116: CSAT with Denise Twum

Charlotte Ward 0:12
Hello, and welcome to Episode 116 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 Twum. So Denise, the topic for this week is customer satisfaction. And I’m particularly interested in how you measure customer satisfaction if you’ve got any particular stories or advice for our listeners, and how you do it, and what your favourite measures are.

Denise Twum 0:54
Customer satisfaction is one of those measures that I love. 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, then you help 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 want it or in the colour they want it or the shape they wanted, they’re gonna ding you. And part of that is also because while they might be deceased, that question is asking, Well, how is your experience with this support agent or the support person, they are actually rating the tool or the app or the product technical support. So in my ideal world, there would be a very easy way to rate the product, and the support experience. And some people who’ve been 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. What are the some of the stories all my goodness, we use nice reply right now, which is really easy to get are really easy to integrate. I especially love it because the support heroes we call our agents and heroes can go into nice reply and see their ratings. And it’s not just 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. 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 the satisfied. We’ve had someone do that 12 times on the same way. Oh, yeah. Wow. And I was like, at that point, I don’t even know, 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. And so at that point, I am not going to take those 12 negatives of ending the customer support agent one is enough. We got we got it. You know. And so, one of the things, what point at what point in that

Charlotte Ward 3:41
opportunity for recovery do and not particularly in the case of the 12 dissatisfied guy. What, at what point in that opportunity for recovery? Do you say okay, this is the final measure of satisfaction for this case?

Denise Twum 4:03
Um, I think our 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 our company is planning to support and we are not going to follow up with that, because it really is not any. Oftentimes, you will receive a request where the customer wants your tool to be like the Swiss Army Knife of whatever it is. And oftentimes when you have a Swiss Army knife or whatever it is, and some parts of the implementation are going to suffer and some parts are going to be built properly and the team will not know how to support it, there will be an old code that breaks so you can even work with whatever it is. And so that kind of decision is one that is the public team has made, we can go back to them and show them the stats, show them, you know, lots of emails from customers asking for it. But if they say 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?

Charlotte Ward 5:20
And yeah, do you think you can isolate out those things that don’t measure the quality of service? And

Denise Twum 5:28
we try. I mean, we try, it’s one of those things that I know the, the other hero managers, they go through the support ratings weekly. And they will weed out some of those, if it doesn’t have to do with the service that the hero provided, but it’s a product complaint. And we are hoping one of the things that we’re hoping to do is find a way to actually take those and create a report for the product team. The interesting thing is when we tell the product team some of these things, they go, Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, we know. Yeah, yeah, definitely. You know, but sometimes you have to make decisions with some customers again, sometimes you hear from the vocal minority. So they are aware of their shortcomings. But right, but getting that info out. And, you know, letting the heroes understand that this is not, this is no reflection on of you, or your ability or skill. And we are aware of that. And we’ve removed it, you know,

Charlotte Ward 6:27
yeah, yeah. And I think that’s changing and support, isn’t it? It didn’t, it doesn’t seem so very long ago that companies who were measuring cset were scared to slice and dice it right to what was a product satisfaction and what was service satisfaction and everything else? Because it in some ways, historically, I think has been seen, has been perceived to be kind of engineering the numbers.

Denise Twum 6:53
Yeah, yeah. And I ever since I got into support, and I, 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 going to come and tell you suck at your job. Because there is no way you’re going to get hundred percent satisfaction. Yeah, I was reading. I think it was in support revenue, or somewhere where someone was saying that the customer is upset that their company is called West Coast something but they ship from the east coast. Just like, again. It’s a name, but they’re unhappy with it. You know,

Charlotte Ward 7:32
I wonder, I wonder if that person was dissatisfied about that 12 times tonight?

Denise Twum 7:40
I wonder, but you can’t please everybody all the time. Right? So it is the I love see sad. I think that is one of those things that enables you to see a trend and to see a poll. So let’s say the whole team is getting 85% 90% sees at readings, and then there’s somebody who is getting 50%. And that’s where we’re going to dig in and say, What’s going on here? Why is this person consistently underperforming? Or someone is actually aceing? And getting 100%? What is your secret? Are you cherry picking? Or maybe you just see some Tigers a careful

Charlotte Ward 8:19
choice of word there.

Denise Twum 8:22
Right? Yeah, yeah. 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 C stat 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 and that that is always how I see those he’s at numbers, unless you know, you’re tanking because you’re really just bad. And then we’re going to have that conversation about a performance improvement.

Charlotte Ward 9:12
That’s it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com/116 for the show notes, and I’ll see you next time.