Avoid these 4 customer service mistakes, please.

After an infuriating customer experience a few months back with a very well-known service, I was struck by how many customer service mistakes were made along the way. And after explaining the play-by-play of my frustrations to Pete, I knew this was a perfect example of “what not to do”, especially when it comes to self-service.

I’ve narrowed my experience down to four mistakes that you should avoid making with your customer experience. And if you are doing any of these, I’d highly recommend fixing it sooner rather than later.

1. Vague error messages requiring me to contact support

I get it – error messages happen. But this is what I received…

“We’re sorry that xxxxxxx cannot be created at this time. For further questions, please contact us using the Customer Service link at the bottom of this page.”

What’s wrong with this error message? Let me count the ways.

1. We’re sorry” – Are you? Is that because this is a problem on your end? Should I try again? I don’t know, you don’t seem that sorry. Apologies are great but they need to be sincere.
2. No call to action – Should I try again later? Was this my fault or yours?
3. “For further questions” – Of course I have further questions. You didn’t tell me what the problem was.
4. “Use the link at the bottom of the page” – Really? Couldn’t you just link me from the error message? You aren’t really convincing me that you want me to contact you at all.

Okay, it’s not the worst error message in the world. At least there is an error message. At least they weren’t blatantly lying in the message.

Sadly, we had a default error message in an older version of our survey software that stated that an error had been logged and our team was working on it. It was partially true; the error had been logged somewhere, but no one really had access to them or knew about them. We didn’t actually know about issues customers were having unless they contacted us. Asking them to contact support would have been more helpful.

The best error messages are the ones that don’t have to happen, but when they do you can make sure they have the customer in mind.  So how do you make a customer-friendly error message?

1. Acknowledge.
2. Apologize.
3. Include a call to action to fix the problem. If the customer needs to contact support, make it easy for them. Better yet, reach out to them directly. If the customer needs to fix something, tell them what to fix.
4. Thank the customer. Seriously, you are requiring them to do more work or worse wait. Appreciate their patience – there are other options out there.
5. Document it. If you customers are running into error messages, you should know about it. And if it happens a lot, you should fix the root of the problem. Tracked numbers improve.

What could this error have looked like then?

“There was an issue creating xxxxxxx. We are so sorry for the trouble. Please check out our guide to xxxxxx (link) or click here to contact support for help (link). Thanks for your patience!”

And if you were documenting your errors, you could even have a member of your team proactively reach out to the customer to see if they needed help with xxxxxxx. Now that would be amazing customer service.

But back to my story, the error message itself exemplified mistake number 2….

2. Making your support contact info hard to find

I wasn’t left with many options other than “using the Customer Service link at the bottom of this page”. Funny, I don’t see a Customer Service link at the bottom of the page. Maybe I’m just missing it. I’ll use “find” on my browser. Still nothing. Awesome.

Well, I guess since I really want to create xxxxxxx I might as well Google it. Oh look! Google is showing my that there are knowledge base articles on this exact issue. As it turns out, I hadn’t completed all the necessary steps in order to be able to do it.

It would have been nice if those requirements were presented to me in the first place. And maybe I shouldn’t have even been able to access this option and fill out a form if I didn’t meet the requirements. But I digress.

The big issue here is that I was told to click on Customer Service at the bottom of the page and there was no Customer Service at the bottom of the page.

Anyway, I follow the instructions from the knowledge base article but I’m still getting the same error message. And there still is no Customer Service at the bottom of the page. I’m stuck, but I really, really want to do  xxxxxxx so I’ll figure out how to contact support.

And I did. As it turns out, there is a Help Center option at the bottom of the page. I was just looking for the wrong thing! Silly me…

Well, now that I’ve finally figured out how to access your Customer Service/Help Center, surely I’ll be able to contact you now. Unfortunately, this leads me to the next customer service mistake.

3. Forcing me to jump through self-service hoops

After finally arriving at the elusive Help Center, I am perturbed to find the Contact Us link grayed out. *Sigh*

Why isn’t this option available? Is it because I’m not a paying customer? What did I do wrong now? Maybe I should hover over the option…

Search our Help Center for an answer. Then, if you still need help, please click Contact Us.

Great, I have to search the knowledge base for an answer even though I already googled and read the knowledge base article. Couldn’t you just give me the benefit of the doubt that I tried to solve my own issue?

Anyway, I do the search and click on the same article I found googling before. Success! The “Contact Us” option is now available!

I’d love to say that I was now able to contact support, but this self-service system was really persistent. After filling out the form and clicking on the Continue button, I was greeted with another message…

Your question hasn’t been submitted yet. Did you see any of these articles?

REALLY?!?! Are you f%^%ing kidding me? To answer your question, “YES! I have seen these articles. First when I googled my own problem. Second when you forced me to search to activate the contact form. And now for a third time.”

Self-service can be great service, but only when it respects the customer experience and doesn’t become a barrier. It should make it easier for me to solve my problem, not make it harder for me to contact support. Who is this for, me or you? Clearly this wasn’t implemented to improve your customer experience.

4. Lame responses from support

It would be nice to say that there was a happy ending. That despite all the mistakes along the way, the interaction with support was amazing and totally world-class. But it wasn’t.

I’d love to show you the response, but I was so mad I deleted it immediately. Basically, I was told that it can take up to a week for the option to be available once the requirements were met. And that I should reach back out if I am not able to do it after a week has gone by. Again, really?

There was no acknowledgement of the issue and no apologize. There was no effort from the agent to help me out. The burden was totally on me to keeping trying and contact them back if the issue didn’t resolve itself.

Was it the worst possible response? No. But after the vague error message, the difficulty even finding the support option, and the self-service system that made me jump through hoops, it was a completely missed opportunity to redeem themselves.

The Root of all Customer Service Mistakes? Not Valuing the Customer

When it comes down to it, this whole experience was so maddening because it demonstrated that I was not valued as a customer.

• They clearly weren’t thinking of me when they created an error message that didn’t help me resolve the problem and made it difficult for me to even figure out how to contact support.
• Their support site showed how much they didn’t trust me by forcing me to search TWICE in order to contact them.
• And the crappy response from the support team (which took a few days) was completely unhelpful except to let me know that it could take a week for the option to be available.

So clearly I am not a fan of this service or their support. Am I crazy or is this seriously a poorly designed and implemented customer experience?