116: CSAT with Denise Twum

Charlotte Ward: 0:12

Hello and welcome to episode one hundred and sixteen of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. The theme for this week is customer satisfaction, so stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I would like to welcome to the podcast this week my very good friend Denise Tuam. So, Denise, the topic for this week is customer satisfaction. I'm particularly interested in how you measure customer satisfaction, if you've got any particular stories or advice for our listeners, uh, how you do it and what your favorite measures are.

Denise Twum: 0:54

Customer satisfaction is one of those measures that I love hate. Um mainly because there are some customers that will never be satisfied because you're not giving them exactly what they want, when they want it, how they want it. And it is one of those aspects of support that can be a little disheartening because when you're in support, you want to help the person and you want them to be happy that you helped them and you're excited when they finally get it. But even when they get it, because you didn't deliver it on the platter they wanted, or in the color they want it, or in the shape they wanted, they're gonna ding you. And part of that is also because while they might you the CSAC question is asking, well, how was your experience with this support agent or this support person? They are actually rating the tool or the app or the product that you support. Um, so in my ideal world, there would be a very easy way to rate the product and the support experience. Um, and some people who've been um maybe corresponding with support teams often will be savvy enough to say this agent was very helpful, but the product doesn't work for me. But you don't often get that. Um what are the some of the stories? Oh my goodness. Um, we use Nice Reply right now, which is really easy to set up, really easy to integrate. I especially love it because the support heroes, we call our agents uh heroes, can go into Nice Reply and see their ratings. And it's not just um the managers who see it. So someone can go in, see their rating, and say, Hey, I wonder if there's any way I can recover this bad rating or, you know, follow up with the customer because yes, the bad rating sucks for me, but they still seem confused about how to use our product. Um, and um, you know, most of the time they're able to turn that rating around. But there are some customers who are so unhappy that they will keep hitting dissatisfied. We've had someone do that 12 times on the same 12 times. And I was just like, at that point, I don't even know if we should keep talking to you because you're just upset. It's not even like this was a follow-up, this was just on that one message and they hit it 12 times. Um, and so at that point, I am not going to take those 12 negatives and ding the customer support agent. One is enough. We got we got the message. You were not happy about this, you know.

Charlotte Ward: 3:34

Um so uh one of the things um at what point at what point in that opportunity for recovery do and not particularly in the case of the 12 dissatisfied guys at what point at what point in that uh opportunity for recovery do you say, okay, this is the final measure of satisfaction for this case?

Denise Twum: 4:03

Um I think uh if the question has been answered, right, for instance, if it's something that is a product decision that we really can't, you know, you want us to build this feature, it is not anything that our um our company is planning to support, we're not gonna follow up with that because it really is not any uh uh oftentimes um you will receive a request where the customer wants your tool to be like the Swiss Army knife of whatever it is. Um and oftentimes when you are the Swiss Army knife of whatever it is, some parts of the implementation are gonna suffer. Some parts are not gonna be built properly. Um, the team will not know how to support it. There will be um old code that breaks, so you can't even work with whatever it is. And so that kind of decision is one that is the product team has made it. We can go back to them and show them stats and show them, you know, lots of emails from customers asking for it. But if they're saying no or not yet, really, um, I don't think going back and forth with that customer is going to yield anything positive or new. Yeah.

Charlotte Ward: 5:21

Do you think you can isolate out those things that don't measure the quality of service?

Denise Twum: 5:28

We try. I mean, we try. It's one of those things that I know the uh the other hero managers, they go through the uh support ratings weekly and they will weed out some of those. Um, if it doesn't have to do with the service that the hero provided, but it's a product complaint. Um and we are hoping one of the things that we're hoping to do is um find a way to actually take those and uh create a report for the product team. Um the interesting thing is when we tell the product team some of these things, they go, Oh yeah, oh yeah, we know. Yeah, definitely. Um, you know, but sometimes you have to make decisions with some customers. Again, um sometimes you hear from the vocal minute minority. So they they are aware of those shortcomings, but right, but getting that info out and you know, letting the heroes understand that this is not this is not a reflection on of you or your ability or skill, and we are aware of that and we've removed it, you know.

Charlotte Ward: 6:28

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's changing in support, isn't it? I I it didn't it doesn't seem so very long ago that companies who were measuring CSAT were scared to slice and dice it into what was product satisfaction and what was service satisfaction and everything else, big because it in some ways historically, I think, has been see has been perceived to be kind of engineering the numbers.

Denise Twum: 6:53

Yeah, yeah. Um, and I ever since I got into support, um, and I'm you know I'm the one digging in and looking at the numbers, I tell my team, so long as you're within a reasonable range, I'm not gonna come and tell you you suck at your job because there is no way you're gonna get 100% satisfaction. Yeah, um I was reading in um I think it was in support driven or somewhere where someone was saying that the customer is upset that their their company is called West Coast something, but they ship from the East Coast. And I'm just like, again, you're not gonna it's a name, but they're unhappy with it, you know.

Charlotte Ward: 7:32

Um I wonder, I wonder if that person was dissatisfied about that 12 times. That's all I need to know.

Denise Twum: 7:40

I I wonder, but you can please everybody all the time, right? So um it is the I love CSAT. I think that it's one of those things that enables you to see a trend, to see a pulse. So let's say the whole team is getting 85% to 90% CSAT ratings, and then there's somebody who is getting 50%. That's where I'm gonna dig in and say, what's going on here? Why is this person consistently underperforming? Or someone is actually acing and getting 100%. What is your secret? Um, are you cherry picking? Maybe.

Charlotte Ward: 8:17

Are you just the secret with a careful choice of word there? Exactly, right?

Denise Twum: 8:22

Yeah. Are you are you picking only the easy cases? Well, let's have a talk about that. Or are you taking your time to craft some amazing email responses and people are responding to that? How about you train the rest of the team so we can all try to emulate what you're doing, right? Or if your CSAT is really bad and you're taking the most convoluted cases, well, let's have a talk about that. Do you need some extra training on that because you know you you focus on those cases, which is we need someone who wants to take those challenging cases, but how can we then equip you to do better at that? That is always how I see those CSAT numbers. Unless, you know, you're tanking because you're really just bad, and then we're gonna have that conversation about a performance improvement.

Charlotte Ward: 9:08

Yeah. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash one one six for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.