Ask HN: When a customer contacts support, the battle is already lost. T/F?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3246525

by fezzl • 15 years ago

1 1 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Back then, I always felt that whenever a customer contacted us I could show off what good customer service we had -- how quick, effective, or friendly we were. Customer support emails were treated as reasons to be happy, since we got to learn from them and impress them at the same time!

But I was wrong. Now, I always feel that the moment a customer contacts us, there is already some growing, irreversible dissatisfaction. Quick, effective customer support is merely the best apology that we can offer, a weak compromise. The best customer support is customer support that is not needed.

This is completely anecdotal, but whenever we have customers switching away from us we try to look back and see that, despite how quickly or effectively we helped, the fact that said customers had to contact us on anything (especially when it's called a "turn-key" solution) means that they already were unhappy. No amount of quality customer support was going to remedy those situations. Mitigate perhaps, but not remedy.

Anyone else feels the same way?

otoburb• 15 years ago

Without knowing anything about your product, I have to disagree -- especially for "turn-key" solutions.

The turn-key solutions that I've had the pleasure (sic) of delivering depend in no small part on post-implementation support (disclaimer: I manage telecom infrastructure deployments). This seems to be the case (and yes, I'm generalizing here) for complex software solutions that have either many components, or are sold as a single complex point product.

Quick, effective customer support in the form of P1 issue resolution would be the second highest praise one aims to receive from a customer. Your point about the "best customer support is customer support that is not needed" is the highest praise of all (especially in an infrastructure play).

Quality customer support undoubtedly helps with customer satisfaction and often is one of the underlying factors to sales' ability to up(sell|grade) existing customers.

Your unhappy customers may be a marketing or sales issue; not necessarily a customer support problem.

As such, without additional information, my answer is "F", qualified with "you may have framed this question incorrectly."

Customer support can be considered a last line of defense to help resolve deeper issues, such as fundamental dissatisfaction with the product. The feedback that you hopefully take back from disgruntled customers should be fed back to your sales and marketing organizations to understand if the problems are indicative of a larger trend (i.e. product/solution not meeting needs of key customers), or if the lost customers were one-offs with specific circumstances unlikely to 'spread' to other customers.

EDIT: Added last paragraph.