What I've Learned About Customer Support Agents

For my first time, I’ve been working as an On Call engineer this week. I’ve only done this for 2 days so far. Between my (minimal) interactions with them, seeing the issues and messages that customers sometimes send in, and my roommate who works as a support representative for another startup, I’ve learned a few things about customer support agents. Here are a few things to consider about the everyday job of a support representative. Hopefully it’ll make you think twice next time before being an entitled asshole when you write in about an issue.

They know the product much better than you do

If you are encountering an issue, even if you’ve been a power user for a really long time, your knowledge of the product is inferior (probably much more so) to their knowledge of the product. They know how to use the product, they know about almost all (if not all) of the intricate nuances and tips and tricks about the product. Lecturing them about the product is only going to antagonize them. It’s almost as if you were to write a book, with the content entirely created by yourself, and a fan was to come up to you and point out a typo in your book, and then proceed to lecture you on how the story should be slightly altered to fit a different purpose, or on how your writing style isn’t the best suited for the book. It’d make you angry, but because they are your customer, you would keep a smile on your face, acknowledge their comments, and once the interaction was over, completely forget all about what they said.

You aren’t the only customer

This is applicable in a few ways. Firstly, they have other customers with issues that they are in the process of helping, and there will always, without exception, be an issue more severe than yours. Don’t expect to receive their absolute unwavering attention. Acting as if you are the only customer helps nobody.

The other way this is applicable is in how you interact with the agent. Feel free to request a feature, or an improvement to the application but be aware that what may seem good to you, may not be:

• Feasible to implement (in terms of development)
• What other customers want
• A priority to the company

If you request a change in the application and an agent replies and indicates that your request has been denied for whatever reason (and they may not give you one), thank them for looking into it, and leave it at that. There are some exceptions, but in all likelyhood, if it’s an exception, they (the company) will have already thought about and discussed it. If the feature or change is that crucial to you, consider looking at alternative products.

Read their instructions twice

Instructions that support agents send are often fairly straightforward. They understand that you may not be familiar with a certain technology (which might be the product they are supporting or not) and are willing to work with you to help you resolve the issue. Read their instructions, look around the application, and then follow their instructions carefully and in order. Don’t ask them to do a certain thing in the application for you. The reason they are trying to teach you how to do it is because if they don’t teach you, you’ll be writing in soon enough with the same issue asking them to do the same thing for you again. One of the most frustrating things that a support agent encounters is a customer who is completely unwilling to learn how to use the application properly, and expects a support agent to be available at the ring of a bell to solve every problem they might have. If you want to be proactive and really help, then see if there is documentation for the application, and if so, read the relevant documentation on your issue and see if that solves your problem before you send in a support request.

They deal with asshole customers all the time

There are many dicks and assholes that write in with issues. And support agents deal with them everyday. Yet, everyday more and more write in. Most have accepted this as simply a part of the job. That doesn’t mean they like it. Those kinds of difficult customers are the ones that will often receive the least forthcoming help, and it will often be slower. If you have an issue, please keep in mind that it isn’t their fault that the application wasn’t working for some reason or another. By writing in and being courteous, and responsive you are much more likely to have an agent:

1. Answer you quickly, and with as much detail as they can
2. Go above and beyond with their service (maybe get you a discount, a refund, solve other issues, etc)
3. Be willing to help you in the future

Just like at a bar, if you aren’t going to be nice to the bartender, you aren’t going to get good service. On the other hand, by being nice even if the issue (for example, the bar is very busy) is a serious crippling issue for you, you’ll get quicker service, and they’ll be much more likely to come help you right away next time you show up. This doesn’t mean you should be a pushover, or let things fall by the wayside - if they stop responding feel free to ask again - but it does mean that being impatient, or difficult will only serve to make things worse.

They aren’t the one experiencing the issue

While you may be very frustrated about the problem you are encountering, and while (as mentioned above) they may know the product better than you, they aren’t the person to whom this problem presented itself. By writing a ticket with the contents ‘X isn’t working. Please fix it.’ you are giving nearly no information to the support agent. This means they need to spenda large amount of time looking through the application doing trial and error to figure out how the error happened. That’s like the equivalent of your car breaking down on the side of the road, calling the repair shop, and telling them ‘My car won’t start’ without telling them the make and model of your car, what happened to cause the car to not start, what you did before, and what you might have done after to try and troubleshoot. The repairman isn’t going to be able to get very far fixing your car. If you really want to make your life and their life easierl try to provide the following information:

1. The exact error message (if any) that you received when the issue happened
2. Whether you were able to cause the error to happen again or if it appears random and sporadic
   • And if you can cause the error to happen again, the steps you took to do so
3. Any input that you provided, or buttons that you clicked
4. The date and time that the error happened (approximate is fine)
5. What portion of the application the error happened in
6. Any screenshots that can show the issue

In the long run, it’ll save the support agent time because they won’t have to go digging for that information, and it will save time for the engineer who eventually goes to fix the issue because they’ll have an abundance of information to help them reproduce the issue and/or find any internal logs for the events leading up to and surrounding your issue.

They get many bad reviews, but very few good reviews

The nature of being a customer support representative is that in most cases, the people they deal with are unhappy or frustrated in one way or another before they even speak to them. On top of this, people (in general) are much more likely to make a comment, or leave a review if the service they receive is not good enough as opposed to when they receive good service. When you put these together, it results in a large disparity in the number of bad reviews compared with the number of good reviews. The worst part of all of this is that some companies grade their customer support agents on the comparison of the number of bad reviews to the number of good reviews. If you want to really make an impact on their day, once you’ve finished interacting with the support agent, leave a review if possible, and if not, ask to speak to their supervisor so that you can leave a positive review.

Have you worked or do you currently work as a customer support agent? If so, please leave a comment with any additional tips you may have.