Just having a great product is not enough. Many people forget that exceptional customer support is one of the most important parts of an organization’s ongoing success.
Why? It’s most often the only contact a customer has with your company. Receiving the help they need (while interacting with awesome people) encourages customers to stick around. Further, it reinforces the lifetime value of your products and increases customer loyalty.
Why does it matter?
We’ve had continuous, award-winning growth over the past 10 years.That’s because we love to delight our customers with excellent products and exceptional support.
We hold ourselves accountable with a running tab of how our customers rate our support for SCORM Cloud and SCORM Engine. All 2517 tickets that have been opened this year are followed up with a satisfaction survey that is posted around the office and on the website. That’s why we get really excited when the Delight-o-Meter has 100 smiling Jenas in a row:
What qualifies as exceptional?
We looked at the global benchmark analytics from Zendesk, the help desk tool we use. The average global satisfaction rate for all Zendesk users is 83 percent. But, average is not exceptional, so we try to shoot higher.
Here’s a quick look at where we stack up next to the industries in which we operate:
So how do we keep our numbers close to 100 percent?
1. Giving the right help:
We shoot to give customers the best answer, not just the fastest one. And when we can’t help them, at the very least, we provide a path forward.
2. Being real:
“We’re two dudes in an office. You can call us on the phone, you can see our photos on the website—you can find us. We’re accessible and we want to help. People often call us and are surprised: ‘Oh, there really is a Joe?’” –Ryan Donnelly, half of the Donnelly Support Team
It’s okay to want people to like you
A previous boss used to tell me “people don’t have to like you, as long as they respect you.” Good advice. But wouldn’t you rather have customers who respect AND like your company? A delighted customer is a heck of a lot easier to work with than one who hates your guts. So why not shoot for both?
Continue to celebrate in the delight of your customers—it pays off.
