Aphorisms 2
I’m reviving my Killing the Myth of Soft Skills conference talk (FullStorians, Friday at 2:30!), so I’m going to share some more aphorisms this week, following up to Aphorisms 1 from a few weeks ago.
Photo by Faye Cornish on Unsplash
“Blow the dust out of the connector”
This is a classic nugget of product support from Raymond Chen’s blog. Sometimes you know what the customer needs to do, but you need to phrase your instructions in a way that helps the customer save face.
Here’s the trick: Don’t ask “Are you sure it’s plugged in correctly?” If you do this, they will get all insulted and say indignantly, “Of course it is! Do I look like an idiot?” without actually checking. Instead, say “Okay, sometimes the connection gets a little dusty and the connection gets weak. Could you unplug the connector, blow into it to get the dust out, then plug it back in?”
“Delay and Destroy”
This is one from my Fog Creek days. We lean on it a bit less at FullStory because FullStory session replay provides so much additional context beyond what the customer typed in their email. That being said, it can still be useful. Imagine somebody writing in with the following:
How do custom variables work?
Custom variables are a rather technical area of the FullStory product because they require the use of the JavaScript API. You could imagine sending a lengthy email anticipating all of the different ways they expect to use custom variables, covering each and every nuance and making sure they’re set up for optimal success. This would be an extraordinarily high level of service, but it would also be quite costly (in terms of time) to provide that service.
“Delay and Destroy” is a technique you can use to slightly delay your highest level of service while you ask clarifying questions. When the customer’s response comes back, you destroy (positively speaking) their question with a high level response.
Custom variables are a powerful way to get your custom user data into FullStory. Our help documentation will give you a complete overview, but before jumping in, what brings you to asking how custom vars work?
Imagine getting this response:
I want to know how custom vars show up in the FullStory UI and how to search for them.
What if you had gotten into the technical details of how to use FS.setUserVars() in JavaScript? This wasn’t what the user asked and you would have wasted your time. Now that you know exactly what they’re asking, you can destroy the ticket with the exact answer to their question.
And some of the time, your simple “delay” response will actually give the customer exactly what they need, eliminating further back and forth over email.
“You are not my customer”
While we want to provide excellent service to everyone who writes in, sometimes the best way to care for a customer is to come to the realization that they’re not in fact our customer.
When I worked for Fog Creek, we had this product called Copilot that allowed you to do remote attended support. It was “help your grandmother with her computer” type of software that was ahead of its time when it was created in the mid 2000s.
We didn’t actively sell Copilot and it mostly supported itself, but we would get calls from time to time where someone might have a question about the product. I got this call one day that went something like this:
Him: “Hey, do you have a product that will let me control a computer when I’m not there?”
Me: “Well, yes, our Copilot product has a feature called OneClick that lets you…”
Him: “Yeah, listen, I’ve got this business that makes a good bit of money and mostly runs itself, but occasionally I need to log into my computer. I’m wondering if this is the type of product where I can, you know, move to the Bahamas and then dial into my computer from there, you know what I mean?”
Me: …
Him: “It’s just, I want to work with a company who has a number I can call if there’s a problem, because I’d hate to have to fly home from the Bahamas to fix a computer problem.”
Alarm bells started going off in my head. While the OneClick feature did allow you to log into a remote machine, our software wasn’t fully featured (it was essentially just a great UX that packaged up VNC) and we were priced so low that we certainly didn’t want to be on the hook for loads of support for someone running their business on a remote island in the Caribbean. With that in mind, I spent the last five minutes of the call convincing him that the product he really wanted was LogMeIn, which at that time was a fully featured log-into-my-computer-from-the-Bahamas sort of product. He was really happy with the recommendation, if not a bit surprised that I was recommending a competitor.
A bit of time passed, and he called back, speaking to our receptionist. When she asked him what product he was calling about, he said “LogMeIn”, to which she replied, “that’s not one of our products,” and hung up.
Now, I can’t recall if she hung up right away or after a bit of time had passed, but it was 1) hilarious and 2) clear that he was legit trying to get us to support his use of LogMeIn because he couldn’t get them on the phone and he wanted to speak to a human. And since we were the ones who recommended LogMeIn, could we help him? Of course not, he’s not our customer! Bullet dodged.
Most cases of “you are not my customer” aren’t as egregious as the above example, but you see it all the time in modern SaaS businesses. As we explored last week, there are times where it’s beneficial to “treat everyone like a customer”, but there are also times where it’s clarifying to know who your customers are and who they aren’t. That clarity helps you to preserve resources so you can continue to provide service to your actual customers.
Etc.
Things I’ve read:
“When your clueless boss wanders into the room, glances through your presentation and says “this is good but we need to talk about how we will address the problem of interstellar dragons,” you put in a bullet point like “also we will take all appropriate measures to address the problem of interstellar dragons” and hope no one asks you about it.” The stupid TikTok thing. sigh.
“…and then I heard the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on an old radio. He was talking about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. He said we are all complicit when we tolerate injustice. He said it is not enough to say it will get better by and by. He said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. ” Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation
And I’m still reading the Hamilton biography. I thought that partisan fighting was bad in modern times—well, it is—but reading about the bitter hatred between the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans is something else. Did you know that if you ran a Republican newspaper in 1799 and you spoke out against the Federalist Adams administration, you could be fined and thrown in jail for four months? Yes, this was in the United States of America and the First Amendment, which guaranteed freedom of the press, had been ratified in 1791. Unbelievable. (The Sedition Act of 1798 expired in 1801, but it wasn’t until New York Times Co. v. Sullivan in 1968 that the Supreme Court finally declared The Sedition Act of 1798 unconstitutional).