All of a sudden ...
no luck!?
Things we have learned while supporting Perch.
Converge Edinburgh, May 2013
Friday, 31 May 13
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WOW!
No More Clients.
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HALP!!
All those customers.
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In business you get what you
want by giving other people
what they want.
Alice MacDougall
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http://xkcd.com/627/
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Most of your competition spend their
days looking forward to those rare
moments when everything goes right.
Imagine how much leverage you have if
you spend your time maximizing
those common moments
when it doesn’t.
Seth Godin
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Value of amazing
customer support.
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People talk about
the help they get
(or don’t get)
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One customer well taken care
of could be more valuable
than $10,000 worth of
advertising.
Jim Rohn
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A commercial
product in a
world of free.
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Support is something
people pay for.
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Customer service is the new
marketing.
Derek Sivers
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Email is hard to scale.
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Even if you are a
support team of 1.
Create a system that
can scale.
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“Canned” responses
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Collecting data on
support helps you
plan for
growth.
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http://helpspot.com
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http://zendesk.com
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Assess solutions based
on the type of
support you need and
want to offer.
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https://twitter.com/TMobileUKhelp
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https://twitter.com/grabaperch/status/322331407991062528
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Twitter is not good
for in-depth support.
But it doesn’t hurt to
be helpful.
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If you make customers unhappy in the
physical world, they might each tell 6
friends. If you make customers unhappy
on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000
friends.
Jeff Bezos
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Customers are human and
humans can view situations in
unexpected ways.
Marilyn Suttle
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Statistics suggest that when customers
complain, business owners and
managers ought to get excited
about it. The complaining customer
represents a huge opportunity
for more business.
Zig Ziglar
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Is the customer
ALWAYS right?
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I get support tickets that are
nothing short of extortion
Andrey Butov - http://bootstrapped.fm
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The trouble with
feature requests.
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The more you engage with
customers the clearer things
become and the easier it is to
determine what you
should be doing.
John Russell, President, former V.P., Harley Davidson
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Protect the core use
case of your product.
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http://docs.grabaperch.com/docs/developers/creating-regions/
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You can’t please
everyone.
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Add features that
benefit the majority,
not a noisy minority.
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Customer support
can be your best
market research.
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Know what your customers
want most and what your
company does best. Focus on
where those two meet.
Kevin Stirtz
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Building your website
- one ticket at a time
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customers who have contacted support
26%
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have raised more than one ticket
10%
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of requests are from the same 50 people
25%
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of requests are from the same 20 people
15%
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of requests are from the same 10 people
10%
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of requests are from 1 customer
2%
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0
10
20
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40
50
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70
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Credit: Flickr user uair01
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Drew and the
“mental model”.
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When we enlarge our view of
the world, we deepen our
understanding of our own
lives.
Yo-Yo Ma
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With a digital
product you are
an export business
from day 1.
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Design support out
of your product.
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Provide a variety
of help material,
different levels &
formats.
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Predicting busy
support days.
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Jun Aug Oct Dec Feb Apr Jun Aug Oct Dec Feb
Requests
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Jun Aug Oct Dec Feb Apr Jun Aug Oct Dec Feb
Requests Licenses
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The “end client”
problem.
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Clients can lose
contact with their
designer for all
kinds of reasons.
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Who owns the
license for third
party software?
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Who supports the
end client with a
third party CMS?
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Not all support is
really your problem.
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Terrible webhosting
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We give customers
copy and paste
information to give
to their host’s support.
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Cheap hosting is
very expensive.
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A small amount of
extra money on
hosting saves a vast
amount of time.
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I am adding paragraphs in the
editor but Perch isn’t
displaying them on my
website!
Many, many Perch customers
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Understanding the
full stack saves you
time and frustration.
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You don’t need to
become an expert.
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If you have been able
to learn CSS you are
capable of learning
some PHP or Ruby.
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HELP!
It’s not working.
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What
is not working?
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If we can reproduce
an issue, it is well on
the way to
being solved.
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Tell us what you
expected to happen.
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no luck
no joy
no love
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If a suggestion
doesn’t work don’t
forget to say
what it did do.
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The perfect support
request?
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Give versions of the software in use.
Include Diagnostic info where available.
Give step by step instructions to reproduce.
Include any code required.
Explain what you expected to happen.
Explain what actually happened.
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Good support gets
you back to your
project as
quickly as possible
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@rachelandrew
http://rachelandrew.co.uk/presentations/support
Thank you!
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