Customers are generally satisfied with both our service coming from Sales consultants (SCs) and our technical support from Support engineers (SEs). However it still happens from time to time we drop the ball on some cases and run into issues between teams which shouldn't happen
Our goal must always be a satisfied customer and that's the only proof that shows we're handling our business correctly and are doing our job well
Below are listed a few important things that you should already know, but please make sure to read them carefully again and implement them in all future cases:
- SCs job and responsibility is to forward customer emails who have technical questions/issues to the support team and follow up on the progress early and often to make sure a customer got all the answers and the help he needed
- SEs job and responsibility is to include corresponding SC in all conversations they have with the specific customer and to also let SCs know when the support job is done; although SCs won't participate in this "technical part", they will see the progress of the case and will be able to plan their future activities
- SC responsibility is to make sure a customer always gets what
he needs (a technical support, a quote, respond to a specific question,
etc.)
- SEs - during the business hours (M-F 8-5 US ET), we should acknowledge all emails within an hour, provide actionable response within 24 hours and have a resolution within 72 hours
-- If we get an email after business hours, SE on duty should ACK email, while the product owning SE should provide actionable response on the next business day
-- Here it is very important to know that if the SE on the job doesn't know the answer to some question or he is not sure about something, ignoring an email until he gets an answer *is not an option*; SE must reply (ACK email) and provide an ETA when more details will be provided
- SCs – during the business hours, we should acknowledge all emails within 15 mins and provide actionable response within an hour; if the assigned SC finished the shift and a customer sends an email, a colleague from the team should respond and provide all necessary details
- Not responding to customer emails and not following the rules above is not an option; we need to be responsive to our clients and honor the things we put on our website such as our availability and resolution times
-- If we don't honor our commitment it creates dissatisfaction for our clients that has already in several cases directly or indirectly influenced client's decision to purchase our products
- After the customers purchase our products our job is not done – we still need to care about their satisfaction and to make sure we solve all the problems they run into
-- If we can't solve a problem immediately we can at least be responsive to provide all the info and all the help that we can to at least workaround an issue or provide an ETA for full resolution
- When replying to customer's email, it's desirable to always have following guidelines on your mind:
-- Read every email twice very carefully, and then once again
-- Make sure to provide an answer to every question a customer asks
-- Reply inline and use a different color (except red)
-- If you don't have an immediate resolution, make sure to provide an ETA to the customer for the question or issue he/she has reported
-- Always provide an ETA for the next step if the ball is in our court; if we miss that ETA for whatever reason then follow-up to provide a new ETA without forcing customers to follow-up first
