Don’t underestimate good customer service. I am always on the phone with Tubu.net, my hosting tech support, a lot. As someone who “does” customer service for a day job, I get it from both sides of the coin.
A little bit ago, I had a stupid problem, but it seemed like a not-stupid problem. I was trying to upload pictures to WordPress and it wouldn’t let me. It kept saying that the file wasn’t permitted for security reasons and I’m all like, “What’s such a security threat? It’s just a picture of my outfit.”
I thought it was because I updated my theme. The last time I added a new theme, WordPress freaked out. I was panicked, so I called Tubu support and had such a great experience last time that I figured I would call again sooner this time.
Let’s be honest, I’d just try to keep doing the same thing over and over expecting it to work. I guess I’m growing up when I recognize that I can’t fix this one myself.
Here’s the crazy thing: I talked to the same guy I talked to last time. It’s been a few months, sure, so it wasn’t an immediate recognition on his end, but it was the same guy as before.
It was so reassuring that I 1) was talking to someone in America who I could understand and 2) had a positive experience with this person in the past.
It ended up being a really stupid-easy fix. We tried using Chrome, removing spaces from my file name, he did some tech voodoo over in Back-end Webroot PHP-land…nada. Turns out my genius self didn’t end the file in .jpg.
That makes a difference, folks.
But kudos to Rick who was probably sitting there going, “Wow, lady, that’s the first thing I would have checked.” I know he was thinking that because most of the time I’m sitting at work thinking, “Did you really just call me when you couldn’t post to Facebook but you didn’t check to see if you were still connected to Facebook first?”
Side note: can we strike “please advise” from all emails?
It’s so rewarding when people are genuinely excited and thankful for your help that it eases the sting that you just took 30 minutes to explain how to highlight text and change the font size. Or, in Rick’s case, to figure out that I needed the file extension.
He was laughing along at with me, making conversation while we waited, and just made the overall experience really pleasant.
Sometimes you just need that little reminder that there’s always someone on the flip side. I try really hard to be nice to customer service reps because I’ve been in those shoes; I don’t want someone yelling at me, so I don’t yell at them.
Also, when you lose your cool, it’s a one-way ticket to I’m Going To Do As Little As Possible To Help You-sville.
Moral of today’s story: good customer service is imperative.
As a blogger, it’s important to think about what customer service means to you. It can be responding to comments, reading other blogs, retweeting content to support the blogger, making sure what you’re repinning isn’t just a weird spam link, etc.
You are a brand, whether you think so or not. How you conduct yourself matters and reflects back on you. Good customer/reader service deepens your brand image in a meaningful way.
Write down a code of conduct for how you’ll approach situations. What would you say if someone wanted you to write a review for free? (Here’s a great response!)
How will you approach others about writing a guest blog for them? (Here are three ways to be a good guest poster and here are some tips for inviting guest posters.)
Or do you have a time frame of when you can realistically respond to comments? Write it all down and stick to it.
This will contribute to a strong, positive image for your blog. Your readers will know what to expect and you’ll be happy knowing that you have a plan for responding graciously to all kinds of situations.
