The Last Word

Ryan at 37signals, blogs today about his positive customer experience with T-Mobile. He identified three aspects of his support experience that all Helpdesk Managers can benefit from.

While the first two observations are what I would consider "table stakes"...
1. Don't make the customer wait.
2. Care about the customer's problem.

It's his last observation that doesn't occur often enough in the "I.T. world".

3. When the problem was fixed, I heard it from them first.

Too often, I've seen Helpdesk's fail to notify their customers when the problem was resolved! In our effort to fix things, we left out the most important task - letting the customer know!

I would make one further suggestion to T-Mobile.

My personal experience with Helpdesks, is that many times, the agent feels the ticket is closed, once they feel problem is resolved. In actual fact, the ticket isn't really completed until you've resolved the issue, notified the customer and the customer confirms it's resolved.

The last interaction is essential, because it sends the message that the ticket isn't closed until the customer says so. Too often, Helpdesks close tickets prematurely, in an effort to "keep their stats up" (time to resolve issues) or under the assumption that the problem was resolved.

Now in many cases, once customer problems are resolved, they aren't particularly responsive to confirming the resolution. Hey it's fixed... I'm onto other things.

So provide a negative option:

"We believe that we have resolved your issue [describe the issue]. If this is NOT the case, please let us know immediately and we will continue to work on a resolution. If we do not hear from you, your ticket will be closed in 5 days."

Always give your customer the opportunity for the last word.