As a customer support agent for several years in different companies, I know that the stress level is not really different when the company or product changes. That’s why I try to be as polite as possible when I reach to customer support myself by encouraging them and congratulating them for the hard work they do, and trying to avoid putting a lot of pressure on the agents when I ask for help. One issue I encountered while creating a website for one of my clients required that I reach out to the hosting provider’s customer support to help me fix it.

Tickets

There was no phone number to call, or chat link to reach customer support, so I started by creating a ticket in order to get the help I needed, even though the error I was getting is a 500 Internal server error and required urgent assistance, however their help center clearly states that they’d answer tickets in less than 24 hours, so that was a bit reassuring.
After explaining the problem exactly, and giving the exact actions I made before getting the error, I kept waiting for the answer… for 72 hours… Then I decided to take the next step…

Phone call

Day #1

Since there was no phone number shown in their help center, I had to do the research myself, and finally found a customer support “hotline” to reach out to, and kept getting surprised, the first thing the agent said is a cold “Hello”, and then awkward silence, no introduction, and no “How may I help you?” maybe?
Well, they were maybe having a bad day that day, so I explained the issue and gave them the details (Customer ID, ticket number, etc…), and after answering a few questions, the agent asked me to hold on for, and I quote, “two minutes” while they look at the issue, I stayed on hold for 16 minutes, and after getting back to me, they said that they escalated the issue to the specialized department and asked me to provide availability so they can call me back, we settled for the next day at 10AM.

Day #2

“Today is a new day”, that’s how I started that day, and waited for them to call at 10:00, 10:05, 10:10, and until 10:15, since I have deadlines to respect, I decided to call them back myself, and their answer was “As I said they will call you, in fact, you should hang up in case they call now they won’t find the line busy”… pretty disappointing, but I am a patient person, so I gave them another chance, and waited until 4 PM.
Since my hosting provider is a multi-national comany, I took the liberty to call the company’s headquarters in a different country, in a different continent just to ask for customer support, and that costed me a fortune in the next phone bill, but it was worth it!
The agent that answered my call didn’t have any visibility of the account the ticket, or website stauts since my account was with a different departement (the one in my country), they apologized that they can’t help with the website, they apologized on behalf of the company for the disappointing customer support experience I had with their colleagues locally, and did what I considered going the extra mile, just by visiting the website in their browser, making an effort to see what’s happening, how cool is that?

The only solution they can suggest is trying to restore my website to an older version, I made a lot of progress (in the website) that I didn’t want to lose, I didn’t want to restore an older version of the website in the first place but now I don’t have much of a choice, so I had to (thank god we chose a plan that included backup!).
Well, the problem was solved. I had to re-implement some parts of the website, but it’s better than nothing! But…

Suprise!

One day later, I receive an email notification that my ticket was answered “I see that your website is back online, we’re setting the ticket status to solved”… no comment could describe how that feels like, everytime I say that I reached rock bottom being disappointed of that kind of customer support, they keep surprising me.
I thought they didn’t even look at their tickets, but apparently they keep an eye on them until you solve the problem yourself.

The difference?

I could’ve bought the hosting from a different country in the first place (same provider, but different country), but I preferred the one in my country for the simple reason of having better customer support (same timezone, same language, etc…), but I experienced the exact opposite, when the agent in my country was not helpful, and made me feel less than important as a client by not bothering to call back or suggesting a solution, while the second agent in a foreign country went the extra mile and gave a solution that worked, even though they didn’t have any visibility of my account.
In a few words: Your customers are important, make them feel like it, and the first thing to do so is by providing proper customer support.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

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You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.