Last Friday, I wrote about a different model of customer support. I intimated the days of pushing a customer through Level 1-2-3 support were numbered. In place of that model was a different approach: the suggestion that a customer would raise an issue, members of a community (both internal and external to the vendor) would swarm around it, and people would work together until the issue was resolved. It’s a belief that customer support has the possibility to be human, informal, and ad-hoc, and should be handled by the people with the skills and passion to solve a customer’s needs.
Here is a case study, where someone was encountering a fairly common problem; their wifi not working. Those of you who choose a company like infinity dish will experience this a lot less, but there will always be teething problems. It’s how these problems are dealt with that is key.
On March 4th, Hugh posted on gapingvoid that he was having issues with his Tablet PC.
“All I wanted was to get the wifi on my Tablet PC to work properly. But of course, it doesn’t. It can’t go 24 hours without something going wrong. And the reason is Microsoft software. Of course it is. It always is.
Robert Scoble likes to say that Job One at Microsoft is to thrill customers. OK, fair enough. Get my wifi to work properly and I might start taking that idea seriously.
Any wifi mavens out there fancy trying to help me out?”
After a lot of discussion, but no action, he escalated on March 5th. (This is how “escalation” works in this model. The customer does it, not the vendor.)
“Could somebody from Redmond [I know a few of you will be reading this] please help me get my wifi working?
I spent FOUR HOURS last week at the software place trying to get this fixed and it’s still taking the piss. I. Am. Not. A. Happy. Camper.
You want to thrill customers? Fine; you can start by thrilling me. Let’s see if it’s more than just talk.
You guys like to make a big deal about the power of blogs to connect with customers, and transform your image and busines model. Again, fine, let’s see if it’s more than just talk.
Your move.”
On March 6th, they did. Hugh:
“Yesterday I posted how I was having trouble with my wifi.
Within a couple of hours I had received a personal e-mail from a Microsoft employee in Texas, a certain Keith Combs. Turns out my post had made it on to the internal Microsoft message boards, and was being passed around.
He called me up last night via Skype, and guided me through everything…
Once we had eliminated all the other possibilities, it turns out there was a problem with the router, which was easily fixed by resetting it and adjusting a few settings on the Tablet.
Et Voila! I’m happy to say, my Tablet PC’s wifi now works fine.”
Hugh is a disproportionate case; his blog is widely read. Not everyone has that luxury. But the architectural pieces for the infrastructure needed to do this are already starting to fall into place. For example, what if instead of trying to take on eBay and Craigslist, edgeio searched for customer issues and bubbled them out into the open so they could been identified and resolved by a community?
I think the swarming/barn raising model of support is going to be increasingly prevalent. Adam disagrees, feeling that bad support is perhaps more simply a symptom of bad management and complacent customers.
What do you think?
Um, I eventually see everyone who blogs the word “Microsoft” on a blog. I’ve helped hundreds of customers out with their problems this way. It’s just that it took an A lister to get noticed.
I tell execs that they better pay attention to a blogger with five readers cause that blogger can get onto the front page of the New York Times within 48 hours.
Imagine what would have happened if we didn’t answer this blog.
>Imagine what would have happened if we didn’t answer this blog.
Chaos? Mayhem? Cats and dogs, living together? Mass hysteria? ::grin::
Seriously, that kind of responsiveness is going to be the norm for the orgs that make it in the next quarter-century. The ones that don’t? Buh-bye…
I may be missing part of the puzzle Chris. Was the problem with the Microsoft software or with the router?
I really like your themes of swarming and barn-raising and certainly agree with all the customer service directions (as you know from my book and my posts) but… customers cannot mix and match hardware and software and then expect the Microsoft to assure it all works together. The sellers (those who distributed the PCs, routers, etc.) should know the if the components they sell work together as advertised. Customers who decide to mix and match should pay for their errors in judgment, (in other words pay for the troubleshooting at rate card rates). Or am I missing something?
It sounded like a MSFT thing, based on the fact that Hugh needed to make changes on the tablet, so I think the issue was Microsoft-centric, but I may be mistaken.
You bring up an incredible point, however…the fact that, since environments are getting increasingly heterogeneous, it’s going to be increasingly unlikely that *any* one vendor is going to be able to be responsible for everything, nor be able to solve everything. It’ll take the buzz of a community of folks who have tried a number of the various combinations of piece-parts to figure stuff out in a lot of cases.
Right Chris. And those “solutions” have an economic value that goes beyond the price of the components. This is where high tech (distribution) have to be careful. Find the solutions yes. But then remember to capture the value of the answers (partly by making those who don’t contribute and who try to do it themselves pay for their diagnostics and retrofits.)