Don't Settle. Dig Beneath The Surface For Customer Insights.

We’re starting a new blog series called Support Spotlight, highlighting lessons from customer support interactions. This was originally posted here.

Welcome to Support Spotlight, where we analyze the bajeebies out of a support interaction from the past week. Because we're uncomfortably obsessed with support quality…

This week, the support interaction showcases what we like to call the "Big Dig": a technique to dig deeper into a seemingly simple customer request in order to gain insight into your customer's experience using your product, and ultimately to improve that experience.

Take a look at the brief conversation below, then we'll dive into the analysis.

Analysis Of The Customer Support Interaction:

The story was essentially as follows:

1. The customer messaged in with a request.
2. The agent responded with a solution.
3. Instead of ending the conversation, the agent asked a follow-up question to learn about the customer's use case.
4. The customer explained what they wanted to accomplish.

In most customer service situations, the story ends after Step 2.

Here, the agent instead rerouted the conversation to dig deeper into the customer's intentions. (You can recognize this technique when you see "If I can ask, …", "By the way, …", or "Curious, …".)

What started as a seemingly inconsequential question about giving each automation a title, quickly became a valuable feedback session. The agent learned that automations (originally intended to increase efficiency) were being utilized by managers to avoid bias when choosing tickets to grade.

These customer insights are gold to your team. There is no better source of feedback than your customers themselves.

A point of improvement for this agent: ask questions more targeted at the customer's intentions, i.e. use "why" questions.

In Summary:

The first level of customer service is answering customer requests, and getting it right on the first call (also known as first call resolution)

Elevate your service to the next level with the "Big Dig". There's a surprising amount of treasure just below the surface.

We feature other companies's customer support interactions in this blog, as well. Contact us at team@maestroqa.com if you're interested in giving your team's service a moment in the Spotlight.

Until next week, may your customers be friendly and may your gif game be straight fire. Adieu!