I’ve been on a Customer Service “Bender”, you could call it, for the last year or so.  Believe it or not, I actually don’t like talking to people.  I’m not a jerk, I just like to do my own thing while working, and stuff like customer support takes away from “me doing my own thing” - it’s an interruption.  Since launching BuySellAds.com, and since we’re trying to claw our way to the top without any outside cash right now, this means that I am very involved in customer support every day.  For me, it’s hard for me to work on anything if I don’t believe in it and if I don’t have any passion to contribute.  Simply put, I had to figure out how to become passionate about customer support at BSA.  Once I got down to it, it was really just a matter of me being passionate about growing the business, not being a jerk, and discovering that I actually DID enjoy talkiing to people once I found satisfaction in being able to solve their prooblems.

Finding passion in customer support quickly became more than just “customer support”:

• Being involved in customer support allowed me to build relationships with our users, which, if you look around online for reviews of BSA it is the main driver for people who leave positive reviews about our company online.
• In an effort to make customer support more efficent the BSA application became more efficent and usable as well.  It’s obvious, but still important to note.  Since fixing a bug, changing messaging, or making a certain feature work better can reduce the volume of customer support, and therefore, reduce the customer support “interruption”, these things get fixed, tweaked, and improved very quickly at BSA.

Somehow, the BSA business continues to grow, but I’m still spending the same amount of time doing customer support.  Yes, I do have help now, but our inquiries per active user continues to go down month after month.  This is directly related to us fixing stuff, continuously improving the application, and more importantly EDUCATING users as we reply to support tickets.  When we reply to a ticket the goal isn’t to ask a stupid question just to put it off and get it out of our queue - the goal is to have such a good response that they don’t need to ask for any more help.  It seems obvious to work this way, but I think you would be surprised how many organizations use certain techniques in support to “procrastinate” a bit.

What sparked inspiration for this post was a something I just read from Seth Godin’s blog:

“My rule of thumb is this: every person you turn away because your product or service isn’t right for them turns into three great customers down the road. Every bad sale costs you five.”

… which brings me to my last point in this rant, Being honest in customer support is always the *best* answer.  At BSA we do our very best to be very direct with people, and, we find that this always yeilds the best results even when it might not be the answer our users are looking for.

If I were to rewind the tape and start BSA again today like I did just over a year ago, I would chose to be as involved in customer support as I have been and am now.  If you asked me this a year ago when I actually was starting BSA, I might not have answered the same.  The past year has really showed me how valuable quality customer support can be - it’s a huge opportunity, really.