4/1/1: 4 Random Thoughts from me, 1 tools to help Sales Engineers, 1 quote for motivation
4/1/1 The Impact of Customer Support on Future Deals
- March 31, 2022
By Ramzi Marjaba
4/1/1 Weekly
4 Random Thoughts, 1 Tool, and 1 Quote
It’s been a while. In case you didn’t notice, and to highlight my failures, the website was down for a while. I had to debug and work with the support engineers of the hosting service, and the website builder software I used. It was so slow!
I use Bluehost as my hosting service, and They were actually great. Elementor’s support (my website builder), left a lot to be desired. Sure, in the end, it was a problem on my end, but as a customer, they could have helped me figure it out faster, and I’m actively working on replacing that software.
Note that the issue was that there was a WordPress plug-in that stopped all plug-ins from updating, causing some of the plug-ins to become old and stop working altogether (again my fault). Here are some of my thoughts on how support can help you lose a customer.
Before I continue my rant, in this week’s podcast, I hosted Justin Ferber and we discuss how startups recruit their SEs.
Also, I talk about overcoming the self-doubt of having no skills to get a job as an SE or even transitioning from industry to industry as an SE.
Let’s dig into this a bit with the 4/1/1
4 Random Thoughts From Me:
1- Provide vague instructions, then complain to the customer that they didn’t follow their instructions. I actually got an email saying “Well if you followed our instructions, you would have resolved the issue” and I actually yelled at the computer saying that I did. Had to go back and try to decipher their email again to see what I missed.
2- Assuming that the customer is an expert in something, and not just a user. This assumption lead to that first error above where they just said a bunch of gibberish and I read it as vague instructions.
3- Only working through email. Some support engineers are afraid to pick up the phone and call. Or even schedule time to jump on a call with the customer. It’s much easier to jump on a call and walk the customer through something than to go back and forth through emails and have the customer get frustrated.
4- Since some Sales Engineers, especially enterprise ones, work mostly with existing customers, we have to run interference with supports. Some support engineers are great, and some need to be nudged in the right direction. It’s not always a fun part of the job, but we have to do it.
1 Tool:
FreeCodeCamp.com It’s a free tool to at least provide a base for some coding experience. That includes coding for web development. I just went through their first HTML and CSS course and I’m hoping to use the info I learned to build a static portfolio website!
1 Quote:
“Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten.” – Aldo Gucci.
Stay in the loop
Subscribe to get our latest content by email.