Give employees the tools to build your brand
Joel Spolsky relates how his New York software company has figured out how to do customer service right. They give their tech support staff the tools to fix customer problems in two ways: to solve the immediate problem, and then to fix the source of the problem.
This has positive brand-building consequences.
The power to build the brand
Spolsky’s company, Fog Creek Software, does not outsource customer service. They take accountability for it in-house. When a customer calls with a problem, a tech support employee first helps resolve the customer’s most pressing issue. Once that is dealt with, he or she is empowered to take steps to get the problem fixed at the source. Often, this is a code-level fix. In this way a potential class of problems can be eliminated, and with it the possibility that other customers will experience similar issues.
The result is both a tactical and strategic step forward in customer brand experience.
Call centers can erode brand value
Joel contrasts his company’s approach to that of typical call centers, where support personnel take calls day after day without ever having the tools to fix anything. The same calls keep coming back, and support personnel keep reading the same canned diagnostics on their computer screens. Customers hate it, call center morale is low, and the company wonders why its brand just can’t seem to gain traction.
To quote Joel:
Many software companies still think that it’s “economical” to run tech support in Bangalore or the Philippines, or to outsource it to another company altogether. Yes, the cost of a single incident might be $10 instead of $50, but you’re going to have to pay $10 again and again.
The customer wins and the brand wins
Joel says he invests more up-front in customer service, but gains a great deal more in downstream sales and customer satisfaction. The innovative way he structures his company’s tech support career track also seems destined to pay brand dividends.
Photo: barto — Flickr
February 23rd, 2007 at 4:30 am
Joel may invest in customer support. However, he also promotes a book on his sites that is about seven years out of date. I bought the Joel on Software book as it was, well, positioned as the book of Joel’s site and I thought, I want to read about Interface deisgn for Programmers.
But it’s six years old and reads like a primer for the last century (which is more or less what it is). The examples are embarassing – a history lesson.
So I emailed Joel, but there is no response. I just wanted to know why a)there was no updated version or b)there was no warning that THIS BOOK IS ABOUT SEVEN YEARS OLD and belongs in a museum.
I don’t call this customer support – I call it taking the piss. So, take all with a pinch of salt.