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Stop Treating Customers Like Prisoners

Stop Treating Customers Like Prisoners

July 23, 2013
Have you ever had the unpleasant experience of sending an email to a company and then receiving an instant response in which you have been assigned a case number?

You receive a first response as ticket#974 You are later informed that case ticket#974 has been escalated, to then get an email saying that case  ticket#974 has been closed?

bad-ticket

Why are case numbers even used?

My view is that they are completely redundant and remove any personal touch a company could create when communicating electronically with customers.

Prisoners are referred to as numbers.  And if you send in a policy claim, insurance companies assign you a case number.

Do you really want to risk making your customers feel like prisoners or people involved in the stress of dealing with an insurance claim? “

You don’t have to settle for this type of anti-customer-centric  system!

It’s not that there is something wrong with keeping someone informed about the progress of their awaited response.  In fact, the right brand of helpful reply is widely appreciated.  If you are aiming for a customer centric approach, however, using technical jargon doesn’t make sense, not to mention doling out case numbers.

Ditch case numbers and technical guff.  Instead, respond to your customers with a message as personal as the kind you write to a friend.  Devise every email to address customers in a personal manner.

Take care to ensure that each email response sent to customers is like a casual communication between two people who are acquainted with one another.  Avoid making customers feel that they are being managed by a customer service department that doesn’t care a whit about them.

And please, do not make your customers have to register in order to read the reply of their inquiry! If you are like me, you hate having to register to new websites. So please do not make it compulsory  for your customers to register to simply read an answer to a question they’ve asked.

prison_customer

But, don’t customers want to know the progress of their inquiry?

Yes. As I said letting customers know that their requests for support have been received or that the customer service department is currently busy dealing with prior requests is a good thing.

Just don’t include case numbers, and don’t format your emails with things such as “–Please respond above this line—“ or “Support request powered by XYZ TICKET SYSTEM.”

Simply acknowledge the customers’ requests; and encourage them to send an email if they have any questions, such as what the status of their response is.  Here is a good example:

 Hello, (name), and thank you for contacting us.  We got your request, and we’ll get back to you in the order your request was received.  We look forward to helping you resolve all questions or problems you may have.  In the meantime, feel free to email us regarding further questions or a status update.

When you or your customer service agent responds, write to the customer directly, as in the following example:

Hello, (name), and thank you for your patience.  I read your request, and the best solution is (etc.) 

Is it still possible to keep track of each conversation internally if case numbers are not used?

Sure, the way you manage the flow of each conversation  should still be trackable.

The system you use which keeps track of inquiries, of who responded, and whether the request has been escalated to someone else can be in place, but it’s not information you need to unload on your customer.  Keep track of the internal data, but keep it hidden from the customers.

So, what is the best way to respond to customer inquiries?

At Keeping.com, we know there is a better, more customer-friendly way to handle the flow of customer messages, which is why we offer something new.  We are building an invisible ticket solution which has all required features for internal management of support requests while at the same time focusing on making each customer feel unique, with one-on-one communication.

So which do you prefer?  Would you rather be assigned an impersonal case number or be addressed by your first name in a customer service response?

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November 19, 2013 Vincent Cassar

49 Responses to Stop Treating Customers Like Prisoners

  • HK July 24, 2013
    Could not agree more! One thing that has always agitated me with support software are case numbers. When asking companies that provide such software as to how to remove them (despite being a premium service), the response is typically "no, we need to use them to track within the system..." Im glad someone has picked up on the topic! Thanks Keeping Team for making support personal again!
    Reply
  • Nikitas Georgopoulos July 24, 2013
    Very informative blog post and I agree with the Founder of Keeping.com
    Reply
  • Giancarlo August 1, 2013
    Good approach, bein more personal in yuor reply is certainly better than any tech system sending spam and mass updates nobody wants! I want my cases resolved or at least know by when without comparing numbers and case ID's.
    Reply
  • John August 15, 2013
    That's a good idea but there is a sense in those numbers. If you're calling help desk and you have assigned tracking ID, it's much-much easier to find the info about particular case. I thinks ID should be preserved but not assigned to the customer as a sign of prisoner.
    Reply
    • Vincent Cassar August 16, 2013
      I am a firm believer in using email addresses as a unique identifier. Unless you deal in an industry in which your customers send you frequent tickets (eg. hosting companies), the vast majority of your customers will only send you a handful of requests during their lifetime and your agents can easily track a case by only using the email address and the date. the way we envision Keeping.com is to keep case IDs BUT only for internal purposes.
      Reply
      • Daniel Schwarz October 28, 2013
        Agree with you on this. Hate to feel like I'm just "another number"
        Reply
      • Lilia Tovbin November 8, 2013
        I agree because that is exactly what I use and email as an identifier works just fine. Plus, typically customers only switch a method of contacting if they haven't gotten a reply on their first attempt.
        Reply
  • Christian Batist August 15, 2013
    Completely agree with you Vincent. The system I started using for a client is also unnecessarily mentioning the case# in every single piece of communication. A number like that never looks good anyway. Too high a number will give the customer the idea that there are enormous amounts of complaints/errors/problems and too low a number may have the service be perceived as non-popular. :) The case number only makes sense for the agent attending to the request, and the system in which it is stored. Good work! Looking forward to the next post! Christian
    Reply
    • Vincent Cassar August 16, 2013
      Thanks Christian.
      Reply
  • Graham Parker September 16, 2013
    Great blog and agree with this 100% , good old fashioned customer service is lost in so many industries and personally any project I am involved in , having an "obsessed focus" here has proven to make all the difference. One tech start up I know not only have insane customer service but also write personal messages to thanks the first 1000 clients. It works !
    Reply
    • Vincent Cassar September 16, 2013
      Thanks Graham for your kind words. Would you mind sharing the startup you are mentioning?
      Reply
  • Cristiano Ghersi October 2, 2013
    Thanks Vincent, very nice post! I totally agree with you, automated or semi-automated response are very annoying. Direct email is absolutely the way to pursue to expose a high quality service for customers!
    Reply
    • Vincent Cassar October 2, 2013
      Thanks, for your comment. I do beleive that a company should automate as much as possible (this is after all the essence of what we are doing at Keeping.com) BUT customers should not perceive it that way.
      Reply
  • Dr. Larry Hiner October 2, 2013
    I'm in favor of anything that can re-humanize business processes. A number of years ago, a compassionate hospital where I was a Chaplain started insisting that the unit staff refer to patients by their names - and not "the CABG in 471" (a particularly egregious descriptor). Is this type of shorthand easier than remembering names, or than referring to people instead of case numbers? Probably - but at what cost to our souls?
    Reply
  • Kapil October 3, 2013
    From Kapil (http://www.tekkraft.com/) I totally agree with you. Case numbers, support tickets.. it just gives the impression of too much red tape. On the other hand, I have had amazing experience with support teams of these startups: sidengo.com & http://postach.io We as entrepreneurs should always keep in mind that customers are your best ambassadors. Word of mouth takes time to spread, but it starts to accelerate and eventually you get this kind of sustained, virally growing customer base. You just have to persist long enough. It happened to a friend of mine who is a tattoo artist. He started his tattoo studio and initially, as with any startup, things were slow. But he persisted, and today he owns 3 studios across the city, all because he focused on quality of work and made his customers feel comfortable and happy. Today he charges premium fee compared to other studios, yet he has a growing customer base and returning customers!
    Reply
  • Dusan V. October 18, 2013
    Great angle Vincent. Good luck with the launch!
    Reply
    • Vincent Cassar October 18, 2013
      Thank you!!!
      Reply
  • AJ October 18, 2013
    Spot on Vincent. I can also appreciate John's point of the efficiency of preserving tracking IDs. Hopefully your invisible ticket solution will make the process seamless on both ends. Much success to you and Keeping.com!
    Reply
  • Mikhail October 24, 2013
    Good point, Vincent! Not that I am usually paying too much attention to a case number, but it certainly leaves a subconscious impression that you're speaking to a robot (in conjunction with the way such replies are usually worded). I would certainly not use the case numbers and would try to be as friendly and responsive to my customers.
    Reply
  • Dimitris October 28, 2013
    Great post Vincent! Totally agree
    Reply
  • Laura November 2, 2013
    I think this article is covering a very important point on CRM. There would be no business without customers. For that reason, having personal and friendly communications with them - from sales process to after sales - is key. Numbers and "tickets" are from the robotic era :)
    Reply
  • Lilia - Founder/Owner of a SAAS business November 8, 2013
    I am a founder and owner of a 6-figure SAAS business and I do my own customer service for all the reasons mentioned in the post, but also the most important one for me is a FEEDBACK LOOP - it's priceless! I used to think my time was too valuable for customer service but then I learned Craig of Craigslist was doing it and gave it a try. When I reviewed emails between my customers and my freelancer I never saw any customers reply back and now I get grateful replies on more than 50% of all emails. Customer Service and Customer Development go hand-in-hand. You can't grow your customer base and address churn if you don't know what your customers want and where their pain points are. I would suggest for all founders to do customer service once in a while. - Founder/Owner and Customer Service Rep.
    Reply
    • Vincent Cassar November 8, 2013
      Thanks Lilia, that's an excellent point. I also beleive founders and top management should be involved with some of the day to day operations in order to remain connected with reality.
      Reply
    • Trep Talks January 24, 2014
      Great points. Once a company gets bigger the upper management stops caring. Recently I asked a customer service rep to speak to her manager because my request was a little bit out of their regular processes. Her response was "This is a 50 million dollar company"....after much haggling, she gave me the email address, and I sent a couple of emails but never received any acknowledgement or responses form the manager. They are big enough to let go of my business.
      Reply
      • Vincent Cassar January 24, 2014
        This is nonsense. One would expect any companies irrespective of their size to care. How do they think they got to their 50M per year size? Through their customers of course.
        Reply
  • Rex Dixon November 22, 2013
    That was how I ran support at my last startup I worked for. Everything was about a personal reply. While we used a "system", we could have easily used email threading. That was how the startup I worked for before my last one ran support. All done via Gmail.
    Reply
  • Simon Kanapka November 22, 2013
    As a regular user of support desks on both sides of the fence I can see the points of view of both client and operator. Finding the correct case is not always a simple thing but as a client I want to believe I can contact the support desk say my name or company and my case can be quickly located. Email addresses & dates are fine if you know who created the case and when but chasing the status of a case it can be done via numerous people and most times it's just a question of how quickly both the client & operator can connect with the correct case details. As a client I want to say hi it's simon from Pulpazo we have a case regarding x logged. What's the status? Whether that search can be based on email addresses, names, domains, subjects or company names I want my case to be located by any pieces of information that I have at hand. Thinking that you are the only case that the help desk is dealing with is the perfect scenario. So I agree that the less formal and technical the communication is then the better, as long as the help desk operator can use that informal flexible communication to efficiently locate the specific case details. No one wants to wait 20mins while someone locates your case or emails back asking for more details.
    Reply
    • Vincent Cassar November 22, 2013
      Thanks Simon, this is awesome insight.
      Reply
  • Shachar Pessis November 26, 2013
    I don't like automatic responses ... even more if eventually I never hear from the company. Having that said a ticket case number doesn't irritate me, I don't see it and I don't care of the existence of it. I do care if my query gets resolved or not.
    Reply
  • Sanmaya kumar Dhal December 8, 2013
    Lovely article. Yah, I too. We take steps to keep the mails as personalized as possible, changing default settings etc. If we need to tell something technical we add a humanized description alongside it to explain what we mean by that and why it's necessary to convey you that way. I liked the way you wrote me about this blog post. That'd be among the best personalized message I'll see. I'm keeping it in my list of best emails I ever got. Love your effort towards making support desks more responsive. I'll share you an example of what we do in difficult situations like a support request where they need a change in the software urgently: "Hello dear, I understand the problem. My teammate XYZ(our developer) is looking after the error. I'll inform you as soon as he solves the error. He told me to inform you he owe an apology for the issue. It'll take 2hours in minimum to a day or two at max. I'll inform you about the progress in 2hours. While in the mean time you can take the following alternative steps to get your work done. 1. XX 2. YY 3. ZZ I'm really sorry about what happened and thanks for informing me about the issue. It'll help us solve the same problem for many of our clients, who might have faced the same problem as you. Please do ask me help and let's know where we can make the software better for you. With love Sanmaya Project manager & co-founder SlickAccount " 1. We prefer I or a name instead of we or our team as far as possible. You need to be taking responsibility of the problem. 2. Agree to customers issue and feel his/her pain. 3. Tell when they can expect the solution. Your customers don't want to check the email again and waiting and worrying what have happened. 4. You need to provide and immediate alternative that they can do to achieve the same result. In this case deleting an entry and again entering it, instead of an edit (which was faulty in this case). You need to understand they need a solution right now, they are in some problem, and you can't solve the bug so soon. 5. Brand yourself as a company who loves it's customers and is responsible. Thank them as they are just making you better. Let them have a feeling that they are contributing to your brand and making you successful. That's the best thing you can give them as a customer. It also make them feel free to talk to you and give you more opportunity and feedback to make your product and company better. 6. Overall make them feel you are real human behind the website, brand or the product. This approach made us a better company at heart and bought us more referrals and paid customers and our customers are negating the churn rate somehow. It's boosting morals of our team too and we are eager to solve difficult issues. Hope some of your readers may find it helpful and if you guys have any suggestions, I'll be listening to your replies and will try to inculcate in our process. Thanks in advance.
    Reply
  • Brett Atkin January 20, 2014
    I don't mind case numbers or even how the email addresses me (Sir, Hi, Brett, Good Morning, etc.). What I do mind are poorly formatted emails that looks like the example you provided. You can be personal but still professional. I can see the case number mentioned in the subject line and in the body of the email (at the end in a section that summarizes the correspondence) but it shouldn't be peppered throughout he message. I think it is more of design/layout issue than anything else. The flip side is people just don't read thoroughly and maybe putting the case number everywhere servers a purpose (still bad though). Personally, I have people ask my phone number and it is in every email I send (plain text) in my signature line.
    Reply
    • Vincent Cassar January 21, 2014
      Thanks Brett for your input. Yes, the layout and design of the responses could indeed be part of the problem, and I think this is well illustrated with the screenshot on top of the article. All the best to you.
      Reply
  • Kira Kotulska January 30, 2014
    Good point Vincent! When personalisation and customisation is what customers nowadays expect to be commonplace, addressing them by case numbers sends the very wrong message about how the company values and respects them. Even if in many companies handling customer inquiries is a highly automated process, this should never be so blatantly apparent to your customers.
    Reply
    • Vincent Cassar January 30, 2014
      That's exactly my point Kira. Thanks for your input and all the best with https://zineinc.com/
      Reply
  • Magnus F. Joensen February 24, 2014
    Great post! Every time I get one of those overly automated and unpersonalized responses, I consider how valuable said service is to me and if there are other better alternatives. Sure automation is great for the company but since support is for the customer, I just prefer a personal response and that is what we are putting a big emphasis on at entrostor.com. So I guess what it comes down to (in my case at least) is - Do to others as you would have them do to you.
    Reply
  • Nawar March 11, 2014
    IMHO the case number is a very technical thing to show to the user, unless they are working in such an environment where it makes sense. As for the average Joe it won't make sense that much, and in such situation, the common wisdom of "talk to them, not over them" kicks in. By the way, even better than the email to use as an identifier is the Message ID that shows in the email header ;) Message-ID:
    Reply
  • Rashmirathi May 12, 2014
    I completely agree with you. Another issue I see with such ticking systems is the way a so-called "single" support team works in a totally dis-oriented way. While you're discussing you're issue with a person in the team, you'll receive an email from a completely new person asking for more details to debug the issue. They don't realize that you've provided the details 10 emails back which is recorded itself in the ticket.
    Reply
  • Josh May 12, 2014
    I agree that emails need to be more personalized but I always like having a case number that I can refer to. For example say I have more then one case open at once.
    Reply
  • Saurabh tyagi May 12, 2014
    Great Article Vincent.
    Reply
  • Oscar May 14, 2014
    Vincent, I couldn't agree more with you. It is completely unnecessary to use numbers on e-mails. As a customer, all you want to know is that an actual person (and not a computer) is solving your inquiry. Using numbers settles a bureaucratic environment. Who likes that? Personal touch is everything. Perhaps some companies think that by exposing the numbers or their internal procedures system they will end up looking more serious and this will ultimately be a relief for the customer: "Thank God I'm dealing with a company that can manage." But I think the real secret here is being able to enforce an effective response/solution system inside your company and making customers feel it's a person-to-person situation when e-mailing them back. Regards!
    Reply
  • Angel Harizanov June 18, 2014
    I agree! And it is frequently the case that you reply and then your reply didn't meet the subject line/body/whatever requirements and was returned with a request to follow the instructions... a bit too much. This kind of bureaucracy can definitely be avoided
    Reply
  • Vadim July 17, 2014
    I agree with Vincent. Relationship marketing is very important in modern business. May be add in each support answer to the customer at the end: Waiting Time Answer: xx.xx Enjoyed this Answer? Please share the love... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and for each management may be will important... simple index Love Support = Love, multiplied by time and divided by the fair rate
    Reply
  • Molly @ FeeHacks August 4, 2014
    Totally agreed about the case numbers -- I find that when I'm on the customer end of things, I'm put off by the fact that my problem or inquiry turns into a 'ticket' that has to be dealt with. Not as personal for sure, and makes the experience feel like you've taken a number and are waiting in line at a deli. Great post!
    Reply
  • Scott McGregor August 5, 2014
    These questions about Ticket IDs illustrate a major problem that affects both service providers and customers -- failure to consider use cases that aren't their current case. If you are a customer who has only ever had one open trouble ticket with your service provider at any one time, you may think knowing the ticket number is irrelevant. You might think your email address or something that identifies you is all that should be needed. But if you are someone who regularly has many open tickets you may be very appreciative of any naming system that makes it easy for you distinguish which answers go with which issue. That said, there are many other points made above about being must customer friendly that make sense. If you only have one open ticket, an email, or phone number or even name might be a good way for service personnel to be able to look up your ticket. If you have multiple tickets the ticket ID might be convenient but other lookup keys should also be supported for best service.
    Reply
  • Russell Fama August 8, 2014
    Yup, we totally agree! Expecting a great solution from Keeping.com soon. =)
    Reply
  • Gene Sobolev October 29, 2014
    Agree absolutely. An invisible label solution is definitely the way to go.
    Reply
  • Abraham November 18, 2014
    It make a lot of sense not being treated as prisoners, I prefer the casual engagement.
    Reply
  • Ron Valderrama November 18, 2014
    Netflix does a great job with this. Good read.
    Reply
  • AMIN DURANI November 19, 2014
    I see your point Vincent! I totally agree with you, but im not sure if users are ready to not have any case number at all. I think there could be a solution in between, which people could use until that day people gets used to it. For now, even i would be afraid not to have a reference number when i create a "ticket" on a support page. Maybe something like "... please refer to us with your phonenumber which also is your id in our system."
    Reply

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