The importance of personal customer service

While in Canada I was thinking a lot about how to automate BetterEdit so that more of the job processing could be handled by web applications. I tossed around all kinds of ideas including a fully automated system where the client selects the editor they want, makes payment and the whole editing process is handled online with no interaction with admin. This of course would reduce my role (admin) significantly as I would only be needed for support, rather than also processing and coordinating jobs between clients and editors.

I contacted some of our editors to ask for their opinion and while everyone was supportive a concern kept popping up – how can we maintain personal relationships with our clients if they interact with an automated system? Over the last few months as new jobs have come through from Canada and we have ‘met’ clients for the first time, they have tasted our service and provided feedback, and repeat clients from Australia have returned like old friends, I have further noted how important personal interaction is.

One of my own peeves is customer service and in particular phone support. Like most people I hate waiting in phone queues, I hate how you often have to bounce around from department to department. My impression and happiness with a company often rests on how well their support staff can handle my query. If it is quick, simple and directly addresses my needs then I walk away satisfied and often will spread the word just because of the good experience. I have learnt this holds true for email support of BetterEdit clients too.

The personal interaction between editors, clients and admin create a ‘human’ environment that if handled well and meets everyone’s needs, will stimulate growth. For every client that walks away impressed with our service, often thanks to the dedicated personal support of our editors, we create a great referral source. Personally I like nothing more than receiving positive feedback from our clients and for those brief moments I don’t even worry about making money from it, the kudos is reward enough.

Of course it doesn’t always work out ‘all roses’. Sometimes mistakes occur, deadlines are missed or needs are not met. Occasional a client expects more than is possible. Sometimes email doesn’t get through in time because I have been sleeping in Australia when work has been coming through from Canada or vice versa.

Once I had a client confuse dates because they sent through a document early in the morning, about 1am their time and they mistakenly requested return for the document a day later since they didn’t realise they had worked passed midnight. Consequently we sent the job back 12 hours too late and they refused to pay. I felt angry because it was their mistake but after writing out a couple of ‘heated’ responses (and then deleting them before sending) I simply refunded the payment, wrote off the job and wished them luck with their studies. I wanted to make sure the damage as a result of this job was kept to a minimum and I’m sure an email flame war was not going to leave a good impression.

There is still reason enough to warrant some automation. I am mindful of the need for clients to have personal contact and maintain a simple email submission method, but perhaps the payment/invoice process could be more automated and steps could be taken to allow two different admin officers to maintain jobs so that we could offer 24 hour monitoring of admin email. The problem I face now is finding the skilled people to create something from the ideas in my head and keep costs to a minimum.

Yaro Starak