I’m writing this article to answer a WF thread - do customers expect us to provide support to them 24/7 ?
I strongly believe that the answer is no. Because there’s a HUGE difference between slow customer service and poor customer service. Time doesn’t matter much… It’s all about the real quality - your mindset.
I am pretty slow at answering emails and customer service. I have not completely outsourced it - and the part that is on my shoulders is being taken care REALLY slow.
However, my customers never complain about it.
Why ?
Because I positioned myself as their friend. I “tutoie” them in my newsletters (you lucky English speakers don’t have to think about it, but French people have two ways of saying “you”…the polite or the friendly one.)
I sign off “Your friend,
<my pen name>”.
The result is that I can get away with shipping a product 5 days late if I’m on holidays and I couldn’t process your order - because I’m your friend and you wouldn’t throw tantrums at your friends because they forgot to put the DVD in the DVD box (this happened once - the guy called the shipment team and actually APOLOGIZED that he did not get his DVD in the box).
On the other side, if you want to position yourself as your customer’s friend than you’ve got some extra work too - make them happy at all costs. I give free copies and refunds and re-ship products liberally - if a guy sends me an email saying his DVD cover has bleeding colors, I’ll both refund the whole set, FedEx him another perfect one and tell him to give the old one to a friend.
Tony
Tags: customer service, positioning, support