Customer Service 2.0 - Episode #233 of CloudFocus Weekly

Machine transcript generated in 2026 from the episode audio (Whisper speech-to-text with automatic speaker separation). Speaker labels are automatic and may be wrong in places. Timestamps shown every few minutes.

00:10 Jason Atwood: This is the 233rd episode of CloudFocus Weekly for the second week of October 2015. This has episodes title customer service 2.0. CloudFocus Weekly brought to you by Clone This User. Go to an existing Salesforce user with a clickable button by the desktop, yes the desktop or in Salesforce One Mobile. Available for free, free, free on the AppExchange or go to www.CloneThisUser.com. I'm a host Jason Atwood and joining me co-host, 233 times in a row, head of customer service here at Arkus Incorporated. Justin, what am I the head of? C-H-R Edelstein. Customer service?

Justin Edelstein: I don't know. I guess, sort of. Not really. You're actually not.

Jason Atwood: We actually have someone else who runs it.

Justin Edelstein: I guess I used to be. You used, that's right,

Jason Atwood: Former head of customer service here at Arkus Incorporated. How you doing buddy?

Justin Edelstein: My voice is a little... Yeah, what happened? Yeah, you out yelling last night? I was out yelling and screaming last night. Yes, I know.

Jason Atwood: As was I, at the same thing. Or mostly at each other. But then at the sporting event that we were at. Which we'll not talk about, because it was just painful. Alright, but we do... We do have an agenda. We have another special episode that's been in the making. I think we are going to skip over the blog post for this week because that's nothing to do with what we're talking about. We are going to do a CloudFocus app pick of the week because that's fun. But we're going to talk about customer service. We did a podcast many, many, many, many moons ago, I think almost two years ago. Yes? It's been a while and camera call how long but cheers sounds about right we kind of talked about customer service We can't talk about good bad and ugly of customer service And it is it is one of my small passions,,, I it's not a huge passion But when I think a company does well with customer service...

Jason Atwood: I try to give them accolades, I and I That's all I have for you today. vocally through through social media and when they do poorly I try to give them the reverse of accolades which is to tell them that they're crappy and to see how they respond because you know, I think it's it's interesting we're gonna tie this into Salesforce because well as Consultants we help people I was just going to complain about Salesforce. Well, we're going to do that too. some flybys and some I could do this all day all day no

Justin Edelstein: Written somewhere top my head I'm going on very, little sleep.

03:27 Jason Atwood: We should tell we went to a sporting event because it's giving sound a little odd that we were yelling at each other. We were at a sporting event last night, a Thursday night sporting event. the green team took on the red team. You guys figure the rest out.

Justin Edelstein: And the Quick, I don't need to do any pre-work., the, a I, and the the the,, the you I,,., and the. the I a I,,,. of that Stop yelling at me. keep going. Why are you yelling? I will scream at your face. Alright. So now that we have this here. He is. Why don't we do our typical special episodes and I will start it off by like just asking you a question or something and then you can maybe answer it and then I can chime in a little bit and give a little commentary and then we can just sort of keep going. I feel like what Here's what I think we should do instead. Great suggestion. Why don't we just do whatever you want and I'll just sit here.

Jason Atwood: So why don't you just talk to yourself for the next 25 minutes? This could be the first podcast where I just talked to myself. So what I did was I came up with a list of things. What I'd like you to do,

Justin Edelstein: Instead of- What would you like for me to do? It would be nice for you to tell me before we started. I gave you a warning about this. You didn't give me anything. Oh, did you read the meeting invite? Yeah, I did. You're like, I have a list, you're gonna come along for the ride. Oh, okay. Well, there you go. So that's it. But it would have been nice to share the list. Oh, well. Now I'm sure where I was like surfing.

Jason Atwood: So what I'd like you to do is come up with, because what I don't have, what I have is sort of a list of things that are, you know, sort of bad things or customer service sins, deadly sins. And then I have like five things that you should do to make your customer service better. But I'd like you to come up with some Salesforce ones. Sure. Okay.

Justin Edelstein: Salesforce ones. Yeah, like where they go bad. We're good. We're good.

Jason Atwood: All right. Big one that goes in. So the first one, I just made this list A first thing I think is the most obvious of customer service, which is not getting back to you in a timely manner. I mean, if you think about... Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, you know, responsiveness in customer service is sort of the number one thing. You put in a ticket, you put in a case, you communicate with someone, you send in an email, and not getting back in a human manner, I guess, is a real thing, within... a period of time that seems reasonable. I have a question for you. What seems reasonable? If you put in a case, if you put in a, let's talk Salesforce, you put in a case with Salesforce and you say, I need help with X, you obviously get an automated response.

07:25 Jason Atwood: That doesn't count. Sorry, we know what that is. That's not, that doesn't count. What do you consider like a reasonable amount of time to get back to you about it? Like if it goes, how about this? If it goes over this amount of time, you start to be like, you guys are messing up.

Justin Edelstein: How about it depends on what I'd say the severity of the of the issue is okay so if it's like there are things that are like hey you know we're partners so you need to put in a ticket you can get a courtesy license right I don't think I'm telling stories out of school or anything about that too I think for that, let's use that one because it's rather generic and it's not like an issue or bug or whatever. I think within one day I should have my courtesy license. 24 hours. Yeah. Solved. Solved. Cause I can't, I can't imagine that's a very difficult process cause I've had it done for me like within hours, but I've also had it take like four days where I've had to follow up. So I feel like.

Justin Edelstein: Within a day 24 hour time period business working hours that should be resolved. If I have something that I say is critical affecting 100% of my user base and is I've already checked and I know it's not my fault and I give you perfectly production steps and there's no known issues like I expect like within an hour timeframe to hear from somebody.

Jason Atwood: A real person. A person. Like, this is like a problem.

Justin Edelstein: Yeah, like, hey broken.

Jason Atwood: Yeah, it's true. I would say if I'm using,

Justin Edelstein: Obviously I want immediate response if I'm calling, because obviously you want to talk to somebody. Well yeah, it depends on the channel, I guess, right? If you're chatting, you want them to.

Jason Atwood: Pick up. Well, right, you want to come to the chat? Pick R, pick up chat. I would say when I'm submitting something I'm generally not looking for emergency type of situation, but I am, but I think 24 hours. 24 hours of in a business if I put in Friday at five o'clock. I don't expect it to be Saturday at five My expectations, you know, I think, and some of the stories that I'll tell about customer service that I have, I'll give a good example of, actually it's the same company, I can give a good and a bad example. Quickin, Rumba-Intuit, has support for their product, their online, fine. Thanks for watching. product and they do Saturday support so you just you can call in on Saturday and talk to somebody else I'll give them huge props because Typically the people are running books and whatever, you know, you sometimes you're doing it Especially for small business owners.

Jason Atwood: Sometimes you're doing your books on a Saturday and you need and something's broken. So like, you know calling in and getting that risk on a weekend is really nice. I don't think it's expected. There's some other companies that I find are very, very good, or 24 hours a day, and you're pretty impressed with it. So second one would be, this is a big pet peeve of mine. Another deadly sin is having a support channel that doesn't actually support you. So, a support channel means like if you're coming in through chat, if you're coming through email, you're coming through phone, those are channels in the service industry, the Twitter, right, the Twitter, the social, so those are channels. And what I find a lot of companies do is they promote that they have these channels. Oh, you want support?

10:51 Jason Atwood: Come. Come here, come here, come here. You can get support by the phone. You can get support by the web. You can get support by Twitter or whatever. And they'll promote that they have these support channels. But when you actually go to try to use them, I think the number one is chat. That's the one I've seen fail the most. When you go to try to, it's like, chat with us now. And you click on it and it pops open. And you're like, and you wait and it says, hi, I'm taking your, I'm. you know, Bob and I'm taking your case for the day. And you're like, oh hey Bob. And they're like, oh, I can't do that from here. And I wanna be like, what's the point of this support channel if you can't do that?

Jason Atwood: That one, that one, and the story I have was actually UPS. I had a UPS delivery issue, I went in, they had chat, and I went into chat and I waited and got through the thing and then I said, I basically wanted to change, I wanted them to investigate a missing package. and they couldn't do it from chat. Well, of course they couldn't, it's missing. Well, they couldn't even start an investigation. That was what they told me. We can't start the investigation from the chat. That's not the investigation team.

Justin Edelstein: No, that's another team. You got to call in to do that. You can't chat with the team. Ugh. They're busy out in the field investigating.

Jason Atwood: So I'll give a positive Salesforce story. The other day I had a Salesforce issue. I'm trying to figure out the exact issue. And I use their chat. I never use Salesforce chat. I always put in cases. Because I just like, ugh, I don't want to use the chat. Sometimes I feel like I get kind of off on support channels. I don't like it because I think that they're not very good. And they helped me out, went through, one and done, 10 minutes, done. Did the thing, it was something that had to do with it in org. Did it, fixed it, and I was like, oh, it was getting access for an org that had been, oh, what was it? I had never gone in, so I didn't have a security check, okay, so I couldn't reset my password.

Justin Edelstein: You didn't have a question.

Jason Atwood: So I couldn't reset my password so I couldn't get it in the org. And I got on chat and they did it and they did it great. I was like, this is awesome.

Justin Edelstein: They reset your password for you on chat? Yeah. How did they, just out of curiosity, how did they know that you were you?

Jason Atwood: Because it goes to your email address that's on file. So they're really just resetting it. I guess I told them who I was. I was logged in that org as me. Oh you said just reset.

Justin Edelstein: But your email address is in probably hundreds of orgs. Yeah but there was also a log in too. Yeah that's the other thing. But you weren't logged in. We find you a lot of places.

Jason Atwood: But you just said you couldn't log in as well. I was logged into an org in order to start the chat. You have to be logged in to start the chat. So it knew who I was.

Justin Edelstein: But you were asking them to reset in another org. So how did they actually verify that you were who you said you were? They just went into the other org.

Jason Atwood: They found me. They see that my name and email address from the org I'm in and asking for support was the same as the email address and the username of the person of the org I was trying to get into. And they just said we reset it. Right, I didn't say change my email to bobat.gmail.com, but then they just reset it. Okay.

14:02 Justin Edelstein: Anyway, it was great. It didn't take it. Sounds great. I don't know if I... Alright, you don't want the security of that? Not really. It doesn't sound very good.

Jason Atwood: So we'll go to number three of the Deadly Sins. Is not paying attention. to the ticket or the case. Basically, it's when you as a customer, when you put in information about what you need. Now, I will say, a lot of people don't put, they're like, stuff broken, what stuff? Nothing, something, like they don't put it. But those of us who want to have our tickets done or our cases or support handled well, we put in. good information. We know that the more information you give them, the better they are to solve the case or solve the ticket or to give you support. So my job, when I'm putting in a ticket, is try to give them the most information. Like I'm going to give them what I think they need. Like here's the org ID or here's the thing or here's the problem or here's what I'm seeing or here's two screenshots, whatever it is.

Jason Atwood: Here's the file, right? So I find that like That's important. You put in that stuff. You would agree. Yeah.

Justin Edelstein: I mean, but then one of my biggest bugaboos with, with sales for support, they're the people I call the most for support because I don't really call. I've never called them. They call me, but they have a field on their form to submit a case. That says org ID right and it even pre populates for you with the org you're in as new as like a year and a half ago and I have gotten responses back that asked me what org ID. Yep and My response back to that which is probably not the most efficient use of my time is actually Can you see the field that I filled out? And they're like, no, give me the org ID. So I feel like there's this field that they can't see. No, they can't see it.

Justin Edelstein: Because I've done that. Well, then why would you even bother asking me? Well,

Jason Atwood: I have supported the Salesforce specifically. I've put in way too many cases where I say, please email me the, you know, I do not want to call because... Honestly, I don't want to call it's like I need to do X here's what need to do do it and call me or sorry Email me when whatever please communicate me with email. I almost have as a text expander now and Nine times out of ten and they don't really respect that. They just call. They'll call.

Justin Edelstein: They just call It's weird because they've done so much work to deflect You from being able to submit Case at this point well to call them to you can't even know them You've got to like navigate across about seven screens before you can actually create a case Now I don't know when the last time you've tried. Oh days ago. It's horrid. It's horrible. It's horrid Cause I think... How about this? Yeah. Are you logged into an org right now?

17:04 Jason Atwood: I might be logged into seven. Alright, let me refresh to see if I'm actually logged in. I am. Great. It's called Arkus. Open your case. Okay, I'm gonna go where I think. Go ahead. Go ahead. Tell me what you're doing. Help me training. Walk us through this. Yes, this is a virtual walk. Help me training.

Justin Edelstein: It single signs you into the help and training portal. And it bounces me around. Bounces around. Okay. Alright. This is a little new. You haven't done this in a while. Have fun. No, no, no. Open the keys. Here we go. I'm gonna do it.

Jason Atwood: Technical support. Okay, good. Go there now. Two. Okay. Alright.

Justin Edelstein: This is so cool. Contact us.

Jason Atwood: Three. Oh, you're lost. No. Okay. No, no, no. general, General Salesforce functionality for.

Justin Edelstein: Boy cloud and files just a total you lost you already lost, lost why can i because you went the wrong way

Jason Atwood: Wow, they have really gone to deflection you can't hold on i'm gonna go i'm not gonna go We have to go back wait you have to go back are you backing out

Justin Edelstein: Did you do you didn't they, they, button no i think you did a No it didn't did you had to

Jason Atwood: You have to get out of wherever you are because you're in the wrong place my friend I was I was gonna try to get my profile and see if I can get to my cases or I cook a new my case Nope, you

Justin Edelstein: Can go there, but there's no new button

Jason Atwood: Well, he does are you enjoying this or what this is actually terrible I'm so glad we always try please try keep I'll keep talking and you keep trying.

Justin Edelstein: Let us know when you get there. Let's try again. Keep going. Help and training. Oh, you're starting over again. I did this the other day though and I did it great. The fact that you can't even figure it out is just absurd. All right, this time I'm gonna go create a case, right,

Jason Atwood: From context report to create a case. So that was good. Yes. So topic, setup and security, security, show more questions. Don't see additional options here.

Justin Edelstein: I'm gonna go here, log a new case. How many clicks did that take you to get there? Alright, let's try again. And you'd actually do this quite a bit. Imagine trying to do this the first time ever. Create a case, one, one quick. Two clicks, you're already in help and training. Two to get to a category,

Jason Atwood: Three to get to a section, four to go down to don't see a question, options here, it exposes the case, five, six, quick case. Yeah, yikes. And the first time you didn't even know where to go. No, you went to contact support I see that and then I hit contact us. That's not the right way. Let's see. Let's see if I could have gotten there You can't support and set up. I think I could have security. Yeah, I could have don't see issues I just didn't get the yeah, I can get there right there and get there that way Don't look at the bottom.

20:11 Justin Edelstein: This is do not rain like very small Yeah, the point is don't make this difficult. We know you're trying to deflect us but have like well that have a big button That's like I know what I'm doing. I need boy. Yeah, I need to submit a case submit a case Yeah, like have a button. That's like I don't need deflection I need answer and it's not here or like I've already stuff So let me ask somebody a question. Wow. That's pretty good. Well, our point was that people who come back. It's not better if you have premiere support either. It's the same experience. It's the same thing.

Jason Atwood: Also, that's not paying attention to the ticket, which is really what we talked about, but I've had them do that too. I put in a ticket with Chase the other day. And actually, that's my next one. All right, so my next one, on the deadly sins. I'm just gonna keep talking about salesforce stories. Fine, I have other stories. Number four and changing the channel. This is actually kind of the same as not paying attention to ticket. It's, you know, I ask you to stick in this channel to communicate with me. Generally, I want to stick to email. Or maybe I want phone. and I don't want you to switch channels on me. Don't go from I am to then call me unless I ask you to. Don't go from email to phone call unless I ask you to.

Jason Atwood: Stay to the channel that I'm communicating with unless we've agreed to go. So I went put in a chase ticket. So chase is a banking company, right? Is that what Chase is? They made a mistake in their rendering of the, you know, of a deposited check. It was off by 50 cents. So I went, I looked at the check, I looked at the thing, I'm like, okay, it's off by 50 cents, you guys made the mistake. I could see clearly through the screen that it was 0.50 and it wasn't, and they had it as 0.00. And I'm like, all right. So I like take the details, the check number, the whatever, I then go into their help and support, I then create a case, I says, you know, deposit error. I put in all this information, they ask, when is it?

Jason Atwood: What date? What's the check number? What's the amount? What's the rate amount? When was it? I filled out this whole stupid thing. I then submit it. All I want them to do is to go in, figure out what they did wrong, and credit my account 50 cents. Like, not a big deal. 50 cents. 50 cents. Well, you know, I've already wasted money even thinking about this. I need my 50 cents. And it's really because it wouldn't reconcile with... So I was like, that's why I work QuickBooks. So I was kind of, you know.

Justin Edelstein: Gimme, gimme gimme. They phone me. Of course they phoned you. Like they call me.

Jason Atwood: And then left a message. Oh, how dare they. So then I then had to call them back. Because it was the only way to communicate with them back. And this person asked for every single piece of information again. Everything! When did you deposit it? What was the amount? What was the check number? What was the what I'm like? Come on Chase. I went didn't I just give you all this information? Better Chase. That was terrible. Be better and Salesforce And Salesforce will do it too. They will call you will say please do not call me and they will call you Yeah, you had a theory the other day. Do you want to say it on air?

Justin Edelstein: Yeah, I Do you have a So, so, people are just tweeting It's all about that human interaction actually goes down and how well that person is equipped to actually talk to another human. So give me your theory. Well, my theory is that they like that they actually

24:32 Jason Atwood: And talk to you, because they don't get to talk to you very often. The theory is that you put, you put in a ticket and ask them to email you whatever and they'll call you because they Yes, you've told me not to communicate with you this way, probably based on the center I go to or maybe the support round I go through, but sometimes they are just, it's just very and I can get someone who's like, tell a story. So, using Quicken. So, I called, I call it a Saturday, great. Another one, I have there's a bug, a legitimate bug in QuickBooks Online. It sits there, I can't get rid of on in end of August or beginning of August. Okay. And I put in the support ticket and I'm like, and I verify it and they did all their good stuff.

Jason Atwood: We verify, okay, I'm gonna support you. Whoa, whoa, whoa, great. And I said, and you know what we're gonna do for you. Tell me, what are you gonna do? We're also, you know, because you have this issue, we're gonna not charge you for next month or for next two months. I'm like, okay, you know, because sometimes it's a nice thing. It's a subscription service. You, you, and you should know what your subscribers are doing. I said, okay, fine fine. for this service. Give me an update. They go in, they go through the ticket. Now, and I, you, you know, I'm mad when I keep my own notes. I have my own case notes. So I like tell who I talked to and when and what they said they were going to do. T T T T T T T T T Yes, engineering is still working on it.

27:41 Jason Atwood: I'm like, oh, still working, or they're working on it. Yes, they're actively working on it. I'm like, okay, what's the latest update on the case? Because of course I know support systems, so I'm like trying to get them to give me like what they're looking at. So what's the support? What's the latest comment? Like, wait, now you know, I get a message because I don't know the user sales force, but what's the latest comment on it? They say, well, it just says it's with engineering, engineers working on it. I said, well, how long is it going to take to have this bug fixed? It's now been over eight weeks. And they're like, well, we can't, we don't know. I'm like, so you have no idea how long this is going to take, but someone is currently working on it?

Jason Atwood: And this is, so I say, okay, fine. And I said, then also you weren't going to charge me. Okay, oh, yeah, definitely not charge you. Okay, next two months, oh, the next month comes. But, I In order for a developer to work on that, they have to go, open up the work, open up the code base, start testing, and when they do that, they do something. They provide an update. They change a status. Working. Like, she said, well, that's not, we don't have any visibility into that. We don't have any, into what's going on. I'm like, so you have no idea what's going on behind the scenes. You're just this frontline thing, three months not working. By the way, it's now been four months. And then she said, oh, we're sorry We can give you two months.

Jason Atwood: Who is this again? This is into it. So, I'm like, so wait a second. Somewhere they decided, because I know you can refund money on a credit card, it's pretty easy. There's actually a button on most credit card systems that you could refund and it just refunds the money. I said, they created the system for you because you're a service company and because you have subscription that they don't allow you to refund money. for a pass, but they will let you do free. Basically, they're trying to sucker you in for another two months. Like, well, you have next two months are free. But of course it's not working. She's like, well, this time it's gonna work. We swear we won't charge you this time. I said, well, I'll call you. Does it work or not?

Jason Atwood: No, four months, still not working. And I'm waiting for the end of the month to see if they charge me again. That's stinky. Oh, I just, I was, I was, I was livid, livid. So the point is, if you have tickets, if you have cases, especially long-standing ones, and Salesforce is good at this, known issues, right? I wouldn't say they're great at the updates, but they do at least put something out there in the universe that says, we know this is an issue and we're, they're not working on it. I have an issue with known issues. What's your issue with known issues? That... I will... Well first of all, explain no to the issues, just so if someone just listening to the podcast doesn't know about it, what is it? That's weird if someone's just listening to this podcast and No, why not?.

30:45 Justin Edelstein: And doesn't know anything about... Well alright. What is the known issue? Well Salesforce does believe in transparency and trust and all that, so... And I think they're pretty good about it. And they're pretty... Pretty good about the trust and transparency stuff. So... They have a allows for any user of Salesforce to go in and look at them and say this affects me. Right. And you are then subscribed to it so that when an update happens, you get an email alert, which is really nice because if you say it affects you, you are actually then kept in the know. Right. So I've had people You know where I've had a case and they say oh, that's a bug we need to work on that and I'm like, well Okay, is it a known issue? There's no issue right and they say oh there is no known issue and they want to close the case and I say you are not closing this case until there's a known issue I'm not a known issue post it back to this case with the link right I will then closed the case.

Justin Edelstein: Right. And I've had people closed cases on me and I've asked for them to be reopened. I've also had the, I've also had the situation where I believe something is a bug and should be a known issue where it's one of those it's working as designed So I feel like there's a tweener, like it's a... this sort of bug, but it's designed that way, so it's sort of designed. It's designed to be broken. It's a bad design. It's designed improperly. The example example was... shared activities so oh yeah the idea of relating up to 50 contacts to a task right or an event or something and it works on your phone right it works in the standard user interface of creating a new task or a new event or whatever. But it doesn't work on the desktop quick action.

Justin Edelstein: So it works in the Salesforce one publisher or Salesforce one action. Right. Any lightning experience, but it doesn't work on the classic. desktop experience if you have an action in your feed to create a new task. And I was told it was that that's how it was built. Like that's designed that way. Right. That makes no sense.

33:56 Jason Atwood: Like that doesn't make sense. That's not really a bug. That is a that is a missing feature. It's a missing feature. This thing doesn't do this, but this thing does. Seems like a weird, like a lie. I will say, so the good things about known issues, A, it's in the success community. So you can go find it easily. It's under help, you know, it's answers, re-entry ideas, and then under more, it says known issues. So you can go grab them. They tell you what statuses they are. They tell you when they're updated. They tell you when they're reported, how old they are. It's at least, I mean, for most companies, this is like... This is like years of light years ahead because they're at least telling you that hey this thing's out there and we're either doing something about it or not.

Jason Atwood: I don't think it's perfect because I know I've had and own issues out there for long periods of time and had to scream about them to get them solved. But at least it's at least the level of transparency is there and at least there is an update to them. And I'll say with even the ideas which are They're not really known issues. They're ideas to do things, but sometimes they're missing features. They now are very good at going in and trying to give an update from the product managers about the idea. Hey, we don't...this thing doesn't work. We're going to work on it. And so I think they do a pretty good job with that. I think Salesforce does a good job with the sort of web of vacation and trust level of support. I think they do.

Jason Atwood: Not a great job with the actual people part of it.

Justin Edelstein: Yeah, I think what happens is because Salesforce is so big and they serve Companies of one all right up to you know Fortune Five right or one or one right so They may have Some let's just say non sophisticated like Things that go into support like how do I reset my password right? Oh, I'm sure there's tons of that a ton And they're trying to just cut that out, but they really should be like the shortcut like I know what I'm doing I know I need to submit a case. Right. Trust me. I'm not asking you to reset a password I'm also not asking you, you know, this drop down on the field. Right. How do I add change?

Jason Atwood: I'm sure they have like stats on the most commonly asked questions through cases that they, you know, And in theory, when a case comes in, and we support our free products, and I don't think we, you know, we're not the greatest support organization, but we try, you know, it's free. And so when you pay for something, get a little different level. I'll say, when I, something's free, I feel like, hey, if you support me, I think you're great. If you don't, well, it's free. But when you pay for something, you want that level of support. All right, so I'm just trying to think. So now, I have, I've never wrote my five ways to win. And anything else about... Deadly sins that you want to add to the list? Deadly sins of customer service? No, OK.

Jason Atwood: And then I kind of, I put together sort of the opposite of this, the five ways to win. You know, I would say, one, you should make sure your channels can actually support. So when your support channels are built, they should all have the same ability. Don't let phone support do X and not let, you know, this other support channel do Y. Because unless you're going to be very clear about that, like, hey, or maybe for a security reason, you can't do X unless you call. will begin. begin. But if you're going to put a channel, make sure that channel actually can really truly support people. And they should all be of equal value. I would say, you know, and this is an obvious one and a nice plug, you should, you need to have a support, a support service tool.

37:44 Jason Atwood: It is something that when people call in, they have a case number, they get the updates. My least favorite thing is when I call in and they're like, you give them like a case to the next number, you say, can you look me up and they're like... I don't, can't find you, I'm like, well what was the last update? Oh, I don't know, like, you know, that usually gets me crazed, like when they just don't have a system. They don't have notes, they don't have updates. Or two teams don't use the same system, like in the case of Intuit, so it's off with engineering, but engineering doesn't update the case, so they have no visibility in what's going on. I put in here pay for better people. There are support times you call up and it's wonderful, great people who help you and you feel great.

Jason Atwood: And there's times you call up where they are just not helpful. And it's just levels and tiers of who you're hiring. Yeah, I agree.

Justin Edelstein: Training, depth of knowledge of the actual. Like that, that's why it's good to collect a lot of information up front. Right. You know what, it might be a bit more of a pain for somebody to submit into. That's why I don't like social support. I think it's like, how much can you really tell somebody in 140 characters or a Facebook post or whatever about what's actually going on? Like I don't mind filling out a form with a bunch of required fields because it actually makes me think and... actually like how do I reproduce this? Let me tell them. And that way, I feel like I get to the answer faster. If the other person knows what they're doing.

Jason Atwood: So part of that is. But unless they ask you for all the same stuff, you just fill that out. Right.

Justin Edelstein: If they know what they're doing and they are paying attention and whatnot, you should get to the resolution faster. The. The good part about that also is just is routing. So if you have a good routing system, and you ask the questions upfront about what the problem is even faster.

Jason Atwood: That's true. I would say, you know, then... Just stole your wallet, by the way. Oh, thank you. I would say the other thing is just transparency. You have to be transparent and if there's things that are broken or things that are not working, you know, be transparent about that. Don't hide it. Don't limit your customer service. I would say the best customer service experiences are the ones that are empowered to do things, right? It's kind of that Ritz Carlton theory, like you can ask anybody in Ritz Carlton, can I get help with whatever? And they will help you, they'll do you whatever they can. They won't say, well, I'm limited to do X. Like the example of the Intuit, like we can't refund your money. Well, that's because you chose to limit yourself, your support staff to not be able to do something because of profits.

Jason Atwood: And when you're thinking about that in your support world, yeah, that's when you're losing. Your support people should be able to support them and make decisions. So it shouldn't always have to go to seven layers higher to make some decision. You'll make a better support organization if you empower them. And then... I have a thing to connect,

41:00 Justin Edelstein: I don't know what to end on, alright lets move on,

Jason Atwood: I have one great story that I'm going to give a shout out for a support organization that is usually terrible has some of the worst support ever seen in my life I want to give them a shout out, so at and t i've had some of the worst support support have ever had from any organization ever mind lining in t would you agree? mobile carriers are generally just Terrible.

Justin Edelstein: Oh, I'm how I mean I Haven't had to deal with this in a very long time luckily But I've had some knockdown dragouts in the past with Verizon Yeah, where it's just like why are you treating me like a piece of garbage, right? It's usually cable companies or companies usually have you jump through hoops. Well, they figure they've gotcha. Right. Because you don't have another option usually. But now that I think that that's sort of working its way out, like, right, it's like, hey, I'm gonna go to FiOS then. Right.

Jason Atwood: They usually like well wait a minute now Well, I'll say there's there's certainly cable companies. I mean Time Warner is supposed to be known I don't have kind of more

Justin Edelstein: Or Comcast Time Warner is awful But I've known they've been they've been known for my very bad My wife who at the time was my girlfriend lived in a building that only The only thing she could get was Time Warner and that's that's kind of what I'm talking about Like when like cable companies they kind of like gotcha. They're like, yeah The only thing in where the only right we're the only game in town, right? So she had time Warner and it was We not only was there issues with the service because the service itself was bad But their support was even worse, right? They were like not Just compounds the issue if you don't have a good service or a good product And then you have really bad support on top of it. You...

Justin Edelstein: I mean... And you don't even give... People don't even have the chance to get off of you. It's like really stuck there. So I will say... So AT&T... Alright AT&T, good for them. What do you do? Usually terrible.

Jason Atwood: What do you do? So I needed to activate a a phone, switch sims,------. a I and and I was it was Saturday morning and I thought I'm gonna have to wait till Monday to call them or whatever and then I went Huge kudos to them, whereas some of these companies are terrible. And I'll tell you, anybody who wants to learn about customer support, you should go look at Rackspace's model. I've had, for 10, 15 years, I've had some of the greatest customers I've ever had from Rackspace. They're far and above the best customer service I've ever had over a long period of. R a and they really build in their DNA.

46:08 Justin Edelstein: I don't understand why it needs notifications and every first place tell you in your cabinet My ground Told me to go to a

Jason Atwood: Place it when I

Justin Edelstein: Hit the button it brought me to the place and it wasn't working So this stinks? So I'm sitting in the cabin like oh, man, but then this ad scrolls So. The way, how is that different than, it's not?

Jason Atwood: So they are, they're the exact same thing? They do the exact same thing. b But isn't way to write like supported by the the cap companies like TLC or whatever the cap company is. It may.

Justin Edelstein: Arrow does virtually the same thing for New York City taxi service. I don't think it's as robust as Wageride because Wageride allows for multiple credit cards. You can do all sorts of fun stuff in Wageride. Can't do any of that in this. Nope, but it still does the basics. You check in with the same number. the same pin, it's that same exact thing. So I think this has become a standard, this pin, where anyone can build an app that hooks into it. So you can have a cab with Aero, which actually has a more uber-like interface than Way to Ride does. And you can pay with it and you can get your email receipt right away as soon as you It's easy peasy and it works really great. But is it lemon squeezy? I wouldn't call call- I wouldn't call it lemon squeezy.

Justin Edelstein: Okay. But it's easy peasy. And it works! It works great. It's free and... Is it just New York? It's just New York City right now. Okay, so everybody else go away. Yeah,- go away, we don't care. Okay, arrow 8- R- R-O.

Jason Atwood: Don't- now go away. You shouldn't be listening anyway, it's too late. You shouldn't have heard that. You shouldn't have heard this. Alright, my pick is... It's finally out., I guess, if you've been thinking about it. So all those people who have, who are browser people who like to have browsers, you know, Chrome and Safari and Firefox, well, iOS is now out. So you can have Firefox on your... multiple devices. You know, usually I push the microphone away from me and let you just talk at this point.

Justin Edelstein: Yes. But I'm going, and I'm going to jump back in here. Okay. Yes. What is the point of this?

Jason Atwood: The point is about choice and features. You know, because all browsers now kind of have a, well, first of all, you know, Firefox is the only open source. browser at this point. So the three big, the four big browsers, three of them are controlled by three mega corporations, Apple, Microsoft and Google. So this is the only one that's kind of on the outside and has, you know, is not being controlled by a multi-billion dollar company. Why? Because options and features. So it has Firefox options and features. It has syncing. It has its own way of doing privacy settings. It has its own engine.

49:43 Justin Edelstein: It's a different... Can I just say I think this is a waste of money? It's not a waste of money. It's an open source product. It's free. No. Someone had to build this. Well, it's open source. of course. They work on it. Someone had to build this. Okay, yeah. It's not like it's Firefox open source, the community built the iOS browser. I think nobody got paid a dime. Well, no,

Jason Atwood: Mozilla is an organization. I think they take- Mozilla's a foundation. Yeah, I think they take in money, like grants and things, and then they build applications.

Justin Edelstein: It seems like a waste of money. I agree that, like, you know, 97%... Why not just make it better on the desktop. Well, they do.

Jason Atwood: I mean, if you've seen the latest versions, they're really getting good. Why not, like,

Justin Edelstein: Really laser in focus? Because you've kind of lost here.

Jason Atwood: I don't think you've lost, though. I do. Because people want to have that experience across multiple devices, especially if you start to use browsers that have a certain set of features. and it can synchronize. So here's the thing, you're a huge Firefox user on your desktop, you're not. But if you were, and you've all your bookmarks there, and all your saved stuff in there. But here, I'm a huge Chrome user on the desktop, but that's you. No,

Justin Edelstein: I just don't. I just, I understand. I guess I'm like that guy who just uses the internet. Yep. Google, Google, Google. Right. That's my name. Google. do you think. You could swallow this microphone if you tried. This is very big microphone. I bet you could. I don't think I could. I think you've got. I don't know.

Jason Atwood: I think you've got it in you. You might do it because you don't know how to switch browsers. Browsers?

Justin Edelstein: I'm done. That's me yelling at the mic. Good pick.

Jason Atwood: Anyway, here, I'll even give you another example.

Justin Edelstein: Have you tried it yet? Yes a half. Is it good?

Jason Atwood: It's fast? It's good and fast. Does it sync stuff well? Yeah, I haven't tried syncing. How about your passwords and stuff? I haven't tried syncing yet. I use Firefox as like the, oh crap, it's the other two browsers. Let's go try that third one. I use Firefox for like. Firefox has like my home Gmail account right right. I will say here's why, I think that the browsers are more important because Ios is becoming more and more of a platform and more and more of a desktop app desktop. Computing system you say what no Ios is for the for the smaller devices but not really with the iPad pro that. it's more and more like a desktop. You're gonna have a keyboard, you're gonna have a, so since the future is probably more on iOS side than it is on the side, I think people are trying to get their things on that platform, because eventually you're gonna sit at the desktop that's gonna be iOS, or a hybrid of the two.

Jason Atwood: So having this ready for that hybrid is why they're doing it. So. Eventually, I think all apps are going to run on iOS or a hybrid or somehow. Maybe it's an iOS that emulates OSX or OSX that emulates OS or whatever, but you know that's where it's going. These two OSs are not going to do nothing. They're going to merge at some point. The hardware is going to be fast enough on one side to run it. Anyway, I also like Firefox. I supported them. They had a big campaign many years ago and I gave money to it. I just like that there's someone- I just like that there's someone else out there building something that's not controlled by these three companies which I love those three big companies well two of them but I still like that there's Kislyak when Opera comes out there's another one the other day that a new browser came out and I tried it.

53:18 Jason Atwood: Remember when we used to love trying, trying new browsers? You do remember that.

Justin Edelstein: What was that one? Oh, the social one? The social one. Is like... Squinity or Square or something... Something Rock. Hard Rock. It was something rock. Yeah. Anyway. So there was these... Yeah, there were a couple of, like, browsers that... Firefox, for a... They were trying... They were trying some interesting things.

Jason Atwood: Yes, integration of the social with it. Integration of like feeds. I mean, I will say I generally want my browser to be very light and fast. Because now I'm more and more inside the browser. I don't want the browser doing as much. But that's not to say that it's not things I still want it to do. I'm trying to floc. Floc.

Justin Edelstein: Yes. Floc. I said, would I say rock? Rock. Yeah. Floc. Alright, Firefox, 4ox, alright! Flox discontinued by the way. Yes, of course it is. But it provided social networking and web 2.0 facilities. Oh, I love those. Built into its user interface. At Just Elstine.

Jason Atwood: That's me. At Jason Amatway. That's you. At Arca Sync. That's all of us. All the rest of the places. We'll be back next week. Hope you enjoyed our special episode. We'll probably be back. I think we're going to round up our Winter 16 stuff next week. We have two more blog posts. There's, I think, one more. I think I posted it. That was the last one. It wasn't the last one. No, no, no, no. There's two. There's one more coming.

Justin Edelstein: There is. The ideas, right? One more coming next week, which is the ideas that are being delivered. Yep. And that's it. For winter 16 or just move right along

Jason Atwood: Hips, I tell you spring will be out before we even notice it's the best. All right, so we'll be back on this We'd love to hear it without hear your customer support I don't know why I said that it's Justin and Jason saying enjoy those cloudy days