You heard that right. Twitter isn’t the future of customer support, the shining beacon of greatness that we all say it is. Twitter is where people go to get a goddamn answer from you when they can’t get it elsewhere. [Tweet this]

Let’s back up a pace. What comes before Twitter?

To continue the analogy, let’s pretend you’re a landlord. Your tenent comes over and knocks on your door to ask if you could please fix their leaking pipe. That’s regular support, via email or helpdesk or live chat or phone. An even more benign version of that would be your tenant giving you a call to simply to ask what days garbage is picked up.

Customer feedback or satisfaction scoring would be you dropping by your tenant to say hi, see how they are, and let them know you are around if they need you.

Community management might be baking your tenant cookies, or planning a block party.

But when your tenant leaves you a phone message every day and you don’t answer, or asks you to fix something and you don’t…then they get mad. Then they take you to small claims court to force you to give them what they’re deserved.

They don’t want to be there. And you don’t want to have to deal with the inconvenience or the bad publicity. But you have to deal with it, because it’s public and there are consequences.

That’s most support on Twitter.

Don’t believe me? In a recent Ask Your Target Market survey we conducted, only 1% of people said they preferred to get support via Twitter instead of traditional mediums. [Tweet this] Yep, 99% of people prefer to get support via traditional mediums like email, phone, etc.

I think it’s fantastic that this small claims court exists. Too many companies neglect their customers and it’s great that there’s a place that they can, generally, guilt companies into responding to them. I do it often with companies whose regular customer service is horrible.

You don’t want to be that company. You don’t want to be the landlord that goes to court.

Yes, monitor Twitter for folks in need of support and help them. But PLEASE, focus on making your traditional support channels great before you expend resources on Twitter. It’s not a magic bullet…it’s where people go when your other support sucks.

Courtroom photo courtesy of Douglas Palmer.
Owner don’t care photo courtesy of Bart Everson.

Options

The options we gave people (which I believe we appropriated from Kevin) were:

Although there are certainly more emotions in the universe, that seemed to cover the basic range.

Insights

Our support team got the most out of negative emotions. Having a quick indication of angry or frustrated folks helped them use extra care with people who really needed it.

Statuses also helped clarify emotions that may have been unclear. “I thought a customer was upset because they were being so curt,” says Claire Talbott, Customer Support at UserVoice. “But they had set their emotional state to ‘Excited!’. Turns out they just had a very…direct…writing style.”

These fields have also been useful when monitoring for trends. For example, when we announced that we were giving money back to our customers, we saw a spike in “Excited!” people. If we see a huge spike in “Confused” folks, we’ll investigate if any of our recent changes fouled up our user experience.

Response rates

We assumed very few folks would bother to fill out this field, but a surprising 19%-25% filled it in. The majority have been “Confused” or “Frustrated” – common emotions when contacting any helpdesk – but we were pleasantly surprised to find that many were “Excited!” as well.

Thankfully, only a very small number were “Angry”, “Panicked”, or “Worried”. Rest assured, those folks got very tender care.

“Emotional State” vs “How are you feeling?”

Kevin named his field “Emotional State”, but we felt that “How are you feeling?” was a little more human…so we experimented with both. The difference in response rate was negligible, so go with whatever feels natural to you!

This is an easy field to add in most helpdesks (here’s how to add a custom field in UserVoice) and a great additional piece of information. We recommend you give it a try!

Today we’re very excited to announce that UserConf 2013 will be hosted at the San Francisco Zoo! We’ll spend the day in their rustic Great Hall learning about customer retention from Automattic (makers of WordPress.com), Github, and more…then we’ll head to the Lion House for the afterparty. WITH REAL LIONS.

You work hard at delighting your customers and we think you should get to play hard, too! Meet your fellow attendees, get boozed up, eat some delicious hors d’ oeuvres, and see lions, tigers, fisher cats and more walk around mere feet from you! Don’t worry, it’s totally safe.

If you need a break from the feline ferocity, you can step outside into the courtyard to freshen your drink and watch the penguins.

Best of all, this means that part of your ticket money is going to the Zoo…which means you’re supporting the cause of animal preservation!

So if you want to absorb amazing amounts of knowledge, meet great people, AND hang out with big cats, buy your ticket now!

…and then discover we have to contact them for pricing. Then this happens:

[Tweet this]

[Tweet this]

[Tweet this]

Now, don’t get me wrong, some companies really can’t list their prices on their website. For example: one printing job doesn’t look like another and you don’t want to get stuck doing a complex job for a flat price.

(There are also plenty of businesses who see the opportunity to squeeze more money out of their clients by keeping prices unlisted and negotiating them as high as they’ll go. I’m going to assume this isn’t how your company operates.)

But customers can find multiple competitors in seconds these days, thanks to an internet full of options. And they want quick results. If a competitor lists a price, they may just go with them because it’s easier.

If you really can’t list your prices on your site, then you have a very important responsibility:

ANSWER ME DAMN QUICKLY.

[Tweet this]

If you simply MUST hide your price, that means you have to be even more helpful and responsive when people do actually spend their valuable time reaching out to you.

Here are some things you should probably do:

• Have 24/7 support. You really don’t want to leave a customer hanging (with competitors a few keystrokes away) 8 hours until someone wakes up.
• Have a phone number or live chat. Although this doesn’t work for a lot of companies, it’s necessary to assuage customers irritated by your lack of listed pricing.
• Strive to get me a price in as few exchanges as possible. Even if you don’t list it, have a few common packages available for your rep to refer to so you don’t have to spend hours (or even minutes) calculating the cost of my specific situation.

Here’s how you definitely SHOULDN’T do it:

I just wanted to get a rough idea of how much it cost to get towel service for UserVoice HQ, so we could waste fewer paper towels. There was no price on the website – sigh – so I emailed them. And what do they do? Point me at yet another contact point I needed to reach out to.

Guess what? As a potential customer, I don’t care that I need to talk to my local Cintas location. I emailed them, I gave them my location, and I asked a clear question. Cintas should contact the local Cintas location and get a quote from them, or assign this email to them, or have them call my phone number (which they forced me to provide). I’m guessing it’s pretty clear to you that I didn’t call the number and they didn’t get my business.

Making your customers do the work is going to send them running, as quickly as possible, for the nearest competitor. Customers get to be lazy, you don’t.

“Gamification” is a tricky term. It immediately brings to mind badges, points that mean nothing, and companies struggling to make their product relevant.

Let’s be clear: gamification cannot motivate people to use your product if they don’t already have interest in doing so. I know that’s what the gamification gurus want you to think, but it’s simply not true. A unengaging product is an unengaging product. But gamification can be effective if it reminds you of why you’re inspired to use something.

Zappos recently wrote a great post called “Motivation is Not the Answer”. In it, they say:

“It constantly amazes me how many people I meet who say they want more information on how to motivate their team members. I believe that motivation is necessary; however, when I feel that I need to motivate myself, it’s usually to do something that I really didn’t want to do in the first place. It may seem that motivation is a good thing, and it is, if it’s coming from the right place.”

Instead of trying to force motivation, they argue, you need to inspire people. Inspiration motivates like nothing else. People worked their asses off for Steve Jobs because he was inspiring. He may have been a questionable human being, but they sure respected him. They’re not going to work their asses off for Tim Cook unless he does the same…even if he chooses to give them points, badges, or bonuses.

Foursquare badges – a classic gamification example – motivate people because they reflect the inspiration behind their real-life activities. I genuinely feel pride to get the Jetsetter badge because I have been flying all over the country (like a boss). They’re not arbitrary badges…they’re badges that remind me that I’ve succeeded at something (even if that something is drinking too much).

Part of the growing distrust of gamification is the number of companies attaching it to “boring” products. WIRED recently ran an article that was largely skeptical of gamification in customer service. They argue that customer service is a tough job, and badges aren’t going to make it less tough. Sure. But you can still gamify your customer service by reminding customer service reps why they do what they do…and when they actually do a good job at it. Which is why the gamification features in our helpdesk product are about reminding customer service reps why they do what they do: because they like making people happy.

Our leaderboard does give points, yes. But they’re not focused on simply awarding support agents for finishing tasks. Responding to 100 support tickets doesn’t mean you did a great job with them (“sorry, can’t help you” shouldn’t earn you much). Instead, you get one point for replying to a customer support ticket…but you get 3 for responding within 1 hour (which our data says is the key window in which to respond) and you get fifteen when a customer chooses to give you a kudos. And the result? Customer support reps love these points.

@ryanbakernz @uservoice @timely It’s not ever yet! If I manage to crash the system there might be a last minute flurry of tickets

— Andrew Schofield (@nzscoff) October 31, 2012

Yes, customer service can be a tough job. But most folks who do it for an extended period of time because they like helping people. There’s your inspiration. Our leaderboard strives to remind them of that inspiration: “look, you just got a kudos because you made someone happy.” Trying to create motivation is going to fail. Getting a badge doesn’t make a day dealing with angry customers worth the effort. Making someone happy does. [Tweet this]

Trying to get your users more engaged? Take a deep look at what inspires them. Then try building in gamification that evokes that inspiration, that reminds them of why they’re doing what they’re doing. That’s worth far, far more than an arbitrary badge.

Originally published in Website Magazine.

BetaPunch

The offense: Aggravating a potential customer.

What happened: When user testing site BetaPunch intercepted a tweet from a well known blogger praising a competitor they swooped in with a counter-offer. Unfortunately they failed to do their research. This particular blogger, Danielle Morrill, had used BetaPunch in the past only to have her test results tweeting publicly without her consent. She let BetaPunch know that was why she wasn’t using BetaPunch anymore only to get a response back that said, “yes 3 free tests that you never bothered to acknowledge or thank us for #classy.” Dayyyum. The exchange continued and culminated in Danielle creating a very popular blog post  titled “Why I won’t be using Beta Punch for user testing. Alternate title: How NOT to do social media for your startup.” The blog post is the third search result in Google for “BetaPunch.”

The takeaway: Don’t start a fight. It simply isn’t worth it and can have implications you’ve never considered. Or, as we say at UserVoice, “don’t be a dick.”

“You’re about to become a case study.”

HMV

The offense: Failing to safeguard its social media accounts.

What happened: HMV, a global entertainment retailer, was put in a tough spot – they had to layoff some of their staff. In an impromptu meeting they gathered a bunch of their employees to give them the bad news. The layoff would be immediate. Among the staff being laid off was their 21-year-old community manager Poppy Rose Cleere (yes that’s her real name). It didn’t take long after learning that she was newly unemployed that she tweeted the following from her cell phone via HMV’s corporate account: “We’re tweeting live from HR that we’re all being fired! Exciting! #hmvXFactorFiring.” With over 70,000 followers, it’s no surprise that people took notice. Another tweet followed once HMV took notice: “Just overheard our Marketing Director (he’s staying folks) ask ‘How do I shut down Twitter?’ ” With thousands of retweets, ‘shutting down Twitter’ at that point wouldn’t really matter. Read Hootsuite’s take on the ordeal here.

The takeaway: Plan for worst case scenarios. It would be reasonable to assume that firing someone would make them angry. Understanding that this may disgruntle some people, take away their access to something like Twitter if they’re a community manager before you royally upset them. Not doing so would be like telling your teenager they’re grounded when they’re still out driving your car.

She really wasn’t happy.

Chris Brown

The offense: Surprising no one.

What happened: Oh Chris Brown. If there was ever a man that needed to change the perceptions around him it’s Chris Brown. He’s been called all sorts of things in the past, almost all of which peg him as a woman-hater. Fresh off his ‘exchange’ with Rihanna, Chris Brown had somehow convinced his PR team that he could have his Twitter handle back. It wasn’t a great idea. It didn’t take very much time at all for him to degrade another woman – this time comedian Jenny Johnson. When Jenny took a jab at him (something he should be very used to at this point), he responded with…graphic stuff. I’ll let you read it all for yourself, but just be warned that he doesn’t really hold back. Or maybe he is holding back. This is Chris Brown we’re talking about. Anyways, this whole ordeal ended with Chris Brown getting his Twitter account taken away…again.

The takeaway: Let haters hate. There are going to be people who exist solely to pick a fight with you or your product. These people are beyond interacting with – and that’s okay. You can leave them be and let them fade away. Sometimes these people poke, prod, and try to aggravate you. Ignore it. It will make your life much, much easier.

Censored because of grossness.

#McDstories

The offense: Lack of foresight.

What happened: McDonalds is no stranger to Twitter campaigns. Perhaps they were feeling empowered after their fairly successful #MeetTheFamers campaign that helped people realize that at least some of the food they ate at McD’s was real. Regardless, when McDonald’s launched #McDstories I’m not exactly sure what they were expecting. It’s no secret that Twitter is filled with people trying to be the wittiest or the most sarcastic, so when they heard about #McDstories they used it as their personal complaint hotline. Twitter was flooded with stories that starkly contrasted to McD’s paid tweets about the magical experiences that happen inside their restaurants. With people using the hashtag to report fingernails in their Big Macs to others complaining about getting nine chicken nuggets instead of ten, the promoted hash was quickly flooded withe precisely the kind of content McDonalds was trying to prevent in the first place. Their social media manager went on record saying, “Within an hour, we saw that it wasn’t going as planned. It was negative enough that we about a change of course.”

The takeaway: Not all campaigns work for all brands. The “stories” hashtag is a common one on Twitter, but that doesn’t mean it will work for anyone. Knowing your audience is an important place to start when deciding what sort of campaign to launch. If you think a campaign could be easily misused, it probably will be. Adjust as necessary.

There were so many more.

Hit the hay

The offense: Insensitivity.

What happened: Ah, the good old horse meat fiasco. Super market chain Tesco was under serious fire when it turned out that their value “all beef” burgers were actually at least partially horse meat. People were outraged. It made national headlines as people felt ill with the thoughts that they may have consumed Seabiscuit. It was no doubt a sensitive situation and Tesco was in no position for any sort of controversy. Alas, during the height of their dilemma the following tweet went out: “It’s sleepy time so we’re off to hit the hay! See you at 8am for more #TescoTweets.” 0_o Hit the hay? Like the horses in your burgers? Like the cute little ponies I indadvertedly gobbled up at my last BBQ? While I personally got a little bit of a sick chuckle out of the tweet, others were not as amused. Turns out the tweet was a scheduled tweet that slipped through the cracks and went out unchecked. They apologized saying that they’d “never make light” of the situation.

The takeaway: In a crisis, stop all scheduled tweets. Just do it. We do this at UserVoice when there’s any sort of emergency or sensitive national issue. It doesn’t look great to push your content during a time of national mourning. (An dishonorable mention goes out to Epicurious for this.) You may be caught up putting out the fires, but take the time prevent starting new ones.

Heh.

Quit.

If the folks who are leading your organization truly don’t care about customers, two things are clear:

1) There’s no way the rest of the company can. People follow their leaders.
2) The company will fail. It might not be immediate, but listening to customers makes or breaks a company.

I hear people complain all the time about their bosses who don’t care about their customers. These people fight the good fight every day against opponents they can’t beat. We’ve shared one such horror story.

I don’t like to give up, but there’s a point at which you have to realize that you can’t accomplish what you’d like to…no, what you need to do.

So do it. Quit.

If your calling in this world is to make people happy, then you should be in a situation where you can do that. If your leadership truly doesn’t care, then you need to move on.

I know it’s hard. I know the job market isn’t great (though customer service rep pay is rising). But being miserable isn’t worth it. It’ll shorten your lifespan.

There are lots of companies who do care about customers. Many of them aren’t great at building for customers or communicating with customers, but they DO care. You can be the catalyst that helps them understand customers and succeed because of it. You can be the one who makes the breakout feature based on customer feedback. You can be the one who helps them become Zappos. But if the company you’re at is dead-set against you doing those things, don’t give them any more of your life.

Photo courtesy of Mikey Wally.

We’ve already warned about the dangers of creating too many rules based on a traumatizing outage. But if you had angry customers, it’s worth taking a look at how you could have made them less angry.

Assess why they were angry

Obviously if there were any bugs then you probably reported them already. But there’s a difference between a customer finding a bug and a customer being angry about it. What drove them to be so frustrated? User experience in the product? Was the support process itself frustrating? Or were they just having a bad day?

Figure out if you can improve processes

If there were elements of your support process that frustrated the user, look at how they can be improved. Was language used that pushed the wrong button for them? Did it seem like your agent didn’t care about their issue (even if they did)? This isn’t a blame game; it’s about figuring out which tactics work and which don’t.

Figure out if you can improve the user experience

Often a customer is frustrated because something didn’t work as expected. If it’s not a bug, some customer support teams will just forget it. But as I mentioned in my essay about error messages (and how they’re screwing Square), it’s your job to pass UX issues on to the product team as well. If it was really hard for a customer to find the settings section, that’s something that should be addressed just as much as a bug should.

Give your agent a breather

Dealing with an angry customer can be exhausting and frustrating. Don’t make your support agent dive right back into the fray. Give them a different task to calm their nerves, like improving your documentation or sending out gift packages to customers. Otherwise you risk them burning out or lashing out at customers.

It’s tough to deal with an angry customer, so make the most of it and learn + improve all you can. And then pour yourself a drink; you deserve it.

Photo courtesy of Chris Turner.

1) Validation

Make sure to apply this empathy during the act of apologizing by showing that you really understand how and why this is affecting them. Validate and acknowledge that something is a real problem. Probably the worst example of an apology is “I’m sorry that you feel that way” or “I’m sorry that you think I’m not being clear.” Simply put, there is no “you” in apology. A far better way to phrase would be “I’m sorry WE caused this frustration,” or simply “I’m sorry for the trouble.” Take responsibility.

2) Explanation

Just as important is to explain what happened. This not only shows that you truly understand how and why something is a problem, but it also builds trust and transparency. The cherry on top is then to be equally forthcoming about what is being done to resolve the issue. As a customer, when I’m the one having a problem, empathy only goes so far – I want to know if there is a solution, and I want to be connected to that solution. You can even take the extra step of mentioning the names of the people working to fix the issue, which will further humanize the support experience and help the customer feel especially connected. (Thanks to Daniel Slater of GuildLaunch for this tip!)

3) Appreciation

Another way to show that you care is to thank them for using the product. In fact, I will often do this first – showing appreciation for not only the customer’s problem, but also for the person herself, might diffuse the negative feelings by mixing in some positive ones.

4) Reparation

An important part of an apology is making reparations, but maybe not in the way you’d normally think. Throwing money at the problem can at times be appropriate, but can also cheapen the gesture (getting money for your birthday is great but also somewhat impersonal – wouldn’t it be better if you got a gift that someone took the time to pick out?). This might be an offer for some personalized attention (a demo, a consult, a phone call) or perhaps simply an overture to “let me know if there’s ever anything I can do to help.”

5) Verification

The apology should invite a response, such as “let me know if you have any questions about what happened here” or perhaps “let me know if this was solved to your satisfaction, and if not, what more can we do?” This makes the customer feel involved and respected – and possibly even part of the solution – and assures him that we’ll here for him and are not going anywhere, even after it’s resolved.

Lastly, a word on style. If you’re trying to humanize the interaction, then sound like a human! A cliched sentence like “sorry for the inconvenience” will likely just add fuel to the fire (forgive the cliche). Personalizing your response will go a long way towards establishing a connection. But avoid being too cute – you want to empathize, not trivialize.

Follow most of these steps, and you might find that your relationship with your customer has actually strengthened as a result. We all make mistakes – maybe you will even look forward to the next problem, and see it as an opportunity to show how supportive you can be!

“I’m sorry” photo courtesy of The Master Shake Signal.
Sign photo courtesy of Craig Murphy.

Turns out, it’s the sort of man who’s very good at customer service and very likable. He could have easily spent his timeslot speaking about how great he is at customer service, but instead he spoke about outages, major issues, and one particular traumatizing experience he had.

Basically, Mathew covers the entirety of what we’re discussing this month. This is a must-watch.

Liked this video? Join us at the next UserConf!