ConversionCast Ep. 1.13 : Support That Keeps Customers (and Keeps Them Happy)

Tim: Previously on the all new ConversionCast… Interviewee: Because we really do believe in supporting customers after they purchase, otherwise you know it’s like a one sale stand you know Tim where you know you bought from me, you never hear from us again you know and that’s not the experience that we wanna create for our customers. The last thing we wanna do is make it cumbersome to build a page or build a Lead Box within our system. Tim: This is the conversion journey in 13 parts as told by the Leadpages team. In this all new series, you’ll hear what we do each day at LeadPages to find, convert and keep our customers. I’m Tim Paige and this is the all new ConversionCast. On the previous episode, we had Jeff Wenberg talking about post sale marketing, how to create that engagement with folks once they’ve become customers and what to do from there. But one of the things that I find a lot of marketing trainings out there forget about is how do you support those new customers? You know we’ve spent 12 episodes of the all new ConversionCast talking about how do we get a customer, what do we do, what steps we take. But I really believe and we have this philosophy at LeadPages that it’s just as critical to support your customers well after the sale as it is to get them as a customer in the first place. And I can think of no better person to help kind of explain the way that we are able to support our customers than you Tai. So can we start first of just by having you share a little bit about who you are and what you’re role is here at LeadPages? Tai: Sure Tim. So my role at LeadPages, I am the technical support training manager but I’m also a LeadPages customer. I’ve been a LeadPages customer ever since we had Lead Player way back in the day. And so I’ve been using the tool, I’d recommended it to my – to you know a few of my clients and like I said, I still use the tool today. Tim: I love it. I love it. Okay, good. And so you understand the experience of somebody becoming a customer and being our customer and what it’s like, and what things are important you know to that person who’s a customer and what the experience is like afterwards. And so I think what I wanted to focus on today is just some of the ways that you found are most effective to support the folks who are customers to help make that experience better to help them have success as customers. So I think we’ll start this off with just something you know quick and that is, what would be your #1 if somebody says, I wanna be better at supporting my customers, what’s the biggest thing I should focus on? What would that thing be? Tai: Oh that’s a great question. I think the #1 thing is to make support or help accessible to your customers. Tim: Okay. And how do you do that? Like what – we’re doing a lot of stuff, I mean the team that you’re working with is just incredible. So can you share some of the ways that we’ve doing that? Tai: Sure, you know we’ve got a lot of things going on because we really do believe in supporting customers after they purchase, otherwise you know it’s like a one sale stand, you know Tim where you know you bought from me, you never hear from us again you know and that’s not the experience that we wanna create for our customers. So you know how do we do that? We make it accessible 24/7. We have a huge knowledge base that we’ve been in the process of updating with articles that are structured in a way that help customers find the answers they’re looking for. So even if you know it’s after hours and they can’t reach us by email, chat or phones which are the other options that we have available, they can still get their questions answered and that’s what I mean by making it accessible that help that customers need. You wanted it to be easy to find so that they’re not scratching their heads or you know if they’re up at 9 o’clock or some of our customers are up at 4 o’clock in the morning. They don’t have to wait until they can get to a live person to get the help and support that they need. Tim: You know this is one of the things I was really glad that you are gonna bring up because I know that sometimes if someone is a let’s say they are solopreneur right and it’s a small business, it can be difficult to say well I need to invest, whether it’s myself you know as the owner of that business investing myself in doing the support when I also have to be the marketer and the accountant and you know the product creator and all these things. And then if I’m gonna hire somebody, that’s a huge expense to have you know either a dedicated support person or a part time person or higher firmer whatever. [0:05:03] And I think that that is probably one of the best things that you can do is to create a knowledge base like that, to create resources to make it easier to implement and to get help even if they’re not able to at that point in time access support. So I’m glad that you brought that up. Tai: Yeah, and we’ve even gone a step further Tim. Because now we started to actually make the knowledge base articles and videos available in the actual app. So for our drag and drop builder for example, to actually get access to the articles, you could actually do that from right inside the application while you’re building your page or using the tool. Tim: Oh I love that. So as oppose to having to you know close out, go search the knowledge base, find the thing, it’s accessible right there. Tai: Absolutely. Tim: And is that part of making support a you know – or part of providing support is making it so that the experience of getting help is a quick and easy one? Tai: Absolutely. You know when I’m – you know I can be the – an example here but when I’m working on something and I’ve got a question, I don’t wanna have to spend 20 minutes searching for an answer so one of the best things that you can do is figure out how to make it accessible very easily like we have it within the application. And once they find it, you know use headers and use the right descriptions and use the right structure so that it’s really easy for people to get their answer. They don’t have to read 10 paragraphs to find one line that’s gonna help them solve their problem. And that’s one of the things we’ve really been working of the knowledge base, how can we organize the content better and make it really simple for customers to find exactly what they need. Because like you mentioned, if you’re a solopreneur, you’ve got so many other things on your plate. The last thing we wanna do is make it cumbersome to build a page or build a Lead Box within our system. Tim: Yeah, I agree. So spending some time, giving some kind of a knowledge base, answering the most common questions, understanding what those questions are. But what are some other ways that you can provide outstanding support for your customers? Tai: Sure. So mentioned things like having email support which is huge letting people being able to email you and applying that there are some services or products that don’t even offer that, you know. It’s only a knowledge base. But sometimes your knowledge base doesn’t answer the questioning, you’ve gotta have a way for people to get in touch. Even if you don’t have an answer right away, being able to email someone alleviates the pressure and the stress because at least they know they’ve reached out. So email support is a big help. And we also have phone support for our [indiscernible 0:07:44] advance in our pro customers that get that but they could pick up the phone and call someone at the support desk, could get support that way. And then we even have chat. And we’ve seen a lot of companies starting to use chat more and more, not just for sales questions but for people who need that just in time help and that’s available again for you know outside our standard level. We’ll make that available for other customers as well. And it also you know we wanna have different types of help so questions, it could be tips in the form of a newsletter, you know customers they sometimes they don’t even know what they don’t know. So when you send a newsletter to your customers, letting them know that oh we found a shortcut or you know we have this new feature. You know those are things that can help them get acclimated to the your product a lot best doing a lot better. And then you wanna include things like videos as well in your content so that it’s not just you know a tutorial but maybe you’ve got someone that’s explaining some best practices and tips and I know Jeff Wenberg does a great job of putting a lot of those videos together. And we’ve got a video Tim that helps with that too but giving people a lot of different ways to access that information, because you never know what their learning styles is going to be. Some people need to see the words, some people need to see step by step instructions, some people need to see someone actually doing it. And so having all those different ways that customers can consume the knowledge to use your product is definitely a way that you can add more value. Tim: Awesome. Now before we go any further, I have to mention that all throughout this episode and in the all new season of ConversionCast, you’re hearing what we do at LeadPages to automatically grow our email list and boost our sales every single day. Well, in my next webinar, I’ll show you exactly how to do this for your business. In this free training, I’ll give you a live step by step walkthrough of the top 3 tactics we use at Leadpages to automatically grow our own list week after week. This is gonna be everything you need to know to implement this in your business. So make sure you check it out. To reserve your spot on the webinar, text LeadPageslive to 334444, that’s all one word LeadPageslive to 334444 or head to LeadPages webinar.com All right, let’s get back to it. [0:10:00] I love it and one of the things you mentioned that I think is critical is almost being proactive in support as oppose to just always waiting for somebody to come to you with issues, you know you reach out, you know you sent out a newsletter that said, hey, we found this better way to do something or here’s you know a new feature and here’s exactly how to use it for your business. I think that’s a really special way to support your customers once they’ve already become customers. I think one thing I wanted to touch on is an issue that I know a lot of people struggle with and you know of course it’s easy enough to help the folks who were like, oh, I can’t figure out how to do this or you know how do I use this feature. But what about the folks who are angry, who are frustrated, who have had a rough experience and even though you know they had the ability to get support, maybe they just didn’t and they’ve reached the end of you know their patience and now they’re reaching out and they are frustrated and taking it out on you or your support team. How do you handle somebody like that? In a way that you know maybe you can’t solve their problem but may be you can. How do you handle that in a way that it keeps everybody happy and sane? Tai: That’s – you know that could be tricky but I think we do a really good job of deescalating issues when they come up. I had a customer the other day who was really upset about something and he said some not nice words. And his response you know after he you know emailed us back but you know I let him know that I understood his frustration. And while we don’t have an answer for him that you know he would like right now, I would forward his information on so that at least he would feel heard. Because I think that’s a big part of it but you know we can’t do every single request that a customer has. But just helping them feel heard and letting them know, you know what that’s an idea and we haven’t address that or maybe we haven’t thought about that, I’m gonna forward this on to the right person so that it gets visibility. Those things can make a difference and always just being gracious and recognizing that you know the customers world, there’s a lot going on. What they do with our product or what they do with anyone’s product is not the only thing they have going on in their day. There are so many stressors and so many different things that they’re facing. The least – that last thing that we wanna do is make them feel more frustrated. So it’s you know taking ownership if it’s a problem that we you know – that we actually know about and we’re working on. But it’s also just assuring them that we’ve heard you know we’ve heard you, you know maybe there’s nothing we can do right now but you know in the future we’ve got some things planned, letting them know what’s coming up sometimes can help and even if they haven’t taken advantage of the resources that are available reminding them. We get customers who are sometimes frustrated and then we remind them that we have you know the converted you. We remind them that we have articles in the knowledge base. We remind them that we have tips on our blog on how to get more traffic or how to get more readers and subscribers. So pointing out all the things that you do have can sometimes help alleviate that frustration because maybe they forgot about it or maybe they just didn’t know about it or maybe they just didn’t think to check those other places. So giving the customer additional options, making them feel like they’re heard and always remembering you know from their perspective, they’ve got a lot of things on their plate. So even though if they are frustrated and they might be taking it out on us in their messages, there could be other things going on. You know they feel like they have no control over and there’s nothing we can do about that but we can always be mindful of on how we respond. Tim: Yeah, that’s great! And I think that that will lead naturally to this next part which is the person who says I’m ready to cancel. Because I think that that specific request needs to be handled with a whole lot of grace. Because of course, you know you’re in business and you want somebody to remain a customer. You wanna do whatever you can to keep them as a customer but we also don’t want to be that company that it’s like you know cancelling is an absolute nightmare and when they’re not a customer anymore, they’re so glad they’re not a customer anymore because oh my gosh the experience of trying to cancel was so nightmare, right. So – and I know this is a difficult question but how do you tow that line between trying to keep somebody as a customer, trying to address their complaints or concerns in a way that’s like, oh well, that was the thing you were trying to do, here you could do that and here’s how. And also if somebody is just, I’m cancelling and that’s it and there’s nothing you can do about it. How do you tow that line? Tai: Oh, that’s a really important question. It’s also a sensitive issue. You know in text support we recently have taken over handling retention tickets directly and so we’ve got a number of macros that we use that help our support specialist answer and ask questions of customers. [0:15:06] So for example, if someone decides that they wanna cancel. You know we’re glad to tell them how to do that, right? So we make it really easy so they’re not frustrated, not by going back and forth with us about, oh we don’t want you to cancel or can we do this. And you know that’s stressful when they’ve already made a decision but we do ask you know if you’re open to it, can you tell us you know what were you know the road blocks for you or what made you decide to cancel. We invite them to give us that feedback. And sometimes just asking that question opens up the dialogue for them to tell us and for us to be able to give them a response that might make them think twice about cancelling. Maybe they’ll give us another month and in that month, they get some of the results that they’re looking for because they’ve used a resource that we recommended or because they’d used a strategy that we have recommended to them or maybe they’ve listened to your podcast or you know they’ve listened to whatever our webinars and got the information that they need. So we always invite them to share of this. And then we have some that you know we know by the tone of their message that they are just ready to cancel and we’re still gracious by saying you know, we’re sorry to see that you’re leaving us, let us know if there’s anything that we can do for you. When you’re ready to come back, you know we’ll be glad to have you. But we wanna make that – we wanna be very empathetic to where our customers are and so we pay a lot of attention to the tone of their message and also we make sure that we give them that opportunity to give us the feedback. Tim: There’s so many wonderful things there but I think one of the things that really stands out is that when you’re trying to find out what the concerns are and why they’re cancelling presenting it as you know, hey, we really truly wanna know what’s caused you to feel this way. And it’s not even that – maybe it’s not even that you wanna know so that you can go, well, you know here’s where you’re wrong so you should stay a customer, you know but it’s truly wanting to get that feedback and understanding what makes people not want to remain a customer. We actually, on the marketing team, we’re getting that feedback. You know we’ve been giving that feedback of what are people saying when they decide they’re not gonna remain a customer because that allows us to have a better understanding of what people are looking for and how we can work together with support to create those resources to make that easier to maybe change our marketing efforts to present the information that people need. Because sometimes it’s as simple as, look I knew I needed to create Landing Pages but I don’t know what to do with it once I’ve got it and providing that education that says, well, here’s how to promote a Landing Page or here’s how to use Facebook ads or here’s how to do this or that. And you know sometimes it is just, you know what, I just hated it and I’m not gonna use it or whatever the reason is but I think it’s really special that everything comes from a place of empathy and saying, we understand you know circumstances change or you know something is not working, you know we wanna help you but you know we’re not able to help everybody and some people are just going to cancel. I think that that’s really important. Tai: Well one of the things I think that we do is – that which is really smart him is that we make that information around why people are cancelling or deciding to leave. We make that information available to the entire company so it doesn’t become something that just marketing things about or just support things about but you know everyone from our engineers and developers, you know all the way over to our customer education team. We all get that information so we could all be faking about and be aware of what challenges our customers are facing and figuring out how and each of our roles we can contribute to making it a better experience for our customers. Tim: Yeah. And it’s the good, bad and the ugly too. That’s the thing is it’s not some rosy picture of oh the only people that cancel you know are people who you know maybe their business didn’t work out or like you know whatever the reason is. We see the good, the bad and the ugly. And I think that that’s really valuable. So I guess I wanna close this out by asking if you can share based on just your experience the impact that bad customer support can have, because we’ve talking a lot about how to provide better support but just you know because I think that this is an area that I find too many folks, especially you know again not to focus on it too much. But especially folks who maybe are – it’s a side business for them or maybe you know they just have such a small business and they have very limited resources. Oftentimes, support gets pushed to the side and you support your customers when you can but at the end of the day, you’ve gotta get revenue to keep the doors open. It tends to become not a priority and I want to forewarn people because that’s been one of the key reasons for our success at LeadPages. So can you just share you know based on your experience what the impact of bad support can be. [0:20:03] Tai: Yeah. There are maybe about 3 or 4 things that I can think of Tim. You know the first one is that you know if you’ve got bad customer support, one of the things you have to recognize is that your customers might not ever tell you but they will tell other people. And so just because you don’t hear it doesn’t mean that there’s not chatter out there about you know not using your product because someone had a bad experience and so that’s something that you’ll never get feedback on and you can never control. So you really have to think about what are you not hearing if you are creating you know bad customer experiences. The other one that’s a direct hit to your bottom line is you know the churn or people just leave. They won’t come back to you, they won’t be repeat customers. And that’s going to impact your bottom line because we know that it’s I think the number is 40 times or 50 times easier to sell to people that are already in your pipeline to people that are already customers and it is to get a customer. And so if you can’t keep those people, you have a lot harder job of bringing new people and generating consistent revenue. And there’s one more thing that is big but I think people overlook this. When you have continuous bad customer service experience, it demoralizes your team. Even if you’re a one person shop and you keep getting you know feedback from your customers that they’re unhappy, that they’re dissatisfied, that they’re frustrated. That demoralizes you when they start to shake off your confidence and even if you have a team of people and you know maybe you’re C-sat, your customer satisfaction score or maybe you just keep getting really bad feedback from customers. It starts to weaken the trust that you’re employees have in what you’re offering and they’re gonna feel demoralized. They’re not gonna wanna take customer calls with a happy attitude because they’re gonna be so used to people complaining. And that’s whether you have you know bad customer policies or your product is bad, you know if people are consistently calling in you know complaining or not happy. Your team is gonna take that energy on and then you have an environment where people are stressed out about work. But you also have people that may not be able to give their best support. Tim: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been in environments like that before where it was so clear that when somebody was a customer, that company didn’t care at all. I’ve been both worked in those environments and been a customer and you can feel that. You can feel that as a customer and it can cause so many issues so I think this is great, couldn’t think of a more fitting way to close out season 1 of the all new ConversionCast. So thank you so much Tai for coming on the show. Tai: Well, thanks for having me. It’s been an absolutely pleasure to have this conversation. Tim: All right, so this was the season finale of the all new ConversionCast season 1. We’re working on season 2 as we speak and I gotta say, if anything can won up season 1, it’s gonna be season 2. But in the meantime, I wanna make it easier to take action on all of the great tactics that you’ve learned during this Conversion journey. So we’ve created an action guide which includes a detail break down of how to implement all 13 episodes of the all new ConversionCast season 1 so that you can really get a positive result from listening to this and not just some entertainment. To get an absolutely free, text ConversionCast to 44222. That’s ConversionCast to 44222 or head to ConversionCast.com. I hope you’ve enjoyed season 1 and we’ll see you soon for season 2.