Author Archive for Jason

In the early part of this year, I read Joel’s 7 Steps to remarkable customer service. The piece resonated with me, and it was one of the reasons that I applied to the SMTP program. Customer service in the world of technology is, generally speaking, an embarrassing and dehumanizing process. Here was a person who believed that there was a better way to do it.

Shortly after joining the company, I asked the question “Why do we give this information away freely? Aren’t we concerned that our competitors are bound to read it, see the wisdom of it, and emulate it?” At that point, I had about 4 weeks of customer service duty under my belt and was confident that this model could be scaled and replicated. Now, after 6 months and lots of conversations with customers, I understand why it is to our advantage to let people know that this is the way we do things.

It is hard work.

Real customer service is emotional labor. You have to dance between being truly empathetic to a frustrated customer’s problem and self preserving as a customer, pushed beyond the limits of human endurance, takes out their frustrations on you directly. The former is the norm and the latter the exception, but both efforts take a lot of energy. Add to that the fact that the problems I am asked to solve are frequently subtly complex technical issues, and I am spent at the end of the day. The payback comes in the form of a tremendous sense of satisfaction from seeing Joel’s suggestions work to make not just satisfied but fanatical customers.

The problem is, I honestly don’t think most of the people that apply for customer service jobs could do it. Either they don’t have the people skills, but are excellent technically, or they don’t have the technical skills. This is not to say that I am a phenom, by any means. It is proof positive of the draw of the promised career advancement once the customer service stint is over. I am willing and motivated to work hard because these are the same customers that I hope to be serving as I move on to QA and Marketing and, eventually, to management. Understanding them, and their needs, gives me the information I need to make decisions and trades-offs about the products on which they rely. If you ask most customer service people what they do, I bet they would say “I answer email and telephone calls”. Customer advocacy is my job. It is the best way to keep customers happy and continue to increase our revenue

You have to get the environment right.

To get people motivated and give them the tools they need to do the job of customer management takes real effort. While Joel’s steps are conveniently broken up to make them more understandable, combined they create the environment necessary to make my daily efforts possible. The entire company is oriented toward the customer. We are constantly evaluating how what we do and what we say will affect our customers.

This is hard to believe for some customers because they have been asking for this one feature (or that one) for 2 years, and we haven’t implemented it. Although it is easy to imagine us in our ivory tower laughing with scorn at your feature request, I can honestly say that we agonize over our decisions as to which features to implement when. We honestly feel badly about not getting to your suggestion, but we can’t cloister ourselves for 10 years writing the next version, so we need to choose.

Our incredibly lenient return policy allows me the freedom to say to someone “Try it, if you don’t like it you get your money back immediately, no questions asked” and “I can’t recommend that you buy FogBugz because it isn’t going to do everything you want” and “I am really sorry that we couldn’t get you connected, here is your money back and a free pass for your next connection”. All of this is intended to show that the second reason we aren’t at risk is that it is almost impossible to replicate this environment without tremendous effort, and true belief that it is worth it.

By telling customers that this is how we do business, and actually sticking to it, we make our customers confident in our ability to make them happy. We get more risk takers and advocates that push our products into markets where they might otherwise go unnoticed. And my life is better because when customers call or email, they (mostly) treat me like a human being that wants to help them, instead of their worst enemy.

We aren’t at risk at all; we have a distinct advantage, a differentiator. While other service organizations understand that these are good ideas, they aren’t able to implement them (the environment isn’t right) or they won’t implement them (don’t want to do the hard work). In the rare cases that I come across one that is able and willing, dealing with the company is such a pleasant departure that I find myself liking them, even if they are one of our competitors.

Management acumen is a oft sought after but rarely found talent in all industries. The lack of available talent makes companies desperate and leaves many vulnerable to the shills. The company I work for decided to do something about this by creating a management training program. An expensive endeavor, it seeks to give the participants all of the relevant experience required for management in the real world of technology. Much of the “training” has to do with understanding customer needs, learning to manage laterally and vertically, and making rational trade-offs between features, design, and income. What is much more difficult to come by, in a company full of very smart and dedicated people, are the hardcore people management skills.

Enter World of Warcaft. A well know international phenomenon, WoW has gotten attention for being an addictive money making machine. You may have also seen it appear in Wired when, in an interview, it became a source of common ground and led (indirectly?) to a job offer. For outsiders, even with the well written explanation, it is difficult to conceive just how this game could really help you develop relevant skills for business. The Wired article compares Warcraft to other simulation games that have been used explicitly to train people (e.g. flight simulators). What interests me is something a little more subtle in the virtual world that Blizzard/Vivendi have created. They have created a virtual reality in which organizations (guilds) of upwards of 40 people are required for continued success, and simultaneously remove most of the barriers impeding an individual’s ability to change organizations (or quit altogether).

By way of confession, I have over 200 days played (200×24hours) in the world of WoW. I have two maximum level characters, and I am a member and officer of Bad Blood (a guild in the top 300 in terms of progression in the US). To get where we are, we raid 4 hours a night 5 days a week. In addition, to give us the best chance of success we have to put in additional time each week gathering materials and completing activities that give us access to progressively more difficult content. We are challenge junkies. A group of geeks who get their kicks from figuring out just how much additional damage, to the tenth of percent, they will be able to do if they pick up a particular piece of digital gear. For an idea of the level of complexity and coordination take a look at this video, prepared by another guild, designed to help people understand one of the encounters we recently mastered. At our level of play it takes 25 people, acting in unison, to get things done. If one person screws up, everyone fails. And we do this, without ever meeting each other.

Imagine for a moment, that you never had to meet any of the people that you work with. You have no opportunities to share passing conversations about the kids, your favorite sports team, or what you did last weekend. All of those informal measures of the quality of your co-workers being masked by anonymity. I know many of my colleagues, who have had experience with consultants, have an idea how difficult it is to get work done in this type of environment. Now take away the friction created by your, and your colleagues’, dependence on a salary, and reduce the cost of switching organizations to almost zero. It starts to give new clarity to the phrase “herding cats“.

It makes every moment that we spend together important. It means that frustrations and outbursts need to be managed carefully. It requires an increased sense of unity of purpose. It applies in immense amount of pressure to leadership, and forces them to identify and jealously guard talent. My experience has given me insight into the true value of positive feedback. When a kind word, spoken honestly, is basically the only currency that you have, other than success (which is unpredictable), you are forced to use it carefully. I have had to learn to listen carefully to what people mean, and not what they say, or type. I have been forced to learn to express myself clearly and concisely under pressure. If I can’t get an important message across quickly, it can mean hours of wasted effort. It is effectively the equivalent of condensing weeks or years of people management experience into 20 hours a week.

As remarkably unlikely as it may seem, I have tried to avoid exaggeration and hyperbole wherever possible. Still, I can imagine my readers’ incredulity. To that end, I will leave you with one more question that may help to highlight the value of this experience: how long does it take to explain a difficult concept to an audience of people you work with on a tele-conference, and how many people retain it afterwards? The limitations placed on communication on WoW make those skills extraordinarily important, and ultimately, a key factor to your organization’s success.