Why customer support is a UX job
Many UX teams share similar principles: to listen to users, to test with them all the time, and not just at the last step of a project, to be their voice in the company, to understand their needs, …
There are a lot of ways to do this, from user testing sessions to data analysis, but it’s easy to forget about another huge source of information on user expectations: Customer Support.
At Schibsted, I was lucky enough to work in a team which included Customer Support in the UX team. Here’s why I think this was the right way to go.
Customer support is a source of information on your users
It can seem a bit obvious, but good communication between Product and Customer Support is far from being the norm. And that’s a shame.
Customer Support are a unique point of access to users. They deal with all of the complaints, respond to all the frustrations and deal with the challenges users face with your Product. The flipside of this is that your Customer Support team can tell you exactly what users think of a feature (“Oh, they hate that, they always ask us for a refund”) or of a page (“Mmm, now that you mention it, I don’t think we’ve ever had anyone complain about that.”)
Your Customer Support team will remember challenging cases the most, and that’s a good thing, considering your goal is to discover user pain points. If something is a pain for the user, trust me, it’s a pain for your Customer Support team.
If you want to learn more about what your users think, you should ask the people who spend their day talking to them.
UX and Customer Support share common goals, and methods
Customer Support and UX have the same ideal: a user who has no questions and no issues when using their product.
But when a user has a question, the Customer Support’s job is to find the right way, the right words to explain so that the user understands, and doesn’t need to ask again. A UX Designer’s job is to anticipate these questions when they write the copy for a certain feature, or a certain page.
When the user has a problem, the Customer Support’s job is to find a solution with the means and the constraints that they have. This means taking into account what the product can and can’t do, and something suggesting an alternate solution to get the user as close to what they want as possible. Again, this is what a UX Designer does: creating the best possible solution to the user’s needs, within the constraints that they have.
The user journey includes Customer Support: it is part of your product
Have you ever gotten frustrated over an answer you got from a customer service?
I know I have.
Every answer a user gets from your Customer Support will forever be associated with your product. When a user is feeling lost using your product, giving them an unhelpful answer is just about the worst thing you can do to your brand. One single frustrating or unhelpful answer from Customer Support can convince a user that your product is just too complicated for them.
The internet is filled with statistics about how one poor experience can hurt your retention, and how most users are more likely to convert if your Customer Support is good, but looking at negative company reviews is enough to understand how key your Customer Support is to the user experience.
Emailed them several times this morning no response can’t even call them it’s like google has blocked them they are totally unprofessional and will never use these again.
My order of 7 exterior lights was cancelled twice , no reason was given. Customer Service online were not at all helpful and were, in fact, quite rude. I want to cancel my account/subscription but cannot find anyway to do this online.
TERRIBLE customer service, TO AVOID AT ALL COSTS.
If your users contact your Customer Support team, it’s because they have an issue, and this is the moment in which you can build or break their trust in your product.
Users can understand something unexpected happening, but they can’t be expected to accept not being given a solution when that happens.
If your Customer Support can’t provide a solution when problems arise, your users will churn. On the contrary, if your team provides a solution when your user thought they were in a bad situation, your users’ trust will increase and they will love your product even more.
Don’t let your users feel alone or abandoned. Their experience with Customer Support is part of their experience with your Product.
UX impacts your Customer Support… and vice versa
UX and Customer Support share the same goals, share the same methods to reach those goals, but more than that, they both have a direct impact on each other.
An easy to use product will trigger fewer customer complaints, giving your Customer Support team more time to answer the questions they do get. They can answer more quickly and give customised replies, and as a result, user satisfaction with your product will grow. In turn, this means fewer complaints, and more time to answer, and so on…
You get the gist of it.
Alright… Now what?
If you think about it… every user who has ever sent an email to Customer Support has voluntarily taken 5–10 minutes out of their life to tell you what they think of your product. User complaints are a gold mine of user expectations! Customer Support and UX teams should listen to that.
In the end, UX and Customer Support have a common goal, and common skills. Listening should be what UX and Customer Support do best.
Your user’s relationship with your product is defined by a lot of things, including the availability and quality of the customer service they get. A good product has a positive impact on Customer Support, and this increases your users’ satisfaction with your product.
This doesn’t mean that you should drop all other forms of research, but if you’re a UX Designer you should be spending time with your Customer Support team. Ask them and they’ll tell you more about your users than you might expect.
Both Customer Support and UX work towards a common goal, and they might get there faster by working together more.
This article is a revamp of an article I wrote for the Schibsted blog in 2016.
