Tag: Customer Service Page 3 of 8

Be Personable

On March 16, 2015

When you work in tech support, you often don’t know who you are talking to. You don’t know if they’re high-powered or the new intern. You don’t know their level of technical ability or their patience.

But one thing you do know is they are human. So talk to them like it.

So many times, I get an email back from a tech and all it says is “This account has been deactivated.”

That’s nice, computer. I am happy you processed my request in an efficient and timely manner. But it would have been even nice if I knew you were a person too.

Now let’s compare that to:

Good Morning Monica,

I’ve deactivated the account for John Morris effective immediately.

Is there anything else I can do for you today?
Thank you,
Carl T. Holscher

I address Monica by her name.
She is a person. I am a person. There’s no reason I can’t address her by her name. It’s add a little humanity to our interaction.
I told her exactly what I had done.
That way, she knows immediately what this request is about. It doesn’t rely on her to remember what she had asked me for. She’s busy. She doesn’t have time to sit around and wait for me to get the work done. She is doing other things, so don’t make her guess.
It also verifies to me that I have made the correct change. It’s easy to make a mistake, especially when dealing with a large number of requests. Repeating back the action I took helps me to double-check myself.
I used my name.
I am not a team. I am not a group. I am an individual and I did this work for her.

Whenever I am about to send an email to someone, I ask myself if this is the email I would like to receive.

If it is, I hit send. If not, I take a moment to improve upon it. Spending those extra seconds can make a big difference in how you come across to your customers.

It’s hard to be as warm and friendly over text. But it is easy to impart some humanity in your words. Use them.

I Am Mac

By Carl

On November 5, 2014

In Observations

Working in tech support for about a decade, I’ve supported Windows-only shops and Mac/Windows shops alike. I’ve worked with techs and in organizations that viewed Macs and their users as pariahs. Something to be dealt with. A necessary evil within their organization.

I’ve seen it in old and young techs alike. I can almost understand it from the older guys. They worked in support when Macs were a pain to support. They worked at a time when supporting a chatty Apple-talk connected Mac caused problems.

They worked in the foreign world of Apple. But those times have changed. Those times are over. Support Macs today is much different than it used to be. I am reminded of this after reading You’re Mac by David “Macsparky” Sparks.

“You’re Mac”

It was interesting because this time his inflection implied my situation was hopeless. It was like a Microsoft-approved version of “I am Groot.” One phrase. Infinite inflections. Clearly, he’d had a lot of practice at saying it.

Macs can play nice with Exchange servers and Active Directory. Macs can speak Samba to access file shares. They can run corporate anti-virus software. Macs are good citizens.

It’s most interesting that David has encountered issues when presenting with Macs. They’ve so easy to work with! I’ve never had a problem with a Mac when presenting. It beats the guessing game of which magical button combination I need to press to get the Dell/Lenovo/IBM/Sony computer to acknowledge the VGA cable plugged into the side of it.

David closes with:

Many (but hardly all) of the IT professionals serving these industries have been far too busy earning Microsoft certifications to pay any attention to Apple and they are not only unhelpful, they can actively lob hand grenades at your attempts to get any work done with your Mac.

I’ve always prided myself on being as fluent with Macs as I am with Windows. It helps me when I work with every customer. It makes me a better technician because I can speak Mac or Windows. I’ve said it before but this is a great time to reiterate. Technical Support Is Customer Service!

The first job of a technician is to help the customer. It doesn’t matter if the customer is someone you see everyday, or someone who has come to your organization from the outside. Especially if that customer is someone from the outside.

That’s the other secret role of tech support no one talks about. People remember their support experiences long after they leave. Just as David recounts these two experiences with poor support, don’t be the reason for someone’s post about poor support.

Support your customers. All your customers. And be that shining example of support for your company. It’s not hard. Just try to help and care about what you’re doing.

Customer Service in the age of the rabid fan

By Carl

On October 1, 2014

In Observations

Author’s Note: Nearly a year ago now, October 16, 2013 I camped out in a Chick Fil-A parking lot. I did this as part of their First 100 Event for new store openings.

I was out of work at the time, due to the government shutdown. I didn’t know how long it would last (15 days) or if I would be paid for any of it (I wasn’t).
But Chick Fil-A and their offering of 52 free meals for the next year and something to do for 24 hours, including three free meals during the event, was too good to pass up. I could stay home and not get paid, or I could go and try to be one of the first 100 people and have something to do for the next 24 hours.

This is not about Chick Fil-A’s policies. I wrote about that already this is a chance for an out-of-work guy to get some free food while the government tried to figure itself out.

For 24 hours, 100 people are camped out in the parking lot of a Chick Fil-A restaurant. They are all camping out for 24 hours to receive a year’s worth of weekly free meals to the restaurant. Is 24 hours of your life worth 52 free meals? For these 100 people, the answer is yes.

I am one of these 100 people. I am #94.

I am camped out to receive my year of free meals. Why am I camped out in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant with 99 of my new best friends? For the free food. Also because it is a good story and I’ve met some interesting people. Including a duo of other furloughed NIH people. This morning we talked about how we were handling the furlough. How well, or not we were doing.

It was interesting to see how it affected each of us differently. I am OK for now with savings, but not if this stretches on another week or two. The older guy with a family and kids who lives in Pennsylvania and commutes to work here in Rockville is struggling. The younger, single woman is doing OK too since she’s got some money and it’s just her. They’ll both be getting paid once the furlough ends since they’re government employees.

I still don’t know what’s going to happen with my pay check come the 15th for sure. No one seems to have an answer because I’m not sure anyone knows…

This evening, we were treated to dinner inside the restaurant. With this being their grand opening and our camping out, the staff is getting their final training today as well. They were all on hand to help with dinner and the service was excellent. We are 100 strong and we’re cold and wet from the rain but we’re all in good spirits.

We are being fed for free inside a nice warm restaurant. We are all here by our own choice. We are here to get the free food offered to the first 100 people to show up and camp out for 24 hours. We are the rabid fans if there were ever such a thing.

This is my first grand opening event. But there are some who have done this many more times. This is grand opening number 13 for a couple I met this morning. Another person I talked to has been to three in total. The big winner is a friend of the first couple, who has attended 102 events. They are not here today because there’s another Chick Fil-A opening 40 miles from here and that one was closer for them.

But I digress.

Dinner service was very fast. It helps to have a limited menu. But it was still very fast. Especially considering I was near the end of the line, being #94 out of 100. I received my meal and every few minutes an employee would stop, introduce themselves and ask me if I needed anything else. Do I need my drink refilled? Any more sauce? Is there anything they could do for me?

It was clear they were directed to make us feel well taken care of and I did. It was better service than I’ve received in many fancy restaurants. Now, I know this is not the normal procedure for a fast food restaurant. Nor are there usually 40 people running around the place. But it set a great first impression of the store and the staff.

When I eat here in the future, I will remember the smiling faces I met today. It was a great first impression for the restaurant. Clearly, I am already predisposed to liking the franchise since I’m literally camped out in their parking lot, but it was still great customer service. I am here, I am being fed, you have me in a good mood. It wouldn’t take much to sour the experience for me with sub-par service or rude staff.

But instead, everyone I’ve met and talked to has been very excited and happy to be working here, even at 5:30 this morning and at 2am the following morning. Different, smiling people, but still smiling and friendly.

**Customer Service could have made or broken this event. ** It’s cold, the high was 62 with a low in the 40s. It rained from about 5pm through the night. People are cold and maybe rethinking their decision to be here. But they’re still here and the staff really made us feel welcomed.

This entire event is a huge opportunity to squander the good will you have built up among the loyal 100 people, as well as those who have wandered by to ask what was going on. But they’ve done a great job in meeting my high expectations and from the Chick Fil-A opening veterans, they consistently hit those high marks for customer service and the experience is always positive no matter where the store is opening or the weather decides to do.

Text expansion makes support a breeze

By Carl

On August 22, 2014

In Observations

I’ve used various apps to expand snippets into full words or blocks of text for years. It’s made my work in support roles easier and saved me from retyping the same things constantly. I’ve not written much about it until now. I read a post from Chase Clemons on the Be Snappy blog and left a comment there.

For instance, when I don’t have a customer’s name, I use the snippet “`ht” to trigger “Hey there!” I use snippets even down to days of the week and months. Instead of typing out September, just put that as a snippet with “xm9.” Every few seconds you save adds up.
My Best Email Support Tricks and Tips : Snappy

Chase offers some good advice for snippets to make customer support email quicker. I have some tips of my own. While I do less general support now that I’m supporting one application, I have my list of snippets to make my life easier.

Snippet Basics

For TextExpander(Mac) and Breevy (Windows), both of which I use and love. They sync over Dropbox, or via snippet export/import for environments where Dropbox isn’t allowed.

It’s good to choose a trigger character. This is something you’ll type to indicate you’re starting a snippet. It’s not required. But it does prevent words from being swapped for snippets when you don’t want them to be.

I use “Z” as my trigger character so everything starts with Z.

zname is my full name.
zphone is my phone number.
zmail is my email address.
zadd is my full address.

I have zdphone and zdmail for work since I work at the Department of Labor.

How many times do you type these out?

About the 50th time I mistyped Thank You I turned that into zty.
I also use zgm and zga for Good Morning and Good Afternoon.

What about filling in forms?

I also have a snippet that fill in an entire page to book closed captioning for events I run since most of the information is the same. (Shout out to Caption Colorado! Those guys seriously rock!)

Here it is in action:

What questions do you often ask?

I have a snippet I use when I’m planning an event. In my current role, I support WebEx. I need some basic information to schedule an event with the desired options.

For this, I enter zplanning because it’s easy to remember. It expands to:

Name of Event:
Date:
Time:
Duration:
Will you be using a Webcam?
What will you be sharing? Video? Slides?
Will you be taking Questions/Chats from the remote participants?
Are we recording the event?
Do you need Closed-Captioning?

I send this out along with any specifics for the event. I never have to worry about forgetting to ask something and I have it all listed out in one easy-to-reference place.

Email templates

I get a lot of email questions. Many of them are asking the same questions, so I’ve put together some stock replies.

How do I silence the beeps when people join a conference call?

I respond with zzbeeps.
This expands to:

Dialed in with the Leader code press the following.
*9 – to bring up the menu
3 – turns off the beeps
* – to rejoin the conference

WebEx won’t let me share my Word/Excel/PDF using Share File, but _____ can do it?

I respond with zzwdl.
This expands to:

To get all other files besides PowerPoint files to show up with the Share File option in WebEx you’ll need the WebEx Document Loader.

The application is found here: https://support.webex.com/MyAccountWeb/supportUtilities.do?root=Tools&parent=Support
It’s listed under WDL Installer/Uninstaller
Direct download link: https://support.webex.com/US/includes/documents/supportutilities/WDLInstall.zip
You will need administrative rights to install it.
You can verify it installed properly because you’ll see a printer listed as WebEx Document Loader.
Once it’s installed, start a WebEx session and share any files you like and it will work.

Part of my role is to reset passwords and manage accounts. As a result, I sent a lot of password reset emails or messages informing someone of a new or transferred account.

Please setup a new account for John Doe.

I respond with znewebex.

For this, I use some advanced features which I’ll walk through.

First, I need a subject line.

Your new WebEx Account%(Key Tab)

This gives me the subject of Your New WebEx Account and the %(Key Tab) is telling Breevy to press the Tab key.

Now I’m in the body of the email.

%fill%%| tells Breevy I want to enter something before the rest of the snippet runs. I type my greeting, then I press Tab to have the snippet continue.

A WebEx conferencing account has been created for you. Please use the information below to use your account:
URL: https://dol.webex.com
Username: %clipboard
Password: Welcome!23 (you will be required to change your password on your first log-on)

Username: %clipboard tells Breevy to input the contents of the clipboard. Before I activate this snippet, I copy the username to the clipboard so it’s inserted automatically.
The password is always the same.

I have requested an integrated audio conferencing account as well. Once created, I will send you the account information and instructions to link your audio account with WebEx. You can still use WebEx with another audio account if you already have one until we get an integrated audio account set up for you.

To learn more about WebEx:
1. Log into your WebEx account
2. Click on Support (located on the left navigation bar)
3. Click on “Training”
4. Select the platform you would like to learn about (Meeting Center is the main platform and widely used). You will have a list of topics to select from for tutorial.

Feel free to contact us via Support Email if you have any questions.

Thank you,

Here is how it looks when I’m using it in Outlook.

Do you fill out weekly status reports?

I have a snippet for those too.

%A, %B %d, %Y Status
Accomplishments
1
2
3
Issues
1
2
3

The %A, %B %d, %Y turns into the day and date. When I run it, the snippet looks like this:

Finally, I close most of my support emails with zppp which expands to Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

These are some of the snippets I use to work better. I highly recommend getting Breevy or TextExpander. These applications will pay you back in saved time many times over.

Excellent Snippet Resources

Shawn Blanc has posted A Quick Guide to Common Miscapitalizations of Tech Names
. If you write the names of Apple products or other tech products like AirPlay, iPad, or TextExpander it will put the capitalizations in the proper places.

Brett Terpstra has an excellent collection of TextExpander Tools. I particularly like the iOSMarkdown and Characters collections.

I would also recommend looking over the TextExpander posts Brett has written. Brett is a wizard with a computer. By subscribing to his blog, your computer life will improve immeasurably.

David “MacSparky” Sparks has solved the problem of pasting text without formatting or styles. Pasting text with TextExpander. This simple trick will take anything with funky Microsoft Office formatting or a mix or bold or italics and convert it into pristine plain text without formatting.

The Balancing Act

By Carl

On June 7, 2014

In Observations

Balancing Act

This is my work life now. I run. I run from event to event. I try to squeeze in lunch. I try to rest for a moment in-between events and obligations.

I have no idea where I am going. My calendar is my Sherpa guide. I go where it tells me. I go when it tells me. I show up. I hope I’m ready. I hope I have everything I need.

I usually do. And no one notices. No one complains. No one cares. No one takes note of me when I show up ready to make their event great.

But the moment I let something slip.

I fear that moment. I fear the failure. My failures are public. They are quite literally broadcast in front of people, to people all across the country.

If I falter, it will not be in private.

But I do not often falter. I work twice as hard and I
spend double the time preparing. I practice. I practice and I practice more. I work hard to assure my events succeed. I delight my customers.

When an event I run succeeds, it fills me with pride. When I am able to do a great job, it makes me happy. And when I do an almost-great job it bothers me.

I notice the little things. No one ever mentions these things. No one ever complains or asks about them. But if I notice them, other people have too.

For instance, running an event recently, the slide deck was excellent. It looked perfect to our 131 remote participants. It looked excellent to the presenter. It looked good on the two large LCD screens for the local audience. But the projector was slightly cropping the right side of the slides. It did not cut off any words, but parts of some letters were lost. And it bothered me.

Most of the events I run use a webcam. I have access to a pretty good one that will allow for some panning and zooming so I can set up shots. I like to get a tight-cropped view of the presenter at the podium. I like to have my view of the panel nicely framed. I think about the camera angles. I think about remote participants and what their experience will be during the event.

And that’s the biggest take away I have for running events. There are two audiences.

The first audience is sitting in the room. They’re the ones who see me. I see their quizzical looks when something goes wrong. I can see their dismay when there’s a hiccup. I can see them and they can see me. I need to keep them happy because they’re in the here and now.

The second audience is not in the room. They’re around the country or around the world. They are everywhere. And they can often outnumber the people in the room. Their needs must be considered. Their experience is just as important, if not more important, than those in the room.

It’s a balancing act. To run a great event, both audiences must be not only appeased but delighted. That means thinking about everything. Or as much as I reasonably can.

Before I started running events full-time I had planned and executed a few of them in my time. But this is a whole new level of detail.

Before an event, I start out with a simple list. The basics I need to know before I can even plan the event.
Here is my short list.

Name of Event:
Date:
Time:
Duration:
Will you be using a Webcam?
What will you be sharing? Video? Slides?
Will you be taking questions?
Remote participants?
Local participants?
Are we recording the event?
Do you need Closed-Captioning?
Approximately how many remote participants do you expect?

This lets me know not only what options I need to enable in WebEx, but what will be presented. This informs any recommendations I make.

I do not only need to know the technical requirements for an event, but to be an advocate for the platform and consult on events. I have experience running events large and small for all sorts or audiences. Most of the time I am working with someone who has been tasked by their office to put on an event.

When they come to me, my role is part technical, part advocate for the platform and part consultant. I play the role I need to in order to help my customer the most.

The biggest hurdle to a successful event is behavioral.

The presenter of the event needs to set expectations. Will there be a Q&A session? How will questions be asked, both in the room and remotely? The presenter needs to set any expectations before the meeting starts. That way, the audience knows what to expect.

Dry Runs are practice

For every event I run, I recommend doing a dry run before the event. This serves two main purposes. First, it’s to allow myself and the Events staff to work out any kinks in the setup. We can test our audio and video setup. We adjust the microphone levels. We make sure the video is clear and the angles are good for everyone who will be on camera.

Second, it allows the presenter to get a feel for the space. Where will they be presenting from? What tech is in place to help them? Will they be driving their own slide presentation? Will someone else do it for them?

How is the lighting? Does it wash them out on camera? Is there a light shining in their eyes? There are tons of variables which can make or break an event. The goal of the dry run is to practice.

What about sound? How many microphones will be used? Will they be wireless, wired or a lavaliere attached to the presenter? Once I know what how many people need to be heard, then the I need to test the sound levels on the microphones.

The microphones need to all be loud enough to be heard. Both for the people in the room and the people out in the field. If the sound is poor, the event is going to be a mess.

Acts of God

No matter how much practice I have or how many things are considered, things can still go wrong. At that point it’s not a matter or how well I prepared. It’s a matter of how I respond to the problem.

What could go wrong?

Phone lines can drop
When we’re not using VOIP, we a teleconference line which can support a few hundred people. Sometimes the phone drops. In those situations, I dial back into the meeting. The only times it has happened, has been in smaller sessions with under a dozen remote participants. I was able to dial back into the conference line in a few seconds and we were back up and running.
There can be noise over the phone line
I work very hard to offer alternatives to a wide-open conference line because even when lines are muted, people can unmute their phones.

Dogs barking, typing, papers rustling, hold music and other phone conversations broadcast to a couple hundred people can be a disaster.
Presenters can put remote controls in their pockets
I was running an All-Hands meeting for a group at work. We had a couple hundred people in the Auditorium and a few hundred more online. Everything was going well, then the slides up on the projector screen and LCDs in the room started changing randomly.

The person running the slides locally turned to me in confusion, I realized someone had the remote for the slides and was pressing buttons. So I unplugged the USB dongle from the laptop and for the rest of the event, we manually changed slides.

Afterwards, I learned one of the presenters put the remote in their pocket, and it was there, where the buttons were getting pressed causing the slides to dance.

These are both good lessons. No matter how much you plan, something can always go wrong. Communication can be missed or forgotten, something can make a mistake. I can forget to schedule closed captioning. The webcam can malfunction and refuse to work. The information received from the event organizer can be incomplete, or plain wrong.

Perfection is never a guarantee. It is a goal to strive towards.