After Adam White’s test of of Rypple.com, I decided to try it myself. I soon ran into a fairly serious problem. I was able to try the service without registering, but when I tried to register, the system claimed I already was registered. Then when I tried to reset my password, it claimed I was not registered. Seemed like someone’s database tables were in a bunch.
(Oh well, quality is dead…)
But since I was so hard on WebGreeter about their creepy customer service technology. I thought I’d call Rypple’s toll free line and take my chances.
Aside: I hate calling tech support. I hate the stonewalling and being patronized by poorly trained anonymous dunderheads. Even if I were to lose most of my fingers in a data mining accident I could still count on one hand the good experiences I’ve had with tech support.
Anyway, I had a really good experience. After one ring, James Tam answered. That’s right no voicemail menu! I had tapped the man Tam himself!
The first thing I said was “I want to report a bug on your system.” I was expecting a defensive or brusque reply. Instead he asked me to tell him about it, and I did.
Well here’s the thing. He couldn’t solve my problem right away. He tried. I believe he’s working on it right now. But one thing he said struck me: “This looks like a problem on our side.”
Let me savor those words again…
This looks like a problem on our side.
Somebody taking responsibility?? How often do you hear that from a website support guy? Assuming you ever get to talk to one?
Look what happened. On paper, I had a bad quality experience. Yet I feel good about Rypple. Go Rypple.
Hello James,
I have to admit I almost called mr Tam also just to get this amazing experience also. I think this is a great example that good service is often cheaper then ignoring possible facts.
as far as I see there are some significant steps to be acknowledged:
1. There is a possibility of instant contact which are of no or less cost for the customer
2. The customer has the space to tell their story
3. The service provider is able to check instantly the story
4. The service provider gives the customer the feeling that it probably is not the customers fault
5. The provider gives information that it will not be solved immediately
The results are:
1. no discussion about who is wrong or right (saves time)
2. only the problem is spoken (less noise in conversation)
3. the service provider is capable and has room and time to check instantly (more visibility on the problem)
4. The customer is satisfied by letting him know he didn’t something wrong and it will be checked within time which gives the customer a good feeling and trust in the service provider.
This seems a bit how we testers most of the time are willing to work only we get often stuck in tooling like defect registration systems and we are spend too much time that certain issues are not registered correctly. I also saw in some projects that we testers were not allowed to talk to developers. Your example proofs that in some situations it is just good to communicate real-life instead of just using tools.
Thanks James for you enlightening report in this early morning.
James, I think you’re being slightly harsh on callcentre ‘dunderheads’.
Having spent my share of time in the call-centre salt mines providing technical support for dial-up connectivity to an ISP, your ire is slightly misdirected. You want to be railing against the people who knowingly hire people who are not up to par or who place incredibly unreasonable restrictions on how they are allowed to operate.
After a short time working there, I was running on autopilot. I could tell the speed and sometimes the brand of a modem by listening to it handshake and could build an init string for it that was as closely optimised to that brand as could be made. Didn’t matter though. If I couldn’t close out a call in 5 minutes I had to hang up on the caller and escalate it so they could be called back. Too bad if the problem was that the user was slow. We also had other fun restrictions like having to ask permission to go to the toilet. I was written up repeatedly for non-compliance. We were told ‘we never apologise – that might admit liability for something. Instead, we regret any inconvenience caused’.
You probably hate calling tech support because you are one of the very few who do call who are probably more technically au fait than the person on the other end. I dare you to spend a month in a call centre and not pick up the 1000-yard stare of the call centre veteran. After your 5th time of hearing ‘Why can’t I get any internets?’ or ‘that thingy with the picture of the world keeps spinning, but nothing else is happening – fix it’ or similar – you might be a little stressed. After the 50th time, you’ll want to cut out your own heart with a spoon.
I am not surprised at all that the default response of some is to patronisingly walk through a rote response. I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s understandable. I quite looked forward to calls such as the one you describe above. When something out of the ordinary happened it was a refreshing change. When I found myself looking for excuses to keep such people on the line, I realised it was time for a change of scenery.
The good call centre operators tend not to stay very long. They tend to value their sanity too highly. Good call centre operators tend to be very good troubleshooters – for those test managers out there feeling the hiring pinch – go raid your call centre team for their best and brightest 🙂
There is excellent tech support out there. When you find it, you should buy stock in that company – it is highly likely they care enough about their people – call back semi regularly though. Once the call quality drops – sell sell sell
Hey James B,
Thanks for the kind words, and moreover for bringing this issue to our attention. I’m happy to report that we’ve managed to resolve the underlying issue. Future users should have a much more delightful registration experience than yourself, so again thanks so much.
Here at Rypple, great customer service is one of our core values and commitments, because we’ve been on the other side of the phone ourselves.
http://blog.rypple.com/2009/01/29/customer-service-is-everyones-business/
Every member of our development and product teams is responsible for answering support calls. Even our co-CEOs get involved. After all, who better to take responsibility for the product experience and resolve issues than those building it? Plus, speaking to regular users keeps it “real”; we get to learn what users like, and when we’ve made errors that frustrate them. We think this leads to a much better service and user loyalty.
Thanks again…and we hope you enjoy Ryppling!
James T.
Isn’t is amazing how we remember the rare positive customer service experience? I had a good experience with tech support at Plaxo in the midst of total and complete tech support hell from comcast, so the good experience really stood out! Sometimes I wonder if I’m alone in wanting to reward businesses that do customer service well with continuing business. Surely if businesses realized a benefit from good customer service, they would try harder to provide a positive experience.
Of course, today we have countless examples of complete lack of common sense in the business world.
I worked in support what was first Generic Software and then later Autodesk Retail Products after they bought us out. I like to think I provided excellent experiences for all the users I had contact with.
But then we were not saddled with the idiotic restrictions described by Ben above.. We didn’t use scripts, we hired people with troubleshooting skills and we didn’t outsource or offshore. We reproduced and reported bugs when users found them, and worked to find them a workaround till development could get us a fix for the bugs. and we also solved a lot of problems that were not our own doing..
one of my most memorable users in fact was some poor guy who had problems with the application and his PC) crashing or hanging randomly.. I and others went over everything we could think of, we even helped devise a script that would exercise the system so he could take it to a repair shop and let it run till it crashed (it never did).. There was NO pattern, no rhyme or reason to when and where it hung, what he was doing, the time of day, NOTHING we could find.
Finally I said, it has to be something external, and I explained this to the customer and said.. try to pay attention to if anything is going on around you, or happens around you when the problem occurs. yeah we were despirate, but I really wanted to fix his problem, so I was willing to go well outside the box at that point.
I got a call back a few days later, “I found it” I noticed that every time it hung, the refridgerator had just turned on” he ran an extension chord and connected the system to an outlet on the other leg of his power, and the system was rock solid stable..
Did I make any money for my company solving his problem? hard to say, but odds are eventually ues. That man was a lifelong customer and promotor of our software to all he had contact with in his industry. Had I not solved his problem, I doubt that would be the case.
Unfortunately as a result of my experience, my standards are pretty dammed high when it comes to support, and far far too many of them parallel those described by James above. what is most frustrating is that given my skill levels, for me to call support means I’ve usually tried a large number of things already, and already done a lot of basic troubshooting.. and yet even if you open the call telling them all the things you’ve tried, some of these nimrods insist on following their script, 90% of which consists of having you repeat the very things you’ve just done… DESPITE you telling them you’ve done it before they ask you.. (duh if I’m lying, I’m also psychic, dude PLEASE believe me when I say I’ve done that already).. it is SOOO frustrating to spend 20 minutes of your life you won’t get back going through the stuff just to satisfy their requirement to walk you through their script.
EVEN worse is when you plainly give them information that would tell them that the problem CANNOT be the things they are having you try, IF they only understood the technology.. Such as telling them that you can ping some place on the net and get a response, and they want you to replace your network cable.. Or that you’ve tried something from 4 pc’s on your network but they insist on having you reboot YOUR machine…
in my list of ‘what is worst in life’ surely dealing with a support person who either has zero troubleshooting skills, or is not allowed to use them and deviate from a script, is near the top of the list.
[James’ Reply: Wow! Great story!]