There are various ways to increase sales in a growing business. You can use the Internet to further your brand awareness to the population at large. If you are making enough money you can even go as far as advertising on some other media like television or radio. There is one major source of increased sales that the majority of people under appreciate, that is your existing customer base, people who have already dealt with you in the past should be much easier to deal with again. No matter how much you increase sales, no matter how many new customers you bring in, there is a finite limit to how much you can expand. Your existing customer base is an untapped resource in most cases. Returning to existing customers and either cross selling or up selling can lead to massive amount of revenue. The key to being able to tap this resource however is to build a strong relationship with the customer. To build a strong relationship you have support the customer as well as you can. Below are some useful methods for improving the customer support process no matter how large your business is.
1. We work weird (night) shifts…
Just like prostitutes.
2. They pay you to make the client happy…
Just like a prostitute.
3. The client pays a lot of money, but your employer
keeps almost every penny…
Just like a prostitute.
4. You are rewarded for fulfilling the client’s dreams…
Just like a prostitute.
5. Your friends fall apart and you end up hanging out
with people in the same profession as you…
Just like a prostitute.
6. When you have to meet the client you always have to
be perfectly groomed…
Just like a prostitute.
7. But when you go back home it seems like you are
coming back from hell…
Just like a prostitute.
8. The client always wants to pay less but expects
incredible things from you…
Just like a prostitute.
9. When people ask you about your job, you have
difficulties to explain it…
Just like a prostitute.
10. Everyday when you wake up, you say: “I’m not going
to spend the rest of my life doing this.”
Just like a prostitute ……..
Providing support of any kind a to a customer can be a challenge. Providing IT support remotely is particularly hard though. What makes it hard is that you have no way of judging the IT knowledge level of the person you are supporting. They could be as IT literate as you are, or they could be as bad as your 70 year old grandma who thinks a computer virus is an infection passed to humans by computers. Some times the IT literate ones can be more of a problem than the novice users, the novice users will at least listen to what you tell them to do where as the ones that consider themselves pro’s will mix your advice with their own feelings on how it should work.
If you are unable to get remote access to the computer you are supporting then you have to learn how to modulate your instructions and advice to the user in a way that they will understand. It’s no good just treating everyone the same, a savvy IT user will not take too kindly to instructions for dummies. While a novice will not grasp the more detailed instructions given to advnanced users. If you want the user to be able to get past their problem then you have to work out the kind of user you are dealing with and give advice at the level they need.
If I am supporting a person I have never dealt with before I tend to assume that they are at a novice standard, this doesn’t mean they have just started using a computer more that they are not at home using them they are the kind of people that think Internet Explorer is the only way to access the Internet (or AOL browser yuck!). You can usually tell with in a few moments of starting the call what kind of user they are, the way they carry out your instructions and the responses they give will indictate if they need their status upgrading. If a user doesn’t understand when you ask them to click on Windows Start menu then there is a good chance that they are going to fall into the novice IT user classification. This kind of user need to be hand held all the way through the solution, if you cant get remote access to help them then you are going to need to be patient and stay on the phone with them. Feeding them information a bit at a time so that they do not get lost or confused as they follow your instructions. You need to remember that what is second nature to you isn’t always the easiest thing to them. When dealing with this kind of user I tend to find it helps to set my mind to work as if I am supporting my mum. My mother is a novice IT user like most of her generation. She has come to them late in life and while she is getting better its at a very slow rate. By thinking I am dealing with my mother I tend to keep my patience a lot longer than I would normally, if im sstruggling to get through I think back to times when I have had to work around problems with her that she doesn’t understand. The thing to remember is that this kind of user is not stupid or dumb, they just don’t understand computers because they don’t need to.
The other end of the scale is the user who is proficient in IT, the instructions for this kind of user don’t need to be broken down as much as they would for a novice user. This kind of user can be given more detail on the steps they are following and about how the system works in general. Just remember not to give them too much information, not because it could negate your own usefulness to them but because if they think they understand the system to will be apt to wonder around on their own trying to fix things and end up causing you more problems that are even harder to fix. There is such a thing as enough knowledge to be dangerous and a person like that can cause some of the most awkward problems to fix.
Following hot on the heels of my recent article about Social Engineering tricks used to deceive users into downloading dangerous software on to their computers comes news of a study conducted in to how users react to popups. Sadly it merely goes to prove that the average computer user is servery lacking in the understanding of the dangers of the online world. The study looked at how a group of students reacted when popups were inserted into a task they had been given. All the popups where of a different style, some looking like a typical Windows warning, some looking completely different. Quite a few of the warnings acting in various ways that would have pointed out that it was a web based popup rather than a system generated warning (i.e. cursor becomes a hand when rolling over the Ok button) Continue reading »
Yesterday I posted about how to deal with the IT support department. Well as you may have noticed, I try to be fair and look at both sides of things. So I’ve decided to follow that up with some helpful hints for the person at the other end of the phone to make their life a little smoother hopefully, and perhaps help the person calling them not to get too stressed! Hopefully these hints will be useful for anyone considering a career in a helpdesk role as well. Continue reading »