Last Updated on September 30, 2018 by Neil Murray
Offer some form of solution in each reply – August 20, 2015
Even if you need to ask your customers for more information to diagnose the problem, at least attempt to offer some form of solution at every opportunity – even if it’s just a case of eliminating the most common problems from the list.
When you do this, you give yourself the opportunity to resolve every ticket at the first time of asking.
Become Great at Managing Feedback – December, 2014
Research shows that for every customer that bothers to complain, another 26 customers have the same problem, yet remain silent.1 Any and all feedback from customers is gold. Even a single complaint is worth putting through whatever system you have for collecting, organizing and processing feedback.
Give Your Employees an Identity Worthy of Ownership – December, 2014
We start to see the real merit in the ways companies like Buffer refer to their support team as “Happiness Heroes.” It’s not to create distance between the traditional service rep title; it’s a clear-cut way to show how the company values support and what they expect this department to achieve (not placating customers, but truly making them happy). It is more meaningful for employees to “make people happy” than it is to “provide customer service.” The objective directly affects motivation.
Tim Carr – A Guide to Providing Quality Customer Support – April, 2014
I looked at other ways to engage with the customer after their purchase. One great way of doing this is to add them to a mailing list upon their purchase, and setup an auto-responder follow up email 24 or 48 hours after their purchase.
Hi,
Tim from WP Cube here. Just wanted to follow up on your recent plugin purchase to see how you’re getting on.
If you have any questions, need help, happy with your purchase (or not!), do reply to this email and I’ll be happy to help out. I’m keen to hear all feedback, good or bad.
Thanks,
Tim,
WP Cube
Pippin Williamson – Getting good at support – October 15, 2013
Conflict with your theme or another plugin are an unfortunate fact of life in the WordPress eco-system.
I’m sorry to hear that you are having trouble, but we are more than happy to help you work through all of issues you are experiencing. Typically this kind of problem comes from a simple conflict with your theme or another plugin. With just a little information from you, we should be able to diagnose the issue and track down the source of the problem.
Get used to stepping back, putting myself in their shoes, replying kindly, and finding a solution no matter how long it takes.
Most people are one curly bracket or disabled plugin away from remedying the issue.
Ian Dunn – Support Expectations for Meta Plugins in the WordPress.org Repository – September 17, 2013
Since we have a lot of things we want to accomplish, and a limited set of resources, my opinion is that we should provide product support, but not user support. i.e., we should fix bugs and security vulnerabilities, but not help people who are having trouble using the plugin, or who want to customize it to fit their specific needs.
Support Expectations:
We created this plugin to scratch our own itch, and are happy to offer the code to the community in the spirit of open source. We are only able to provide limited support, however. If you find a legitimate bug or security vulnerability∗, please let us know; we take those seriously and will fix them.
On the other hand, if you’re just having trouble using the plugin, or making it fit your specific needs, then you’ll need to solve the problem yourself, hire a developer, or get help from the community.
∗ If you do find a security issue, please disclose it to us privately by sending an e-mail to security@wordpress.org, so that we can release a fix for it before you publish your findings.
