I have come to expect that when I call a company for customer support, I am subjecting myself to frustratingly long hold times, mazes of prerecorded soundbites that have nothing to do with my problem, and customer support reps who speak from a script and can’t do anything to help me. I know I am not alone. But, our low expectations do provide companies with an opportunity: the opportunity to surprise and delight consumers with truly positive customer service experiences.
Earlier today I unboxed a brand new espresso machine: The Nespresso Citiz. The Citiz is a stunning espresso brewing champ. You can turn around a flawless shot of Ristretto with the push of one button. But first I had to prep the machine for its inaugural brew.
Step 1: Fail
I turned on the machine and it quickly heated up. I was t-minus three minutes from the delicious union of South American and East African Arabicas. My plan was to down the coffee and then dash off to the gym. Unfortunately, I hit a snag. The Citiz did not work.
It turned on, but there was no water flow. I re-read the instructions and carefully checked the steps. I had followed the instructions perfectly. My frustration was beginning to brew.
I called the Nespresso helpline and was prepared for pain.
Surprisingly a real person picked up the phone within 20 seconds. Carol introduced herself and quickly apologized. She explained that she thought that there was an air bubble in the system but that there was a manual workaround. The Citiz is designed so that the top of the system can be used like an old fashioned water pump. I needed to pump water through the Citiz to push out the air bubble.
I began pumping the Citiz but nothing happened. We tried five variations of pumping the water while holding down the espresso, lungo, and on/off switch. After 10 minutes it was becoming clear that I was not going to have any espresso today.
I had two options: Carol would overnight a replacement machine or I could unplug the machine, wait an hour, and push out the air bubble again. If the latter option failed I could call her back and she would overnight a replacement Citiz. There would be no need to recount my tale to another rep. I was delighted that they were willing to send a replacement so quickly and that I wouldn’t have to waste any more time. I picked the second option hoping that the Citiz would magically start working in the next 60 minutes.
I hung up the phone and tried the water pump action one final time before my 60 minute wait. Suddenly, steaming hot water was flying through the Citiz and I was ready to brew! A minute later and I was enjoying my Ristretto. It was even better than I remembered. I called Carol back and thanked her for her help.
My Takeaway
The Nespresso support process was wonderful. They treated me with respect by explaining why the problem was happening instead of just prescribing a solution, they gave me clear and concise options so that I felt like I had control of the situation, and it was clear that they were genuinely concerned that I was not going to enjoy a coffee that morning.
By the end of the call, I would have been fine with a new Citiz arriving tomorrow because it was so clear they were willing to go the extra mile to make sure I was happy. But the fact that Carol actually helped me solve the problem made the coffee taste that much better.
There is no better way to create an evangelist than to surprise and delight someone during the support process. So get out there and help your customers to brew their first coffee.
We’ve changed the pricing for Wistia probably 20 times in the last three years by listening to customer feedback. During the feedback process we monitor how similar groups respond to new pricing. What do videographers think of the pricing? How are medium sized software companies responding? What about life sciences? The funny thing is that we consistently see polarized reactions to pricing within every segment we look at.
We’ll always find a portion of the group who thinks that Wistia is either really cheap or really expensive while their cohorts find it the exact opposite. This was confusing. Then we found one question that helps us calibrate feedback consistently: How do you value your time?
It turns that how one values their time is an amazing indicator across all segments. You’d expect normal purchasing behavior to look something like this:
But if consumers value their time highly then they’ll happily pay for something that saves them time. It turns out that the opposite is true for businesses that don’t value their time highly. Companies that pay employees very low salaries (like fast food chains) or companies without any money (read: early stage startups) will see business prices and jet in the other direction.
A perfect example of this is email. Consumers don’t really pay for email….it’s just something that they use and it works. Flip this to the business side, however, and businesses are more than willing to pay for email marketing tools to help them design emails, manage lists, and track email performance. These are tools that, for businesses, save time and help them make more money. However, this is not something that the normal consumer is willing to pay for.
Once you start segmenting pricing feedback based on the value of time it becomes much simpler to manage pricing. Then you can optimize pricing for the kind of benefit and type of buyer you sell to.
I hear great ideas for new companies all the time. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these ideas never mature into startups, and even fewer become lasting companies. This is ironic because most people think building a startup is all about having a great idea. (I believe the phrase goes “if only I had thought of Facebook, I’d be rich!”) The truth is that while a good idea is essential, it’s only the first step in creating a viable startup.
I see three problems that prevent an entrepreneur from following through on an idea: a person doesn’t recognize when the idea is viable, ideas aren’t given enough time to evolve, and there is a lack of commitment to turning the idea into a real-world success.
1. Viable Ideas
There are tons of viable startup ideas that get stopped before they get a chance to start. These ideas get left un-executed for a multitude of reasons including fear, money, and time. But, the most common roadblock I see is overestimation of the competition. The process goes like this: come up with an idea, google to see if it’s been done, find someone doing something similar, and give up.
As it turns out, this is the exact process we went through when trying to start Wistia. We’d think we were onto something exciting because our idea was so unique, then we’d find a company doing something similar and we’d give up on that particular approach. We continued this vicious cycle for 4 months until we realized that absolutely no one else had heard of the ‘competition’ we’d found. It turns out that it’s actually really, really hard to get people to pay attention or use anything. After this epiphany it was easy to forge ahead.
2. Evolving Ideas
One of the first questions that I’m always asked when discussing Wistia is “How’d you come up with this idea?” To which I answer: I didn’t come up with the idea for Wistia. I could never have imagined where we’d end up today and I have no idea where we’ll be in four more years.
Our initial “great” idea was hosting filmmaking competitions. We started on this path and began building product. It became clear within a month after launching, that our approach would not work. We couldn’t come up with any good models for attracting new users or making money. Let’s just say, we had problems.
We took what we had, a platform for sharing and managing videos, and started seeing how else we could apply our technology. As luck would have it, a medical device company reached out to us. They were looking for a way to privately share videos in clinical trials. This was a completely unexpected use of what were building from a completely unexpected type of company. We pitched them on paying a monthly fee. They bought. A week of building later and we delivered the first version of what we now know of as Wistia. The light bulb went on. Help companies who don’t regularly use video.
3. Seeing Ideas Through
Now in startupland, we like to say “it’s not the idea, it’s the execution” which is definitely true. But execution isn’t enough. If you execute well for a month you’re not going to get anywhere. You need to be committed if you want to make it through. You need to be obsessed with surviving, obsessed with thriving, and obsessed with doing your idea justice by giving yourself enough time to execute.
Brendan and I started Wistia in June of 2006. We quit our jobs and went in fulltime. It took us almost one year to the day to get our first customer. It took us another year to get to 6 customers. It took us another year to reach 60 customers. This past summer, 1460 days after starting Wistia we crossed 350 customers.
It takes time to build companies. It takes time to learn from customers. It takes time to be lucky. Without commitment, you have no time and with no time your ideas won’t matter at all.
The question is: Do you have what it takes to commit 365, 730, or over 1460 days of your life to your idea? If you do, you may just make it.
Just another average drive (Taken with instagram)
Every company has a culture of some sort but when it’s clearly defined it makes decision making better, makes hiring easier, and acts as a marketing tool. Defining company culture early can be the difference between success and failure.
Decision Making
A company is built by making an incredibly large number of small decisions over time. At the beginning, when the team is small it’s possible to have an influence over every decision. But as your company starts to grow and there are more streams of activity, more decisions need to be made.
Dealing with dispersed decision making is challenging unless you have a consistent rubric for problem solving, a.k.a. a strong company culture. A strong company culture can help every employee learn how to categorize a decision in a couple of basic ways.
For example, at Wistia everyone knows how to prioritize the current task based on:
Hiring
Bringing more people onto your team is one of the riskiest things you can do. The wrong hires will suck up time, resources, and will certainly damage the customer experience through bad decision making.
Having a strong company culture makes it much easier to screen applicants so that you can stop the hurt in advance. If defined properly, it will also help the right people find you.
Example: Zappos’ $2,000 to Quit campaign.
Zappos’s offers new employees $2,000 to quit after they’ve been with the company for two weeks. If the employee values the money over the work environment then they know they’ve hired the wrong person. Zappos’ hack helps determine the commitment and value system of new hires. It also highlights to the outside world that everyone who works at Zappos wants to be there. Sounds like a great place to me!
Marketing
People like to work with companies they can trust and understand. If you know how a company is run, you’re more likely to predict their actions and understand your place in their world.
If your business is obsessed with delighting customers, prospects will be more likely to give you a try. For further insight here, see point 7 of Joel Spolsky’s post on customer service (hat tip to Paul Farnell).
Example: Hubspot customer happiness index
Hubspot, the marketing software company, has such a laser focus on customer happiness that they publish a customer happiness index. Hubspot’s emphasis on customer happiness is so strong that it’s spilled over the company wall for the world to see. Ever wondered if Hubspot customers are happy? Now you know they are.
Finally, how do you know when your culture is strong?
You know your culture is strong when people understand what you mean when you say, “that’s a very COMPANYNAME thing to do” or “this should be more COMPANYNAMEish.” Think about the companies that you look up to for design inspiration (Apple), customer service (Zappos), or small business acumen (37Signals). Their company cultures are so strong that they permeate company walls and you and I now know what it means to handle a support request the Zappos way.
For us, it took us about 2 years before we started saying “that’s not a very Wistia thing to do” and about 3 years before we started saying “if only COMPANYNAME was a little more Wistia, then we’d definitely sign up!”
That is one confused gentleman.
(Source: chrislammert)
Invisible bike helmet inflates before impact.
A helpful venn diagram regarding privacy and the Internet.
So that’s how it works.
(via davehyndman)
Inbox Zero: The mysteriously wonderful feeling on an empty inbox.
I’m riding the inbox zero train - well actually it’s about inbox 4 or 5 right now. I’m often asked how I do it, so in the interest of sharing and learning more here are my rules of thumb.
Keep your emails short
Nobody wants to read long emails. Keeping emails concise will accomplish more through less correspondence.
Format emails for easy reading
Emails are read the way they’re written.
If you jam everything into a single block paragraph it’ll be harder to pick out action items from sentiments and sentiments for meaty comments.
Hit the snooze button - This one is a new arrow in the quiver
Snoozing emails let’s you respond at a time that’s good for the reader. If your pen pal is traveling until next month you can snooze their email until they’re back in the office. I use FollowUp.cc which allows me to control the snooze period by changing the beginning of the email address. For example, to snooze an email to next month I can forward it to Nov15@followup.cc. On November 15th I’ll get my email back with a reminder.
Separate tasks from emails
Many emails are discussions of tasks that need to be completed. If the goals of the task are already established then archive that email and move the task to your to-do list. I use Remember The Milk to stay on top of all of my tasks. I can sort tasks by priority, category, due date, and into separate lists. When I complete the task if an email is needed I’ll blast one back out.
Pick up the phone
I find it surprising how out-of-vogue the phone is — so much stuff is just faster on the phone! Anything open ended, go to the phone. It’s hard to discuss complex topics by email. Often, items without defined constraints go unanswered. IMHO, 15 minutes on the phone is better then 15 minutes writing an email.
To get rid of the unnecessary emails used to schedule the call I use tungle.me. The other person on the call can pick a time that works for them on my calendar and then schedule the call.
Those are my core five. What are you doing to stay at inbox zero?
It really bothers me when it’s clear that a startup has prioritized their company’s experience instead of prioritizing the customer’s experience.
Let’s look at two scenarios out of the support world.
Scenario 1: Company’s Experience is Prioritized
Benefit to the company: The company doesn’t need as many first responders. Analytics on support are baked right into the system. A web interface keeps everything organized for the support team. Automated responses ‘buy’ time for support team to respond.
Downsides for the customer: They need to use an unfamiliar system. They know that they are interfacing with a system first and a person second. There is more opportunity for error. This system is more arduous to use when on a mobile device.
Scenario 2: Customer’s Experience is Prioritized
Benefit to the customer: There is no learning curve. They know that they’re interfacing with a person.
Downside for the company: Managing inquiries can be arduous. Customer expectations are higher. Tracking and routing issues is more time consuming.
But these don’t seem that different!
Whenever a company prioritizes their experience, they’re betting that the decrease in customer satisfaction is worth the increase in company efficiency. Every time a customer interacts with an unfamiliar system, there is risk. They don’t want to screw something up. They want to explain themselves properly and make sure they don’t miss an important checkbox. Multiply these moments of risk across a customer base and you’ll have higher churn, less word of mouth, and a multitude of other issues.
What’s the solution?
By using systems customers already know well, like email, you can take away all the risk and barriers so that you get more feedback and can solve more problems. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have systems in place for a customer optimized experience. It just means that you need different systems than the off-the-shelf options.
In our case, we’d love to have an email based system that routes emails to the team, knows when someone has responded, records interactions, pulls out analytics, and creates more value for the company while being optimized for the customer experience.
The next time you’re thinking about how to make things easier for yourself, think about how you can make something easier for your customer. The best products will help your customer first and your company second.