I’ve been fortunate enough to work in organizations that have shared my philosophy about supporting users, which is grounded on this principle:
The purpose of any interaction between myself and a user of our products is to assist them in using our products successfully.
Everything else flows from that. Anything I can do that brings us closer to resolving the problem the user contacted me about is a good thing, anything that gets in the way is a bad thing. I have the right to expect that the same is true for the person on the other side of the fence. That means that I don’t have to worry about being right, demonstrating I’m smarter than the other guy, entertaining them, becoming their new best friend, etc., unless doing so will result in a quicker solution to the problem and a more satisfied user.
Things to remember:
[ul][li]It’s never personal. No matter how frustrated or angry the caller is, they aren’t (at least initially) annoyed at you. The best support tech I ever had working for me was technically savvy and a good troubleshooter, but his biggest asset was that he actually got a charge out of dealing with raving customers, taking great pride in remaining unflappable no matter how angry or irrational they became. That’s not to say that you have to take abuse from customers; no one gets paid enough for that. But usually if you are firm but polite in saying, “I’d really like to focus on solving the problem you called about, but I need your help to do that,” the customer will realize that they can accomplish more by working with you instead of abusing you. Sometimes, you get a customer who just wants to rant – after a few seconds, you politely interrupt and say, “I’m sorry you’re having such a difficult time with our product. Is there a specific problem I can help you resolve, or would you prefer to put your thoughts into a letter or e-mail to our product management staff?”. If they just want to beat up on you, cut them off and pass them up the line – try “I can see that you’re really upset about this, and I think that it’d be best for you to express this to someone with more authority.” Only once in nine years of dealing with customers have I had to pull out my ultimate trick: with a customer I knew was lying to me about whether they were following the instructions I was giving, I ran through a sequence of several non-existent commands. After getting their assurance that they’d done those things and gotten certain results, I then informed them that they couldn’t possibly have done so because I’d made them up. Then, I told them that I’d be happy to help them solve their problem if they were willing to deal with me in good faith, but that I would not spend any more time with them jerking me around.[/li][li]Listen. You can learn a lot about someone’s level of experience and knowledge, what they’ve already done, their personality, and how frustrated they are by simply listening to what they tell you. Since I’ve never worked in an environment where standard scripts were used (or useful), my calls usually began with a freeform description of the problem by the user. I tried to use this description to calibrate my response – gauging how savvy the user was, whether they’d tried the simplest troubleshooting steps, etc. Of course, after a while, you’ll recognize some calls as dealing with one of your product’s most common issues. It’s tempting then to rush in an deliver your standard spiel on solving that problem (and I’ve certainly done that myself plenty of times), but it’s important to try to hear out the description of the problem and make sure that you’ve got right. You’ll also be surprised at how often you’ll find yourself hearing what you expect to hear and not what the caller is actually saying.[/li][li]Repeat. Once you’ve got a schematic of the problem in mind, describe the problem back to the caller in your own words (though still in a manner you believe to be appropriate to their skill/knowledge level). This allows you to make sure you haven’t made some false assumptions and have correctly understood what they’ve said. Describing the situation in your own words also forces you to construct a mental model of the problem that is adequate to allow you to begin troubleshooting.[/li][li]The customer is probably not using your product for its own sake. Except in the case of games, using your product is probably a means to an end for the customer. While the product is the most important thing from your perspective, the customer cares about it only to the degree it allows them to do something useful. The time it takes to resolve this problem is time they’d rather be spending on whatever they purchased the product to help them do. You should remember this and respect the customer’s time and the work they do (i.e., don’t take a cavalier attitude toward their data or the time it’ll take them to reformat their HD and reinstall everything from original disks).[/li][li]It doesn’t matter who’s smarter. You aren’t omniscient and you’ll only get yourself into trouble pretending to be, and the point of the call is solving the customer’s problem, not impressing them. In fact, you’ll probably impress them more by helping them solve it quickly than by bombarding them with a lot of pointless information that doesn’t advance the cause.[/li][li]It does matter who’s the caller and who’s the callee. Even though you don’t have to impress the caller with your smarts, you do have to solve their problem, and presumably they called because they believe you might have some insight on the issue. If they call and then resist everything you suggest, run off trying things on their own and ignoring your directions, then you have every right to call them on it. Point out that if you’re to help them solve their problem, you need them to cooperate with you, to listen to you and make a good faith effort to implement your suggestions. If they refuse for any reason other than that you have misunderstood their problem, you’re under no obligation to continue the call.[/ul][/li]
If you’re sufficiently motivated to want to become a really good support rep, you could do worse than to read Help! The Art of Computer Techncial Support.
