How we cheat customers. Software as a Service
"You can fool some people all the time, all people for a while, but you can't fool all people all the time." Abraham Lincoln
The most undervalued, on which each company can earn - is the Service. Twice you can increase the turnover, but you have to be honest to the end. Sly with all the time all the same will not work.
A fresh story where the client feels like he’d been a fool:
I ordered three boxes of mineral water.
Wrong and brought three bottles instead of three boxes.
They threw up their hands, took away three bottles, said that something went wrong in the warehouse.
No action from the store.
Called in support. They were surprised, laughed, informed that they had compiled the request, the specialist would study and make a decision.
A day later I received a letter with apologies and a discount of 100 rubles. on the next order.
Posted in reply “Can you deliver my order to me?”
No reactions.
')
And the service economy works like this:
I ordered three boxes of mineral water.
Wrong and brought three bottles.
Sorry. And two hours later, they brought four boxes. One gave.
Make orders here has become more common.
During one month he told the story of five more acquaintances, three tried, one became a client.
They spent less than 600 rubles on me, for the year they earned from 30,000 rubles.
We are a startup that makes a project management system . The market is very difficult, a lot of things have already been done before us. However, this is not our first company and the current experience says that you need to work where there is a market and closely follow what customers think and feel.
In this article, several key approaches to the service in the development of software. Everyone’s experience came to us very dearly. The most expensive is the second after kata.
Service is what your customers think about it.
This very, not very specific definition is given in the book “First-class service as a competitive advantage ”. It turns out that if the client believes that the packaging of the goods is not convenient, despite the fact that he likes the product, it is directly related to the Service.
Personally, some time ago I wanted to argue with this definition and give, for example, such - these are all the points of contact between an employee and a client, to equate service to service. In this embodiment, it is much easier to build the work of the support department and assume that the service is at its best. With a specific definition, it is easy to build an exact process.
However, this does not work, we tried, then reworked. It leads to a separate work of the support department, which absolutely cannot solve the problems of clients and falls asleep complaints by senseless politeness. This sin almost all major networks. It seems that the staff on the first lines can only say: thank you, please, we are very pleased, we are very sorry, come to us again, pass your request to a qualified specialist.
Service is what customers think about it. And yes, the task is to constantly figure out what they think.
All requests that come to us automatically turn into a picture of calls:
The numbers on the cards are the number of requests received, multiplied by 20. That is, we believe that there are 20 more users for each who applied with the same request, but did not write us a ticket. Probably, our factor is even small, in the book mentioned earlier, the options from 50 to 2000 are offered. The most important thing here is to multiply, this leads to the correct feelings regarding even minor bugs. The board begins to visually demonstrate the reality in which there are many users with requests and requirements.
Some powerful conclusions from the experiments and observations of the pattern of calls for several years in different companies:
There is no other way to grow than word of mouth. Advertising, PR, newsletters, promotions - all this can slightly raise, but does not provide growth.
From the very beginning, for the company, the traffic is needed only to understand whether the customer is satisfied in such a way that he tells the product to others.
A strong positive experience is told to five potential users in one month, a strong negative one twice as often and twice as long. Not a very simple statement: what is a strong positive experience? Why in just a month? Is the rule the same for all types of goods?
There is no exact simple formula describing all cases, but the general principle always works. You can choose any formula, accept as an axiom and do not forget.
They say when the resulting higher expectations. They say it is necessary, it is the instinct of struggle for a place in the hierarchy. The one who told about something useful, gets respect. In a completely wild nature, a wolf, which had raised a cow, leads the pack to the victim (Jack London. Using this, they tried to catch the entire pack).
The higher the feeling of winning customers, the more will result. Do not promise too much or give more than promised and virality will be. Even in a difficult busy market, if you just slightly exceed expectations, customers will grow in number.
Most marketing departments are guided by short-term objectives - to increase revenue by 10% in six months. Nobody thinks that if you slightly offend a user, for example, with obsession, then they will talk about this company much less often. At the very beginning of life, a company simply cannot afford it - it will be too sensitive to offend the first hundred customers.
The strangest thing about marketing methods is sms mailing about promotions in their customer base. No big research is needed to understand that this is a failure method. It is enough to ask others if they like at least some kind of advertising coming from companies via SMS. Among my acquaintances, 9 out of 10 simply hate such messages. 1 out of 10 he regularly sends and found it difficult to answer.
Everything is simple - the opportunity to appeal should be available from anywhere. We now have two channels of calls, this is not enough, we will definitely increase the ways of communication.
The first is the button in the lower left corner of the system:
collects 85% of hits.
Second in the mobile app:
collects 15% of hits.
It is enough to shake the phone (from irritation and inconvenience) and the form for creating a ticket comes out. It works well - the method of invoking feedback in the application itself exceeds the user's expectation. About this little thing they tell.
What really matters in this matter is who processes and analyzes requests and how.
An important part of the service is direct user interaction. There is a separate book on this subject - “Moments of truth. There are no trifles in the service. ” Jan Carlzon . If you try to put 300 pages in one paragraph, you get: Direct interaction is the most important point, but in order to solve problems on the first line, you will have to restructure the entire company and dismiss half of the middle managers.
In my opinion, there are only two important things for the perfect closure of the question of direct interaction:
Empathy for people is when a person wants to help without any additional motivation. Check it out easily enough on an interview and, if you make a mistake when hiring, you should quickly say goodbye. Trying to teach someone to relate to the client is a bad thing. Support may be ideally aware of technical issues, but simply not in love with people and this negates the company's efforts. While the team is small, it feels very bright.
Empathy is often confused with politeness. All greetings, thanks, apologies, etc., with this rather have to fight. Often they try to replace the answer with essentially senseless politeness. With the authority to solve problems and dispose of the budget for the shoals, the level of politeness will always be correct and natural.
The first line should be able to resolve issues immediately. Persons interacting with customers must have full authority. If this does not happen, then the client interacts with the helpless employee and feels the helpless company. Simply forming a ticket and politeness lubricating professionals should not be.
Organizing this part is much harder than telling and complexity increases dramatically with the growth of the company. Now YouGile is a small company, about 200 tickets a month, we support ourselves without hiring a person separately. The greatest enthusiasm among users is that their question is solved on the first line. We, of course, have the authority to tell about plans to release new features, catch the bug and fix it quickly. As soon as there are 500 tickets, the real struggle will begin to save the service.
The shoal budget is a method that is easy to implement, it lives for a long time, is supported by the team effortlessly, brings the cheapest leads, has no minuses - a real grail!
When something bad happens to a customer, all his expectations come down to normal . This is the most convenient moment for the excellence of expectations. We need a small additional resource for such cases. These expenses are many times more effective than advertising.
Our last case:
There was a gap somewhere in companies where more than 30 people actively use the system, it became very difficult to slow down when switching between projects. Ticket tickets arrived from three companies in the first hour. The position from the users was peaceful, that the pier began to slow down, it would be good to correct, to return as it was.
We paused in the current sprint, corrected, released an update and after 2 hours wrote that everything works faster than before. From a startup, no one expects such quick actions to solve a problem.
We worked 2 hours more, and each of the companies wrote a letter of thanks and became even more a fan.
Each complaint, in which there is an understanding that we have done worse than promised, is solved with an emphasis on doing a little more than just getting back to normal. Even if you send t-shirts or cups after small drops to those who noticed, it is more profitable than spending the same 300 rubles in Direct.
Service is difficult to count. The definition of the service itself is not specific and, trying to formulate more precisely, inevitably something is lost. Complaints do not come from all users and not on all issues. Requests from the market are constantly changing. Attitudes towards the product in general can affect the incorrect behavior of the head in the social. networks.
There is no method of calculation without flaws, but there is a set of practices.
If users get more than expected, there should be natural growth and this is easily seen on the charts. If it does not grow, this issue is not solved by advertising, something is broken either in the product or in relations with customers.
The frequency of returns to the product should not fall ( excellent video about the Retention Rate ). This indicator is easy to measure and it reflects well the level of satisfaction and willingness to reuse.
Count the number of complaints, requests, requests, thanks. The knowledge of these numbers in itself influences the decisions made.
In YouGile in August came to us:
There is still an excellent customer survey: How many friends have you told about our product? And the answer options with transcripts. ( sample survey)
This question is answered willingly and it gives a real picture of the relationship to the company. Even with a good product there will be many zeros.
For comparison: the question “Are you ready to recommend us?” Gives much less information, even worse “Do you like our product?” Or really bad “Rate our product from 0 to 10”
Our schedule for August:
PS Our startup news:
Having released the boxed version , we made the first sale to a really large client and sat down for a month in the company's office. Requests will fly directly from all employees and we will lead a separate board. If the client remains unhappy, we will definitely feel it.
The most undervalued, on which each company can earn - is the Service. Twice you can increase the turnover, but you have to be honest to the end. Sly with all the time all the same will not work.
A fresh story where the client feels like he’d been a fool:
I ordered three boxes of mineral water.
Wrong and brought three bottles instead of three boxes.
They threw up their hands, took away three bottles, said that something went wrong in the warehouse.
No action from the store.
Called in support. They were surprised, laughed, informed that they had compiled the request, the specialist would study and make a decision.
A day later I received a letter with apologies and a discount of 100 rubles. on the next order.
Posted in reply “Can you deliver my order to me?”
No reactions.
')
And the service economy works like this:
I ordered three boxes of mineral water.
Wrong and brought three bottles.
Sorry. And two hours later, they brought four boxes. One gave.
Make orders here has become more common.
During one month he told the story of five more acquaintances, three tried, one became a client.
They spent less than 600 rubles on me, for the year they earned from 30,000 rubles.
We are a startup that makes a project management system . The market is very difficult, a lot of things have already been done before us. However, this is not our first company and the current experience says that you need to work where there is a market and closely follow what customers think and feel.
In this article, several key approaches to the service in the development of software. Everyone’s experience came to us very dearly. The most expensive is the second after kata.
Service definition
Service is what your customers think about it.
This very, not very specific definition is given in the book “First-class service as a competitive advantage ”. It turns out that if the client believes that the packaging of the goods is not convenient, despite the fact that he likes the product, it is directly related to the Service.
Personally, some time ago I wanted to argue with this definition and give, for example, such - these are all the points of contact between an employee and a client, to equate service to service. In this embodiment, it is much easier to build the work of the support department and assume that the service is at its best. With a specific definition, it is easy to build an exact process.
However, this does not work, we tried, then reworked. It leads to a separate work of the support department, which absolutely cannot solve the problems of clients and falls asleep complaints by senseless politeness. This sin almost all major networks. It seems that the staff on the first lines can only say: thank you, please, we are very pleased, we are very sorry, come to us again, pass your request to a qualified specialist.
Service is what customers think about it. And yes, the task is to constantly figure out what they think.
What do users think, the pattern of appeals
All requests that come to us automatically turn into a picture of calls:
The numbers on the cards are the number of requests received, multiplied by 20. That is, we believe that there are 20 more users for each who applied with the same request, but did not write us a ticket. Probably, our factor is even small, in the book mentioned earlier, the options from 50 to 2000 are offered. The most important thing here is to multiply, this leads to the correct feelings regarding even minor bugs. The board begins to visually demonstrate the reality in which there are many users with requests and requirements.
Some powerful conclusions from the experiments and observations of the pattern of calls for several years in different companies:
- Without honest drawing up a picture of requests, guesses about what users want will be wrong, and mistakes will be total.
- The worst thing is if the product develops the opinion of one “authoritative” leader.
- If the month does not look for appeals, you can guaranteed to find something strange or surprising. Requests change and come in waves.
- The picture of appeals is for everyone. It is necessary to show, tell, arrange a discussion around requests.
- You should not separate requests that you can not get through and about bugs in the application. This is all the Service, which the user perceives as one picture. We do software, but we work on the service model, this is SaaS.
How virality works. Service Economy
There is no other way to grow than word of mouth. Advertising, PR, newsletters, promotions - all this can slightly raise, but does not provide growth.
From the very beginning, for the company, the traffic is needed only to understand whether the customer is satisfied in such a way that he tells the product to others.
A strong positive experience is told to five potential users in one month, a strong negative one twice as often and twice as long. Not a very simple statement: what is a strong positive experience? Why in just a month? Is the rule the same for all types of goods?
There is no exact simple formula describing all cases, but the general principle always works. You can choose any formula, accept as an axiom and do not forget.
They say when the resulting higher expectations. They say it is necessary, it is the instinct of struggle for a place in the hierarchy. The one who told about something useful, gets respect. In a completely wild nature, a wolf, which had raised a cow, leads the pack to the victim (Jack London. Using this, they tried to catch the entire pack).
The higher the feeling of winning customers, the more will result. Do not promise too much or give more than promised and virality will be. Even in a difficult busy market, if you just slightly exceed expectations, customers will grow in number.
Most marketing departments are guided by short-term objectives - to increase revenue by 10% in six months. Nobody thinks that if you slightly offend a user, for example, with obsession, then they will talk about this company much less often. At the very beginning of life, a company simply cannot afford it - it will be too sensitive to offend the first hundred customers.
The strangest thing about marketing methods is sms mailing about promotions in their customer base. No big research is needed to understand that this is a failure method. It is enough to ask others if they like at least some kind of advertising coming from companies via SMS. Among my acquaintances, 9 out of 10 simply hate such messages. 1 out of 10 he regularly sends and found it difficult to answer.
Collection of complaints
Everything is simple - the opportunity to appeal should be available from anywhere. We now have two channels of calls, this is not enough, we will definitely increase the ways of communication.
The first is the button in the lower left corner of the system:
collects 85% of hits.
Second in the mobile app:
collects 15% of hits.
It is enough to shake the phone (from irritation and inconvenience) and the form for creating a ticket comes out. It works well - the method of invoking feedback in the application itself exceeds the user's expectation. About this little thing they tell.
What really matters in this matter is who processes and analyzes requests and how.
Empathy Employee Search
An important part of the service is direct user interaction. There is a separate book on this subject - “Moments of truth. There are no trifles in the service. ” Jan Carlzon . If you try to put 300 pages in one paragraph, you get: Direct interaction is the most important point, but in order to solve problems on the first line, you will have to restructure the entire company and dismiss half of the middle managers.
In my opinion, there are only two important things for the perfect closure of the question of direct interaction:
- Search for employees with empathy for people
- The first line should resolve issues immediately.
Empathy for people is when a person wants to help without any additional motivation. Check it out easily enough on an interview and, if you make a mistake when hiring, you should quickly say goodbye. Trying to teach someone to relate to the client is a bad thing. Support may be ideally aware of technical issues, but simply not in love with people and this negates the company's efforts. While the team is small, it feels very bright.
Empathy is often confused with politeness. All greetings, thanks, apologies, etc., with this rather have to fight. Often they try to replace the answer with essentially senseless politeness. With the authority to solve problems and dispose of the budget for the shoals, the level of politeness will always be correct and natural.
The first line should be able to resolve issues immediately. Persons interacting with customers must have full authority. If this does not happen, then the client interacts with the helpless employee and feels the helpless company. Simply forming a ticket and politeness lubricating professionals should not be.
Organizing this part is much harder than telling and complexity increases dramatically with the growth of the company. Now YouGile is a small company, about 200 tickets a month, we support ourselves without hiring a person separately. The greatest enthusiasm among users is that their question is solved on the first line. We, of course, have the authority to tell about plans to release new features, catch the bug and fix it quickly. As soon as there are 500 tickets, the real struggle will begin to save the service.
Shoal budget
The shoal budget is a method that is easy to implement, it lives for a long time, is supported by the team effortlessly, brings the cheapest leads, has no minuses - a real grail!
When something bad happens to a customer, all his expectations come down to normal . This is the most convenient moment for the excellence of expectations. We need a small additional resource for such cases. These expenses are many times more effective than advertising.
Our last case:
There was a gap somewhere in companies where more than 30 people actively use the system, it became very difficult to slow down when switching between projects. Ticket tickets arrived from three companies in the first hour. The position from the users was peaceful, that the pier began to slow down, it would be good to correct, to return as it was.
We paused in the current sprint, corrected, released an update and after 2 hours wrote that everything works faster than before. From a startup, no one expects such quick actions to solve a problem.
We worked 2 hours more, and each of the companies wrote a letter of thanks and became even more a fan.
Each complaint, in which there is an understanding that we have done worse than promised, is solved with an emphasis on doing a little more than just getting back to normal. Even if you send t-shirts or cups after small drops to those who noticed, it is more profitable than spending the same 300 rubles in Direct.
How to count service indicators
Service is difficult to count. The definition of the service itself is not specific and, trying to formulate more precisely, inevitably something is lost. Complaints do not come from all users and not on all issues. Requests from the market are constantly changing. Attitudes towards the product in general can affect the incorrect behavior of the head in the social. networks.
There is no method of calculation without flaws, but there is a set of practices.
If users get more than expected, there should be natural growth and this is easily seen on the charts. If it does not grow, this issue is not solved by advertising, something is broken either in the product or in relations with customers.
The frequency of returns to the product should not fall ( excellent video about the Retention Rate ). This indicator is easy to measure and it reflects well the level of satisfaction and willingness to reuse.
Count the number of complaints, requests, requests, thanks. The knowledge of these numbers in itself influences the decisions made.
In YouGile in August came to us:
- 6 complaints, tickets in which it is explicitly stated that we did not meet the expectations
- 23 thanks, in which it is clearly stated that we have exceeded expectations
- 117 neutral requests
There is still an excellent customer survey: How many friends have you told about our product? And the answer options with transcripts. ( sample survey)
This question is answered willingly and it gives a real picture of the relationship to the company. Even with a good product there will be many zeros.
For comparison: the question “Are you ready to recommend us?” Gives much less information, even worse “Do you like our product?” Or really bad “Rate our product from 0 to 10”
Our schedule for August:
Memo in conclusion
- Service is the main cause of virality. The client should like it.
- Pride, wrong priorities, focus on short-term benefits, lack of understanding of the realities of the service economy are the main reasons for the lack of attention to Service.
- Keep a picture of appeals and discuss strategies around it.
- Breaking away from customers is dangerous, 10 closed tickets are returned to the earth per week.
- Allocate in the budget budget shoals. If it is not there, it’s really impossible to solve problems.
- Make a board with query statistics open and discuss priorities with customers.
- Flatten the structure and give all the resources and powers to the first line. There will be additional costs, but there will also be stories with incredible service around our company.
PS Our startup news:
Having released the boxed version , we made the first sale to a really large client and sat down for a month in the company's office. Requests will fly directly from all employees and we will lead a separate board. If the client remains unhappy, we will definitely feel it.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/337634/
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