A Plea for Companies to Provide Support via Text | Hacker News Reader

A Plea for Companies to Provide Support via Text

medium.com

17 pointsnewy9 comments

A counter-plea from someone in Software Support to never implement something as haphazard as SMS-based support: We have more than enough trouble already getting people to tell us exactly what their problem is when they have the expectation that they must send us a communication with a clear subject and body (not that this stops the random e-mails with no body and a subject of "HELP!"; or the e-mail that evidently went through five people in their company before going to us and contains "FW: FW: FW: FW: App Crash" in the subject line). Do you really think the kind of support we can provide will improve if the expectation is that the user is going to provide as little information as possible? Here's how I expect such an exchange would look:

User [1:51 PM]: help plz

CSR (Customer Support Representative) [1:51 PM]: Hi there! Thank-you for contacting support. What can I do for you?

User [1:52 PM]: my app isnot working

CSR [1:52 PM]: I am very sorry to hear that! I don't believe we have this number on file. Can you please tell me your name ?

User [1:54 PM]: john

CSR [1:55 PM]: Hi, John! I am afraid that won't be quite enough on its own. May I please have your full name?

User [1:55 PM]: john smith

CSR [1:56 PM]: Thank-you, Mr. Smith. Now which app in particular may I assist you with?

User [2:05 PM]: ThatBusinessApp

CSR [2:06 PM]: I see. You are having a problem with ThatBusinessApp. May I ask on what platform you are using this app?

[Time elapses]

CSR [2:36 PM]: Mr. Smith? Please tell me which platform are you currently running this app on?

User [2:40]: whats a platform

CSR [2:42 PM]: How are you running this app? On your PC? On a tablet? On your iPhone?

User [2:45 PM]: tablet

CSR [2:46 PM]: I see! And would this be an Android tablet or an iPad?

User [2:50 PM]: at&t tablet

CSR [2:52]: So you got the tablet from AT&T. Do you happen to know what operating system the tablet runs?

User [3:00 PM]: no i dont f_cking kno what os it runs. i already said i got it from at&t. your sh_tty app is broken and its been a goddman hour and u still haev no idea (1/2)

User [3:01 PM]: wat the problem is? this service is terrible and above all else u cost me money by wasting all my txts 4 the month! (2/2)

Cheap shot.

I could describe countless communications where the supposed tech-warrior-wizard didn't record accurate notes, didn't listen properly, didn't respond and ... later, this all conspired to ensure that they didn't know what the hell they were talking about.

And don't get me on the customer services staff ... I name no names ... (VODAFONE have completely dropped the customer services ball. It's a disservice).

I actually disagree with the article (from my experience). It's not the communication platforms that are to blame, it's the rigidity of processes and the imprisoning of staff within those processes that are to blame.

I feel sorry for staff and despise the people who design such customer service architecture (at least any I have encountered).

We do a substantial amount of support at ExpeditedSSL [1] via email for precisely the reasons the author mentions.

It's asynchronous but lets you respond quickly and for startups will likely be sufficiently organized to keep things moving without a full blown helpdesk application.

Secondly, it lets you be extremely precise and copy & paste friendly in a way that phone calls can't match. Ex: we often have to help people set their DNS entries and it's much easier to email someone the following than explain it.

    Please set your www CNAME to fugu-1111.herokussl.com

Email is in fact so predominant as a support tool that you can actually go quite far with managing support requests in your email client before you need a dedicated support app/service. Modern email clients that nicely group emails into threads are more than adequate to get started.

1 - https://www.expeditedssl.com/pages/how-we-grew-our-startup-b...

Not SMS, but I work on a call-center-over-IM product. Our customers usually end up relegating their phone systems to a second or third-choice option once it is rolled out and they get their staff trained. Some advantages they cite:

1.) There's no accents in text. Especially for outsourced call-centers and helpdesks, communication through text eliminates a lot of the difficulty in variations in spoken language.

2.) Higher through-put. It's just about impossible to service two phone calls at the same time. It's not nearly as hard to switch between two or three IM conversations.

3.) With enterprise IM platforms, you've got capabilities to step up into a phone call, transfer files and screenshots, do a screen-share, and other things you just can't do with just phone.

4.) Integrating with ticketing systems, customer tracking systems, whatever, is easier, since you can pretty easily look up the incoming requester by their IM username or email, and present that information to the agent servicing the request.

About the only downside is that, developing, you're often dealing with limited APIs, half-baked, incomplete and even downright incorrect documentation, and weird, little-known platform limitations.

It'll happen soon enough. The post millennial generation lives and dies by SMS. Another (imho) neat thing to happen alongside this will be 911/999 service via SMS.

Actually I think I sent maybe 4 texts last month. That's been entirely subsumed by Facebook messenger and whatsapp.

I work for a law firm. We have this in place, and people use it to schedule meetings, or ask a call back, or even detailed questions.

I've been using Sonar [1] to provide customer support for my clothing brand via text for about 9 months now, and customers have loved it. Interactions are much quicker than email, so it's great for us as well.

1 - https://www.sendsonar.com/

We need a plea for companies to provide support at all. Google still lacks any meaningful support for many services (AdSense, Google Play, etc)

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