Tag Archives: customer support

Quote: The best customer service experience is when they never have to contact you.

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Awesome Jeff Bezos Quote:

 5. Obsess over Customers. As Bezos said in his Wired interview, the best customer service experience is when they never have to contact you.

Forbes Article: 6 Things Jeff Bezos Knew Back in 1997 That Made Amazon a Gorilla

In my early days of Flying Cart it was my goal to get people to email and call us. We saw that as a sign of engagement.  We were completely wrong. People just want the product to work. Getting your email open and typing out a question is a lot of work and nobody wants to do it.

Remember the last time you contacted customer support? It was probably because the product didn’t work the way you wanted it to. The worst thing of all is only in very few cases does someone actually contact you – most people (like me) will just hit the back button until they find a product that works for them.

When someone contacts support with a question think about how you can solve it before they even ask it.

Enthusiasm Goes A Long Way Over Email

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I work over email, I rely on my words to get things done and make money. I email developers, designers, and most importantly my customers.

25% of my day goes to customer support at Flying Cart and sometimes I find myself going above and beyond for certain customers.

I want to go above and beyond for all my customers

I started to ask myself why I do this for certain customers. At first I thought it was based on when I had my coffee or the type of question they asked. As I started analyzing my emails in our archive I began to notice a pattern. All the people I went above and beyond for started things off with a nice greeting or compliment.

Here are a few things customers said to me:

  • “Hey, Rishi. I’m loving the outcome.”
  • “Hi Rishi! This was so helpful and we appreciate it so much. I have a few more questions and could use your help.”
  • “I’m totally loving Flying Cart. It is so easy to use. I need some help though on setting up…”

– These type of responses totally pump me up. It showed me that I was making progress. They also spelled my name correctly!

When things got frustrating they showed me a little sympathy:

  • “I hope I’m not coming off as a pest with this, Rishi”
  • “I know this is a lot of work but we really want it to be amazing”

– This was after 10+ emails which was frustrating. When the customer shows me that they understand they are being annoying it completely relaxes my frustrations and keeps me plugging along.

I broke it down even further and found 2 major patterns:

  • The use of my name: “Hi Rishi”

– By simply stating my name I felt like I was helping out a friend not some random stranger.

  • Using emoticons: “:)”

– In college I use to cringe when my friends used emoticons, I thought it was something only 13yr old girls use. But when it comes to email interactions with co-workers or customers I actually picture them smiling which does a lot for my mood.

In summary: emoticons, friendly greetings, and a little enthusiasm!

This works well for 2 reasons:

  1. No one else does it. So your email will stand out as polite, mild mannered, educated, and fun to work with!
  2. Your emails are read based on how the recipient reads it. Do whatever it takes to convey a positive mood so they don’t create a mood for you.

Do you have any tips on how to sound better over email? I’d like to know in the comments below.