I spent almost 45 minutes on the phone with my bank today because of an error with their online banking. I didn’t want to, I had to, after their email support told me my issue couldn’t be handled online. It was such a mind-numbing, protracted, time wasting experience that it made me ask myself, “How can anyone ever ask us why we don’t offer phone support?”
In a perfect world, calling a business for help would be quick, painless, productive, and human. But it’s not and it’s not going to be. That old time ideal of calling the local retailer or company and talking with someone after two rings was demolished by the call centers and overseas help desks that sprung up in the information age. It’s time to stop thinking that phone support is so essential. We’re lucky that we have an email support system that works and is incredibly efficient considering the volume of customers we interact with daily. It works because we’re committed to making it work, and if we can do it every company with a mailserver can do it too.
Now, I know people want to pick up a phone and talk to a live human being. We all want assurance that our money is being spent on something maintained by human beings who speak our language and hopefully live in our same country. I get that instinct, because I share it at times. I also totally and completely understand some people’s experience with email tech support is way too techy, unreliable or frustrating and dialing an 800 number is an escape from that. What I don’t get it is why a person would rather sit on the phone for however long it takes – maybe 45 minutes!!! – rather than send an email and go about their life while it’s read and replied to.
Phone calls require you to stop what you’re doing, go to a quiet place, and concentrate. It requires waiting on the line, listening to hold music, being transferred and possibly having the call lost, all so you have to start over again. You can’t share a phone call with your colleagues, you can’t get someone else’s input or feedback.
Emails can be printed out and saved. They can be sent to someone else who can chime in on the thread. They’re a historical document you don’t have to copy down hurriedly while information is spewed out to you. They can be sent quickly, tagged, labeled, archived. You can send an email whenever you want, there’s no business hours to abide by or schedule to confer with.
We get requests every day from people who don’t think email support will cut it and demand a phone number to call us. Their worries are assuaged when they get a reply from me in less than 15 minutes that is informative, helpful and obviously written by a human being. It’s absolutely 100% possible to provide excellent customer care without a phone or phone number, and our company proves that daily.
Chris
on 24 Jul 08I like your attitude – I love parking things and coming back to it. So if I’ve got a problem, kick it off with an email and come back to it when someone replies. I prefer interacting with email when it’s fast
Doesn’t always work in emergency situations though as I have to phone some companies several times to get things right. An email conversation getting something sorted may have taken 2 weeks. I agree that if they put in the effort, this could be made more efficient.
Chris Jones
on 24 Jul 08I do a lot of support myself and agree with you 100%. Though convincing people on the other end to agree with this is difficult, having a company that has this belief behind you (in 37signals case) makes it so much easier.
Adam
on 24 Jul 08I hate the phone. I hate answering it and I hate making calls.
I once called a domain registrar based here in the UK over a billing issue. I called up, pressed the automated responder buttons… “You’re in a queue, we will be with you shortly”.
Almost 1.5 hours shortly later I threw the phone at the wall and smashed it to pieces in rage. I then transferred my domains away to someone else.
If anyone asks “We’d like to do business with you, but do you offer phone support?” I say no. If someone says “I’d like you to call me about this issue”... sorry, we don’t do it.
You can’t keep logs easily, you can’t search them, you can’t print phone calls. You can prove a call ever took place and the entire experience of making a call is crap.
HB
on 24 Jul 08Sarah – I hear you on how frustrating it can be to get product support on the phone – but I think the same can potentially apply for e-mail support as well. I believe it comes down to the quality of the person on the other end.
I work at a mid-sized web-based financial data company and one of the things our customers like most about us is our phone support. The support team is made up almost entirely of business / finance graduates usually 1-2 years out of school, so they are well educated and usually have a good understanding of the customer’s issues. They take personal ownership for customer problems and frequently will take on small projects for the customer if it will make their lives easier. They are friendly and good communicators. The service is available 24 hrs a day. You could call them mini-assistants to our customers, and they rave about it.
Similarly, the reason your customers are satisfied is because you guys have intelligent people on the other end who respond quickly as well (I know because I’ve e-mailed in once or twice). But if you didn’t respond quickly and thoroughly, or you sent me some BS auto-responder and didn’t e-mail me for three days, I would be equally frustrated with e-mail support.
Whenever I call my bank, I go through the same thing you describe in your post, and wish their customer service emulated my employer’s. If only businesses worked to create stronger, more human relationships with their customers, they would be a lot better off.
Jessica
on 24 Jul 08I agree that a lot of the things that are often handled by phone support could be better supported through email…But I’ve also found that in practice when I send a support-request by email (or web-form) that I get back a form reply that does not address my problem, based on some sort of keyword matching. “Does this answer your question” no, and I already had to wait a full day to get this reply. Retyping the message on the new form if you’re lucky gets you a reply from a real human, but often it just ends up being so slow and dragged out and not getting the answer I need that I pull out my phone and call the support phone number—because at least a real person will (if I can navigate their automated call system) talk to me and try to answer my question. I suspect the people who would rather call you have had quite a few experiences like that, rather than the support by email experiences like your company and my web-hosting company provide (who similarly personally respond to inquiries in a timely fashion with a response that indicates they’ve actually read my email). If anything, my only encouragement would be to make it really clear that their support request will be read and responded to by a real human being not an auto-mailer.
SH
on 24 Jul 08“But if you didn’t respond quickly and thoroughly, or you sent me some BS auto-responder and didn’t e-mail me for three days, I would be equally frustrated with e-mail support.”
That is exactly why companies should be focusing on training their employees on email support: how to write well, how to communicate during troubleshooting, how to respond quickly and efficiently and how to prioritize. When you commit to doing something well, it will be done well indeed. We didn’t always have the greatest email support and we don’t think it’s perfect now, but it works because we’ve spent the past year refining it.
We learned what wasn’t working. We created processes and a system. We built forms for all our products so customers can send detailed emails to us and we could cut out all the back and forth.
When you throw people into customer care, it can’t be because you have a seat to fill and you’re willing to train anyone who needs a job. It has to be because they are the right person with the right skill and the right motivation. If you have that and you train a person well and you actually invest in customer loyalty, people won’t be smashing their phone – or computer – against the wall because of you.
Raymond Brigleb
on 24 Jul 08Oh heavens yes to that.
SH
on 24 Jul 08@Jessica, your experience is all too common. But that’s not because email support isn’t efficient, it’s because the company whose support you experienced wasn’t up to par.
Yes, many companies are doing it wrong. Very wrong. We all know this. It’s time for those companies to start doing things right.
john
on 24 Jul 08i’m with you, but for many people this (from your post) is the reason:
“Phone calls require you to stop what you’re doing, go to a quiet place, and concentrate.”
They’d like to think that you would do the same thing! I realize that would be impossible for 37s to do and maintain a single support person.
Hisham Abboud
on 24 Jul 08These are all excellent arguments—from your perspective. They become less excellent from the customer’s perspective.
But mainly, a lot depends on the software application. Limiting support to email is easier done with web based apps like 37signals’ for two reasons: one your customers are likely to be more “with it” (weak argument, I know), and two, you can get a pretty good idea of what’s going on with the customer by looking at the database.
Not so for other apps. In our case, WE are the ones who sometimes actually ask the customer to call so that we can use screen sharing tools to diagnose the problem that he or she is having. Without phone support and screen sharing, it would be an endless trail of email before the issue is figured out.
Dave R
on 24 Jul 08Fatcow have gone the ‘Live chat’ route. You can still get unlucky with the person at the other end but at least it’s all loggable and you can ask for a supervisor.
Stu Schaff
on 24 Jul 08I go back and forth on this one. In most cases, telephone support offers the instant gratification (I say “instant” ironically) of a human’s voice whereas sending an email is like putting a note in a suggestion box—you have no idea when or if it will be answered. When I am dealing with a big company, I will always pick up the phone because I want an answer now and a name to go along with it.
It is sad to say that you guys are taking a somewhat novel approach by just being on top of your email support. In doing so, you are taking away the basis for any concern that the question or issue will not be addressed. The added benefit to both parties of being able to easily work with emails just adds to your ability to provide good customer support.
I truly hope that great virtual support becomes a trend in business. But it will only happen if people can find ways to add the human touch.
fozbaca
on 24 Jul 08What systems and process are you using to make email support so effecient?
Benjy
on 24 Jul 08I much prefer dealing with support/complaint issues via email. communication can be re-read for clarity, etc. before sending and it can be done whenever it’s convenient for me.
What infuriates me is when companies have was to contact them via email but then respond back with a phone number to call and discuss—within normal business hours, of course.
If I wanted to call, I’d have done that in the first place! But emailed because that’s my preferred means of communication so follow up via email. I recently had this same thing happen with the Gap and with VW.
JF
on 24 Jul 08What systems and process are you using to make email support so effecient?
For one, we make our products as simple and clear as we can. That cuts way back on support requirements.
The best advice I can give anyone looking to improve their customer support: Do less of it by creating less of it. Every email we get is a failure on our part to be clear enough, easy enough, and obvious enough.
So we’re constantly trying to polish the edges and make everything in the products run as smoothly as possible. This cuts down on support requirements which means we can do a better job on the emails we do receive.
Sarah may have other feedback on how she answers/organizes emails, but from the product side, simplicity and clarity are the best tools we know to keep support in check.
Kivi Shapiro
on 24 Jul 08Stu referred to the human touch. Don’t underestimate the comfort factor of speaking with a human being, of knowing for certain that there’s a person out there who is working with you on a problem. It’s not necessarily logical, but there’s a lot to effective customer interaction that lies outside the bounds of logic.
Joe
on 24 Jul 08Well besides obvious reasons why I’d want to call you, Sarah (:-P), I would have to agree that email communication with 37signals has been phenomenal.
I have also had email support experiences that took at least a day to get a response from, and then because I didn’t write something clearly enough or my message wasn’t understood well, I’ve had to send back multiple replies trying to explain something I could have done much better and quicker over the phone.
Kyle Anderson
on 24 Jul 08Wonderful article! Bookmarked and sent to a few colleagues.
As a hosting company, we deal with this all the time. We used to offer technical support via phone when we were smaller, but it’s simply inefficient.
We always get pre-sales tickets asking us if we do telephone support, and how it’s vital that we have this. I just don’t understand it.
The part about getting a reply in 15 minutes or less is spot on too. For the time you’d wait calling a company (15-30 minutes if you’re lucky), you would have already gotten a response and/or had multiple eyes looking at an issue rather than just one person who now has to talk to you and troubleshoot.
Your other points about the advantages of email-based support, specifically about having a “paper trail” of the conversation, is just another reason why today, telephone-based support just isn’t worth it.
That’s not to say the telephone isn’t important. For example, some sales calls are simply better done via phone than through a back-and-forth email conversation.
Thanks for the article.
Morgan
on 24 Jul 08Greetings,
Immediacy.
Your comment about ’...send an email and go about their life while it’s read and replied to.’ is specifically the problem. People don’t want to ‘go about their life’, they want their problem solved while they’re dealing with it.
I’m suggesting that the reason people want to use a phone is that it is immediate. They are having the problem NOW, and they want an answer NOW. IM, LiveChat, etc., would probably work equally well, but everybody can pick up a phone.
Sure, people shouldn’t want or expect ‘immediate’ responses, but everybody does. Sure, the response isn’t actually immediate (as your 45 minute call shows), but historically picking up a phone and calling someone has felt more pro-active than sending an email to what may seem like a black hole.
I have no argument with railing against the companies having crappy email support, but it’s not really right to rail against consumers who want to feel like they’re taking an active role in getting their problem solved.
Email just isn’t as active or immediate a medium.
— Morgan
p.s. I write a mildly popular, free, open source app, so I do all my support for it over email/lighthouse/forums, but I still get people who offer to pay me to get me on the phone and walk through their issues. So far I’ve managed to refuse, but it shows how much people want that immediate feedback, and want to avoid the multiple round trips that often come from email conversations.
Jon
on 24 Jul 08Their worries are assuaged when they get a reply from me in less than 15 minutes that is informative, helpful and obviously written by a human being.
(Sigh) If only all e-mail support were so responsive. I waited four business days (six including the weekend) to have Codespaces answer my e-mail regarding a problem. We PAY for their hosting services. Even if the problem wasn’t their fault, should I wait four DAYS?
SH
on 24 Jul 08As far as our processes and organization, we use very simple labeling and tagging. Our forms help us triage emails that come in by allowing the customer to choose the type of problem they’re having and severity of their issue. Organization makes or breaks this kind of work. You either have 150 emails sitting in your inbox with no discernable priority, or you have them broken up into groups of 10 and manage your time wisely.
The main thing that makes it easy for me to reply quickly to people is that I know our products. I know what they do and don’t do and how to spot an error or issue. I had used Basecamp twice before I started working for 37s, so my knowledge is a result of being trained thoroughly and being willing to learn as much as I can about our products.
We also have assigned programmers on call each day to specifically handle support issues as they come in. They deal with maybe 5-8 issues each day, items that require a “fix”, and that helps tremendously.
SH
on 24 Jul 08Jon – you shouldn’t wait 4 days, or even 1 day. You should be sending that complaint to the owner of Codespaces. And you should be telling as many people as you can about their poor response time. Anything to put the pressure on so they know it’s time to step up.
Grant
on 24 Jul 08Interestingly, Netflix awhile back dumped its e-mail support in favor of an online wiki that for most questions asks the user to call in. They even tell you how long the average wait time is on the website, right below the phone number.
I read somewhere that they consider it a feature over competitors and apparently most people like it. I can’t stand it. As well trained and friendly as their customer service people are it irks me that I have to drop what I’m doing and make a phone call to solve a problem that could probably be taken care of over one or two e-mails.
Tim
on 24 Jul 08Since I might go into a tech support position where most everything has to be put in place, this was interesting.
I’m curious to know if you use any other tools than your email client to keep track of everything. Do you also use Highrise? or something internal?
Your post talks about the results: quick reply through email rather than phone. I’d like to know more about the technical internals. (the support itself, the FAQ…)
Can I give you a call to discuss it? ;-)
JD
on 24 Jul 08I want to call and talk to JF
Mani
on 24 Jul 08“What I don’t get it is why a person would rather sit on the phone for however long it takes – maybe 45 minutes!!! – rather than send an email and go about their life while it’s read and replied to.”
The reason you can’t understand it, is because it is not the case. Nobody wants to sit on the phone for 45 minutes. They want to make a call and have someone answer and help them right now. That is why they are calling. Your customers who are requesting that you implement a phone support system are not asking for an inefficient off-shore call center.
Bill Carroll
on 24 Jul 08You are right about e-mail vs. phone support.
However, Banks are not looking for efficiency, they are looking for ways to charge you fees. You were probably charged a fee to talk with a person. They will do anything in order to increase your fees. Banks will even process your debits in order of size so they can maximize overdraft fees :) Big debits first, every day. Check your statement and you’ll see this is true for each day’s transactions from your debit card.
So, you have to ask yourself, when a company is doing something pointedly stupid, are they doing it to rip you off or because they are just stupid?
Cheers :)
Marc Tiedemann
on 24 Jul 08Didn’t read all the comments and reactions, but from a spontaneous reaction I’d say that people living in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones….
Things like “they get a reply from me in less than 15 minutes” makes me sorta angry, cause I’ve already had three emails that were never ever answered.
So to me – nevertheless how much I like your products – your company hasn’t proved to that email support is great thing.
In the meantime I put my phone on loudspeaker and go about my daily business whenever I call a tech line…
Ben
on 24 Jul 08Depending on the urgency, I’m more than willing to wait 45 minutes on the phone, instead of 3+ hours for an e-mail response (that might not be resolved after several more back-and-forths).
SH
on 24 Jul 08Mark, if you haven’t received a reply, it’s because we’ve never received an email from you. I personally answer 99% of emails that we receive daily, and the 1% don’t respond to are automated replies or spam. I spend 12 hours each day making sure every email is replied to.
You can feel free to fill out a support form or email me directly ([email protected]), but I guarantee you there are no emails from your name on file in our email database. Leaving your email address would have made it very easy for us to contact you and trace your emails, but since you haven’t we can’t do that.
Kevin
on 24 Jul 08Often email support turns into a company totally ignoring your email, even after promising you they will respond by such and such time. California government websites are a notorious example. When you call someone on the phone, you know they will not ignore you forever.
Will
on 24 Jul 08The same could be said of companies that commit to doing phone support well. Just because most companies treat it like a red-headed stepchild doesn’t mean it’s not something that CAN be useful.
Some of my favorite companies to deal with are the ones with great phone support because even though I don’t use it or need it all the time, when I do it’s nice to realize they put just as much effort and care into their phone support as they do into their email support or their products.
Tim
on 24 Jul 08Will’s comment reminded of Apple: their phone tech support is absolutely great! (at least in my experience)
I usually didn’t have to wait at all to talk to someone which in itself is remarkable; when you’re on hold (which doesn’t happen that much) you have nice music (rather than nothing or “on-hold” music); the people over there are pretty knowledgeable and patient…
It made me feel that they really were working on my case (and not a few at the same time) and really willing to fix the issue.
So, it seems that the same way you made email support work, Apple made phone support work. It surely depends on what kind of business you do and your size and means.
JohnHS
on 24 Jul 08I know there is a need for support sometimes, because things do break down.
Why do things breakdown?
If the website doesn’t have the information that is required to support the ‘problem’ then put the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff – use LiveChat, or phone us – how expensive can that be?
JF
on 24 Jul 08Another great phone support company is American Express. Every time I call I get to someone quickly. They are intelligent, clear speakers who are friendly and helpful without being fake friendly.
pwb
on 25 Jul 08I hate, hate, hate having to call companies for simple things. Are you guys able to reveal what your inbound email volume is?
Dan Conner
on 25 Jul 08it is interesting to me how many companies have phone only support, like Apple, Qwest, or Netflix as mentioned above. I’ve assumed that when a company makes a choice to provide only one type of support, they believe that type is more efficient. or that the other options are too inefficient for them (whether or not the decision is based on faulty approach, assumptions, etc)
Shawn Oster
on 25 Jul 08Like others have mentioned, yet I think it’s important to re-state, is that it’s all about quality. Good quality in e-mail or phone support is amazing. Just the other day I had an amazing support rep from Comcast work with me on switching lines, getting accounts transfered and answering all sorts of odd little questions. Of course the entire reason I was on the phone was because there was no neat little box for my issue online and therefor I was unable to submit a request.
Another thing to remember though is that there are still quite a few people that only have dial-up or that have heavy techphobia. I think of my grandma or mom and to them being told a company only had e-mail support would be an instant negative point. Granted they wouldn’t be using basecamp but they do expect phone support for things like banking.
At the end of the day I always prefer e-mail support, internet banking, internet pizza ordering (thank you Pizza Hut) but sadly a lot of places use “online support” as an excuse to give poor service.
Matt
on 25 Jul 08Sorry, but this sounds like more “We’re doing it right and everyone else is doing it wrong” crap that you all dish out from time to time, heh. 37Signals is far from being an expert on Customer Service.
http://mattwalters.net/2006/04/13/good-customer-service-where-did-it-go/
It doesn’t matter why the customer wants to be able to pick up the phone and call. If you all don’t have the staff or can’t support phone support, that’s fine, but don’t try to make it into something else. Sounds like you all could use some “Getting Real” of your own.
Matt
on 25 Jul 08good lord man, A back and forth conversation takes WAY longer than the same conversation over email. When I’m on the phone w/ someone, if they’re not explaining themselves clearly, or if they’re not answering the question I’m trying to get across, I can clear it up very quickly, rather than a long drawn out email thread waiting for the ppl on the other end to finally respond. Do you think I would email sears if my new refrigerator wasn’t working. Would there be any expectation that I would get anything other than a form letter in return. Your response would be that yes that means they needs more email training and need to improve their email communication process. But good lord, how long would it take for them to walk me through troubleshooting a problem w/ my refrigerator over email, with me emailing back with the result of each step as I go. No. Companies that are serious about their customers need to get serious about personal communication with them, and that means ballsing up and picking up the phone when a customer wants to talk to you. Just because you’re behind a computer instead of over the counter of a brick and mortor store doesn’t mean you have any less responsibility to provide that same level of customer interaction.
Matt
on 25 Jul 08Note: The two matts above are two different people
Dan
on 25 Jul 08This all depends on business model/target audience; a high end, service oriented shop (software based or “real” world) would never survive on “email only” support (no matter how perfect the email system).
I believe this model you describe is great for mass-distributed services, low-mid end products, or a tech savvy target audience that share your mindset.
Great read!
phonie
on 25 Jul 08You say an e-mail message can be dashed off in fifteen minutes, but a phone call can be answered in ten seconds, and the problem dealt with in a couple of minutes.
You can’t imagine why someone would want to call you? If I didn’t know 37signals better, the phrase “out of touch” would be wandering through my head.
JD
on 25 Jul 08...perhaps because the person on the other end actually enjoys their work, has a problem with money on the line, & needs information immediately?
...perhaps you only care about “your” convenience & not your customers’?
I could say “If I didn’t know 37signals better…” but I’ve found your customer support staff to be rude & unbearably useless. Blog…great stuff. Read it every day. Product…who knows, never got to use it because your CS staff ran me off. This post perfectly explains why.
Skylar
on 25 Jul 08I agree that “most” phone support is horrible. But some companies can do phone support right. Rackspace has figured it out and it really makes theim shine. I know if I ever have a problem I can get a live person on the first ring, without having to hold. They are extremely knowledgeable, solving my problem in minutes. You can ask any follow up questions right there on the spot, as opposed to e-mail where going back and forth can take several messages over many hours, even days. I’ll take my 5 minute phone call over that any day.
I think more companies should take this example and learn how to do phone service better (ditch the automated voice systems) instead of just accepting that they “have” to be as terrible as everybody else’s system.
SH
on 25 Jul 08“Sorry, but this sounds like more “We’re doing it right and everyone else is doing it wrong” crap that you all dish out from time to time, heh.”
Not at all, Matt. We’re doing a great job because we’ve found a method that works for us, and it could work just as great for other companies, big and small. It’s easy to throw the “we’re right you’re wrong” blanket over a subject, but that’s certainly not the point or tone of this post. Even easier may be throwing that blanket over someone else’s words, since that means you don’t really have to think about them.
There are lots of people offering amazing support on the phone. Apple is wonderful at it, Amex is incredible, Irv and Shelly’s Fresh Picks is fantastic, Amazon ranks stellar.
The point here isn’t about who’s right and who’s wrong, it’s about doing something well versus doing something shitty. If you’re doing shitty phone support, consider doing something that suits your company better. The experience I drew on to write this post was a horrible, horrible example of phone support, and it’s ok to use it to support the argument that email support is often more efficient and productive.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with encouraging or even pressuring companies to improve against a tired, dying model. If that sounds like crap to you then you must have something against innovation altogether.
Chris
on 25 Jul 08Just because most companies do it wrong doesn’t mean it HAS to be horrible. This sounds like a cop out to me, Sarah. I HATE email support. Too often I seem to get a canned response that has nothing to do with what I asked. That isn’t the answer either.
Don’t condemn the entire thing just because most companies have chosen to do it poorly.
Damon
on 25 Jul 08It’s not the phones, it’s the people on the other end. It’s just as easy to find crappy examples of email support as it is to find crappy examples of phone support.
I once spent at least 10 emails with Amazon on a colossal charlie-foxtrot. I finally gave up and called. Solved the problem in 3 minutes.
Lots of people love the phone and hate email. Their money is as green as that of the emailers. Don’t be too quick to ignore it in the name of innovation.
Peterman
on 25 Jul 08Sarah, I thought you were hiring another person to help with tech support. Do you still do all of the work?
Josh Lipton
on 25 Jul 08Phone, email or otherwise…. you won’t need COMPLEX support with products as simple (not that there’s anything wrong with that) as the ones offered by 37signals. Much easier to drive support exclusively through email/web when its pretty easy to map out solutions to issues in advance.
We provide outsourced management for businesses wireless devices (cell phones etc.) and the spread is pretty even between phone and web based support. Email runs a distant third.
If your cell phone doesn’t work and it needs to be up NOW, you want a person answering on the first or second ring. No voice trees, no voicemail, just professionals who know what they’re talking about. That’s why our clients pay a premium for our service, they never wait on hold and we take care of things RIGHT the FIRST time.
Cody
on 25 Jul 08For urgent stuff, I still prefer the phone. If for no other reason, email support is generally so bad. If I knew I’d get a response even within an hour, I’d be happy with that.
I actually like the call-back feature some companies do. You call, leave your number and someone calls back. It’s way better than sitting in a queue and you can do other stuff while you wait to be served.
Tamera
on 25 Jul 08Sarah – judging from your reply to Mark above (saying you DID NOT receive his emails – basically calling him a liar) it is good to see you do not answer phones there. I would hate to see how good your customer service skills would be in person.
It is not the delivery method of communication that makes customer service good or bad – it is the deliverer of the customer service that makes it good or bad.
Richard Allum
on 25 Jul 08Interesting article and one that is very familiar having spent lots of time on the phone to our bank as they don’t have any online support! I think that I use support quite a lot and am guilty every now and then of firing off an email before really thinking through the issue. Overall I think Sarah does a good job and prefer the email/online route. I can understand some of the less positive comments above especially regarding emails NOT being received. Sara saying that an email was not receievd is not calling anyone a liar bit simply stating a matter of fact. I always expect emails I send to arrive and I would expect most people feel the same way however, strange things can happen during the process. The online submission forms are great as they standardise the process and a copy of the email is sent to me so that I KNOW it has been sent to 37S.
The most ‘frustrating’ thing about email support is not knowing what is happening when ‘something needs looking in to’. EG – I raised an issue 3 days ago and receievd an email back within 12 minutes acknowledging my issue and saying that it will be checked out. I am sure that it is taken time to deal with it and this is not a gripe about that but the inner cynic in me is starting to say; is it being looked at? shall I chase? etc etc. It would be great to have some kind of tracking system to get over that although I can imagine for the vast majority of support issues that is overkill.
Frank
on 25 Jul 08Sarah, you are not actual planing to launch a hosted email support ticketsystem? Because we could use one. The one that we are using is a pain in the ass and all the other one’s are just blowin up and complicated. Made from people who are not aware of design and the fact that there are small sized companies who just wanna have an easy way to keep track of their customsers problems.
Maybe you can give me a hint what system you are using.
phil.
on 25 Jul 08E-Mails are good if the issue is really being resolved with one mail. But too often it takes several messages to get all the information I want and this can take days and even (when the support centers respond slow or I can only respond in the evening) even weeks. And each message is an interruption. I have to read it, think about it and write back.
I think mail support is good for quick questions or easy to resolve problems, but when it comes to more tricky questions where a conversation/discussion is needed, the phone (or any other synchronous form of communication like IM) is better.
Grant
on 25 Jul 08I tried to deal with 37signals about a billing issue by email. Of three emails, the first and third were ignored and the response to the second spent more time on discussing whether you were responsive to email than dealing with the actual problem.
But even without that history, I’d disagree with this post.
If you are dealing with literate people about an issue that’s not hugely critical, email is fine. If you are not – or you are in the UK where the assumption is that the first N calls to any supplier will have no useful return at all – then reducing customer service to email only is like putting up a big sign that says “here, have a heart attack”.
It may be contractually sensible to communicate with suppliers in writing at all times. But sometimes you need to make the emotional connection with the person at the other end who can actually do something about the problem. And you won’t do that in email…
James
on 25 Jul 08Because some people would rather speak to a real person. Quite a lot of people in fact. That people are prepared to wait 45 mins (which I agree is an awful waiting time), is a testament to how important human conversation is to people when they’re trying to solve a problem. Email is great, but it lacks the interactivity of spoken contact.
The best tech support I’ve ever had is from a company who you could phone, and who then emailed you (immediately) to confirm what you’d spoken about. Best of both worlds; direct contact, written record.
Gosh, now that just sounds awful ;)
Devan
on 25 Jul 08Reading through your original post and follow ups Sarah, it sounds like you are the sole email tech support person at 37S, and that you average around 12 hours per day on support.
This does sound arduous, and being in a support business ourselves, I know how mentally exhausting tech support can be, and how it is easy to burn yourself out if you are not careful.
It sounds like you are close to 90-100% capacity, so I was curious to know how you will scale from this point on if your user base continues to grow significantly.
We all know that each person you add to a team increases the (internal) communication channels exponentially. How will you manage to two or more shared support Inboxes? How will you tag which support rep has responded to which questions?
I am not being antagonistic here – just plain curious (as we are in a similar boat with the same problems to solve).
For the record, I put in a support email recently and was pleasantly surprised with the speedy and friendly response from you. :)
James
on 25 Jul 08@tamera:
Calm down. Calling him a liar would mean claiming he never sent the emails in the first place. She didn’t say that; she just said they weren’t received. There are plenty of good reasons that might happen.
Higgis
on 25 Jul 08In the UK there is a wonderful phone- and online-only bank called First Direct (now owned by HSBC). You phone them and they answer on the second ring 90% of the time. They are pleasant, helpful and know what they’re doing. They are based in the UK. They are available 365 days a year, 24/7, and it’s just the cost of a local phone call. I recommend them to my friends all the time.
An example: I needed to fill out a tax return and had to find out how much tax on interest I had paid for the previous tax year. They gave me answer in about 1 minute – something that would have taken me ages of tallying up from paper statements otherwise.
It’s not the medium you use for support that counts, but the quality of it. If your email support is half as good as First Direct’s phone support you’ll be doing very well indeed.
eric shannon
on 25 Jul 08I see that I am not the only customer who cannot receive your e-mails so your system is not quite perfect.
fortunately, your products are so good that there is little need for support. I figured out the answers to my questions on my own and am delighted with base camp without support.
it’s true that there is no need for telephone support. However, if you want to take care of all of your customers, you would add a web-based backup system for your e-mails. Just the way e-mails can be added to base camp message threads, you could allow customers to access support responses on a webpage and avoid having a few irate customers in a love-hate relationship with you, lol.
—Eric
This text was transcribed using Dragon NaturallySpeaking software so please forgive any typos you might find…
Nic
on 25 Jul 08FogBugz
CJ Curtis
on 25 Jul 08I do prefer email support when it comes to most things, but sometimes it just doesn’t work well.
On the other hand, no matter what the problem, phone support doesn’t work well if the person on the other end can’t understand you or you can’t understand them. Or in many of my experiences, they are a complete idiot.
In “emergency” situations, here is my favorite approach to phone support…
Make the call and see who answers. At the FIRST sign of trouble (language, incompetence, whatever)...hang up and immediately call back. Pretty soon you’ll get someone that can actually help you. This works for Dell, Adobe…even Microsoft.
André
on 25 Jul 08Keith
on 25 Jul 08All phone support is not created equal.
We deal with a company in Arlington VA that never has a menu system and it’s never more than about 5 rings before you get a live person who can help you. On top of being able to help, if you have a question, they direct the call to the expert…not some level 2 clown who has to get authorization to escalate the issue further.
Furthermore, I’d suggest that e-mail support works at 37signals but that isn’t my experience with e-mail support in general.
37s does a great job with e-mail support. I am always astounded at the quick and thoughtful responses even if they are canned (which is fine as they answer my question). My typical e-mail experience though is I send an e-mail and 2 days later someone calls me rather than e-mailing me. Or I get an incomplete answer written by some barely literate support technician.
SH
on 25 Jul 08FYI – Marc’s email troubles have been solved. His were going to the wrong address.
If anyone else hasn’t received a reply, feel free to contact me directly as well: [email protected]. We’ve always promised to reply to everyone in less than 24 hours, and we’re committed to making that happen.
Douglas
on 25 Jul 08Thanks for the post, and I quite agree.
Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with phone support, mind. If you weren’t supporting web applications, it might be inappropriate to only offer support by email. But the phone and email support structures of so many companies are completely broken and seem to be run as cynical damage-limitation exercises, rather than an opportunity to press home an advantage (and I don’t mean an opportunity to cross-sell!).
An auto-responded email is just as bad as a phone call that takes 45 minutes and goes some way to sorting out a situation but not really. However, in my experience it can take just as long – i.e. never – to sort a matter out by email as by phone if the support offered is sufficiently bad, and the support agents are badly trained and not given the responsibility or ability to do anything to rectify a situation beyond those means the company has prescribed. When we depend on such companies for basic services such as the means to heat our houses, it becomes almost a political imperative to try and force companies to understand this, and completely revise their support structures accordingly.
Corinne
on 25 Jul 08No phone support? It works for 37 signals because they are primarily a text-based industry. Your customers seem to be literate and in the main, articulate about what they need.
However here in the UK, as in most of the developed world let alone the rest, as many as 56% of adults are not comfortable with reading and writing. Fair enough, they would not be (as a rule) 37signals customers, but banks and other institutions will and must cater for support mediums other than text to provide anything like the service levels they need.
Steve
on 25 Jul 08There is an innate human desire to want the ability to speak to someone with regards particularly to mission critical services. It sometimes feels like emails can be ignored where as telephone calls are more direct lifeline. Emails can bounce back and forth and if support don’t want to be particularly helpful (it happens) it can waste a lot of time and a phone call can be more efficient.
With telephone calls you feel like support are there and will try and answer your questions explicitly as they want you off the line. With email its too easy to give poor answers and hope the respondent doesn’t keep bouncing back for more. A recent personal experience with 37s showed exactly this.
Tom G
on 25 Jul 08We operate a pharmacy point of sale business and we offer phone support. I believe there are special cases where phone support is essential.
If a retailer can’t do business due to some kind of computer error, they need competent support on a moment’s notice.
If I have a problem with projectpath, I can wait for a resolution – the lack of instant support won’t cost me a lot of money. If I can’t process a customer’s payment, that will cost a lot.
Bret
on 25 Jul 08Sarah, it seems as you’re talking about a personal preference and advocating that it’s the way it should be because that’s what I like.
Not all customers are able to articulate their technical problems in an e-mail—especially in a single e-mail. If they whiff on the first one, they have to wait for a response, reply and then wait for the (hopefully) answer.
Your system is probably perfect for 37signals and its users, considering the size and scope of the applications and the user base. But that doesn’t mean it is right for a multinational corporation.
Sure, companies, as you suggest, should focus on training their e-mail support representatives on communication, prioritization and effective communication, but doing so does not eliminate the desire or need for telephone support.
Alex
on 25 Jul 08How do you guys filter all the e-mails between the different staff? Do you use some kind of helpdesk or a plain old e-mail client?
Frank
on 25 Jul 08I am part of a small web startup (classicwines.com), and so your support success is a great model. To that end, I think it would be really helpful if you stopped dancing around the issue and just told us the damned name of the ticketing program that’s at the core of your support structure.
Ionut Popa
on 25 Jul 08Hello, On the phone you get instant feedback and the feeling that you communicate to a real human beeing, on the phone you can also explain better your needs/problems. Even dough what i said is very true i don’t think offering phone support would pay off.
Nach
on 25 Jul 08It depends a lot on the culture of the company and the urgency to solve a customer’s problem. Obviously, all customers cannot be attended immediately. Our company follows a simple but effective process:
1] Provide quality software with how to use the software integrated into the software
2] When customer has a problem, immediately reply back stating that someone is looking into their problem
3] Prioritize issue as training issue or real issue with the system
4] If system issue, resolve it immediately else send a link of our online training guide to the customer
Most of the time, these above 4 steps resolve issue with our customers. Again, there will be customers who will be exception(a**) and we usually don’t continue our relationship with such customers.
Scott
on 25 Jul 08“Phone calls require you to stop what you’re doing, go to a quiet place, and concentrate.” ... And that’s such a bad thing…why?
For our multitasking, one-second-attention-span, I can spare 20%-of-my-attention-to-you-while-we-talk generation, giving someone individual attention in a quiet place has become a lost art. Yet many customers (maybe not yours, but I’m sure the phone companies), like to do business that way.
Kimba
on 25 Jul 08Sarah, take a deep breath and remember the big picture. Be grateful you have money in a bank, and a cool job with a great company.
SH
on 25 Jul 08To that end, I think it would be really helpful if you stopped dancing around the issue and just told us the damned name of the ticketing program that’s at the core of your support structure.
It’s called Gmail.
SH
on 25 Jul 08Sarah, it seems as you’re talking about a personal preference and advocating that it’s the way it should be because that’s what I like.
Nope. Not at all. Personal preference is what drives experience, and experiences drive innovation. This has nothing to do with “What I like is the only right way” and never once is that asserted in this post. In fact, I say quite clearly that I empathize with people who prefer phone support because I do at times as well.
It’s way too easy to claim 37signals thinks their way is the only way. People have been commenting that here and there for years. The argument simply doesn’t hold weight when you consider how much rely on different choices, experiences, options and preferences to mold how we do things. Our decisions and our successes are based prominently on experience, which is exactly the kind of deductive reasoning any company should pursue when developing a process or product.
What we do works, and because it works well for us, it could work for hundreds of other people. Maybe it’s not “right” or entirely perfect, but it works well for us.
David
on 25 Jul 08I only wish life was as simple as the little universe 37 lives in, where there are no subtlties or shades of gray, and evidently all businesses and customers are the same.
Yes, I hate voice mail too, and love email. But that will not blind me to the fact that there are many, many times when phone support is better than email support, just as services such as gotoassist can go a step beyond phone support. One of my techs solved an issue over the phone the other day along with gotoassist that would have taken days without, and would have ended up with an angry and probably lost customer. Silly us.
None of this is meant to suggest there is ANYTHING wrong with 37 signals model, for the service they offer it may be the right choice.
Some of these articles remind me of when I was 16 and thought I knew everything and knew nothing.
Hal
on 25 Jul 08Sarah – nice to see the follow through!
I think that there are pobably some specific techniques that you use to communicate efficiently through email. I am sure that there are some articles that could be and probably have been written about better email communication.
One that I have seen is to provide options after the answer so if the answer wasn’t what the customer wanted they will have more information about what they can do next.
Which I see you do as wellWhat do you use to help manage your information(knowledgebase) to provide consistent responses or is each response hand crafted with care?
Chris Carter
on 25 Jul 08So I just wrote “two” instead of “to”. Don’t I feel special :) Never would’ve had that problem if I were replying to this blog via a phone call!
:p I keed, I keed
Chris Carter
on 25 Jul 08So apparently replying to the blog post right after writing a previous reply overwrites your reply? That’s not very intuitive.
Chris Carter
on 25 Jul 08Long story short, my post that was overwritten by the above reply (with all of it’s “two/to” mixup glory) basically stated that we had a problematic experience with 37signals email support thanks to an overzealous spam filter on our end. A phone call would have been more reliable. Not 37signals fault, but is a problem nonetheless because email is the only option.
You don’t have to offer phone support to have a good support system – I’ve used plenty of online support systems that only use email as a notification method, and have a central site where I can lodge issues and get them answered without the danger of a spam filter interrupting communications.
Finally, where I’ve seen phone support to be really helpful was Amazon.com. You fill out your issue and information, and they call you, with all of that information in hand. I’ve used it several times and none of the calls with them have lasted longer than 3 or 4 minutes. It was great.
Dave P
on 25 Jul 08Ouch.
One thing that is clearly missing from 37Signals, unfortunately (said b/c I love most of what you do) is any basic understanding of how humans communicate with each other.
The more you force humans to communicate without their using their body language or tone as part of the message, the less of the message is communicated successfully. This is well documented, and hundreds of studies have been done to educate people into the failings of email communication. Such as this one, which was the first thing google gave me.
I read somewhere that when we communicate face to face, we are able to transfer 70-90% of our intended message effectively. That number drops to 50% on the phone, and is less than 25% in written form. Why would I want to call you? Because I’d rather shoot for a 50% chance of you understanding my position than a 25% chance. That’s why.
You can say what you want about response times and your ability to conduct email support, but the fact remains that if there is a number one complaint from your customers, it seems to me to be that is lies in communication. I can’t help but wonder how many of those misunderstandings could be prevented with a simple conversation.
I can’t help but think that if the company in question had answered the phone within a couple of minutes or god forbid, right away, this article wouldn’t have been written.
That tells me that there is something wrong with this thesis.
Keith
on 25 Jul 08Why are so many of the posts on this topic so mean spirited and anti-37signals.
If there is a problem with a company weblog talking about their views and practices then I’ve never heard of it. 37signals hosts this blog and their employees contribute to it. What do you expect them to write about?
The draw of SVN, in my opinion, is seeing the topics that are covered THROUGH 37signals’ eyes. I can see things from my point of view just fine…getting input elsewhere whether I agree or disagree is valuable.
So you need to make that value judgement. Is there value in you continuing t read SVN or is there not? I think if you step back and look at the blog, the authors, and topics you’ll quickly find that there is value.
Jim
on 25 Jul 08I think you are looking at this the wrong way. Phone support can be wonderful when done properly. Email support can be horrible when NOT done properly. The point is that support has to be done properly no matter what the medium. A great company will offer great support using whatever medium the customer prefers.
David
on 25 Jul 08Keith asked:
“Why are so many of the posts on this topic so mean spirited and anti-37signals.”
Human nature Keith, even though we are all free to change the channel, when you read thoughtless drivel masquerading as insight, sarcasm can result.
Here is just one really simple example of how silly the post is. Does Sarah even touch on the possibility that the service/product you offer might dictate whether email only support is appropriate? Might 37 be able to get away with their email support model because their product is very simple to use? of course. Might their email support model fail miserably if they offered a different type of product? of course.
But you won’t find any analysis of such things here. Phone support bad, email good.
Chris Carter
on 25 Jul 08I comment occasionally on this blog not to harass the company, but in the hopes that they might take my suggestions and input to heart, or at least under consideration. That’s one of the reasons why I like 37signals and their products so much – despite writing opinionated software and not listening to every stupid feature request, they DO listen to their customers and are willing to let their opinions be changed.
SH
on 25 Jul 08But you won’t find any analysis of such things here. Phone support bad, email good.
David, I think it’s your analysis that is off. Nowhere in the post do I assert such a suggestion. True, I voice my own frustration with poorly handled phone support, but do I say it’s wrong and I’m right.
No, I don’t. Perhaps that’s your own interpretation, but it’s not fact. If you scroll up you’ll even see my comment here where I claim many companies offer great phone support and that works for them.
The point of this post, since it’s not obvious to you, is that there are other ways of doing things that could probably work better for many companies. GASP, how dare I? How dare I assert such a suggestion!?
Just some more of that drivel, I guess.
Debbie Campbell
on 25 Jul 08I totally agree with you Sarah.
I don’t offer phone support to my web development clients except in rare cases – my business phone number routes to a Grand Central account set to voicemail and immediately emails me on my desktop and Blackberry to let me know someone called, but I rarely answer those calls directly. My email response time is usually about 5 minutes unless I’m out, then it can be up to an hour or so. My customers will cite my exceptionally fast service as one of the reasons they refer me to friends and colleagues.
I explain to clients that emails create records. I know what’s been said, when it was said, what’s been promised, what’s been a problem, and how issues were resolved.
Sitting on hold on the phone for 45 minutes recently while trying to get my password reset on a banking site, I was fuming that this big company wouldn’t allow me to request a reset online. And it’s an online transaction processor!
On the other hand, I sent an email request to Tom Bihn (www.tombihn.com) a few days ago about pricing to fix a broken buckle on a bag, got an answer of ‘don’t worry, there’s no charge for this’ about three minutes later. That’s great service and no phone call necessary.
I do understand that face-to-face or voice-to-voice is essential – sometimes. But not all the time. If email support is handled well, it’s fantastic. If phone support were handled well, as it with some businesses, it’s fantastic too. But it’s just not done very well that often, in my experience.
Mick
on 25 Jul 08Sarah – liked the post. What are your thoughts on Chat services for customer support for web apps? We tried it once, and it was a mixed bag. Immediacy was great, but hard to handle with a small team internally.
david e. in portland, me
on 25 Jul 08Hi, Great post. And, you converted me some time ago when I managed my company’s implementation of Highrise. First time, I thought damn, I have to use an email form. It’s going to be terrible just like Paypal or others. Then, in a few minutes, in the middle of the day, I received a crisp, well written, pleasant response. Problem solved in 10 seconds. Great! Next time, I had the same gut reaction, but then remembered that I’d hear from Sarah quickly and with a correct answer. And I did, and again a few times after that.
With respect to all these people banging up 37Signals, it’s for the same reason people spend their days reading about Apple, slobbering over their fantastic products, but then shred them in the public domain. Or the people who read everything Martha Stewart ever writes or is written about her and then cut her up. And likewise for any number of 1,000 other brands or companies that are doing something great or markedly better than almost everyone else. Innovation and greatness make mediocrity feel bad about itself.
If these naysayers are so convinced 37Signals has their heads up their ass, why do you bother coming to this blog and wasting your time? (and ours)
I’m not a fanboy (don’t use the products anymore at my current company). But still read this blog because I think 37Signals has some great thinking going on and invariably I learn something here or am at least compelled to think a bit about something. More than I can say for 95% of the other blogs and content gluts out there.
Thanks!
Justin
on 25 Jul 08I like your point overall Sarah, but I’d like to offer some food for thought (apologies in advance if one of the other 90+ commenters hit on this already):
With Email:
1. You have to wait for a response.
Yes, that response may be in 15 minutes, but that’s like saying that your hold time may be 30 seconds. It may, it may not. That’s ultimately up to the company.
It’s possible to have short hold times for phone calls (80% of our callers go from dialing in to speaking with us in less than 60 seconds), just like it’s possible to answer email questions quickly.
It’s also a question of urgency from the customer’s end. If something needs addressed within the hour (even if it’s not “broken” per se), a phone wait of (let’s say) 45 minutes is still preferable to an email response that comes 2 hours later.
2. You are not guaranteed a more competent answer than you’d get by phone.
This is a question of training and hiring. Get the right people and train them right, and you can offer great phone support. No different than email IMHO.
3. It can take a lot longer to negotiate meaning and get customer/employee “on the same page.”
This is true even when your employees are excellent. If the customer is having difficulty clearly expressing his/her question or problem, it’s likely to take multiple emails just to nail down exactly what s/he is asking.
Phone calls let you negotiate meaning in real time.
(Note that this does not necessarily mean inbound phone calls. At the company I work for – a SaaS provider – we often call the customer rather than allow an unnecessarily long back-and-forth email convo to propogate.)
4. You run the risk of your response to the customer getting lost among the pile of messages in his/her inbox – or filtered to the spam folder.
IMHO it’s about giving the customer what s/he wants. We happen to offer our users support by email, phone and live text chat. Thanks in part to the systems we have in place to manage each medium (as you note, these are critical), the approach has scaled quite well for us.
Phone support isn’t right for everyone, but it’s not wrong for everyone either.
Keith Williams
on 25 Jul 08Unfortunately, you’re railing against biology.
Customer support, by definition involves the establishment, however ephemeral, of a relationship between vendor and client on a personal level. Even IF the vendor’s voice is only a high-level interface to a rigid telephone script or troubleshooting tree, it’s still a far more engaging, intuitive, and emotive interface for human beings. We’re social mammals highly tuned to parse the emotive and literal context and content of another human’s speech.
If a customer is going to the trouble of calling you, it’s highly likely that they:
1. Are not technically savvy enough to resolve the problem over email. This model won’t apply to many vendors, but 37s probably doesn’t want these people as customers. They are likely too costly to retain.
2. The problem is of a sufficiently obscure or powerful nature that direct human interaction and intervention is deemed a requirement. These are the corner cases (distribution tails) that any vendor in a market economy MUST accommodate since these customers also correlate highly with heavy utilization of your product or service. These are your power-users and potential cheerleaders.
The downside of telephone engagement is if things go badly you lose this customer and probably the 20x or so prospects that this former customer will grouse to.
The upside is you’ve personalized the ‘win’ and further cemented the service properties of your brand with this, likely, high-value customer.
The key take-away is IF an organization is going to offer telephone support, they MUST do it well. It’s a game where, depending on your business model, the cost of a loss can easily be greater than the reward of a win.
As a personal aside, I also had the extreme displeasure of dealing with a national bank’s telephone support this morning. As a result, we’re dropping them as a vendor after a fruitful 8 year relationship. Over time, their level of service had deteriorated, but we tolerated it due to the volume of business and simple cultural inertia.
This morning, successive CSRs demonstrated a lack of knowledge, training, and professionalism. This was simultaneously coupled with a recently removed call-back feature for unresolved trouble-tickets. With the trending, plus this mornings events, the bank has unequivocally demonstrated that they no longer value our time, and by direct corollary, our business.
Keith Williams
on 25 Jul 08Note: Though I do live and work in Virginia, I’m not the surname-less “Keith” in the previous posts.
David
on 25 Jul 08Sarah said:
“Nowhere in the post do I assert such a suggestion”..
There was 0 nuance to your post. Did you examine what type of business might be best service by email only support? Nope. Did you in ANY way even acknowledge that phone support might be an absolute necessity for some businesses? Nope. Did you acknowledge in any way that it’s possible for businesses to offer both? Nope. And on and on.
James
on 25 Jul 08Sadly most people do not posses proper communication nor writing skills. They are unable to properly describe their problem in writing. I receive the most sparse emails you’ve ever seen in your life. Thus necessitating a phone call to collect more information. Most of my customers are financial brokers and they have little patience with computers. The 37 Signals customers are much more computer literate in most cases.
In order for email support to work one must have a web form to collect required information from the user or you won’t receive the information you need to solve the problem.
If you are receiving a lot of these support emails, perhaps having a custom Ruby on Rails application where the email is placed into a database record and you can work-flow the problem from support person to support person and track the history of a problem while adding notes.
As far as phone call tracking, recording phone calls, and logging help desk tickets; if it’s performed with due diligence then you can have very good call history and reporting system. It’s just not easy to do it right, so most companies have horrific help desk and customer service systems. Most problems come from company mergers and being forced to go with Enterprise applications that require a lot of consultants to customize and the company runs out of resources and then you’re stuck with an incomplete help desk ticketing system. I have the sneaky suspicion that someone skilled in Ruby on Rails could have a much better solution put together in 3-6 months. Forget HP, IBM, EA, CA, etc.
Web based chat can be helpful as well, it’s more instant then email. We provide all three venues for support, telephone, email, and chat. The phones always get the most usage.
I do notice the younger generation using chat and email much more then today’s middle aged. I do notice fewer support calls from the younger generation as well. It comes down to how computer literate a person is most of the time. Then again, I do receive emails written in cell phone texting format and that is annoying! I might as well be seeing hacker 3L33T Sp33k!
Elaine
on 25 Jul 08Slightly off-topic from the overall email vs phone support discussion (as with most things in life, I think both have their place, for excellent reasons), but in my professional experience, it’s difficult to securely handle financial details by email. The financial institution where I work can not ever send an account number or other personally identifying information by email, and they don’t want you to send it to them, either. We’re working on some other ways to provide online support, but that basic outlet is just not available in a lot of cases, and for good reason.
Frank
on 25 Jul 08Sarah, Gmail? So you are the only person who is answering support emails? No wonder that you have to work 12 hour and have no time to answer the phone ;) Just kidding.
I am seriously surprised. How you will able scale up when its getting more customers and more emails and you will have to work in a team. I can’t picture doing this with Gmail, with no “locking” emails and without keep tracking of who ouched which email. Sorry this question has actually nothing to do with your post but I am really curious.
Beelissa
on 26 Jul 08Amen! I have been saying this for a long time. Even just in my personal life, if I had to choose between having a phone and having email, I would choose email.
Marti
on 26 Jul 08I think that the distinction between one tool or the other (email or phone) has more or less relevance depending your customers profiles. But what always matters is execution.
Personally when I am at the phone I always try to get how motivated and smart is the person behind. If the things get long and I do not trust the person I excuse myself and call again waiting for better luck. Just once I got the same operator in my new call :)
Geoff
on 26 Jul 08Relevant to this conversation: based on our most recent user satisfaction survey, here’s what OUR USERS tell us are their support preferences. 75% selected email (meaning 25% didn’t). We like providing multiple options, because our audience likes contacting us in different ways. The key, whatever the medium, is to be responsive.
SH
on 27 Jul 08I am seriously surprised. How you will able scale up when its getting more customers and more emails and you will have to work in a team. I can’t picture doing this with Gmail, with no “locking” emails and without keep tracking of who ouched which email.
Gmail is extremely useful and does a tremendous job for us right now. We can label every email, color code them, and have add-ons we use to mark them with over 10 different colored shapes. It’s not difficult for us to know who’s touching what emails. Our incoming customer emails have almost doubled in less than a year and so far it’s working for us just fine.
Your tools don’t really make you inefficient unless you let them. We aren’t the kind of company that has patience for things that don’t work or perform to our standards. When we’re not able to use simple tools to do our job, we’ll move on to something else or build our own. Working long hours to make sure all our customers are replied to and their issues are resolved have nothing to do with not having the right tools to use.
Christoffer Hallas
on 27 Jul 08It’s so american writing that you’d want your money to be handled by someone who shares your nationality. Sorry to bring this up, SvN is a wonderful blog, but I read a lot of blogs and I keep on finding these small distrustful comments. It’s time face reality, there are probably more crooks in america compared to Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, you’re just to blind to see it.
Hallo from Denmark.
Gene
on 27 Jul 08Don’t listen to the haters SH & JF & Team, i’ve had a few situations myself with basecamp and you’ve always emailed me rapidly and solved my problems. From where I stand, good job!
feiern
on 28 Jul 08I somewhat agree with Christopher!
The #1 crime in america is fraud. Compare that to Denmark, France, Germany, whatever country in western europe, and you would see, that this distrustful behaviour is simply based on hatred of foreign people.
Matt
on 28 Jul 08SH: There is absolutely nothing wrong with encouraging or even pressuring companies to improve against a tired, dying model. If that sounds like crap to you then you must have something against innovation altogether.
I find it ironic that you’re giving me a hard time about making sweeping statements in your response to my comment … and then you make the implication that I’m against innovation all together simply because I don’t agree with your post. That’s an absurd jump in logic.
I still think it’s a case of you not wanting to call a duck, a duck. Like I said in my original post, if you all don’t have the time or money to offer phone support, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, and the fact you’ve found something that works for you and your customers is great. But that doesn’t mean that it should be applied broadly. It certainly doesn’t mean that consumers are, an implied, crazy for wanting phone support.
On another note there is certainly nothing innovative about offering email tech support. It was around long before 37Signals was even a twinkle in someone’s eye.
matt
on 28 Jul 08@Sarah: I disagree with your premise and the reason is simple…it actually relates to systems design. A phone call is a synchronous architecture. You’re able to go back and forth with messages in a very quick sense once the connection is set up. Email is asynchronous.
There are simply some situations in which a synchronous architecture is more appropriate than an asynchronous architecture.
Marsha Keeffer
on 29 Jul 08I don’t need a phone call to 37Signals. Why? Because when I email Jason or someone there with similar expertise gets right back to me.
And that’s far better support than I’ve ever received from Microsoft, even after paying thousands for their products.
The economics are simple – if a company spends too much time on support, they lose money and can’t pay attention to software development and improvement.
Don Schenck
on 29 Jul 08SH FTW!
Jeff L
on 29 Jul 08Like Grant mentioned above, I wish I could find a fucking email address for Netflix on their site. I have no interest in calling them when I should be able to email. Not only is there no support email on their site, there are NO email addresses anywhere for anything. It’s impossible to email those guys.
I say, provide options. Let the customer contact you how they are comfortable contacting you.
Kirsten
on 30 Jul 08Excellent point, and one I thought I was alone in making. I get puzzled silence when I ask people to e-mail me their donation requests, event details, or list of products about which they’d like more information. The “paper” trail is the most important part – I can always confirm a product detail or check a time frame with e-mail – but I also like to hyper-organize my correspondence, which is impossible with phone calls.
I translate all of my phone call notes into e-mails to myself, which helps me to prioritize and sort my workload. My colleagues think it’s weird, but I’m never without a vital piece of information because it’s in a notebook buried on my desk in the office downstairs when we’re in a managers’ meeting upstairs. It’s always right at my fingertips (god love the iPod Touch) in electronic, editable, e-mailable format.
Rob
on 30 Jul 08It would be great if you responded to my e-mail that I sent July 4 with a question about the Affiliate program. Practice what you preach.
Rob Longridge
This discussion is closed.