First of all, it’s important to realize that, when customer writes he is usually quite angry and unsatisfied. In order to be able to work with this customer we first need to neutralize these feelings. The best way to achieve this is with soft blue and green.

Green is the color of nature and brings peace to our souls. It’s also scientifically proven that, our eyes benefit from looking at green. Especially, the shade that can be found on the grass and in the forest is the most beneficial one. Therefore, this is the best way to establish contact with the customer.

Blue represents rather peace than healing power. Mainly, because the sky and the sea are also blue and those are the two elements that are always constant. Therefore, when the customer is already ‘healed’ and you want to continue your communication in this established pace, blue is an excellent choice.

But we are not finished here, we also want to get our rating! Therefore, we want to attract attention. For this purpose, yellow is commonly used. It is generally perceived as cheerful and happy, yet soft and mellow. Hence happy customers will be even more happy to rate your mails and unsatisfied will find a way to channel their feelings.

Good luck!

Pancakes. One of the meals that is hard to be hated and really easy to be loved. The recipe is very simple and goes to the point in three main steps.

The first step is to prepare the perfect mixture of ingredients. The ingredients you use while preparing pancakes are salt, flour, milk, egg, butter, sugar, baking powder and most importantly love. Similarly, in customer service there are also ingredients to be used. Especially, I am talking about patience, kindness and the most important one is the same as in the pancakes, love.

The second step is to pour the batter on a frying pan and form the pancakes to the final shape. The pan in the case of customer service is represented by any kind of media, you get in touch with your customers through. It can be classic Mail, Twitter, Facebook or anything. The important thing though is to keep you pan clean, because with dirty pan the pancakes will be spoiled as well. Therefore you also need to take care of these media and make sure no spam is allowed.

The last step is to add some sparkle to the pancakes with fruit, maple syrup or just a jam. In this case we would love to have Nicereply as your choice! 

Motivation is a key to success. Last time we have mentioned how little things can completely turn the relationship from annoyance to friendship and loyalty. Today we are going to take a look how you can motivate your employees or coworkers via competition.

By competition I don’t mean the one where everybody is trying to win despite the dead bodies, but a friendly one. The one, where the fun is important. To achieve this, the price should not be something really important, just a pack of candy or maybe a cake. The second important thing is to set the competition where the winner is determined within a short period of time, week for example.
Luckily we can offer you a perfect tool to create such a competition. Our system automatically generates a top agent of a week month or even a year. In the end the exact period depends on you, but be aware that the price for the winner should be correspondent with the time period. You can find this feature under the tab “Charts” of your Nicereply profile.

Wish you good luck and a happy office atmosphere

In general you don’t need to take care about the happy customers, you need to take care about to most vocal- complaining ones. The problem arises, when there is a customer like Brown or Williamson, because they won’t complain, they just won’t come back. (“I won’t complain. I just won’t come back”, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Ad) This is the point where Nicereply comes into play, because to give a bad rating takes much less energy than actual complaining. Therefore you can spot your unsatisfied customers and learn from them (“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”, Bill Gates) with result of having a company with customer service that is not just the best, but legendary. (“The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best but legendary.”,  Sam Walton, Founder of Wal-Mart )

To successfully compete in this new competitive battleground (“The customer experience is the next competitive battleground.”, Jerry Gregoire, CIO, Dell Computers) we offer you an amazing tool. Just go to the Customers tab and you will see complete list of the customers you need to pay more attention to. By reaching out for them, you can offer more than they expected (“Here is a simple but powerful rule: always give people more than what they expect to get.”, Nelson Boswell) and get the best reward: not a sale, but customer. (“Make a customer, not a sale.”,  Katherine Barchetti)

Until next time, have a nice reply!

Ronin is a simple online invoicing and time tracking tool, best for small businesses and freelancers. The setup is made in two parts, first of all you need an invoice rating page in your Nicereply account and then you can include the link in the default invoice email message.

Nicereply Setup

To start creating a new invoice rating page go to “Settings” and “Create new rating page”. The three steps provided will guide you through the process of creating. If you have one already you can skip to the third step-integration.

The first step is basically the same with all the rating pages, you just choose the appearance you like the most and name your page.

In the second step you will be asked to create some objects to rate. To create one you just need to name it and choose URL suffix displayed in the link, specifying the object. These objects can be your products, service, but there is no limit in your creativity so you can use it for anything. In this case it is “Text Correction“.

In the third step you will mange invoice system URL for getting backlink to rated invoice. To successfully integrate with Ronin use this URL: “http://yourcompany.roninapp.com/invoices/<INVOICE_ID>”

Ronin Setup

Now when we are done with the Nicereply part we can proceed to the Ronin setup.

In account settings scroll down, find the window “Default Invoice Email Message” and insert the rating link:

“I’ll be happy for your feedback. Please use link bellow to rate me:
nicereply.com/yourcompany.invoice/correction/{{ invoice.id }}”

Now your clients will receive emails like this one:

That’s it, have a nice reply!

Everybody who has been in the Netherlands for longer than a week can certainly tell something about the weather. In 95% of cases you would hear something like ‘it sucks’ or like ‘all the time just these annoying clouds’… But wait, if you stay here longer than one month a bit of sunshine can make a smile on your face even during the worst days. Yes, this can inspire your customer service as well!

So what is the lesson from the weather? People got used to it. And when you get used to something you basically change your expectations. In this case you lower them. Later on, when the sun comes out you are just happy, because it’s something you did not expect.

Keeping this in mind, you need to ask: What are the expectations of our customers? And when you will know the answer, just give them a bit more. This will not only create a happy customer, but also a loyal one.

Have a nice week!

Mindvalley is a leading publishing company that merges software, mixed media, video, mobile apps and social networks to put authors in the personal development movement at the forefront of the Internet generation. The company behind amazing home study programs like The Silva LIfe system series. Mindvalley got the World Blue Most Democratic Workplace award five years in a row, and was voted one of the world’s coolest offices by Facebook fans of Inc Magazine. Hanah Zambrano, director of customer happiness shared some exciting insights in this inteview.

Perhaps not funny stories, but we do have some good ones! Our customer segment is focused on people who are interested in lifestyle and personal development, so we have super happy and sweet customers that send us pictures of their families and travels. Some have even wrote poems for us, and one customer actually went as far as mixing a song!

Diamond Candles is online only all natural candles with a surprise ring inside of each one worth at least $10 but up to $5k. Thanks to Savannah, Josh and Justin for their interesting thoughts in the interview!

1. How big is your “helpdesk team” and how many tickets does your team solve every day?

Savannah: Let’s say 7 agents and the volume depends as it varies.  Average of 260 tickets a day.

2.What’s the main reason, you care about your customer support services?

Savannah: A Great customer support team has better rapport with customers.  When you have an excellent rapport with customers they will defend you, promote you and continue to love you and your products.

Josh: Customer support is also a customer retention tool. If a customer comes to us with a concern or complaint, we see it as an opportunity to improve the product experience further.

3. What kind of metrics are you using to measure customer satisfaction and performance of your agents?

Justin: NiceReply feedback on a regular basis.

Josh: We also hear of the support agents’ great work on social, and many times customers come onto our Facebook page or tweet us just to let us know how we’re doing.

4. Do you have any special motivation programs for your help desk agents?

Savannah: We frequently have giveaways in house, which promote an awesome “can do” attitude.

5. Do you have any tips to improve customer service you want to share with?

Savannah: Be more personable.  Use smiley faces to lighten the mood (not all the time, as there are always some rare instances where you don’t want to use them). Show a personal flare in each reply. Your agents have their own personality.  Give them a little bit of breathing room and watch them soar to new heights along with your dedicated customers.  If a customer feels you truly care, they will come back each time they have an issue, question or complaint. Instead of posting that issue publicly they will first ask you and be like, hey this is my issue can you help?  9 times out of ten it’s a simple misunderstanding and is easily fixed… since you have that awesome rapport you don’t have to play fix all with a public message that generate lots of mixed feelings.

6. What is, in your opinion, the future of help desk systems?

Justin: Integration of all social conversation regarding a brand to integrate pro-active social outreach with reactive order related issues, websites that communicate value and answer all possible general FAQ’s so that incoming inquiries are only specific order related, minimizes customer support costs.

Josh: Help desk systems can also be leveraged as a powerful marketing tool, and I see that happening as time goes on. Excellence in support rarely goes unnoticed, so if brands are at the top of the game and quick to assist, then customers can be WOW’d.

7. Do you have a funny story from your help desk that you would like to share with us? (We know that there’s a lot of them)

Savannah: can’t think of a specific one right now, but I have asked the agents to think of one, so I will revisit this a bit later =) Hopefully I can have a good funny one!  We started thinking of a few but they were more “nice” then funny. So hang tight!

Josh: We were once asked about 6 months ago if we had the ability to make a giant candle “by the end of the week”. Needless tos ay, then we didn’t have the resources at the time to do such a task I would say was an awesome idea for a customer. Perhaps one day we’ll venture into mega-sized candles!

Big Cartel was created because founders and their friends needed a good way to sell their stuff online. Big Cartel’s simple online set-up allows musicians, painters, designers, crafters, and all sorts of artists get customizable shopping carts online quickly and easily. “We’re here to help artists make a living doing what they love.” Read more about their customer support culture in interview with Anna Brozek.

1. How big is your “helpdesk team” and how many tickets does your team solve every day?

We’ve got 4 folks over in our Support Fort to help out our stores (we have over 300,000 of them!) – and they handle about 200 new cases each day, PLUS all of the ongoing cases that take a little longer. They’re a busy bunch.

2. What’s the main reason, you care about your customer support services?

Running a business can be crazy-hard, but we want our users to set up quick and then focus on the fun stuff. So when a problem arises we want our support to be fast, friendly, and as helpful as possible so our users can get skip troubleshooting and get back to creating.

3. What kind of metrics are you using to measure customer satisfaction and performance of your agents?

We definitely keep a close eye on our NiceReply ratings, and Desk recently implemented some awesome achievements that are fun to brag about. But we don’t do anything super formal, if our customers are happy then we know we’re doing something right.

4. Do you have any special motivation programs for your help desk agents?

Honestly, our Support Fort is a happy bunch who love our stores. They’re passionate about helping out, so really the end motivation is to know our shop owners are better off after reaching out to us. Cheesy, but true.

5. Do you have any tips to improve customer service you want to share with?

Our trick is to remember why we’re here every day. We want to help artists make a living doing what they love, and with such a sweet and simple mission, it’s easy to get excited about even the smallest tasks that get us, and our stores, to that point.

6. What is, in your opinion, the future of help desk systems?

We’re seeing more and more of our help tickets come in via Twitter and Facebook. It’s likely that this trend will keep growing, and businesses that embrace the personable and immediate nature of social media will really thrive.

7. Do you have a funny story from your help desk that you would like to share with us? (We know that there’s a lot of them)

Our support team has made an art form out of nicknaming. They like to call it Jack-Blacking a name, which is when a “normal” nickname (Daniel = Danimal) evolves into something far weirder (Daniel = Rick Dantorum) while documenting the evolution in between (Danama Canal, Danta Clause, Praying Dantis, D-Shizz, Dan Solo). It makes no sense, but why should it?

Hi, it has been a while and that’s why I would like to talk about something special today. Because of the new possibilities with the Staff rate we not only want to improve your customer service, but also your “in-house” relationships.  There is one experience I would like to share with you related to these relationships.

Let me take you a couple years to the past. I have been working at the restaurant as a delivery guy riding a scooter. You can imagine that the work is hard in the winter, because of the temperature bellow 0°C and a rainy weather. The second demotivating thing is a fairly low wage. I must admit that this is better than nothing, but in these circumstances you just sometimes want to throw everything to the air and quit.

The second person in this story is my boss, a chief in there. A man in the best years with a lot of life experience. As a good boss he had an authority and my respect.

One day as I returned from an order he came to his jacked and gave me a cookie. Not a regular one, you can buy a bag of for just a bit of change. It was a cookie you get for example to your coffee – single packed. I was flattered and I felt like a little child getting a cookie from my father.

What did I want to tell with this story? Don’t underestimate the power of little things such as gifts worth just a penny. If given honestly they brighten relationships and create a bond. This bond is very important not only between you and your colleagues, but also between you and your customers.

That’s it for today, and I hope this advice is worth the time you spent reading it. Success!