Today the customer support team team knocked it out of the park- zero frowns in the past 250 customer ratings!
Seen byMichaelon April 25 2011. There are15 comments.
Peter25 Apr 11
What happened to “Monday’s can be a challenge…”? that was at the beginning of this post title. You know Safari caches RSS feeds so now everyone who subscribes in Safari sees the previous title before the ‘revised’ title.
I think it looks worse to show that you changed your mind about including “Monday’s can be a challenge…” than just leaving it in there.
It wasn’t so bad to admit Monday’s can be a challenge. But now it looks worse because we can all see you’d rather hide that Monday’s can be a challenge.
Kevin25 Apr 11
How does that make anything worse? Whether or not they want to say that Mondays are a challenge isn’t the point. They’re acknowledging that their support team is doing a great job and that they’re making customers happy. That’s what’s really important.
David Andersen26 Apr 11
@Peter – get in touch with your inner chill.
Matthew Sedlacek26 Apr 11
Haha I second David..
Bill B26 Apr 11
I wouldn’t call it “hiding” anything, I think it’s probably more of a “Let’s rephrase that to reflect what we mean.”
It’s already difficult, despite making links obvious at the bottom of emails, to get 100% response rate for this sort of interaction. If you look at Noah’s post regarding Smiley, he says that 30% is “quite high for a completely optional survey”.
That would mean that out of somewhere between 800 and 1000 support interactions, 250 consecutive customers took the time to indicate that they thought the process was ‘great!’ or ‘ok’. That’s 250 customers out of whatever requests piled up over the weekend, PLUS those that came in once the workweek started today—and yet, they still managed 250 customers in a row that weren’t unhappy enough to indicate otherwise.
It’s still Monday, though. They have the rest of the week to net a longer string of non-frown responses. :)
Robert26 Apr 11
When are you guys going to offer Smiley as a service? I want!
Anonymous Coward26 Apr 11
Ratings can be very deceiving. Either your support team got better at solving customers’ problems, or it got better at getting people not to give them frowns.
I suppose every methodology has its flaws. Currently you’re crowdsourcing your customer service evaluation. There are some obvious drawbacks to this method, but it’s really cheap and may be accurate.
Nathan Torrence26 Apr 11
Peter just broke the story of the century! Busted 37signals!(sarcasm)
melvin26 Apr 11
Jason gets the Cadillac Eldorado. Merissa, a set of steak knives. The rest of you, fired.
Just jokes – I wish I had support staff with customer ratings like that. Sure no, system of rating is perfect (what an epiphany!) but in the aggregate, it’s hard to hide systemic issues. Kudos to your team!
MB26 Apr 11
Peter, I tweaked the post after it went live because the “Mondays are a challenge” thing wasn’t the real point here. Being frown free is a great success for our team on any day of the week. We’re certainly not trying to hide that Mondays can be a challenge. Due to the carryover of email from the weekend, they can require more effort than other days. I imagine it’s something that many support teams face.
Michael26 Apr 11
Now I want to make a frivolous request just to break that chain. Red is my favorite color!
Jenny Zhang26 Apr 11
Sorry for asking a stupid question (I’m not an IT person, so I guess I am allowed): How and where was the smiley picture created? It’s such a vivid way of knowing your customer’s overall feeling. I wonder is it an open-source thing that any website can incorporate? Thanks! -Jenny
Peter26 Apr 11
Oh well. Shoot me for being a cynic.
It just looked that way in my RSS feed. I assumed the worst motive for not saying ‘Monday’s are a challenge’ but accept totally that you tweaked it not to hide it but to better describe/promote the subject of the article.
By not removing my comment on the post it’s absolutely clear you didn’t want to hide anything.
Kudos to 37signals. I would take back the accusation if I could – but then if I did would it ever have been cleared up the intention in removing “Monday’s are a challenge.”?
Or maybe it would never have been an issue.
Returning to my cave…
munt26 Apr 11
I don’t know about you, but is sounded like Peter had ….
Seen by Michael on April 25 2011. There are 15 comments.
Peter 25 Apr 11
What happened to “Monday’s can be a challenge…”? that was at the beginning of this post title. You know Safari caches RSS feeds so now everyone who subscribes in Safari sees the previous title before the ‘revised’ title.
I think it looks worse to show that you changed your mind about including “Monday’s can be a challenge…” than just leaving it in there.
It wasn’t so bad to admit Monday’s can be a challenge. But now it looks worse because we can all see you’d rather hide that Monday’s can be a challenge.
Kevin 25 Apr 11
How does that make anything worse? Whether or not they want to say that Mondays are a challenge isn’t the point. They’re acknowledging that their support team is doing a great job and that they’re making customers happy. That’s what’s really important.
David Andersen 26 Apr 11
@Peter – get in touch with your inner chill.
Matthew Sedlacek 26 Apr 11
Haha I second David..
Bill B 26 Apr 11
I wouldn’t call it “hiding” anything, I think it’s probably more of a “Let’s rephrase that to reflect what we mean.”
It’s already difficult, despite making links obvious at the bottom of emails, to get 100% response rate for this sort of interaction. If you look at Noah’s post regarding Smiley, he says that 30% is “quite high for a completely optional survey”.
That would mean that out of somewhere between 800 and 1000 support interactions, 250 consecutive customers took the time to indicate that they thought the process was ‘great!’ or ‘ok’. That’s 250 customers out of whatever requests piled up over the weekend, PLUS those that came in once the workweek started today—and yet, they still managed 250 customers in a row that weren’t unhappy enough to indicate otherwise.
It’s still Monday, though. They have the rest of the week to net a longer string of non-frown responses. :)
Robert 26 Apr 11
When are you guys going to offer Smiley as a service? I want!
Anonymous Coward 26 Apr 11
Ratings can be very deceiving. Either your support team got better at solving customers’ problems, or it got better at getting people not to give them frowns.
I suppose every methodology has its flaws. Currently you’re crowdsourcing your customer service evaluation. There are some obvious drawbacks to this method, but it’s really cheap and may be accurate.
Nathan Torrence 26 Apr 11
Peter just broke the story of the century! Busted 37signals!(sarcasm)
melvin 26 Apr 11
Jason gets the Cadillac Eldorado. Merissa, a set of steak knives. The rest of you, fired.
Just jokes – I wish I had support staff with customer ratings like that. Sure no, system of rating is perfect (what an epiphany!) but in the aggregate, it’s hard to hide systemic issues. Kudos to your team!
MB 26 Apr 11
Peter, I tweaked the post after it went live because the “Mondays are a challenge” thing wasn’t the real point here. Being frown free is a great success for our team on any day of the week. We’re certainly not trying to hide that Mondays can be a challenge. Due to the carryover of email from the weekend, they can require more effort than other days. I imagine it’s something that many support teams face.
Michael 26 Apr 11
Now I want to make a frivolous request just to break that chain. Red is my favorite color!
Jenny Zhang 26 Apr 11
Sorry for asking a stupid question (I’m not an IT person, so I guess I am allowed): How and where was the smiley picture created? It’s such a vivid way of knowing your customer’s overall feeling. I wonder is it an open-source thing that any website can incorporate? Thanks! -Jenny
Peter 26 Apr 11
Oh well. Shoot me for being a cynic.
It just looked that way in my RSS feed. I assumed the worst motive for not saying ‘Monday’s are a challenge’ but accept totally that you tweaked it not to hide it but to better describe/promote the subject of the article.
By not removing my comment on the post it’s absolutely clear you didn’t want to hide anything.
Kudos to 37signals. I would take back the accusation if I could – but then if I did would it ever have been cleared up the intention in removing “Monday’s are a challenge.”?
Or maybe it would never have been an issue.
Returning to my cave…
munt 26 Apr 11
I don’t know about you, but is sounded like Peter had ….
::puts on glasse::
A case of the Mondays
YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH !!!!!!!!!!
Rich 27 Apr 11
Could you implement a similar system for Answers?
This discussion is closed.