CoSurfin's Blog

Be the change you want to see

Aniket

Dalton Cladwell has expressed on his blog that does not like the fact that all the leading social networks have the business plan based on exploiting their users’ data. The only way they know how to make money is through advertisements which comes at the expense of their users. He goes on lengths to say, that he doesn’t hate them, he just hates their business model.

We happen to agree.

Let’s get this straight, everyone out there is trying to make money. Just like there’s nothing in the world such as a ‘free-lunch’, there’s nothing like a free-service - you either pay through your money, or through your data and clicks. That’s just how things work. We don’t blame the likes of Facebook, or Twitter. They’ve created great platforms that have helped thousands of businesses grow who would’ve found it exceptionally hard to gain visibility otherwise, and they’ve also connected millions of people who otherwise wouldn’t have. They have some of industry’s most brilliant people working for them to provide this exceptional service. But they are not as ‘open’ a platform as they claim to be. If you haven’t already Dalton’s open letter to Mark Zuckerberg is a good read.

Everyone has opinions. The world would be a boring place if every one agreed with everyone else. But Dalton is putting his money where is mouth is. He is not just pointing out the faults in the existing social networks, he is trying to create a place he dreams as idealistic. App.net has already raised more than the amount it set out to achieve from people who believe in his idea. Note that I’m saying people who believe in his idea and not the product. The product might fail for all we know, but the idea is worth being a part of. It’s a step in the right direction, and by donating to the cause we are proud to be a small part of it.

How successful it’ll be? No body knows. Won’t the advertisers just pay a $50 annual fee and start spamming users? They might, but it should be far more controllable, and there would be far lesser bots. Will App.net stay true to it’s commitments? Time will tell.

We all take chances based on gut instinct, blind trust, and leaps of faith. It’s evident by the money raised that people are taking chances with App.net. I’m sure there are more people out there waiting for it to fail, than people wanting it to succeed, but the stories and people that are remembered through the ages are the ones that were able to beat the odds. We hope app.net does the same.

The fact that the idea of CoSurfin was inspired from a discussion between some people who thought they could be the change the wanted to see, we are inspired and commend Dalton for the initiate.

Dalton, may the force be with you.

How are you going to compete with X?

Aniket

Disclaimer: This post is not about how to compete with your ex-girlfriends/boyfriends. Though, it would’ve made for a good read.

Broadly there are two kinds of approaches that technology startups take towards building a product :

- To create something that has never been created before.

- To create something better, than an existing product, which you believe would be more efficient, and useful than the existing competitors.

Both approaches are equally risky, as is the case with all things startups.

With the first approach you face the risk of creating an entirely new market space. You can do all the surveys to reduce some risks, but you never know for sure, whether people will think there’s a need for a product like yours, and will be willing to pay money for it. The hardship doesn’t end if you actually manage to create a market space for yourself. Success attracts competition. Others will smell blood, and come running with competitive products, and you’ll get into the race of market capturing, and market sustainability.

For the latter approach, you face the challenges of penetrating an existing market with established competitors. You have the advantage of knowing that there’s an obvious market need for the product. Your competition has proved that with their success. Now, you’re trying to prove that you can do a smarter job than they do, with better features, and probably cheaper price. It’ll take a lot to make a customer switch brand loyalty, if your competition has been doing a good job.

We as a SaaS product startup, fall into the latter category, and are frequently faced with the question: “How are you going to compete with X?”, X being some competitive product that they keep in high regard.

Our product, may be initiated with Chat, but it’s not just a chat product. We call it a Customer and Sales Support application, because it can do so much more than chat.

So here’s our competing strategy:

- Give more real-value features.

- Make existing features more seamless, and easy to use.

- Price it better. (We are not a non-profit organization. Obviously, we want to make money. But we would rather have consistent source of revenue at a lower profit margin, than price it high and hope for the best)

- Provide the best client support one possibly can

If the customers still feel that a competitive product is better, then kudos to them, and we’ll know we have work towards a better product. If we succeed, well, you’ll be seeing more of us. :)

Building Customer Relations - Your usual, Sir?

Aniket

Nothing makes a customer feel more welcome, special, and important than someone remembering them and their likes. It creates an experience worth remembering when they say the simple things like - Your usual table, Sir?

Technology can never make up for an in-person human touch that is required to build a relationship with a customer.

Website owners try to make the most user friendly site out there. They design the website such that a person with minimal experience of surfing the web could navigate their website with ease. They also put in-depth FAQs, site-maps, and every other thing they can think of to make the website self-serving. While these are best-practices, it shouldn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t do more.

A live chat solution, that gives your sales/support executive the ability to look at the transaction history of a returning customer, would empower him to start a personal conversation with the customer.

No one likes to talk to a robot, and get scripted responses. It’s always good to know that there’s a human sitting on the other end listening to you. And if the person actually cares, knows you in some way, it creates a relationship that the customer would want to hold on to.

Things to Do - Online Sales Support

Aniket

Anyone who has been in the business of e-commerce knows that only about 30% of the customers that initiate a transaction, go around to completing it. One can run A/B tests to compare different theories about user experience and interaction design, and provide the best possible interface they can, but it only increases the conversion ratio so much. Even to know which A/B tests to run, you need to have some customer insight, and what better way to get that than the time when the customer is facing some issues.

Now, we don’t need to pitch the need for a Live Chat sales support solution. Most websites already have that implemented. But how many of these drop-outs initiate a chat before they leave your website? Unless you’re brand comes highly recommended to them by a friend, or you’ve done a great job in creating a brand image for yourself already that customers have the drive to put in that extra effort, they’re not going to put themselves through the tiring process of most live chat solutions. Why would they go about explaining themselves to a site that they find hard to use, when there are so many other options to try out? The solution to this proactive alerts for the customer support executive.

When a customer has been inactive on a particular page for sometime, or spent some time on the website for an extended duration, or is just one of your more valued returning customer that you’d want to make feel special; there has to be a way for the support executive to initiate the chat on his end to lend a helping hand. This is his chance to make a connection with the customer, and there are some DOs and DONTs involved:

- Identify yourself and your role (You are just there for customer support, or to get feedback, or for technical assistance)

- Greet the customer, and ask what issue the customer is facing/if any. Try and start a conversation, but respect customer’s opinion if he doesn’t want your help. Don’t start by the usual - “May I have your name, email, mobile no.” Don’t make them feel like they’re just another number in your sales book. Understand their troubles first, before you get to populating your database.

- You can suggest other related products to customer, but don’t bombard him with the entire product pitch if he doesn’t seem interested. Don’t give him the feeling that he’s being conned into purchasing he doesn’t need.

Lastly, once the transaction is complete, don’t just put a feedback form and expect him to fill it. Nothing wins a customer’s heart like some humility. You can politely explain to him why feedback is so important to you, and how seriously your firm takes it.

Give them not a feature, but give them a story.

Customer Support - Past, Present and Future

Aniket

It was probably inevitable that with the explosion of so many business on the internet, pitching all kinds of products and services that were traditionally sold to you through magazines, the television, billboard advertisements and any of the other numerous off-line marketing methods, that customer service would eventually move to the online forum, as well. While you’ve certainly benefited to some degree from the widespread availability and ease (you can get many of the things you could ever want without leaving your living room couch now, as long as you have an internet connection) with which you can learn about and possibly buy products and services, there is one thing that has not quite kept pace with the times.

Customer support isn’t usually very good; despite the wholesale investment most companies with a web presence place into promoting their websites. It isn’t easy to understand what’s holding it back, given that chat with Instant Messenger and other email clients has gotten considerably more sophisticated. Real-time chat is actually very fast and convenient, yet few – if any – businesses use it for their customer support programs. The latter tend to be very slow when it’s available at all; how many websites have you visited and tried to interact with the customer support icon during the stated in-office hours, only to get a “not available” message? Even worse, the platform seems robotic and impersonal when you are able to engage with a (supposedly) real human on the other end.

Businesses would benefit greatly from understanding, especially in this age of social media, the significance of interaction with their customers. In the “old” days – before search engine optimization opened the floodgates and companies took their marketing efforts online – chat was very popular soon after email became the preferred method of long-distance interactions between people. Offline, when you would buy something from a vendor, it felt good to be able to interact with them on issues concerning their product, and question specifics about the service directly. When you are able to speak to someone in a forum like real-life face-to-face or online chat, the speed of the interaction matters a lot to how effective the customer service can be. You simply can’t carry on a conversation with a customer service rep using the common online drop-box, because it can take them hours to respond, or even days in many cases.

Additionally, online customer support is uncomfortably dehumanizing. Just like no one wants to be put on hold during a telephone call listening to unresponsive elevator music, or call a company with a valid complaint or question, and end up talking to an automated system for half-an-hour, when people contact online customer support to chat, they want to speak to a real human. If airing your concerns and taking directions from a robot worked so well, then there would be no need for using people in any physical-world, customer service capacity. The human aspect of interaction is much more important than the makers of these online support forms realize.

There’s another reason why online support needs to be upgraded in user-friendliness to the level of current chat and possibly beyond, and it goes back to why online support was so necessary in the first place. When technical companies moved their wares to the online forum, selling their devices came with a distinct disadvantage when compared to brick-and-mortar buildings where consumers could simply bring in items and get help figuring out how they work, or make a local phone call to do the same. Tech support arose to employ remote access to troubleshoot problems on a client’s computer, sometimes from as far away as halfway around the world. Not only is having a professional fix your computer via remote access beneficial to you, it also saves the company a lot of money. Virus updates, malware removal – all these things can be handled by contacting online customer service. The problem is, due to the inefficiencies of that method, you would end up waiting too long for something that would be easier if the governing program worked much like chat does. When a virus is threatening to wipe out your hard drive; timeliness is everything.

Looking towards the near future, there are already programs arising to help fill this need in the space of online customer service. Experiences with these customer support tools that keep you the consumer in mind, have received raving reviews for the functionality and ease of use. It’s time to leave the frustration of dealing with nonhuman customer support, and get the aid you need to make it a smooth and streamlined process.

5 Mistakes people do while implementing Online Chat Support

varun

Most websites today have an online chat tool. Very few make good use of it.

As choices increase and great new websites offer cooler products and services, awesome customer support can be a great differentiator. Sometimes the only differentiator.

Chat support is great for live interaction with your website visitors, but there are pitfalls. Here are the 5 most common mistakes

1. Live Chat Offline - Really ? Why have a "live chat" widget on your website. I'm sure you have seen this across websites at whatever time of the day you visit them. Bad - gives the impression that you are thoughtful about customer support but pretty much that's where it stops. Hide the widget when you can't have someone answering chats or say leave a message for us - don't say "Live Chat Offline'. It convey's a negative image to the customer that either you don't have enough resources, or you just don't care enough. Instead, it's good to have contact form right there, so that the customer at least, has the means to reach you. Don't make them hunt for a contact page.

2. Customer support or chat support? - Is chat the objective or comprehensive customer support? You are chatting with a serious customer , things could get resolved immediately if you could talk it out. So if you are a small business owner, you pick up the phone or Skype. If you got chat agents, they usually won't call. The chat window is a window of opportunity - your customer wants to talk to you. Shift mediums when necessary and pick a chat tool which allows you to do that - seamless medium transition. Don't break the conversation or stretch by just "chatting"

3. Chat agents and not chat bots - Chat agents represent your firm. Empower them, train them, and don't let them become bots relaying canned snippets of information. If they don't know the product or your return policy, and don't have the authority to resolve minor issues without raising a ticket then you have wasted the power of human touch. People should result in better answers and custom solutions to customer needs. If your chat rep can't make the customer feel like something special was done for him / her...the purpose is defeated. If you can't empower people, put a list of super detailed FAQs on the site, it will save you some money.

4. Fill a form , tell us why do you want to talk us before we allow you to talk to us - Customers seek assistance when they could not figure something out. Good chance they are a wee bit hassled or confused. Don't add to their misery. Unless you are a very large enterprise, with domain specific chat agents, and you want the query to be answered by just the right guy, don't make them fill a form. The name, e-mail, what's their issue etc. can be picked up while chatting. As a customer I'm willing and happy to share my information and all my woes once you start talking to me. All anybody really wants is someone they can talk to, in need of help. Be that person.

5. Messed up queuing - Last, but probably very common is the voice of death repeating in your ears "We are connecting .... we are still connecting, and we will continue to connect" till you close the window and never come back. Plan your chat rep availability and capacity well. Most tools will show you enough history to do that. If you can't deploy more people and active conversations have maxed out - hide the live chat widget temporarily. Not having it is better than having something which does not work or will test your customer's patience.

It's possible to manage these pitfalls, when you shift the focus from using a chat tool to using human touch on your website. Chat or online support can be a great tool. Let the technology support you and not make you follow rules which work against the customer.

In my next post, I will try and cover how chat and co-browsing can make customer support a more visual experience and increase conversions and resolutions.

Where plain old chat fails and cobrowsing technology succeeds

Aniket

Support via chat is often necessary when a consumer of your products or potential customer needs assistance with your website. Regardless of what you are offering on your website, they may still have questions which are difficult to answer through live chat or even over the telephone. The ability to take these support requests into a session where cooperative browsing is possible can easily make all the difference when it comes to customer satisfaction.

The Outdated Functions of Plain Chat

A chat session with a person on the other side of the screen will not be able to convey the information needed to really understand the issues this person is dealing with. Typing out instructions can by time consuming and your customers may not be patient enough to wait on support responses if what they need done is urgent or simply not worth their time when they can use another service to get what they need done.

Chat may be difficult to use when attempting to provide instructions to your customers, especially if they have a difficult time comprehending the instructions you give them. Additionally you may not be able to understand broken English or any other language you are providing support in, so you will be stuck deciphering what the customers say while attempting to help them with their issue without any means of knowing if they are following directions you provide to them well enough to complete their request. You may even wonder if they are on the correct website page or resource they should be on to carry out their needs.

Improvements in Support When Going Visual

When using the technology of co-browsing, a simple session between the support representative and the customer's browser becomes one. This allows whatever happens on the screen on either side to be witnessed on your customer's computer. You can then view their actions while they explain their situation and you could also interact or instruct using your cursor while on their screen. This differs from screen sharing in several ways:

Person to Person Experience - Taking the customer into a co-browsing session allows you to really understand what they are going through when using the system. They can now save time when trying to explain the issue they have via text alone.

Real Time Browser Interface - Browser sharing does not require any special prerequisites aside from having a modern browser. There is no need to download software when working with customers.

Guide the Customer - You can provide guidance and walk your customers through the process when needed. Help them fill out forms easily when they do not know how to proceed. You can even provide visual markers directly on screen by highlighting or drawing using the co-browse tools.

Getting the Support Job Done Efficiently - With the enhancements of having a visual and direct link to your customer's browser session, you can help them achieve their objective quickly and easily. This reduces the length of time you spend helping one person and makes you available to other support requests that need help right away. By making chat support go visual, you can provide direct assistance which cannot be mistaken by words alone.

Visible actions are a bolder stance on support which resolves issues by example while retaining the ability to chat or walk your customers through the process via phone call. This additional level of control really provides you with a chance to make some of the difficult decisions for them as well.

Efficiency is a major goal when working in the visual support scene when it comes to customer satisfaction, and customer satisfaction is (or should definitely be) the common goal for all businesses out there.

The Story Of CoSurfin

Aniket

It was a dark and stormy night… NOT! This story is not that dramatic. Instead, it’s one of those simple ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ kinda stories.

We were a six people strong startup then, with some niche products in WAP and Cloud based storage management. We were still searching for that ‘AHAAA’ moment or that one grand idea that made us jump out of our cozy chairs and say - This Is IT!

Blessed with very active and creative imagination, each of us had our fantasies, regarding how that moment would play out - when sipping beer on a beach, during a walk in the night, or while taking a dump (I did say active and creative). But none of us anticipated it happening over a moment of anger & frustration.

On one not-so-fine day, my mobile-modem of a leading broadband service provider was giving some trouble so I decided to contact customer-support. Now, I’m the kind of guy who prefers mail/chat over calls. There’s nothing more I hate, than listening to endless minutes of music when the IVR keeps repeating ‘Please hold the line, as our customer support executives are on another call’. So when I saw the ‘Chat with Customer Service Executive’, I saw a ray of hope and gave it a shot. Mostly, these links tend to be just for show. You never find an agent online. But they did have one. And he was prompt to respond too. I told myself, ‘Now this is one firm that’s going that extra step to ensure good customer support’. As happens in most stories, it was too soon for me to think that. Why, you ask? Here’s why:

- The chat box that opened up was too heavy and took time to load.

- The customer support agent asked me bunch of questions to validate my account.

- The chat client crashed twice in the course of 5 minutes. Each time after it crashed, a new support agent took my request, and I had to go though the same bunch of questions again. There was no chat history available to me to copy paste the old text either.

- Final resolution of my issue was to fill out a long form (with the same bunch of details I just gave them the third time, and then some) and the support agent raised a ticket for me.

- Then the support agent tried selling me their other products, by pasting entire paragraphs of their product descriptions on my chat window. (Thankfully, closing a chat box is not as rude as slamming the phone down. I hope.)

After the entire tiring process was over, I turned to my team and said, “They’re such a big firm, with millions of customers. How hard it is to build a good customer support module that works? Why ask me the same thing over and over again. And then ask me to fill details that they already have? Why paste entire pages on my chat window to try and sell a product?”

We all were silent for a few seconds after my rant, and then a discussion began: What if we build one pluggable software that did everything we wanted to see in a support module. We always referred to it as a module, and not chat. Because, we wanted to see more than just chat. We wanted to build more than just chat. So we started planning out what the module would do:

- Must be stable and lite.

- Should be able to fetch general data about a logged in customer.

- Should try to allocate the same support agent in case of a crash/connection failure.

- If the same agent is not available, the new agent should be able to view past chat history.

- The agent should be able to call the customer if needed, and generate ticket for the customer data.

- If a form needs to be filled, the agent should be able to fill out the parts of form that have already been discussed over chat.

- There should be a better way to showcase other products/features than copy-pasting big texts of data.

With these features in mind, that day on the whiteboard we wrote ‘Customer Support Module - Not Just Chat’. A few months, many sleepless nights, tons of discussions, and three new hires later, it now reads ‘CoSurfin’.