I caught this very interesting announcement on the Django Developer group:
I like Django, and my unique experience having grown up in a fishing village should make the ideal candidate! If it wasn’t for the fact that I hate cod…
I wasn’t expecting to see Google go so far as to branch into seafood. No industry is safe anymore…
Customer service is still in its infancy on the web. Here are some ideas how to make it better.
A lot is different between doing business online through websites versus offline in a shop or office. For one, customers to a large extent help themselves. The only trace we have of customers are lines they leave in the web server and web application log files. If we don’t look, it’s easy to forget they’re there altogether.
In Joel’s post on customer service he lists 8 steps to remarkable customer service. They’re nothing really new, the same old exceeding expectations and service recovery stuff, but since they’re something I also really believe in I thought I’d chime in.
For products that are sold online, websites often does such a good job at selling the product that customers end up using the product without ever talking to anyone in the product company. When we have problems, however, we don’t want to waddle through more than a few pages of information; there’s just no substitute to having a real person guide you through troubleshooting and fixing problems.
Fog Creek isn’t just the only one to realize the importance of good human customer service; Godaddy’s founder, Bob Parsons, says one reason he pulled out of the IPO was that he realized his values were at odds with his advisors, and a key difference was their view on customer service: his advisors’ wanted to cut costs while Parsons wanted to expand.
Customer service is practically the only human contact point left in this online world, and as such it’s more important than ever.