192: The Perfect Support Email with Stacy Justino

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode 192 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. This week we're talking about the perfect support email. So stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I'd like to welcome back to the podcast today, Stacey Justino. Stacey, it's lovely to have you back again. Welcome back.

Stacy Justino: 0:40

Thanks for having me.

Charlotte Ward: 0:42

It's a pleasure, always. Um, now I think that um you probably have quite some strong opinions and some really, really good advice. I'm very sure. I'm very excited for the next 10 minutes because we're here to talk about that perfect support email. What does that mean to you?

Stacy Justino: 1:02

Uh it can mean a lot of things. I think there's some things that are universal. Um, one thing that I always tell folks in orgs they manage is it doesn't matter how good your steps are if you haven't sucked the person in to actually trust you to follow them, right? Um, so that intro to me is actually pretty important. Um, building some sort of rapport or confidence. Um, so a lot of times like restating the their question or at least giving them some uh confidence that you understand what their problem is, so that when you give them the solution, uh they're more inclined to actually follow those steps for you. Um so that to me is sort of key number one. It might differ a little bit um depending on your customer base, but you still want to get them hooked right away, right? It's the hook.

Charlotte Ward: 1:52

Yeah, it's about building trust, isn't it? I guess it's about saying, I understand what you're here for, what you're trying to achieve and what your challenges are, and I'm I'm gonna help you through it.

Stacy Justino: 2:02

Exactly. And I think also um acknowledging their feelings or their situation, right? So um, you know, I'm much more likely to listen to someone if I I know that, you know, I trust that they understand my situation and they're acknowledging what I'm going through.

Charlotte Ward: 2:22

Yeah, for sure, for sure. It's it's more than just doing that thing that we're quite often told to do when we're in those, like particularly leadership classes for some reason, where we're taught how to do active listening. And active listening, quite often a big component of that in these these kind of classes that are usually delivered by some external workshop leader who comes in and takes aside a few team leads or managers and and just shows them how to echo back. Like I will just basically say, I'm hearing this or I understand that you and almost just mirroring back that reflection is it sort of works, but I'm I'm I feel like I can spot it a mile off. So I think I think in terms of like that understanding and and helping a customer under believe that you understand their problem is more than just that reflection, isn't it?

Stacy Justino: 3:16

Yeah, for sure. I mean, this goes back to a little bit maybe deferring to customer bases and what kinds of questions you're getting. So I think sometimes uh, you know, um if you have high volume and maybe it's more simple questions you're answering, then I think parroting back that sometimes is okay. Um, I think when it's more complicated or nuanced, um that's when I think you need to have a little bit more finesse when you're doing that. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think the other thing uh in terms of the perfect email is um, you know, making sure that you have provided correct information, you know, seems simple, um, and that your answer is complete, right? There's nothing more frustrating than writing somebody and have asking three questions and having them only answered two of those questions. Um, so I think that's really important is the completeness, not just that the information is correct, but that it's complete and thorough.

Charlotte Ward: 4:16

I happen to have seen some really good quality rubrics, and I know that you have a great approach to quality. And I think some of the things that you're telling me here, I can kind of sense an echo of some of the things that you've talked about in the realms of support quality and and and QA and conversation reviews before now. So I think that whole program helps. Um, and and exactly as you say, I think I think that the completeness is really important. What are your feelings about trying to anticipate next needs, though, and next requirements?

Stacy Justino: 4:52

I think it's super important, right? Both from uh satisfying the customer's needs, but also in terms of your organization, right? Uh you want to limit the back and forth. Uh, you want to think about what they might ask you next so that they don't have to write back for that. And hopefully, you know, if you're including links to your help center, you're encouraging them to look there for their answers too. So I think there's a lot of reasons why it's super important. Um, customers want to get their issue resolved in one response, if it can be. And so I think that's one way you can uh try to ensure that that's actually the case.

Charlotte Ward: 5:28

Yeah, yeah. And I think also that anticipation of their next needs is if you can get any sense of that in early on, it's another trust mechanism as well, isn't it? 100%.

Stacy Justino: 5:40

And I think that if you know over time, um you can learn more about those situations and maybe try to stave them off, right? So um I think that's another thing you can be doing in your support emails is next issue avoidance, as they say. Um, you might be able to figure out, okay, people write in for this, they're gonna have this next. How can we go upstream and maybe try to solve that problem too? So not necessarily part of the perfect support email, but I think that sort of plays into making changes and like I said, upstream.

Charlotte Ward: 6:12

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Um, what about um, and again, I I like a sense like I'm pulling threads on a conversation review here somehow as well, but um, which is a different topic for another week, and I must have you back for that. In the meantime, what about um other elements of of written communications with our customers, things like tone, things like how we sign off. I mean, I have pretty strong feelings when it comes to sign-offs, as some of my our our audience will know, but um let's talk about like how how like just the language and the the that that side of things, how do you talk to customers in email?

Stacy Justino: 6:53

Yeah, I think that one thing that people maybe don't touch on as much is um those sign-offs, right? So before in uh support orgs, I've uh run or teams, um, you know, reps might use the same sign-off every single time. But you know, if you've asked the customer for more information and you sign off with the same one all the time, let me know if you have any more questions. Well, that's not actually uh relevant to the situation. You're you should uh have tailored that one to say, hey, looking forward to getting those answers back. Talk to you soon. Um or if the situation is resolved and you say, please write back if you have any more questions, you might be inviting a response that may not have been necessary.

Charlotte Ward: 7:37

That that's a very valid point. It's like recognizing when you believe that the issue is resolved and and and using that as an opportunity to guide that ticket to closure, right? I I know that there are various uh platforms out there that that enforce different language around the word ticket, but we'll go with ticket because I think it's the most common. But conversation, that that kind of case, that that request, whatever it is. I think there's like that however much we kind of try and not be transact transactional about support, we do want to close those tickets, right? So I think being strong in that closure is kind of important.

Stacy Justino: 8:15

I think the same sort of uh mentality occurs in the beginning of a ticket or email when you're writing it. I can totally help you out with that. Well, we can't always totally help someone out with that. So if you start your email with that sort of confidence statement, and then turns out we're telling them no, um, you've really set the customer up for disappointment. So you can, there's different ways you can still instill confidence, um, acknowledge the customer, but don't promise something and then not deliver it. So you could say, I can definitely get you some more information, um, I can look into that for you, but not saying I can resolve this for you when, especially when it's a situation that you cannot resolve.

Charlotte Ward: 9:00

Yeah, yeah. And early on, there's definitely, particularly in in more complex products, and there's definitely situations where you don't know all the answers up front. And even if you are able to provide them all in one question, you just don't know them in that first response. So you certainly have some research or some testing to do or whatever for sure. So don't promise what you're not sure you can deliver for sure.

Stacy Justino: 9:23

I think the only other thing that I think of when I think of the perfect support email is what your customers need or what your audience is looking for. Um, when I was working at Big Fish Games, we started out as helping people uh troubleshoot issues with downloadable games for PC and Mac computers. These were usually older users. So we have really thorough, long responses that explain the problem so that the people would be like, okay, this is why this is happening on my computer and why somebody else might not be having a problem, and giving them these steps like updating video card drivers. Um, then our business shifted to mobile-based, free-to-play. And uh, okay, reading that long email on a phone when you're scrolling is not a good customer experience. And these this new shift in our customers, they just wanted the answer. They didn't want a big explanation. So we kind of did a survey with our research team who surveyed like customers for um, you know, the mobile space. And it turns out they were kind of split down the middle. And we're like, okay, if people are split down the middle, our business is moving towards people looking at these answers on their phones, we should probably optimize for that rather than optimize for like the older the customer base from before that was um becoming less and less of the tick, fewer and fewer of the tickets that were coming in.

Charlotte Ward: 10:43

Yeah, that's a really important point. And sort of demographic and typical user is only one of the factors in how you might structure those replies and particularly around length and particularly around detail and and obviously around tone. I um I think the super important is is as our friend Craig Stoss would say, is like considering the customer context when they're when they're talking to you, and exactly as you describe, are they on their phone or are they in Slack? You know, are they sat at their desktop all day? Desktop, listen to me, how ancient is that? Sat at their laptop at a desk, perhaps all day, like doing something really long form, and actually you need to be that detailed, in which case it does warrant more of a kind of high first name, sign off at the bottom with a full set of instructions in the middle, rather than this very high back and forth, which is almost edging on the social.

Stacy Justino: 11:43

Yeah, I think you you said it spot on. And I think that you know you that will shift. And so that's the thing we had to learn, right? We probably made that shift a little late because we were just doing it the way we'd always done it for the way our customers needed support. And well, that changes. And I think that's something people might need to consider too is what is the perfect email uh for your business today, for your customers today, might not be the same in two years.

Charlotte Ward: 12:07

I I think that's something I hadn't remotely considered, and I'm definitely going to bear that in mind as we move forward because uh it's just such a shifting landscape, both both in terms of our own business, but in terms of that customer context. I think that's a really, really, really important point that as as much as we think we know on the inside, it's always worth having that calibration and making it a regular thing, right? Just kind of that rethink about what your customers look like at this point in time. Exactly. Yeah. Thank you so much, Stacey. That was super insightful. I expected nothing less. Um, I um I am going to constantly think about what my customer is doing at the moment. I email them.

Stacy Justino: 12:51

Awesome. It's a pleasure as always, Charlotte.

Charlotte Ward: 12:57

That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash one nine two for the show notes. And I'll see you next time.