Aiding Tough Customer Conversations

There will inevitably be some customer facing problems where there will be delays in development, or the issue will be rejected as a fix. As a part of the Tier 3 team it is important to give the customer support (Tier 1 / 2) teams the right kind of information to allow them to effectively explain to customers the reasoning behind the decisions being made. They are the ones on the front lines having to explain to paying customers this bad news. The more information we give them about reasoning and timing this helps us to better soften the blow to customers when they get the bad news.

Providing customer support teams with timely factual reasoning behind delays or rejections on customer facing issues properly prepares them for the tough conversation ahead.

Causes

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When looking at why we need to give customers the bad news here are some things I have encountered in the past:

• Extended development times. Usually another crisis or development priority has taken precedence over the issue.

• Deprecated product. As new products are being developed, it can often mean maintenance of the older products is less or stopped all together.

• Not enough customers experiencing issue. What affects one customer and the way they do business or use the product could be a one-off unique case. Sometimes there are not enough customers experiencing an issue to get a fix prioritized.

• Not on product roadmap. Similar to above, unique uses of products or services does not always qualify for a change to the product as requested by a particular customer.

• Feature request backlog. Product managers usually maintain a backlog of feature requests which are not prioritized. If tickets end up here, it is important to say which bucket their request has landed in and set realistic expectations.

Talking Points

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To help customer care teams out with explaining these kind of issues as discussed above, here are some of the data points Tier 3 can be providing.

• Scope of the issue. Is the issue limited to the area the customer is complaining about or more widespread?

• How many customers impacted? Is this an isolated incident or are many other accounts experiencing the same issue?

• Product lifecycle status. Is this product actively being developed, or is it at the end of its life and being replaced?

• Bug or new feature? Is this a current feature which is not functional or looking more like a request for a new feature / use case to the product or service?

Timing

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Delays in responding to customers can only cause them to trust your service or product less. It is important to get back to them on these tough issues within your SLAs and continue to follow upon them if needed. Some timing items to consider:

• Initial response. Make sure and triage the issue and writeup your findings within the original SLA so customer care has this information available to use.

• Follow ups. Weekly updates allow for customer care to reach out to customers on their issues. If possible give customer care visibility into the ticket itself and associated development ticket so they can see the progress (or lack there of) on the issue and its progression through the development cycle.

• Tough conversation. Push to ensure a timely decision for yes / no on an issue once it has left Tier 3 and escalated to development. The faster you know the answer on how the issue will (not) be addressed, this lets the customer plan for their next steps without having to wait.

Think about incorporating these items into your triage process to ensure the customer experience, even when negative, is timely and accurate. SLAs on product triage will help to force the issue of a timely decision. Require information on rejection about the reasoning for rejection which walks product through all of these data points which need to be reviewed with the customer.