The Freshdesk blog has an article that mentions this: Seven things you didn’t know were hurting your support

 

Speaking of articles about customer service, Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers is an oldie but goodie IMHO

Hey Scott! I'm glad you liked the article! I'm the author and you kinda made my day :) This is the article that inspired the 7 sins of customer support piece: it's Buffer's Carolyn Kopprasch on why she stopped using "actually" and "but" in her emails.

Thanos, the HBR piece is one of my favorites as well. Have you read this one, though?

Thank you for suggesting that article Aishwarya. It makes a number of very good points.

I especially liked the 1st section about using feedback from your customer service to improve your product/service. In my view, this also includes the ease with which your product/service can be supported by your own customer service. For example, if you are selling software your customer service can go a long way when its support cycle is well planned ( monitoring, logs, remote access tools, diagnostic and debugging tools, handy instructions on where to ask for support and what your support does and does not cover etc ).

One more comment: The 8th ( last ) one is the other section that I singled out. The whole article was probably written in order to promote what was an experiment that Fog Creek performed. It is not clear if it was successful, but it probably was not: the vision, a decade ago, was http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBA.html but current job offerings, like http://www.fogcreek.com/jobs/supportengineer , don't promise such a career path. Regardless, I think there is a point here in that outstanding supporters don't just fall from the sky. You must look hard to find talented people, work hard to train them and even harder to keep them in top shape.

PS: I enjoy the Freshdesk blog. Keep up the good work !

 

The first section works well for online software, yes but it's a much longer cycle when it's a physical product. My favorite section is actually the second one - the hack is so simple but it saves the customer a lot of embarrassment and it makes the problem solving process easier for the customer.

It does feel like the whole article was written to promote FogCreek's experiment and it's sad it failed - they were trying to make all hands on support lucrative. Finding talented reps is hard, keeping them harder. Even something as lucrative as this, failed.

P.S - Thank you :D

Yes, that is a very smooth approach but carries the risk that some customer may perceive you as condescending, unqualified or, worse yet, as giving them a bunch of BOFH excuses.