Customer support is a part of any business whether you like it or not. If you’re in business and have customers, sooner or later they will need support. How do you feel about customer support? Is it a cost of doing business? A hassle? Or an opportunity to build a stronger relationship with customers?
That’s an important question because it might go a long way in determining the level of success your business achieves and how long you’re even in business. Too many businesses make you feel like you’re inconveniencing them with the simplest of requests. I’ve dealt with some of them personally and you probably have to.
Certainly from time to time there are going to be customer support requests that seem unreasonable or even stupid. But are you perfect? I’m not. I’ve spaced off and not signed up for the customer autoresponder that sends the download link to digital products before. Not often, but I’ve done it before. So I have no reason to cop an attitude with the occasional customer who does the same with one of my products.
Remember The Law of 250 . Every customer on average knows 250 people…including the ones that need support. Handle their issues promptly, professionally, and courteously and sooner or later the word will get around that you provide good customer support. And happy customers are more likely to become repeat buyers too. On the other hand, if you ignore customer support or belittle your customers, word will get around that customers are on their own if they buy one of your products. You’ll never know how many sales (and repeat sales) you’ve cost yourself.
Recently I saw the Richard Lee had installed a support system software. I took a look at it and it turns out it’s free so I recently installed it myself. From now on, anyone who needs support can go to my support system.
If you’d like to use the same tool to handle your customer support, it’s called osTicket. It took about 10 minutes to install and I submitted a test ticket myself just to make sure it works and it does. Thanks for the suggestion Richard.
Tags: Online Business, Create Your Own Products
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3 Comments
Hi Rob,
I’ve found that customer support can be a very valuable research tool for finding out if there are any “holes” in my products or areas where they need more detail/info. etc.
If a customer asks for a refund I will issue it and then politely ask what they felt was missing from the product to make it work for them, this can be very useful feedback for a product and help to not only reduce future refunds, but also potentially make more sales..
OSTicket was my first choice to use for my own support desk, but it didn’t want to install correctly on the host for my support desk site for some reason, even though it’s supposed to be a standard cPanel Fantastico script..
after some research I found another free support desk script that’s quick and easy to install at:
maianscriptworld.co.uk
cheers,
Mattg
[Matt,
Good points. There are several more good reasons to provide good customer support. Thanks for the alternative to osTicket. I found it pretty simple to install but I understand your frustration. On more than one occasion I've had a terrible time installing a script others installed in a few minutes. Technology can be frustrating.
Robert]
Hmm.
I can take a pretty good guess from the blog layout and the 24 hour specials that you listen to JDB too.
But this here is one point where you definitely seem to differ from him.
I’m not sure if it’s because he outsources everything to interns, or what, but I’ve never had much luck with customer support.
I asked about non-delivery of his newsletter via PayPal (since I couldn’t find a support email address for it) and the sole response I got was to have my subscription cancelled.
That seemed to match up fairly well with his attitude towards support in general. That it is a time and cost waster.
Personally, I try and think of it much more in the way that you do, as an opportunity to find new product opportunities, and to make customers happy.
And now you can see the Law of 250 in action
[Roger,
In the past I followed JDB and even flew to Costa Rica to meet him but shortly thereafter he went berserk on me like he has on several others. I don't have a clue what he's up to anymore. He became a very negative influence and had to go so I've unsubscribed from all his lists, his newsletter....everything. He may look good on the surface, but you don't need to dig very deep to discover the truth and it's not pretty. Your experience is typical. At least he's not fabricating lies about you so you can be thankful for that.
Robert]
Just wanted to say that I am very pleased with the customer service Robert offers.
He has seemingly put a system in place where his customers support issues can be adequately addressed and at the same time achieve the freedom that we all crave. Who said it couldnt be done?
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