Communication really is everything.

After having spent about a week considering how to open up this blog post, waning from idea to idea a client gave me something to write about. Adii, a wordpress theme developer & self-proclaimed ‘Superstar’ wrote a blog titled Support: There’s a bulletproof way to do it.

Of course, with a reference to support you were bound to see our name listed somewhere. Although when I had initially started reading his post the ‘bulletproof’ part set reminded me of days gone past when I was working for other web hosting providers. At those providers we took bulletproof very seriously — given that we had clients threatening to kill us on a daily basis..

I’ll freely admit that things are a lot less nerve-wrecking around here. No death threats just yet.

I’m going to be taking a look at what support & customer service really have to offer in todays world. In a society of grab-and-go, does support still matter? Recently a branding specialist over at The Blake Project recently wrote of customer service being dead.

I, on the other hand, disagree. Support-centric companies have shaped their entire offerings around customer service & ensuring that customers are satisfied. It’s not in tune with what most web hosting providers would have to say — their company mantra tends to be “volume, volume, volume”. Sadly, in most cases, not only applicable to the number of sales but their cancellations & how loud they have to turn up the music to ignore their clients too.


Support & what it offers.

Support & customer service isn’t just something we offer for fun. We are our clients lifeline & in an increasingly technical world we need to realize that. Despite there being a firm movement towards diminishing support, outsourcing & turning every query into a copy-and-paste answer — real support is always going to be necessary.

So what is support?
Support is the ability to get a real answer, real fast. In the web hosting industry specifically, there’s a large percentage of clients that are simply used to asking questions about anything technical. Over the years they’ve learned to rely on friends, acquaintances and family to get answers — it’s no different here.

Despite the capacity for a wiki, FAQ system or knowledgebase to get a precise answer out quickly, most won’t use it. Not only do they want the reassurance of knowing someone is there behind the scenes but they want to interact with them. Whether it be via e-mail, phone or smoke signals — they’re going to try to get in touch with us when there’s a problem or question.

From an end-users perspective, they want to get in touch with someone. The added reassurance that there is someone handling infrastructure adds a value that no system can compete with.

So, what’s in it for us?

Us, being Fused Network. Well surprisingly despite customer service being the most expensive resource on the planet (and more scarce than oil, I might add) it offers us the chance to differentiate ourselves from the other companies. Again, given the technical nature of our industry there’s very few ways we can really segment ourselves from our competitors. Inexpensive ways that is, until we get a full-time MBA on board.

So offering thorough support is actually in our best interest. Not only does it give us a face-to-face interaction that gives customers a chance to get to know us, value us & cherish us but it allows Fused Network to stand out. It’s double-plus good!

But.. but.. isn’t automation cheap?

Well of course it is. Self-checkout lines in the supermarket, automated librarians & web hosting knowledgebases are always going to have a place in the world. The truth is that nerds have always been very expensive. Intelligent help isn’t going to come cheap & in order to make up for that — companies should be implementing wikis, knowledgebases, FAQs & as many automated help methods as possible to reduce overhead. At the same time however, that doesn’t mean they should be reducing support overall!

In the end…
The additional support methods like wikis, FAQs cannot come at the expense of quality.

They should be additions, not substitutes. Great support will allow you to differentiate your company from the masses & allow you to sell it to the masses.

There will be a part-2.