While attending a recent seminar in Las Vegas, I came across
myself in a room with horrible internet connection. ace
someone who actively monitors and manages hundreds of
websites, this used to scare the hell out of me. Yet I sat quietly
through many of the seminar presentations, knowing that
all my customer service concerns were being handled
coming soon.
Let me explain my setup and you’ll understand why.
customer service is so easy for me now.
However, I must begin by pointing out that, as your
online business begins to grow, keeping up with the
customer service issues are often the most challenging
part of running your business.
Keeping up with all the emails can be almost
impossible!
Like many online sellers, I decided to outsource customers
service, but also keep positive control. I keep my
own help desk (customer service center) where some assistants
fix 95% of issues within minutes of occurrence.
I route a significant percentage of communications through my
help desk because it puts everything in one place. Yo
have a chained record of many exchanges, stored in a
secure database, so I can always go back and look up the
details later.
I’m a bit of a “control freak” so I haven’t put life
of my business totally in the hands of strangers. I have
some customer service assistants I know quite well.
I know they are trustworthy, they understand my business,
and have good judgement.
I use help desk software, called Three Pillars Help Desk,
but there are other comparable support table packages. In
under $100, this is an amazingly feature-rich piece
though the software.
The typical customer service interaction is as follows:
1) A customer has a question, he missed a download, he needs a
software installation, wants to partner with me, can’t
get a file to open correctly, etc… visit my help
desk and fill out a help ticket.
I do NOT require you to register. just fill the
ticket, and are entered into the system, receiving a
email confirmation. Actually, before submitting the ticket,
are encouraged to carefully read the “frequently asked questions”
(Frequently Asked Questions) integrated directly into the helpdesk. Often the answer to
their concern is there and they don’t even need
Submit a help ticket.
2) As soon as a support ticket is submitted, the administrative assistants
assigned to that ticket “category”, receives a desktop
notification that a new ticket has been submitted. They get
an audible chime, as well as an icon on the desktop that tells them
how many tickets are waiting for responses.
I have my help desk set to get these same,
notices I have it set to check every 15 minutes,
so I can see if any tickets go unanswered for a long time.
However, my tech support is usually pretty fast.
3) Admin wizards login to admin control panel,
using your unique admin logins and responding to tickets
in the categories assigned to them. They don’t see, and they can’t
respond to tickets in categories not assigned to them.
One of the categories in my help desk is “Personal for
Willie.” Naturally, I just want those tickets to be visible to
me. Three Pillars help desk software allows for that option.
JV related tickets are also only visible to me, but
could have a helper assigned to filter through JV
proposals, and have all those tickets ONLY visible to
that administrator Many of my contemporaries have assistants
assigned to filter JV proposals… some using the same
help desk setup I just described.
4) Many of the help tickets we receive can be answered
with a “one touch response”. The administrator simply selects the
response from a drop-down selection of pre-composed responses,
you click “submit”, and in a matter of SECONDS that ticket is
careful. The precomposed responses are assigned to (and
only visible to) specific categories, and the categories
they are assigned to specific administrators.
Perhaps a client unfamiliar with PDF or .zip files failed
to download and save one correctly, or maybe they don’t know
how to open the file Maybe a customer had a hard drive
fails and you need a replacement copy of an eBook. yes my technology
support is provided with proof of purchase, are
authorized to replace these files. My administrators are enabled
to make these kinds of decisions, which you really shouldn’t
you have to get bogged down.
5) As soon as the ticket is answered, the customer
you get the response via email and desktop notifier, when
then refreshes, shows that ticket has been serviced
of.
I mentioned earlier that I route most communications
through my helpdesk. This includes requests for
companies, requests for me to negotiate joint ventures,
ask me to review a product, etc. Details about
how do I do all these things are also included in the
Frequently Asked Questions, so potential JV partners can see if your product
it’s a likely match even before they file a help ticket.
Email is so unreliable these days. There is nothing
more disconcerting than having an angry customer with you
for not responding to an email that didn’t even
received. You don’t have that problem with the helpdesk.
The correspondence is stored directly in the database, and
only visible to appropriate parties. you can recover
registrations by name, email address and various others
database variables at any time… even for closed
Tickets. So you have a veritable treasure trove of data at your fingertips.
fingertip.
The FAQ file shows how many views a given question has.
That can show you potential problems or indicate that
you need to cover a product feature more thoroughly in
your sales letter. just paying attention to something
so you could easily double your sales of a certain
product. The fact is that most prospects, who have a
ask, he won’t bother to ask. so you really need
pay attention to those who do, and assume that many more
had the same question.
Anyway, I just shared with you how I handle the client
service for the hundreds of websites that actively
administer in mere minutes per day. actually i haven’t
tracked how much time my administrative assistants spend responding
to the tickets It’s been a long time since they asked for raises,
so I guess it’s not much.
If you want to spend more time working on growing
your business, instead of offering customer service
“fires”, then I recommend that you configure your
own help desk. My preferred help desk is Three Pillars:
http://ThreePillarsHelpDesk.com but there are others. You
you can be as fancy as you want with a help desk with them
ranging from free to several thousand dollars in price.
Three Pillars Help Desk was designed specifically for the Internet
marketers, so it was a natural choice for me.
