The Freshdesk blog
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Freshly squeezed droplets of customer support...
Vikram
Search Engine Optimize your K-Base!
January 30th, 2013 
Make your K-Base SEO friendly!
So you have everything you need to provide customers the best support experience possible. You have your email ticketing system and social support, your help desk team is ready with their headphones, and you have a pretty solid knowledge base with “everything under the sun”. Except your customers aren’t coming to you. Agreed, they are looking for a solution to a problem they have with your product. But they just aren’t coming to you!
Instead you see your customers queueing in front of Google. And you can’t blame them – when was the last time you faced a glitch on anything you used, and your hands did not instinctively start typing Goog… The trouble is, if your solution doesn’t feature on the top of this results page, it’s likely your customers will never get to hear your version of “this is how we dance”. I know that’s kind of a big deal, so here are the 4 ways you can optimize your knowledge base and solutions articles for search engines.
See what People are looking for
It’s easy to fill your knowledge base with what you think your customers want, but do you know what they really want? What if you could find out exactly what your customers are looking for in your solutions and forums? That way, you can focus each solution article on the right audience, with razor sharp accuracy.
If you use Google Analytics to keep a tab on your web stats, you might want to extend the advantages by tracking activities on your support portal as well. You can immediately identify which posts your customers spend the most time on, where they navigate to, and how they engage with your support. If you have integrated Google Webmaster Tools with this analytics profile, you can even see the exact search queries your customers use, and which of your articles are currently coming up.
Make it easy to Find
If a brilliant solution fell in the woods and nobody heard it, did it still make a sound? Nobody cares about your smooth as butter solutions and genius workarounds if they don’t get to read it. That means you need to make every piece of content you put into your knowledge base super easy for your customers. Think Google search results and SEO.
You don’t need to stuff keywords, sneak links and fill your article with blackhat gibberish to make this work. The right title, description and some well thought-out content should do the trick. So how do you know which title sticks, and what kind of content you should write? Andrew Chen shares a pretty interesting post on how to frame sticky post titles - in short, tweet it and see if it sticks with your target audience. Once you’ve framed the title and content, crafting a snippet for the post’s description is relatively easy. Finally, remember to capture the key idea of your solution in its URL as well.
Provide Intelligent Navigation
How long can you survive in a deserted island with just one solution article for solace? Your customers probably have different levels of knowledge and expertise about your product, so it makes sense for you to tell them where to go next with additional links and navigation.
If you are confused about how to interlink your solution articles, read through them (or better still, ask your mom to) and identify words and phrases where they tend to get lost a bit. If your article describes a series of steps, ask a novice to follow these instructions as you watch over their shoulder. If they fumble at a certain step, or have some additional questions, you might consider creating a new solution and linking out to it. You should also add a list of next steps, resources and calls to action at the end of “heavier” solution articles. You’ll be surprised to see the impact that has on your user engagement levels.
Keep it Fresh !
If you want your knowledge base to be the final authority on the right solutions to your customers, you need to be doubly sure of its accuracy. Nobody likes digging through a stale solution article with outdated screens and workflows. The best part is, frequently updated content gets crawled more often, placing you even higher on your search rankings. It might be a good idea to periodically take an inventory of your knowledge base and reorganize them, editing and featuring the hottest topics on top. In fact, it’s best to shoot an email with your best ideas “as you get them” to your knowledge base, so you always have a few cool articles to review and publish every few weeks.
The trick to optimizing your knowledge base for search engines is, paradoxically, not worrying too much about the search engine at all. Share earth shattering FAQs, solutions and workarounds with customers and your content will automatically feature on the top of search results.
Sairam
Flex your Business Hours: What time does the store open?
January 30th, 2013 
Flex your Business Hours with Freshdesk!
Most businesses run like clockwork, with pretty consistent working hours throughout the week. Wake up at 6, walk the dog, finish up breakfast by 8, start taking support calls at 9, and keep at it till 5 when you pull down the shutters and get back home. Monday through Friday. So when it comes to negotiating service levels with customers, a single rule defining business hours works perfect.
But then, some of us like to fuzzy it up a bit. We work half days on Saturdays. We put in a couple of hours extra on Mondays, because Mondays need some help. And we get home three hours early on Friday, because… well, it’s Friday. A single official “store working hours” doesn’t quite cut it for us. Your customers understand. After all, there’s no point working a uniform 8 hours every day if you KNOW your customers need you more on Mondays than every other day combined. But how do you get your helpdesk and SLA policy to understand that every day is different?
If you haven’t already noticed the new customization options on your daily business hours in Freshdesk, you are going to love this. You now get to set business hours for each day of the week distinctly, and your SLA policies “get it”. That way, you can leave home at 4pm on Saturday and catch some football without worrying about an SLA violation. You can read how to set them up here.
Ramesh
Public Ticket Links: Why sign up when you can just jump right in?!
January 29th, 2013 
Public Ticket URLs Just For You
We all hate having to “login”. I don’t know if it’s having to remember another username-password combination, or being blocked out by a login form but it’s just one of those things people universally detest. Most often customers are already pretty frustrated when they decide to reach out to support. Throwing a “login” between an angry customer and the possible solution to their agony is probably not the greatest idea.
But then again, there are somethings that you need to put up behind a signup form. How else do you track which customer replied to a ticket, or even keep the ticket away from eyes that shouldn’t be seeing it?
If only you could share a super secret link that only your customers knew? That way you can give them “one click access” to the solutions that could change their lives, and just need to confirm their identity when they choose to post a reply.
Your customers can already jump on to your Freshdesk support portal with their Google, Facebook or Twitter accounts. Starting this week, you can keep them on top of their tickets without even signing in!
No more barriers, with Public Ticket URLs
You can share the public ticket link with customers by using the Public Ticket URL Placeholder available in your email notifications and templates. Your customers will then receive a link that looks like “yourcompany.freshdesk.com/public/tickets/t0t4l4b50lut3g1bb3r15h” that they can use to jump directly into the ticket. That’s one less login and one step closer to happiness!
Bonus benefit: Easier Sharing
How do your customers share ticket information with their teams? Copying the mail thread? Forwarding replies? You could save a lot of back-and-forth on a ticket by just letting customers collaborate responses with their team. With Public Ticket URLs, that’s as easy as sharing the link. Now the whole team gets to view progress on the ticket, but only you can add responses and notes.
Here’s a how to guide for public ticket links.
Vikram
The story behind Freshdesk’s new logo
January 24th, 2013 We love talking to customers. We love giving them a great product, coupled with an even better support experience. And we love listening to their feedback – the good, the bad, and the ugly. I believe a brand is a reflection of what the customer really feels about the product, so every time I hear a customer tell us how FRESH his support feels after using us I kind of get goosebumps all over…
Late last year, we decided to do away with our Orange logo. Apparently there were some legal-ish issues with trademarked oranges that we found a bit too tangy for our taste. Plus hey – here’s an opportunity to rethink our identity…
Rethinking “Fresh”: The Designer Brief
When we decided to rethink our logo, we knew right off that it had to capture the essence of freshness. That got us thinking. A sunrise walk on the beach. A whiff of morning breeze wafting through the grass. Rain drops on the window pane, and a cup of cocoa to go along. This guy. Waterfalls. Hot loaves of bread. A drizzle of honey. That was pretty much all we could come up with for our designer brief!
Jogging through: A sneak peak of the design process
For the design team, the problem was every one of these ideas seemed just about right (except the cocoa part – some of us are more of the coffee kind of person). Our rockstar logo designer wanted the motif to be something that presents and preserves the fresh thought…
…Like a dew drop gliding off a blade of grass
At one point, we could almost smell drops of dew falling off the grass, and taste the raindrops in the air. And that was when we figured – nothing speaks “Fresh” like a drop of dew from the treetops landing on your face. We had captured the essence of Fresh, in a droplet!
-The design team
So that was their cue. The art-smiths from the design stable abstracted the concept of the dew to a simple, and yet powerful, motif.
Adding a nice touch for customer support
The final step was in adding a little bit of “perspective” to it. “He tried it flat. He gave it a bounce. He messed around with texture, till he finally had a teal drop that seemed to distil his thoughts.”
So how does it look?
I think the master stroke is the strobe of light that seems to deflect on the dew, through the Freshdesk text. Internally, we love it. It’s great to wake up every morning to a whiff of freshness. Tell us what you think about our new logo in the comments section.
Oranges out. A little dew drop of freshness… In!
Ramesh
Why In-App support is the only way forward for the App Economy..
January 4th, 2013 
Freshdesk's new Mobile SDK for iOS developers
Everyday, every minute we use iPhones and iPads to get things done. We use it on our way to work to check in on the day’s agenda and while on the train to read news. And more than talking, more than texting, it is evident that our daily phone time is used on apps, something which wasn’t even a part of mainstream imagination just a few years ago.
The Economy that Apple Built
Today, the mobile-app industry is peaking. More handheld apps are sold everyday than desktops. And leading the revolution has been Apple’s iOS. Apple’s smartphone operating system has more than 750,000 applications that can run on several generations of its iDevices. Consumers pay good money for applications ranging from as little as 99 cents to more than $10 for a particular apps, a good indicator for real world economics considering the trend towards ‘free’.
Thanks to Apple’s iOS continuous update policy, developers had it pretty mapped out. That, along with their products’ common architecture, has enabled Apple to build one of the most successful digital consumer ecosystems in the world, perhaps only bettered by their own iTunes store, and of course, rivaled by Amazon’s online megamall. But even as the tech giant wages war with other heavyweights like Microsoft, Amazon and Google, there are issues at ground level that need looking into.
What’s Eroding Quality?
As competition continues to grow, iOS apps are increasingly becoming very similar. On a slow Saturday afternoon, touch the App Store icon and try searching for a generic app, say time management. You’ll keep running into virtually the same utilities, similar UIs and a lot of apps that basically do the same thing. Pretty soon, you’ll lose interest (we did) and stop looking. And let’s admit it, who’s interested in trying a ‘slightly’ better app?
A large group of developers and brands entering the market are betting on promising ideas, which they should. But they should do more than make up the numbers. The developers will know how and why their app is better, but the user doesn’t care. For all he knows, this app is the same as that free one on the next scroll.
If you aren’t the first mover
There is the issue of getting there first. And developers need to fight off rivals capable of offering the same experience, only packaged and marketed better. While some do try to address entirely new problems, those who strike gold are rare. For newcomers hitting a known domain, price can’t be the USP either, for there are at least a few dozen apps doing more or less the same thing for free.
Feedback and Reviews
As an App developer, the competition, the numbers and everything ‘business’ are for you to worry about. All the user cares about is the product experience. The little things like loading time, the crash that made them lose a high score, your update cycle will be noticed only by them. Everything contributes to their view of the product. And they’ll talk. App users are a tech savvy breed, after all, and they expect and deserve respect.
This is when you should realize that no matter what app you have, the rating and review space on the App Store, or Twitter and Facebook is the only place for your users to reach you. Sure, you have a beautiful website and a support portal to take tickets, but do you actually believe users will use them? If God forbid, you put in a bug in the app that actually screws up the gameplay or the experience, be ready for a tirade on social media. That’s where everyone vents, and that’s where it hurts most.
Mobihelp
You don’t have to work at CERN to understand that the support experience needs to be a part of your product itself. An amazing website isn’t going to help your customers when they are frustrated with the product. That’s why just a Contact Us link on your site doesn’t cut it. And that is exactly why we built Mobihelp. We wanted developers to be able to integrate a support portal inside their apps, where users could raise complaints, find answers to popular questions and chat directly with developers. Crash reports now get sent directly, no questions asked, and no fire-fighting on social media too.
Wouldn’t that be the best way to stand out ever ? The App Maker that listens to and incorporates customer feedback in real time into the update and maintenance process?
We think it would be.
You can get Mobihelp, Freshdesk’s new SDK for iOS developers here.
Ramesh
You’ve Got MailChimp – The new Freshdesk/MailChimp integration
January 4th, 2013 
Freshdesk is now integrated with MailChimp!
Customer Support is lot like a long distance relationship. In other words, it’s tough. You’ve hardly seen your customers, and every time you reach out to them with a sales email you’re probably waiting for their reply, that notification on your computer that says – You’ve Got Mail!
Just that if you could know what your marketing team see in their email marketing data, whether the message reached them, what they clicked on, what they read, and so on. That’d make sure your customers always get a happy ending, right?
That’s the idea behind the Freshdesk – MailChimp Integration. Now, the support team knows exactly who gets which mailers. They can quickly add confused customers to the on-boarding list or remove grouchy ones who don’t want to be disturbed. After all, it is them who come face to face with the customers everyday. The agents even get to know exactly what newsletters customers have been reading for so long. That would have come in handy for Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, we expect!
What it means to have Freshdesk and MailChimp working together
1. Meg’s messages don’t get mixed up
Add your mailing address to Freshdesk and you don’t have to keep checking it again and again for replies. They now go directly to your helpdesk, where there are agents waiting to resolve it on arrival. That way, no customer email gets sad and lonely while it sits and waits in your inbox.
2. Tom knows if Meg gets his message on time
Agents get complete access to MailChimp’s subscriptions settings from Freshdesk and control who should receive emails. A customer who is already in conversation or prefers to be left alone can be removed from a list quickly. Meanwhile, every click and open is tracked and the numbers are accessibly right where they are.
That brings two of your favorite services together, giving you a whole lot of functionality and insight. Who says work and romance can’t go together?
Vikram
A Fresh look at 2012 (and here’s to a refreshing 2013)
December 31st, 2012 It’s been a great year. An awesome year, in fact. And there’s no easy way to justify a recap without missing a few moments. But here’s highlighting some of the hottest, coolest and fun-est things in Freshdesk, in 2012:
Got the Time ? And a dozen other superpowers….
There’s one question that’s bound to come up sooner or later in your support team: How much time did you spend on each customer and ticket? And what did you actually do? And in February, 2012, we came up with the perfect answer to that… Time tracking. After all, if you are billing your clients for their support time, you need to be able to generate timesheets, invoice them, and pull out awesome reports on who spent how much time, doing what.
The trouble is, now with a stop clock ticking, it gets doubly hard to do anything other than firefighting. Like finding time to update your knowledge base. Shooting an email to your knowledge base, and having it ready for approval sounds like a little thing to talk about. But the ability to keep your knowledge base up-to-date without shifting focus? A perfect knowledge base is invaluable. And with even the biggest companies struggling to keep their kbase updated, the Email to Kbase feature , IMHO, is a big big little thing!
If you can email your knowledge base, why not shoot an email to your help desk too? After all, a smart help desk should be able to “understand” you, right? We imagined how much fun it would be if you could command your help desk to assign, prioritize, categorize and tag tickets. Freshdesk strips out the command, and add just the content you intended as a private note or customer reply. And it lets you play a game of Simon Says with your help desk!
It’s your help desk and it should jolly well be yours a 100%. Through 2012, we’ve worked hard to make Freshdesk deep, customizable and super flexible for the unique use cases of each business. Got a special ticket field you’d need? Just drag, drop, customize and you’re done. Plus there’s no joy like sitting back and identifying the biggest choke holds in your support - hierarchical dependent fields let you do just that.
Sometimes we think we are in the business of creating smiles. So it only made sense to bring in integrated customer satisfaction surveys into Freshdesk. And not just that – through 2012, businesses on Freshdesk have been able to choose when to send out a survey, and how they want to collate the results. And with Freshdesk Arcade, we just made customer satisfaction something that every support rep should covet for!
Going Mobile and Stealing the App store
Customer support issues have this knack of creeping up during the oddest hours. Most often, your laptop is lying a couple of rooms away, the kids are wailing or you’re walking the dog.
All you have is your mobile phone. Sure, email commands help. But sooner or later you need to look at the whole thread, jump between tickets and get the whole “help desk” experience. We call that “FreshMobile”, the HTML5 Freshdesk app for mobile devices.
Speaking of mobile apps, there were very few options that app developers had in terms of getting user feedback. We threw a couple of space birds and super-noted our thoughts on our iPhones, to come up with MobiHelp – the Freshdesk iOS SDK for in-app support.
Obsessing with the awesome….the fun way
If there’s one thing that best summarizes 2012 at Freshdesk, it would be our obsessive focus on agent productivity. More automations to get rid of the boring, more “little” usability things that make your life better… And Freshdesk Arcade, to put the “fun” back into customer support. It’s awesome to see how something as simple as setting out objectives, and competing on things that matter, has changed the way hundreds of businesses (and support reps) look at customer support!
Let’s get some friends for your help desk
A lonely help desk is a sad sad help desk. As it turns out, the more relevant data you have about a customer, the better support experience you get to promise. If only you knew what sales knew about that hot new lead, or what marketing knew about the customer’s subscriptions and interests. If only you could shoot out time sheets and directly invoice clients for the time you spent supporting them. If only you could chat with customers in real-time, and have that information ready in your help desk the next time they come down with a support request. If only… And, well, all it takes is the click of a button in your Freshdesk account!
More CRM: That’s right. You could already tie in Salesforce, SugarCRM and Capsule, (topped with Batchbooks and Highrise last month). Now we’ve added Nimble and Zoho CRM to the list as well. Got some bugs you’d rather squash? The Freshdesk – JIRA integration is just for you!
Invoice on the fly: Why track time if you can’t bill them, right? This year we’ve integrated with FreshBooks, Harvest and Fetchflow, so you can track time in Freshdesk and bill clients automatically!
Chat me up: It really takes support to a whole new level when customers can chat with your service reps in real time. Freshdesk has a whole buffet of chat integrations to choose from. Plus with our recent LogMeIn Rescue integration, you can jump into the customer’s computer screens right from inside Freshdesk.
Hit me a Googly: We are currently the most tightly integrated solution with Google tools. You can single sign in from Google Apps, check all help desk activity with Gmail Gadgets, sync Google Contacts and even drive support insights from Google Analytics.
Mailer Tailor: Knowing how your customers respond to marketing can tell you a lot about what they think about you. Which lists are they subscribed to? What mails do they open? Which campaigns do they respond to? Freshdesk is now integrated with MailChimp, CampaignMonitor ConstantContact and iContact. Seriously – no monkey business!
Call me, maybe: The icing on the cake has to be the telephone integrations that add call logs to each ticket, read out ticket statuses to customers over IVRS, and route calls to the right agent. Cloud telephony provider Kookoo shared a pretty cool voice integration for businesses in India earlier this year, and our buddies at Knowlarity have gone full-out with their Freshdesk integration.
Got a legacy system or inhouse data base you’d like to integrate with Freshdesk? You can plug in any information right inside your tickets and contacts with FreshPlugs. Why, you can even style and format them any way you like. We’ve had a lot of fun building FreshPlugs to add location data to tickets from Google Maps, track sentiment, and even bring in the Klout score. Sounds interesting or got some ideas you’d like to see in 2013? Drop us a line in the comments…
And wish you a refreshingly awesome 2013!
Sairam
10 ways to improve productivity with Freshdesk!
December 19th, 2012 
Increase helpdesk productivity with Freshdesk!
It’s almost Christmas week, and as you jump hurdle after hurdle to get every ticket resolved, anticipate and negate every possible complaint, you know you are racing against an unforgiving clock. And with the holidays looming large in your mind like the mistletoe on Christmas trees, you need every trick in the box to get things done as fast as it possibly can.
We just thought we should help out, you know, this being the festive season and everything!
So here are 10 ways you can improve your productivity with Freshdesk, get everything done at supersonic speeds, and head off for that much needed vacation -
Stay on top with (Email) Notifications
Get your tickets dropped right into your mailbox by getting your email notifications configured, set and working before you get ready to welcome Santa. That way, you know when there is a new ticket to address even as you unwrap that warm smile from your customers for Christmas. Make sure the notification email has a link back to the ticket in your help desk. So you don’t waste time searching for it, in case you need a quick dive into your help desk.
Keep the automations ready for new tickets
Why should someone in the support team need an alert when the customer has a sales query? Apart from filling up inboxes and being an unnecessary false alarm on a holiday, having bad workflows (or none at all) only adds to the delay. A simple automation that files each incoming ticket in the right category, prioritizes it, and assigns it to the right agent or support group can save you hours that you could spend sipping apple cider. The tickets you need to answer will come to you, because that’s how it should be.
Set your business rules and workflows on auto-pilot
There’s something magical about support tickets during Christmas. Your customers who happened to raise all those tickets somehow disappear when you need a response from them. Now, you could either spend the rest of your vacation running through every pending ticket, or just create a rule that sends a gentle reminder email to customers automatically if they haven’t gotten back to you in a day. There’s just so much more you can do by bringing your workflows into your help desk – like auto-closing resolved tickets, or even keep customer frustrations low during their day off.
Keep the motivation high, without losing focus
Productivity falling, support getting boring, agents losing motivation? The last thing you need is your team losing its holiday cheer. Why not transform your support portal into a game, let your agents compete, win badges and trophies, compare achievements and drive each other? You could even consider setting them on short-term “Quests” to keep customer satisfaction levels high, or resolution times low.
Have responses ready in a single click
You know those questions you keep getting over and over again? You are probably going to get a lot more of them during the holidays. Consider creating pre-formatted canned responses to the top 10 questions you get every day. That way, you can post answers and actually resolve tickets in a single click. Your helpdesk will soon resemble the wild west, with your agents slinging guns and shooting down tickets in single shots. Fast will never mean the same again.
Don’t stop with workflows. Automate entire processes
Consider this – a support ticket raises an issue. The agent needs to email the customer with a bug ID, move the ticket to ‘Pending’, assign it to the QA team and notify the QA Engineer about the ticket. This is a time consuming process, albeit a frequent one. And your team is sure to “forget” a step or two, especially with the vacations so near. Have automations ready that can run the entire scenario, from emailing the customer to assigning the ticket to the engineer, and accomplish them in a single click.
Don’t search. Choose from smart suggestions
You have already written a thesis on the subject in your solutions page. You know you could search through your knowledge base for all the related articles, find the right one and share the link in your response. But why? In the world of Google Suggest, actually searching by keywords is preposterous. Make your help desk suggest the solutions that might be the best fit. Of course, the catch here is to make sure your knowledge base is ready and updated.
Keep the Kbase updated and ready
Which brings us to the knowledge base. As you type a reply to a customer, you realise that what you are writing is a great knowledge base article or a even a possible solution. You want to save it, but then you need to copy it, navigate to the solutions page and pen down your draft. Or you could just shoot an email and have your help desk convert it to a k-base article for you. Either way, remember to keep that knowledge base updated and ready before the holidays.
Marry the tools you use most often
It’d be great if your support integrates with your CRM, right? Or your invoicing software, or your bug tracking software or your email marketing software, perhaps? Jumping between a plethora of tools can be annoying even during a regular work day. You sure don’t want to do that during your day off. Run a quick check to see if your help desk is connected with your CRM, invoicing application, email campaign tool, bug tracking system and pretty much anything else you might want to tie it to.
If it can be done from your inbox, do it!
It’s Christmas after all. You don’t want to open up that laptop unless you really need to. In fact, you probably don’t even want to fire up the browser in your phone. If you can get it done with a couple of lines through email, why go anywhere else. But check if your help desk pipes your emails, formats them the way you need and sends it out to customers right away. Better still, if your help desk lets you control it through email commands, you can probably strike gold this holiday season!
Girish
Startups are not a “David vs Goliath” story. It is more like a Commando operation…
December 12th, 2012 This post is based on my interactions with a lot of really smart people, who are either working on a startup or want to be an entrepreneur soon. After many of these conversations, I feel that for most, the odds of succeeding are really low. I am by no means a pessimist but I clearly see that many smart people underestimate the efforts of starting up.
The media always portrays successful startups as a “David vs. Goliath” story but that story is always enjoyable only in hindsight after the underdog David wins. In reality successful startups have a lot of similarities to a Commando operation – Stealth, Speed of execution, intelligence and efficiency.
Here is the Commando’s Guide to succeeding in the Startup world…
A Commando team – While you may be super smart, you also need world class designers, marketers, developers, Product Managers and Sales people. How are you going to attract and build the Commando team? Either you should have pretty good connections or a really awesome Product story that acts as a Talent magnet.
A Commando Culture – Treat everyone as equals. The team understands and respects each other. Ego is nonexistent or it is sealed and self-contained. You are in it together watching each other’s back. You live or die together.
Commando Compensation: A commando is not motivated by money but as they are extremely skilled and efficient they are very expensive. If you can’t pay them good salaries, compensate them with generous stock options.
Commando Ammunition – Commandos can survive in extreme conditions (startup work places) but they still need their guns and knives. Do not cut corners when it comes to buying the best hardware / software tools to make them effective.
If you have such a team, culture and tools then your chances of startup success go up significantly higher. Now go, fight and win. Good luck!
Commando Training – If you are still reading this, then probably you are wondering that you are not ready for a startup yet. Don’t worry Commando skills can be learned if you are willing to go through the learning curve (There are no shortcuts to the learning curve). I worked for almost 10 years in a Product Company before starting Freshdesk. The phrase “been there, done that” has a lot of value in a startup – In my case because I’ve “been there, done that” – really smart people wanted to work with me, investors were willing to write big checks and we were able to successfully navigate our way out of the most difficult phase of starting up.
Instead of rushing into starting a startup, it is not a bad idea to take a slightly longer term approach. Join a good Product company and work for 4-5 years, pick up valuable skills in understanding what it takes to build, market, sell and support a world class Product. In the process you also build good relationships with other commandos and who knows – you may even meet your future co-founders. You can’t become a successful pilot or a doctor without years of practice. Why should entrepreneurship be any different? Go ahead and start your Commando training by joining a good Product Startup. Good luck for your future.
P.S. – My HR manager wants me to mention here that we are looking for Commandos to join us as Developers, Product Managers, UI Designers and Marketers. So if you are interested in joining the Freshdesk School of Commando training please email us at commandos@freshdesk.com
Sairam
How to Handle Complaining Customers
December 5th, 2012 
How do you react to customer complaints?
We all know handling complaining customers is tricky. On one hand, there is the usual business of handling, mitigating and resolving complaints. On the other, babysitting a couple of customers who constantly sap your support team of time and enthusiasm means you have fewer resources for those who can actually make a difference to your business.
And for all its glory, social media has not been a good friend when faced with complaining customers. A witty bad comment from an angry customer can snowball into a PR disaster. With a traditional customer support mindset, you are going to be stuck between trying to appease every complaint, and sidestepping ones that really matter. To be able to effectively handle customer complaints, your customer service has to be proactive.
The silver lining of complaining customers is the opportunity they present to turn the tale around and set things right.
Instead of getting defensive, can you involve the complaining customer into your support process? How can you make your team proactive and serve each complaint, without losing their mojo?
Here’re a few easy tips that will help you handle even the worst of them -
1. Listen, before jumping in
I know, how often have you heard that? But it’s kind of key. 96% of complaining customers don’t care about the numbers and statistics you throw at them – they just have an issue and they need to be heard. Plus giving them time to tell you their side of the story actually gives you a better idea of what the problem really is, rather than jumping the gun with the wrong answer.
2. Ask the right questions
Nothing can be more annoying than hearing a scripted voice at the other end. Asking the right questions means you can help your customer to a solution faster. Scripts work great to train your team, so write one down, print it out, and then burn it. Nobody wants to talk to a human agent who can’t pass the Turing test!
3. Empathize, care and show
Growing on the previous point, do you really care or do you act like you care? I think complaining customers develop a sixth sense to sniff out your agent’s fake concern. Of course, having agents get too emotionally connected and filling up your call center in tears isn’t the best place to be. But that’s definitely better than having a robot who just doesn’t care.
4. Don’t get defensive
A complaining customer needs a vent. And as the front-line face of the organization, your support agent is going to get yelled at quite often. But getting defensive and pointing the blame at the customer never helps. Customer service expert Rebecca Morgan suggests bringing in an inanimate object (like a bad instruction manual) as the punching bag to take the blame. Personally, I think if you hear the sound of ripping paper at the other end you’ve made some progress. The point is, make sure your support reps don’t get on the defensive – in most cases, a chivalrous “we are sorry” can take quite some heat off the table.
5. Dig up the Solution
At the end of the day, your customers still have a problem and that needs a solution. Quite understandably, your agents don’t have it at hand most often. That’s exactly why you should create a process of making sure no complaint falls into the gaps. Ticketing every complaint, making sure it reaches the right eyes within the team, and providing the solution you promised can go a long way in building trust with your customers. And once you get into their circle of trust, your complaining customer suddenly becomes a part of your “team”.
6. Rope them into the Solution
Sometimes there are no clear solutions. No matter what your support reps do, they can never make your car float through water or create magic over an item broken during delivery. But what they can do is make the customer a part of the solution. Ask them what they would want.
7. Process, process, process
How you handle a complaining customer is about empathy. How you handle the complaints, and win the customer forever is about process. When faced with a really bad customer conversation, get your team to take notes and learnings. Stage weekly meetings to discuss each agent’s “agony calls” and how they handled the complaint.
We are pretty soon you’ll have a bunch of support agents who can turn any complaining customer into a buddy for life.