Parature for Facebook

Newly Available Parature for Facebook Helps Companies Increase “Face-Time” while Keeping Support and New Customer Acquisition Costs Low

Today we announced the general availability of Parature for Facebook, the industry’s first and only customer service application that enables direct customer engagement through Facebook. The Parature for Facebook application, delivered on-demand through Parature’s software-as-a-service model, helps companies, educational institutions and government associations directly engage with their Facebook fans to resolve service issues, answer pre-sales questions and conduct one-to-one customer interactions, all within Facebook and accessible through an easily installed Support Tab on a Facebook page.

Several new and existing Parature customers have signed on as users of Parature for Facebook, but language learning software giant Rosetta Stone Inc. (NYSE: RST) made history today when it became the very first company in the world to unveil support and service through Facebook to its more than 6,000 fans.

“We are excited to be the first company, ever, to provide live support through Facebook. Our Facebook presence is key to our customer acquisition and retention strategies, and we knew we needed a way to foster stronger relationships and resolve any questions or issues encountered by our growing Facebook fan base,” said Jay Topper, senior vice-president of customer success, Rosetta Stone. “Parature for Facebook empowers us to do just that, while fully integrating Facebook as an additional channel into our customer success operations.”

Parature for Facebook is designed to meet the market’s increasing demand to provide rich and meaningful communication, service and support through the world’s most popular social media platform, Facebook. Recently surpassing Google as the most visited website according to Hitwise and announcing it reached its 500 million member milestone, Facebook is a cultural force that is changing how and with whom people communicate. Companies desiring stronger and more profitable customer relationships need to figure out how to use social media to build their brand and drive more business through the emerging channel.

“Social Media has taken over several business functions over the past few years, and most organizations are beginning to understand how Twitter and Communities work for Customer Service,” said Esteban Kolsky of ThinkJar, LLC. “The continued migration from several social networks, as well as the rise of Facebook as the destination for more and more customers has put organizations in a particular uncomfortable situation – most of them are not even sure whether Facebook can or should be treated as a channel for Customer Service, or what to do if they decide to move into it. As a result, most of the implementations we are seeing are escalation recommendations for clients. Research has shown that companies that engage customers in the channels of the customer choice are going to have higher customer satisfaction. It is time for companies to consider how to engage customers across all social channels seamlessly, as they have done for email, chat, and other customer service channels.”

Prior to Parature for Facebook, companies had to manually monitor and respond to individual posts. Now, organizations can take advantage of a fully integrated solution that automates and streamlines the service and support process within Facebook. By offering customers direct access to service teams through Wall posts, private chat sessions or tickets, the application enables one-to-one engagement in a very social forum.

Faster and Lower Cost Issue Resolution with Live Chat, Ticket Submission, Knowledgebase Access and More

Parature for Facebook includes several features all directly accessible through a Facebook page and designed to help customers gain access to sales, service representatives and tools that help rapidly resolve service issues and answer questions while keeping support and new customer acquisition costs low for companies. Parature for Facebook features are accessible through the application’s Facebook Support Tab, which is easily installed on any corporate Facebook page, and include:

Real-time Facebook Wall Monitoring for Quick Customer Response
Via the ‘Parature Page Monitor’ all relevant posts containing chosen keywords will be read from the wall and sent to the Parature Service Desk as a ticket, enabling service representatives to easily monitor and respond to otherwise unmanageable wall posts and comments without ever leaving their Parature software;

Knowledgebase Search Right from Facebook The ‘Find an Answer’ feature enables customers visiting a page to enter a search term and receive the relevant answer directly from the organization’s knowledgebase without ever leaving Facebook. Additionally, the customer can use the ‘Ask a Question’ feature for resolution if their question wasn’t answered via the aforementioned method;

Live Chat Direct from a Fan Page
A customer visiting a page can ‘Chat with an Agent’ to discuss a service problem, issue, or to ask a question directly from Facebook. The representative will respond to the Facebook user via Parature Chat™ for quick issue resolution and a rich one-to-one interaction;

Sharing a Customer Service Experience
Using the ‘Share’ feature, a customer who uses the support functionality within Facebook can share their answers and service experiences on their personal wall; attracting new customers and building positive brand perception for organizations

Parature for Facebook is available as a stand-alone application, or as a component of the complete Parature Customer Service™ software suite. All Parature software support solutions are delivered on-demand in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) environment.

“With today’s release of Parature for Facebook, Parature becomes the first software company, ever, to provide organizations the ability to extend their sales, support and marketing operations to Facebook and provide direct engagement,” said Duke Chung, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Parature. “We are extremely proud to be the first to market and to, once again, demonstrate our commitment to innovation by delivering a cutting-edge product that addresses evolving business issues for our customers.”

Webinar - Facebook for Business: How to Engage and Support Your Customers Directly on Your Facebook Page

In the beginning, Facebook was viewed as a personal-focused networking tool. Now users outnumber the entire population of the United States.

Clearly, Facebook can be a powerful tool for brands, businesses, and non-profits. This webinar will help you maximize your business to get the most out of being on Facebook.

You will also learn how you can add the Parature for Facebook customer support application directly to your Facebook Page to ensure your customers’ experience is optimized.

Taking part in this webinar provides the opportunity to hear about the latest stats and changes on Facebook, as well as discover some unexpected surprises that can happen on your page when you are able to support customers directly from your Facebook Page.

This webinar is essential for anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of what Social CRM on Facebook really means and learn about the new Parature for Facebook product.

Attend this webinar to:

• Discover the benefits of social customer relationship management
• Get business results through connecting and engaging with fans on Facebook
• Learn how you can offer customer support directly from your business page
• See the benefits of monitoring, listening, and engaging with your customers on your Facebook Page

A copy of this presentation is available in our SlideShare profile.

If you missed the webinar, the recorded version will be available here. Share your thoughts and continue the discussion here.

Parature Day with "I Wear Your Shirt"

This blog was originally posted by “I Wear Your Shirt” Thanks to our friends Jason and Evan! Great videos guys!

Good customer service is the best marketing you can do. Parature offers software for customer service including customer support help desk software, knowledge base, case management, and trouble ticket helpdesk software. So what does that mean?

Parature gives your company the ability to reduce the cost of supporting your customers through software and support. Their on-demand software is custom tailored to your website and your customers will never know the difference. Join companies and organizations like Citrix, Rosetta Stone, IGN.com, Colorado State and many more that use Parature’s software.

You can also follow @Parature on Twitter,  like Parature on Facebook,  and see how Parature integrates with Facebook. Have a great Sunday everyone!

Photos | View All Video Clip | Watch on YouTube | View All Live Video | Watch on UStream | View All

Photos | View All Video Clip | Watch on YouTube | View All Live Video | Watch on UStream | View All

How IGN is Optimizing Self-Service for First Contact Resolution

Chris Henderson, Senior Manager, Customer Service at video gaming giant IGN Entertainment (a division of Fox), spoke at ParaFest last month and shared some great tips.

She’s been with IGN since 1997 and, as a video gamer herself, really knows her customers. And she’s proven time and time again that you can achieve high rates of first contact resolution even with tight staffing restraints.

Here are just a few tips:

1. When it comes to designing your portal, design for success. Design your support center with the same care your company uses presenting their product.
2. In terms of content, don’t use a lot of filler in your guides. Gamers in particular have little patience wading through irrelevant material to find an answer. Design the page based on the behavior of your customers.
3. Take full advantage of Instant Feedback. There’s no reason to have something on your support center that no one’s reading, says Chris. Instant Feedback is so quick gamers will even use it and quickly tell you ‘exactly where you failed.’
4. “The reports in Parature can really tell you a story you can’t get from your customers,” says Chris. She advises taking the time to do a deep dive into them.

Determining the 'chatters' on your support team

If you use chat as a support channel, should everyone on the customer support team engage in chats with customers, or just a designated set of agents? That was one of the questions raised at last month’s ParaFest, with varying opinions. While there’s little doubt that live chat can add both an additional level of service and credibility to the overall customer experience, is it best handled by a designated set of agents most skilled in live online conversation? Should it be used for both sales and service? Forrester’s most recent research indicates that live chat is the most preferred communications method when a visitor is having trouble finding an item or experiencing an error on your Web site, for example. Tammy Woodruff from Coremetrics says their specialized best practice team handles chat exclusively. What about your organization? How do you make the call?

Measuring 'Customer Happiness Index' One Step at a Time

Jon Landau is Director of Customer Engagement for huddle.net, a highly popular online SaaS collaboration platform growing by leaps and bounds.  (BusinessWeek has even said huddle.net ‘may be the next Google’!) When Jon spoke at this month’s ParaFest, he’s not shy about the ambitious plans he has for huddle.net. Simply, Jon is out to make huddle.net the first in the biz to deliver what he calls ‘enterprise level delight’.  In a nutshell, Jon wants to take the highly successful, customer-centric Zappos model to B2B. In fact, huddle.net folks talk about customer satisfaction in terms of ‘chi’ – ‘customer happiness index.’

To measure ‘chi’, they’re doing a lot of the right things right: with just one support agent, they’ve got an impressive 95% self service rate today. And they’re looking to deliver 98% self service from the support portal. So naturally the quality of the knowledgebase is a top priority. For Jon, providing “outstanding self-service material” means not only is the content up to date; it goes beyond text to include screen shots, video, tutorials to appeal to varying customer preferences. Regular ongoing surveys help ensure the knowledgebase is doing its job.

They also have a pretty innovative approach to account management. Account managers carry no up-sell targets; their focus is squarely on giving customers a great ROI and keeping renewal rates – and the ‘chi’ – up.

Huddle.net has different SLAs (e.g. free users = automated only; web = 24 hr response to tickets; enterprise = five hour ticket response). John uses the Parature support portal as the first point of contact for all users across the board, both from the main website and from within the application itself.

What do you think? What does it take to deliver ‘enterprise level delight’ to a business audience?

ParaFest Panel: Support as a Differentiator - Bringing Customers to the Forefront

This morning ParaFest ‘10 started off with a strong line-up of customer panelists weighing in on everything from how to best integrate Chat into your support mix to establishing a “customer happiness index.”

Panelists Tammy Woodruff (Coremetrics, and one of this year’s Legend Maker award winners), Scott Montgomery (e-MDs), Doug Young, (finalsite), Hugh Ujhazy (Hitachi Data System) and Jon Landau (Huddle.net) offered plenty of practical advice and predictions.

As far as making customer support a competitive differentiator, Doug Young probably said it best: “In our business there are lots of lower-priced options, but our support is a big selling point and justifies our price point. For us, customer support is not a cost, but a real part of the product.”

The session wrapped up with each panelist asked to give just one parting piece of advice for fellow Paraturians. Some good stuff we’ll share in a future post.

Metrics that Wow! How Coremetrics Became the Customer Service Model of Success

A customer-centric culture has never been more important to organizations than it is today, and the most successful customer service organizations have realized the criticality of the customer experience, as well as the need to make organizational changes to improve it.

But how do you facilitate an organizational shift? How do you recognize the need for change, develop a plan, determine customer & business impact, and get results? How do you achieve key support metrics such as?

• Customer satisfaction improved to 90%
• Agent responsiveness is up to 92%
• Agent product knowledge grew to 91%
• Customer loyalty jumped to 93%

The webinar “Metrics that Wow! How Coremetrics Became the Customer Service Model of Success” was attended by hundreds of customer service and support professionals who submitted numerous questions during the webinar. Due to the time constraints of the event, Paige and John were unable to answer all of the great questions submitted; however they have been gracious enough with their time to answer each one within our blog. 

Whether you attended the webinar or not, you may find that the answers to these questions may also help you become a customer service model of success.

If you missed the webinar, the recorded version is available here. Share your thoughts and continue the discussion here.

A copy of this presentation is available in our SlideShare profile.

Do metrics differ much by geography? 

It appears that they do in a few areas. I’m treading lightly here because it a touchy subject. Satisfaction scores, for example, are typically higher in North America than in EMEA and APAC. There are also geographies that may average slightly longer talk time or incident handling times because some cultures are much less brusque than in North America.

-John

Required practice should be in the intersection of the three, no?

A required practice is proven to be successful by its common use, and its adoption by high performing companies. That may not include reasonable practices, which show potential but are not fully baked yet.

-John

When the panelists speak of providing support where the customer wants to receive it – does this include using “outside” resources such as social networking (Facebook, feedback.com, blogs) as a service pipe, or does it mean opening up a wider offering of ways to reach into company service resources?

Well, both may apply, but in general we were speaking about supporting the channels your customers prefer. Many companies assume all customers would prefer phone if possible, but the truth is that different age and geographic demographics prefer different channels, and phone in general is dropping in popularity. It is important to survey customers to find out what social media channels they use, and in which social media channels they would expect to see a presence from you.  Just because your customers are on Facebook may not mean they want you to join the party–never assume.

            -John

For your example of the long hold times, would you recommend using resources to improve front line communications to reduce the number of calls coming in?

There are a lot of tactics for dealing with long hold times. If it is a sudden, short, unexpected peak, I’d go into “call back mode,” opening tickets and promising a call back to clear the queue. But if it is a chronic problem, you either need more staff or shorter calls. And yes, deflection is definitely an option. Be sure everyone calling in is reminded of self-service options and given a chance to use voice self-service if possible.

-John

Would it be more appropriate for Customers/End Users to judge the TSIA Star Awards rather than other suppliers?

Customers do have a big say. Applicants must provide a minimum of 6 quarters of customer satisfaction data, and the first question the judging form asks is: does the applicant have high enough satisfaction scores to qualify?  If they are at or below industry average, they aren’t considered for an award.

-John

Have you seen a growth in companies using Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a key metric?

 Absolutely.  I would say over half of our members are using some form of NetPromoter. I know that 60% have moved to Top Box scores, which often happens as part of a NP program. My only advice is to not stop doing your regular satisfaction work. Too much attention to loyalty and top box can easily ignore some “bottom box behavior.”

-John

How do you get your industry peers’ data?

One of the benefits of TSIA membership is access to our benchmark program. You enter your data, and then can compare your information to that of your peers. As part of membership, we provide a full benchmark review, comparing your financial, cost and quality performance across technical support, field service operations and professional services. I know of no other source for the information–I spent years at Forrester and everyone asked for this data and it just isn’t widely available.

-John

If you had to stack rank the initiatives required to execute on a massive change in support, what would rank at the top?

The key is to gain support from the top of the organization; CEO, President, whoever leads your business. With support from the top, all other initiatives are easy to obtain.

-Paige

How do you promote your customers to leverage the online Support Center?

All clients receive detailed training on how to leverage our Support Center as part of their training curriculum. Additionally, on the home page of the support site we have a recorded training on how to use our support. Outside of this, we reference knowledgebase articles and promote the support site with every interaction that comes into support.

-Paige

I am in the Healthcare industry and we are trying to balance the needs and regulations of HIPAA, with anticipating the needs of our patients. Do you have experience in the healthcare industry? If yes is there a different approach vs. other industries? Thanks

Unfortunately, I do not have experience in this industry and am not familiar with HIPAA. However, I would think that the initiatives we implemented would work with any industry.

-Paige

What were some of the methodologies that you used to identify and measure your service improvement opportunities? Did you apply any six sigma studies to complement metrics?

The key metrics for us are customer retention and client satisfaction metrics. From there it was identifying what improvements we could make and the numerous associated metrics for each initiative. 

-Paige

How large is the Support Organization at Coremetrics?

25 agents covering business and technical support.

-Paige

One of the challenges I’ve encountered as I’ve moved from a phone support model to a predominately email support model is the ability to gather and report some of the critical metrics such as FCR, handle time vs. total resolution time, cost per case vs. contact. Can you share your experience (challenges and successes) in achieving the same level of reporting, analytics, and performance results within the email support channel?

We use email to ticket functionality in Parature; our phone support has always been very minimal. We capture reporting from ticket creation to closure.

-Paige

True Questions from the Front Lines of Customer Support and the Answers from Rich Gallagher

The webinar “Getting Your Worst Customers to Love You: True Tales from the Front Lines of Customer Support” was attended by hundreds of customer service and support professionals who submitted numerous questions for Rich G. during and prior to the webinar. Due to the time constraints of the event, Rich was unable to answer all of those great questions; however he has been gracious enough with his time to answer each and every one which we are posting in a two part series here. Read first part here.

Whether you attended the webinar or not, you may find that Rich’s answers to these questions may also help you turn your challenging customer situations into positive customer experiences.

Congratulations to Rick Bruce, Jason Lorenz and L. Graves who submitted the winning stories for a copy of Rich Gallagher’s latest book “How to Tell Anyone Anything: Breakthrough Techniques for Handling Difficult Conversations at Work.”

If you did not attend the webinar, we invite you to watch it now. Share your thoughts and continue the discussion here.

Q&A Part 2

We provide technical support via the phone. I would love to hear about handling difficult customers on the phone as customers on the phone seem more hostile than in person.

Our members often use quite derogatory language about us personally. Please discuss best practices for lower level staff to help deal with these situations.

How do you handle customers who are having a bad day that just need someone to yell at?

How do I handle customers who are just mean and nasty?

I am going to answer all of these very common scenarios as a group. First, use the best acknowledgements you possibly can, including paraphrasing their concerns. When customers get meaner and nastier over the life cycle of a transaction, you usually aren’t acknowledging them effectively, which triggers more pressure. That said, I have no problem whatsoever with setting boundaries when customers cross the line from upset to abusive – consider phrases such as “I would like to help you, but you will need to stop screaming at me.”
-Rich

As a non-profit organization that signs up people for monthly donations, we occasionally receive calls from donors that were not aware they were donating more than one-time.  How do you recommend handling such situations i.e. refunds, retention, etc.?

Very good question. No communications skills can absolve people from acting on the moral high ground. When someone felt they were making a one-time donation, the only proper response is to apologize and, if needed, return the unexpected donation. And if this happens often, review your procedures to examine why people misunderstand your process.
-Rich

What about the frustrated customer who wants to “jump” to a supervisor?

I am generally in favor of escalation on demand – particularly when you use your systems (like Parature) to analyze why calls need to escalate, and respond strategically. Incidentally, I am also in favor of talented peers serving as a path of escalation where appropriate, particularly where the issue is expertise rather than managerial authority.
-Rich

We offer a free service that we actually pay them money for at the end.  People say they have to think about it.  How do you break through that barrier?

Think like your customer – or better yet, ask them. What is making them skeptical? Is there a trust issue? Is the reward worth their effort? Do they need what you are offering? Then keep workshopping your pitch until it addresses these issues.
-Rich

In higher Ed we deal with PHD’s who feel they are entitled to service from only someone they consider their equal, but they are basically computer knowledge low.  They talk down to you – how do we respond getting them to buy into the fact we can help them?

I know exactly the dynamic you are talking about, Dennis -  I grew up in an academic family and began my career on a campus help desk. (My late father, a university president, often cited Henry Kissinger’s quote that “academic politics are the nastiest, because the stakes are so low.”)

You need to establish credibility with these people, and you can do this by (a) doing a good job of articulately paraphrasing (*not* parroting) their concerns, (b) giving very detailed responses, and (c) summarizing the action items at the end of the transaction. Each of these techniques make you pro-active rather than reactive, and help you establish an equal business posture. And finally, bite your lip and acknowledge Dr. Wonderful’s expertise wherever appropriate.
-Rich

How do you suggest that we educate customers who “just want someone to answer the phone and solve their problem in real time” when we really don’t have the bandwidth for that model?

Here is a phrase I’ve often used: “We want you to have a good experience using our software – and in particular, we want you to have a better experience than we can give you pushing information at you one word at a time over the telephone. So we have some great training (or resources, or consulting, etc.) options for you.”
-Rich

What about handling “internal” customers, working for the same company; same rules?

Yes, but with one big difference. You work with internal customers every day, so your focus must shift from managing a transaction to building a relationship. For example, instead of just defusing a conflict, you want to go further and explore what will make this person happy in the future. Good question on an important topic, I actually devoted a whole chapter to this in my book Great Customer Connections.
-Rich

How do I effectively deal with members who resent a change in our program? Basically, we promised a service forever and now have changed it so it is only guaranteed for one-year at a time.

How can I satisfy those members who wish for the member benefits to always remain the same (but staff, board members, and membership majority) decided to change the benefits?

I’ll answer both of these common issues together. First, lean into their complaints and acknowledge them – “Yes, that was a good benefit package. And I appreciate your taking the step of letting us know how important that was for you.” Second, frame the change in a way that benefits the customer – “We made this change in hopes of holding prices constant for people, while keeping our most popular benefits.” Third, take a learning posture – “I am glad you called, because if enough people still want to keep the benefits they had, that is important feedback for us.”
-Rich

How do you tell a customer that the EFT/WIRE was not submitted on time and that there will be a delay in processing funds transfer?

Lean into the customer’s frustration – openly acknowledge how this is affecting the customer, every time they open their mouth – and then focus on the solution.
-Rich

“Continue as needed to control the conversation”???? Wow–that feels like the opposite of a great customer experience. How do you build a relationship when you see customers are something that need to be controlled? Do you want the talker to “feel” like you are paying attention….or do you pay attention? Big difference…

Good point Molly. In my experience, customers come away much *happier* when you use the “acknowledging close” technique to move the conversation along, because you are engaging them – versus what most people do, which is sit there going “uh-huh” endlessly when overly-talkative customers ramble on and on. This is actually one of the more consistently successful techniques I use in making customers feel good.

Finally, to answer what I sense is the question behind your question – I agree with you, no communications techniques will compensate for a genuine lack of empathy for the customer. In this case, of course you want to both pay attention AND make it clear to the customer that you are doing so – that was the point of that bullet item.
-Rich

I think that the most important thing is have empathy with all the customers.

Yes!! And the second most important thing is to use the right language so that customers feel that empathy.
-Rich

My favorite bit of advice is to ALWAYS remember the customer is complaining TO you, not ABOUT you.

Absolutely Mellissa. You are using a powerful technique from psychology here called “reframing.” When I was a young support rep, I used to think of myself as a psychologist studying the tribal behavior of early computer users, not just someone who was being yelled at.
-Rich

What was that third acknowledgement? Observation, validation and ?

Identification. Observation is where you observe the other person’s response (“I can tell you are pretty upset about this”), validation means letting someone know their feelings are valid (“No one likes to wait for a service call”), and identification means sharing your own feelings (“I wouldn’t like that either.”)
-Rich

Finally, to give credit where credit is due, many of the original issues we discussed in the webinar are documented in SupportIndustry.com and Parature’s 2009 Service & Support Metrics Survey.

Thanks everyone for a great webinar!
Rich

True Questions from the Front Lines of Customer Support and the Answers from Rich Gallagher

The webinar “Getting Your Worst Customers to Love You: True Tales from the Front Lines of Customer Support” was attended by hundreds of customer service and support professionals who submitted numerous questions for Rich G. during and prior to the webinar. Due to the time constraints of the event, Rich was unable to answer all of those great questions; however he has been gracious enough with his time to answer each and every one which we are posting in a two part series here.

Whether you attended the webinar or not, you may find that Rich’s answers to these questions may also help you turn your challenging customer situations into positive customer experiences.

Congratulations to Rick Bruce, Jason Lorenz and L. Graves who submitted the winning stories for a copy of Rich Gallagher’s latest book “How to Tell Anyone Anything: Breakthrough Techniques for Handling Difficult Conversations at Work.”

If you did not attend the webinar, we invite you to watch it now. Share your thoughts and continue the discussion here.

Winning Stories

One of my favorite “angry customer” stories took place in the early 1980’s when I was a phone support rep for Kaypro Corporation. As it happens, one of my fellow support reps was taking a call from a guy who was just yelling. Tom was a very mellow (seriously mellow) fellow. Eschewing the earpieces that most of us wore, he used the phone at work the way he used his phone at home. So he simply held the receiver away from his ear as this fellow kept yelling for at least ten to fifteen minutes. At the end of the tirade, after a few moments of silence, Tom put the phone to his ear and said “I’m sorry Bob, someone came up to my desk. Can you please repeat that?” Bob did, indeed repeat the salient details of his case, but he had burnt out whatever fueled his anger and was able to let Tom help him. I don’t think I’d ever use Tom’s technique, but I did learn that sometimes people want to be helped, and sometimes they just want to vent their anger.

I just had to choose this one, because my first computer was a Kaypro! You would need to have the right personality to pull off what this agent “Tom” did, acting like an interruption was more important than the customer. But he used some very sound psychology in asking good questions that got the user to respond factually and not emotionally. Anyone can learn and practice asking good questions in a tense situation – just like police officers and hostage negotiators do – without the need for subterfuge. Questions ground people and get them to calm down.
-Rich

On our Help Desk we recently had a customer alternate between screaming and crying because he could not remember the fourteen passwords he needed to log into all of his different applications. He would scream, apologize because he knew we had no control over it, and then start to cry before screaming again when the next error message happened. It was an extremely difficult call for the Technician attempting to assist the customer because of the customer’s emotional state. At the time we pulled the voiceprint of the call and asked our client’s home office to address this issue, but I wonder now if there would have been a better way to handle that call with the customer and prevented incident or even won the customer over?

When most people are confronted with an inappropriately emotional customer, we tend to “shut down” and respond procedurally and robotically – which makes these people even angrier! (Reversing roles for a minute, this is also why you shouldn’t lose your cool at an airline ticket counter when your flight gets cancelled – see my recent blog http://point-of-contact.blogspot.com/2010/02/theory-of-relativity.html) This situation calls for lots of validation, acknowledgment, and assessment questions on how this impacts the upset customers.
  -Rich

I work at a university and the professors can be very high maintenance. One in particular has been a real problem. The professor has a university owned computer and allows their children to install games and play online. This usually ends in a severely infected computer even with all the virus and spyware applications in place. The professor has brought the computer to the Help Desk for help and denied that their children used the computer and they had no idea how the software games were installed. The laptop keyboard was dirty and sticky to touch and it appeared that the computer was only used by children. We tried to gracefully talk to the professor about the condition of the computer and their responsibility for its condition and they burst into tears in front of several Help Desk staff members and started to yell at all of us about their life and how bad it is and that they were going through a divorce and we should not be talking to them like this.
As the professor got louder I got quieter to try and defuse the situation. I empathized with them and tried to be compassionate and understanding. This seemed to work and the professors calmed down and responded a little more reasonably. My staff now cringes when this professor’s name is displayed on the help desk phones.

My late father was a professor and later a university president, so I can relate to this one! Never ever accuse a customer of wrongdoing directly. Boil the situation down into facts and work from the facts – “this keyboard is sticky and there are lots of games loaded on here” is OK, “I don’t believe you, you must have children using this computer” is not. I will discuss tomorrow that even when customers lie, you shouldn’t “catch” them at it – here’s another blog I wrote on that: http://point-of-contact.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html.
 -Rich

Q&A Part 1

How would you respond to a customer who consistently and “aggressively” questions your ability and problem solving tactics?

Build their confidence by using a technique I call “playback” – take their agenda and proactively chain it to your response. “Because you need this resolved quickly, here is why I am choosing this diagnostic approach.”
-Rich

How to turn around to the positive, dealing with customers reluctant to change to new technology/software?

Resist all temptation to tell these people how much better the new technology is, at first – acknowledge their complaints that change is frustrating. (I am an alpha geek, for example, but still get frustrated when Facebook seemingly changes its interface every two weeks.) Then ask good questions about how they use the product. *Then*, and only then, sell the benefits of the new approach.
-Rich

How do you get them to use the help desk services instead of phoning or emailing you directly and copying upper management?

Give them a benefit for doing this, and communicate this benefit to the customer. (“Our help desk responds to most open cases within 24 hours, and is more responsive than contacting specific individuals who may or may not be available to work on your issue.”) And if you *can’t* say something like this with a straight face, examine why customers get better service by jumping the line, and address this strategically.
-Rich

Please address the cost of doing bad business and how to position this with Sales organizations.

Great question – my answers could easily fill an entire book! Here is my two cents: in my own management career, “turning around” the service performance of call centers has led to dramatic results – in one case, growing from a startup to a NASDAQ firm, in another, growing sales 25% in a recession. That’s why I’m so passionate about this topic.
-Rich

I have a customer from Australia who complains every time on conference calls about the same topic. Doesn’t matter that we already tried our best to respond numerous times – the customer just can’t let go of the issue, and keeps bringing it back every time.

How do you deal with a customer who is being completely uncooperative and illogical even when you provide various other options to them?

I will answer these both together. When you feel you are quote-unquote “trying your best” and the other person keeps getting angrier, It is highly likely that you are not acknowledging the customer, just providing “solutions” – just like when your mother wouldn’t let you do something and asked if you could just play with your sister instead. Try using phrases like, “I can see why you want to do X. I agree, that would be a lot easier for you. I wish your service plan allowed X. Here are some alternatives …”
-Rich

If two different persons in your customer’s organization have different perceptions of an issue affecting your product and both are correct in their own way. How do you direct both persons to a conclusion that will benefit all parties without having a fight?

This is actually the classic problem of marriage and family therapy, and MFTs use an approach called “multidirected partiality”: speak from the voice of each person, and frame their concerns in a way that puts them both in a reasonable light. (“Arnie, you are trying to preserve your department’s budget, which makes perfect sense – and Sally, of course you are trying to limit defections of our paying customers as much as you can. Let’s break down both of these arguments and see where we can go with them.”) I’ve seen this approach work wonders in both workplace and clinical situations.
-Rich

How do you deal with customers who completely disagree with the service of the website, yet still pay to use it, and do their best to change it based on what they think is best, and takes their aggression into social media?

Welcome to the world of freedom of speech! I’ve actually studied social media responses to corporations as part of a client project, and discovered an interesting fact: when most people like your company, people who complain in social media tend to get tuned out. (And, of course, if people hate your company, these complaints can turn into a feeding frenzy.) From a communications standpoint, acknowledge the complainant’s concerns, and frame your response in terms of how it benefits all your customers.
-Rich

One of our biggest challenges is customers who don’t understand our product, don’t actively engage in the many training opportunities that we offer, and yet become frustrated and sometimes angry when the system doesn’t behave as they expect. 

Been there, done that. Resist the temptation to frame these discussions as “you should have gotten training” – frame them as “here is how we can help you be more productive with our product.” And keep learning from your customers about how to make your products even more intuitive in the future.
-Rich

Is responding via email a better way to respond to a “problem” customer, in order to have a paper trail?

Only if you are in a situation requiring legal documentation. The personal touch is always better. As an aside, I’ve analyzed “paper trails” that training clients give me about their worst customers, and the same communications skills still apply – acknowledgement and benefits calm people down, while limits and “policy” agitate them.
-Rich

I meet with clients who are required by the county to meet with me, have ongoing appts, go to required classes and if they don’t I can sanction (take away) a portion of county assistance until they comply-any thoughts?

Great scenario, similar to what psychotherapists refer to as “mandated clients” who are in court-ordered therapy and don’t want to be there. There is a growing literature base on handling mandated clients, and much of it corroborates my own advice to speak from the client’s perspective rather than yours: “I realize you may not like this process. What can we do to make this easier for you? Since you are here anyway, are there things we could work together on that might benefit you?” And be sure to acknowledge every complaint from the client, which is not the same as agreeing with them.
-Rich

Customers who have preconceived notions about calling and getting someone with an Indian accent on the phone.

I have trained call centers in India before. Often the problem is less one of accent and more one of culture – offshore call centers often use less acknowledgment, and more formal scripted responses, than North Americans are used to. When agents learn to communicate well, they often sound indistinguishable from their domestic counterparts, accent or no.
-Rich

How to satisfy a customer and adhere to company policies and procedures at the same time?

Always focus on what you can do, not what you can’t do. (Compare “you’ll have to fill out a form for this” to “let me walk you through how we can get this fixed for you” and see what I mean – examine and workshop the language you use with customers and ruthlessly cut out “can’t,” “you’ll have to,” “we don’t”, etc. out of the dialogue). Acknowledge legitimate frustrations and use transitional phrases like “I wish” and “even though” to shift the focus back to solutions. Finally, if too many policies upset too many customers, leverage your support team as the voice of the customer.
-Rich

What’s the best way to calm down an upset customer?

Check out my Parature blog series from last year on “What to Say to a Porcupine”: I’m all over this situation. Short form answer: acknowledgement (using “identification” where at all possible), good questions to drain the heat from the transaction, and negotiating solutions from a stance of what you *can* do.
-Rich

If you’re on a call and the customer makes racist comment not knowing your race, how do you respond to that?

Racism (or sexism, or xenophobia) is behavior that crosses acceptable boundaries. I have no problem whatsoever with setting boundaries and/or terminating the call in situations like this.
-Rich

What is your recommended best practice for delivering bad news?

I have a technique called “staging” designed just for that situation. Check earlier Parature blog entries from my “What to say to a Porcupine” webinar – or my books – for more details.
-Rich