Tales from the Front Lines
REWORK
Work in a Restaurant, Right?
There are now 18 people in customer support at Amazon. The company has grown slowly and deliberately to start etching its way around the world, essentially. When you're getting a reply from another person within a minute, your first instinct is "Are they really real? Is it like a real person?"
“When dealing with customers, especially those that are angry, there are always two tokens on the table. One is the token for it just doesn't matter. It's not a big deal. And the other token is it's the end of the world. We pick one, and the customer picks the other.”—Chase Clemons
Today, Chase Clemons is here. Chase is the Head of Customer Support and is on the front lines every day as he leads the 18-person support team at 37signals.
Listen in as he shares why every customer interaction's outcome depends on which one of the two tokens the support team chooses, how to keep things Fisher Price easy for better customer understanding, and some of the strategies he has learned over his eleven years at 37signals for providing excellent customer service.
Show Notes:
[00:56] - Chase shares his story of providing customer support for 37signals for 11 years.
[01:48] - The two industries Chase thinks everyone needs to work in at some point in their lives to be able to handle ANY situation that life or customers throw at you.
[02:25] - Chase shares what went wrong when the 37signals support team tried to meet a 1-minute benchmark for responding to customers.
[05:25] - What the customer support team learned when they dropped the time requirement.
[05:54] - Chase shares an example of how they got off to a rocky start with a customer, but by offering real people PHONE support, they turned it into a WIN for the team and a new customer.
[09:12] - Is it a BOT or not?
[10:25] - Chase explains the meaning of 'stop the cap.'
[10:50] - Humans are expensive but also friendly and can actually help other humans.
[11:46] - 'Training the corporate out of them' and adopting the Basecamp voice for friendly, concise answers.
[13:12] - How to explain things so they don't get lost in the translation.
[14:34] - Why the philosophy of Basecamp products is to keep things Fisher-Price easy.
[15:17] - Chase compares customer service mistakes to white river rafting and why everyone is afraid until they 'flip in the raft.'
[16:54] - The disconnect between what we convey through our text, how people receive it, and why the subsequent response matters the most.
[18:01] - Chase shares the lesson of the two tokens when dealing with customers and why the support team needs to make a big deal out of the problem, so the customer doesn't have to.
[20:07] - Chase shares his tips for putting everyone on the front lines, including where to start if you want to involve everyone in your company in customer support.
[22:15] - "Interacting with the customers reminds us of who is paying our paychecks."
[22:51] - The value of having an 'emergency' contact page for your customers to make them customers for life.
[25:39] - Want some advice from the 37signals support team on how they would handle a customer support issue? Contact us here.
Links and Resources:
Do you have a question for Jason and David? Leave us a voicemail at 708-628-7850
Need advice from the 37signals support team on how they would handle a customer support issue? Email Chase.
Put Everyone on the Front Lines | REWORK
Rework
HEY World | HEY
The AI-powered Podcast Player
