August 25, 2014 at 09:36Complain about your health: as we understood, the main thing is support
One of the most reliable ways to lose faith in the victory of good over evil and to hate humanity is to get a job in tech support. Support is certainly not work for wimps. While your colleagues generate ideas and develop different cool things, you go through all the circles of hell with tech support. They will call you full idiots and wry-witted halfwits, blame you for what you are not guilty of, and ask for what you are not able to do.
Technical support of financial services in this sense stands out even against the general background, because here we are talking about the most important thing - about money. And God forbid you do something wrong with the money of your users (or them with your money, but with the help of your service - we wrote last timethat more than half of the problems with translations are due to user carelessness). Do not wait for mercy, get the full.
Reading such messages, it is easiest to come to the conclusion that these "angry townspeople", let’s say, are small-minded people. So, you should not pay much attention to them, because you do not do your super service for them (but for the good, friendly, smart). But such a strategy will not bring to good.
At first, most startupers only think about how to make a working thing and tell good people about it. But, if you don’t immediately establish a good support, you get a paradox: you will spend money on making people try the service, while ignoring those who already use it.
Why attract new users when it’s better to keep the old ones? We are at UBANKAt one time, they completely revised the organization of technical support work, making it one of the priority areas for the company. And in this post we decided to share several simple principles that helped us to establish the effective work of support.
To get started, you need to establish feedback channels with users. Gentlemen's set: phone number, letter to the address of technical support, the form of communication on the site (which also generates a letter). UBANK is primarily a service for smartphones, so we, of course, added the ability to contact technical support directly from the application. In addition, we track reviews on the Google Play and App Store.
It is necessary to create channels for feedback - this is, in general, obvious. It’s not so obvious that these channels should encourage people to give feedback. If something went wrong, the customer should be comfortable complaining. And this is an interesting field for experiments. Recently, for example, we added a button with which you can send information about an unsuccessful transaction to tech support without writing a word (already in iOS , in the version for Android on the way).
In many companies, support staff are at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy. Stars develop a product, market it, think out strategies. Who solves the problems? For this, there are girls-boys in support.
But you won’t go so far. Because for effective work technical support first of all needs powers. At first, we were afraid to give them to our support, worrying about security. Employees had neither access to user profiles nor detailed information about the status of payments.
To get even basic information about suspended translations, I had to turn to developers who were not very happy that they were being distracted from their main responsibilities.
Initially, the response to the user from technical support could take several days. Changing the priorities, we agreed that support staff should have all the authority to solve customer problems in the shortest possible time.
A shoemaker without boots is a well-known postulate that never loses its relevance. You are developing a super-friendly service for users, while the backend that your people are working on will bring nostalgic memories of the friendly interface of Windows 98. For starters, this is natural, you cannot put a cart in front of a horse. But at some point it’s worth investing in giving support a convenient tool for the job.
We completely redid the admin panel in which technical support works, making it as simple and effective as possible. As a result, now you can check the fate of any payment in five seconds. Previously, the same question could take a whole day. In addition, many users ask the same questions, and we not only created a database of answers, but also integrated the template system directly into the admin panel. These little things save a lot of time - and ultimately save you resources.
Perhaps you do not have the resources to put an army of cool specialists on tech support. Perhaps you have one manager answering your questions, who has to spin, solving a thousand tasks at once. But your user, frankly, doesn’t care. They do not just want to be answered. They want to be answered immediately. And you must provide them with this answer.
During peak load or at night, when it is not always possible to respond instantly, we now turn on the robot. The simple phrase "I received your application and will take care of it soon", strangely enough, really protects the nervous system of people. And three months ago we introduced push notifications. As soon as we send a response to the application, the user immediately receives a push to his smartphone. In the near future we will do push notifications for support employees themselves. It will turn out to be a practically live chat.
In the near future, we will begin to warn users about errors with the help of push notifications - even before they complain to tech support themselves. For example, if the transaction has failed for some reason, the application will notify the user as soon as it becomes known, and at the same time will tell you what can be done. We hope this saves the nerves of many users.
People who complain bring great benefits to the company because they give them the chance to work on the bugs and make corrections. We formed a circle of several beloved fan testers, from whom we regularly receive feedback with a request to adjust something in the interface or add something. In the ticket system, each of them has a special mark. We also value ordinary users who spend their time clarifying exactly where and how they caught a rare bug. We reward such people with promo codes. The amounts are small, but no one has refused them - everyone is pleased to receive a bonus.
At first, we thought like this: UBANK is a financial service, which means we must create an appropriate “serious” image, so it’s worth responding dryly and to the point. We answered and did not feel any enthusiasm from this (users, it seems, too). But then we decided that trying to puff out cheeks was all from the evil one. Some nonsense. And they began to communicate with users in normal human language. It turned out that an appropriate joke and a friendly tone of communication greatly reduce the intensity of the discussion.
The support staff themselves, by the way, after that felt the drive - the work from execution and boring turned into creative and exciting. We began to communicate informally with people, and over the past year, the amount of negativity in our address has sharply decreased (although of course, we still have work to do).
Once we were approached by a user who wanted to know whether it was possible to cancel the transfer to the phone. We asked about the details of his payment, and he admitted that he had not done it yet. Just a prostitute asked to throw her a fee on the phone, and he wanted to know in advance whether it would be possible to return the money if something went wrong.
Working in support, which only does not have to face. But this does not mean that the aspirations of users should be ignored, even if they sometimes express their indignation in a not too elegant manner.
This, by the way, does not mean that they are morons. It’s just that Russian people all the time are waiting to be deceived (and not without reason), and therefore they are always ready to attack with a saber. But if they write the answer in a human way, it often turns out that these are completely normal people. And if you still call them, then all the anger evaporates and in the end they thank you and wish you all the best.
In general, do you want to restore faith in the victory of good over evil and love humanity? Welcome to tech support.
Technical support of financial services in this sense stands out even against the general background, because here we are talking about the most important thing - about money. And God forbid you do something wrong with the money of your users (or them with your money, but with the help of your service - we wrote last timethat more than half of the problems with translations are due to user carelessness). Do not wait for mercy, get the full.
Reading such messages, it is easiest to come to the conclusion that these "angry townspeople", let’s say, are small-minded people. So, you should not pay much attention to them, because you do not do your super service for them (but for the good, friendly, smart). But such a strategy will not bring to good.
At first, most startupers only think about how to make a working thing and tell good people about it. But, if you don’t immediately establish a good support, you get a paradox: you will spend money on making people try the service, while ignoring those who already use it.
Why attract new users when it’s better to keep the old ones? We are at UBANKAt one time, they completely revised the organization of technical support work, making it one of the priority areas for the company. And in this post we decided to share several simple principles that helped us to establish the effective work of support.
1. Complain easy and pleasant
To get started, you need to establish feedback channels with users. Gentlemen's set: phone number, letter to the address of technical support, the form of communication on the site (which also generates a letter). UBANK is primarily a service for smartphones, so we, of course, added the ability to contact technical support directly from the application. In addition, we track reviews on the Google Play and App Store.
It is necessary to create channels for feedback - this is, in general, obvious. It’s not so obvious that these channels should encourage people to give feedback. If something went wrong, the customer should be comfortable complaining. And this is an interesting field for experiments. Recently, for example, we added a button with which you can send information about an unsuccessful transaction to tech support without writing a word (already in iOS , in the version for Android on the way).
2. Support - not a construction battalion, but special forces
In many companies, support staff are at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy. Stars develop a product, market it, think out strategies. Who solves the problems? For this, there are girls-boys in support.
But you won’t go so far. Because for effective work technical support first of all needs powers. At first, we were afraid to give them to our support, worrying about security. Employees had neither access to user profiles nor detailed information about the status of payments.
To get even basic information about suspended translations, I had to turn to developers who were not very happy that they were being distracted from their main responsibilities.
But technical support employees should not be in the position of poor relatives, who ask colleagues to solve customer problems like alms.
Initially, the response to the user from technical support could take several days. Changing the priorities, we agreed that support staff should have all the authority to solve customer problems in the shortest possible time.
3. Special Forces require special weapons
A shoemaker without boots is a well-known postulate that never loses its relevance. You are developing a super-friendly service for users, while the backend that your people are working on will bring nostalgic memories of the friendly interface of Windows 98. For starters, this is natural, you cannot put a cart in front of a horse. But at some point it’s worth investing in giving support a convenient tool for the job.
We completely redid the admin panel in which technical support works, making it as simple and effective as possible. As a result, now you can check the fate of any payment in five seconds. Previously, the same question could take a whole day. In addition, many users ask the same questions, and we not only created a database of answers, but also integrated the template system directly into the admin panel. These little things save a lot of time - and ultimately save you resources.
4. Just in time
Perhaps you do not have the resources to put an army of cool specialists on tech support. Perhaps you have one manager answering your questions, who has to spin, solving a thousand tasks at once. But your user, frankly, doesn’t care. They do not just want to be answered. They want to be answered immediately. And you must provide them with this answer.
During peak load or at night, when it is not always possible to respond instantly, we now turn on the robot. The simple phrase "I received your application and will take care of it soon", strangely enough, really protects the nervous system of people. And three months ago we introduced push notifications. As soon as we send a response to the application, the user immediately receives a push to his smartphone. In the near future we will do push notifications for support employees themselves. It will turn out to be a practically live chat.
5. Prevention is better than surgery
In the near future, we will begin to warn users about errors with the help of push notifications - even before they complain to tech support themselves. For example, if the transaction has failed for some reason, the application will notify the user as soon as it becomes known, and at the same time will tell you what can be done. We hope this saves the nerves of many users.
6. Cookies for heroes
People who complain bring great benefits to the company because they give them the chance to work on the bugs and make corrections. We formed a circle of several beloved fan testers, from whom we regularly receive feedback with a request to adjust something in the interface or add something. In the ticket system, each of them has a special mark. We also value ordinary users who spend their time clarifying exactly where and how they caught a rare bug. We reward such people with promo codes. The amounts are small, but no one has refused them - everyone is pleased to receive a bonus.
7. And the little humpbacked horse speaks in a human voice ...
At first, we thought like this: UBANK is a financial service, which means we must create an appropriate “serious” image, so it’s worth responding dryly and to the point. We answered and did not feel any enthusiasm from this (users, it seems, too). But then we decided that trying to puff out cheeks was all from the evil one. Some nonsense. And they began to communicate with users in normal human language. It turned out that an appropriate joke and a friendly tone of communication greatly reduce the intensity of the discussion.
The support staff themselves, by the way, after that felt the drive - the work from execution and boring turned into creative and exciting. We began to communicate informally with people, and over the past year, the amount of negativity in our address has sharply decreased (although of course, we still have work to do).
Once we were approached by a user who wanted to know whether it was possible to cancel the transfer to the phone. We asked about the details of his payment, and he admitted that he had not done it yet. Just a prostitute asked to throw her a fee on the phone, and he wanted to know in advance whether it would be possible to return the money if something went wrong.
Working in support, which only does not have to face. But this does not mean that the aspirations of users should be ignored, even if they sometimes express their indignation in a not too elegant manner.
This, by the way, does not mean that they are morons. It’s just that Russian people all the time are waiting to be deceived (and not without reason), and therefore they are always ready to attack with a saber. But if they write the answer in a human way, it often turns out that these are completely normal people. And if you still call them, then all the anger evaporates and in the end they thank you and wish you all the best.
In general, do you want to restore faith in the victory of good over evil and love humanity? Welcome to tech support.