Get on with 30 minutes and other Social Media Support records
A lot of articles have been written about technical support. Everyone writes: users, engineers, team leaders, directors, and even business owners. As a technical support engineer in the past and a senior engineer for Social Media Support at Parallels in the present, I also have something to share.
The world is changing, and with it various spheres of our life are developing. Technical support is no exception. In the age of social networks, helping customers and answering questions without leaving Facebook is quite commonplace. Hot numbers have been added where customers can call 24/7 and ask any questions. Chats appeared, in teams there are more and more engineers who speak not only English, but also in other languages. Despite the fact that English remains a priority in many services, a rather pleasant and unexpected feature is the ability to speak with a technical support engineer in the native language.
But despite the pronounced similarities between the classic support and digital technical support, there are features that would be nice to consider when creating your Dream Team.
What first comes to mind when you hear the combination of words Social Media Support (SMS)? Perhaps these are social networks and similar channels in which you can be helped by answering questions, engineers, sales people or other employees of the company. Everything is so, but SMS has its own specifics, which will be discussed below.
Communication style
The first, and probably the main difference, is language. No matter you communicate with clients in Russian or in English, your style is changing. From an official business, he with a flick of the wrist turns into a conversational.
The usual phrases and templates that were used daily and hourly in correspondence with users are transformed into short “please check this out”, “give this a shot” and “thanks for sharing!”, And after some time even these phrases manage to decrease to “Plz”, “thx”, “ICYMI” - in case you missed it and even w / instead of the usual with.
Of course, abbreviations are used only when they are really needed. For example, in order to fit your answer in 140 characters tweet. Unlike twitter, forums and facebook allow us to write whole words, however, the communication style itself is noticeably changing. By the way, “ Hey ” or “ Hi there ” replaces the usual “ Hello. Thank you for contacting Customer Support . " You can also add “ I mean ..” to decrypt your own words in the post, or ask the user “ We'd need more details on this ” in order to get additional information about the problem. Just asking the client about whether the problem was resolved is also much easier on the forum: “ Does it work OK now?"Or something very similar, engineers ask users, and users themselves are not afraid to clarify once again if workarounds helped.
This style is first of all set by the users themselves and you can’t get anywhere from this. Answer the lively, emoticon-flashed question “ Thank you for contacting us. Please try these steps as a potential solution and let us know how it goes. …… Also, verify these settings and provide us with the steps to reproduce the issue if it doesn't help ”becomes not only inappropriate, but also time-consuming.
End of life license or the end of the film
Another difference between SMS and regular support is the answers and assistance to customers with an expired license or with questions about other applications. If in ordinary tickets it can be explained that we no longer support these versions or the problem is related to another application, and after that close the ticket (perhaps by providing the client with a couple of links to articles about fixing the application or the ability to update without extra time), then in social networks, in addition to the phrase "this is the problem of that left application", we usually try to offer a solution that will certainly help our customer. Moreover, answering the forum to a person with an end-of life version that we can’t help him because it is no longer officially updated, is not repaired or maintained, is simply ugly, incorrect and illiterate in terms of the principles of our work. This is such an official channel, which in addition to the official one makes a lot of unofficial. Therefore, when working with such a question, it is worth trying not only to describe the features of the new version, but also to do everything possible to help the client solve his question.
How to help Mr. “not working” or the third difference
SMS is also distinguished by the fact that engineers offer the client many possible solutions in response to his questions. Often, users do not describe the symptoms in such detail as in a ticket, because perhaps they do not have a questionnaire that needs to be completely filled out, thereby answering questions of support that are of interest. Usually everyone writes to Facebook, a forum or twitter is simple: " All the goats! Everything has broken.! Or simply:" - Alley! Cheyta doesn't work? "
Therefore, in order to get a complete picture of what is happening with the client, we, as technical support engineers on social networks, can not only ask a lot of different short clarifying questions, but also periodically send suggested and useful solutions only under certain circumstances. This allows us to understand what happened, under what circumstances, and who or what is to blame. Have you watched the Dr. House series? That's about the same as we treat lupus, Wilson’s syndrome and other terrible ailments, but so far without Vicodin.
Of course, this does not mean that we point our fingers at the sky and try to simply fulfill the stats. We think, reason, test this and try to reproduce the problem in a short time and advise the customer something useful, after which everything will work as it should. By the way, our team also has its own tricks. So, for example, if you use suitable monitoring tools, you can notice that the client is not contacting us for the first time, and answer his next “again does not work” with a ready-made (possibly found earlier) solution.
The timing
In any support, the engineer must answer the user in a certain period of time, call on time to start a remote or just a telephone session and solve the problem. The difference of support in the social. media is that these terms are significantly reduced here. You need to reply to the message within 30-40 minutes.
Of course, the response time depends not only on the indicators that need to be performed, but also on the complexity of the question, the competence of the engineer, a detailed description of the problem by the user, and many other factors. On average, it takes 24 hours to answer on Facebook, and about 11 hours on Twitter. There are other indicators that indicate that the customer receives a response on Twitter within 20 minutes and within 30-40 minutes they can be answered on Facebook.
Clients' expectations also vary, someone believes that they should reply to him with a maximum of 5 minutes on Twitter, after his tweet, while other customers say that the answer within an hour or two is quite acceptable. Perhaps it all depends on the complexity and urgency of the problem, and possibly on the employment of the client himself. Options are possible, but the deadlines remain timing, and also the difference between one support from another.
But do not forget that the solution to the issue with one replay in the classic and SM support is very much appreciated.
Difficulty - Fifth Difference
There is an opinion that in the social. Networks ask support questions only for beginners, and therefore most of the questions are simple.
But now, with the trend of active development of social media, not only the number of questions is increasing, but also their complexity. Of course, a lot depends on the product manufactured and supported by the company, but this is only one part of the puzzle.
In practice, I myself have met a sufficient number of questions from system administrators.
(By the way, communicating in social networks with administrators is much easier, despite the complexity of their questions and problems with the products. The fact is that Admins try to describe the problem in as much detail as possible and provide us with support all possible details, error codes and step-by-step instructions. Fisherman fisherman so to speak)
Instead of a conclusion.
All the differences of the classic support from the technical support of a new type are neither pluses nor minuses. Each of the differences can be considered positive for any technical support. Any user simply chooses what is more convenient for him personally: create a ticket or write about a non-working program on Facebook or Twitter. Perhaps, with the active development of SM support and the appearance of numerous tools for engineers, SM support will come in first place and the number of tickets will decrease significantly. But this will be a completely different article.
