When a designer is taking care of customer support
I am Product Designer at SpotAngels, I recently took care of customer support and this is what I learned.
SpotAngels is a community-based app that helps drivers find parking thanks to a live crowdsourced parking map.
Because we are a small team, we have to execute a lot of tasks outside the scope of our knowledge. It often takes me out of my comfort zone and forces me to learn new things. For a few months now, I have been taking care of customer support.
It makes sense because as a Product Designer, I need to talk with users. It helps me to better understand their needs and problems, but I didn’t imagine that it would go even further than that.
1) People behind numbers
I graduated from a design school in Paris. And like all design schools, teachers give us a lot of courses on empathy in design. We drew empathy maps, done a lot of user research and tried as much as we can to put ourselves in the user’s shoes.
But in a startup, we have to push a new version of the app every week. Even if we always start from a user need, my job is focused on goals I have to reach and metrics I have to increase. We measure our impact on numbers, and numbers make users abstracts.
Talking with users every day makes them real. After a few minutes sending support emails, I discovered stories and real user’s problem behind numbers. It gave me some fresh air and helped me keep in mind that I first design for people, in a business-driven company.
We had a drop in our funnel because some garage addresses were wrong. A user reported to me that he has been struggling for 15 minutes to find a garage, which made him arrive late to his appointment and pay much more for another garage. There, I realized it wasn’t just about numbers.
2) Build a better product
When I design, I am always starting with a problem.
I repeat to the team “Don’t give me the solution, give me the problem” because it’s complicated to find a solution without defining the problem. Every day, a lot of users face a ton of issues in our product and most of the time, I have no clue what’s happening. The customer support is a real chance to know more about it.
I can help a user by email, but it’s more efficient if I help a thousand through the product. Answering customer support forced me to identify a problem and find a solution product wise to fix it. It motivated me to get things done and receive fewer support requests.
I also noted that it makes me more confident in my design decisions because I have a better picture of all users problems and what should be fixed first.
Each time a user reported a problem, I added it to my product roadmap. You have no idea how much my to-do list increased after taking care of customer support!
3) Better understand the product I am working on
I am always using SpotAngels when I am looking for parking. But I can’t have all the features, interactions and copy in mind. Most of the time, I confess, I close my eyes on technical issues.
Sometimes, I also have the feeling that I know the app too well. Some details become invisible because I don’t look at the app with fresh eyes.
When a user sends a request, I can’t ignore it - I need to answer him. If don’t know the answer, I ask our engineers or the CEO. By doing that, I gain a better knowledge of our product, I better understand the technical part and I discover new things that I forgot.
We develop our features first on iOS. If it’s worth it, we add them on Android. Because we don’t have the same features on each platform, I’ve never had everything in mind. Today, I have a better picture of each platform because I am always taking care of answering users requests to the best I can
4) Instant users feedback
When I am designing a new feature, it’s always very useful to have users feedback as soon as possible.
When a user requests a feature, I am often taking the opportunity to show him a prototype, send quick sketches or ask questions to get as much feedback as I can.
In this context, this feedback is very valuable because the user experienced a specific issue and can immediately tell you if the solution looks great.
One time, a user sent us an email to suggest a feature that I was actually working on. I quickly mocked his idea to start a discussion with him. His solution ended up being much simpler to understand and easier to build than the one I had previously designed. I was amazed: he had saved us design and engineering time.
5) Give yourself some love
I am feeling more engaged in my design work when I am aware that I am helping people. Before this experience, when I was thinking about customer support, I always pictured furious users complaining about the app.
Most of my time, I receive structured critiques and very kind words - some users love our product! It makes me very proud of my job and motivates me to keep doing.
To keep the team motivated, we decided to frame every nice word we receive from users in our office. Do you trust me if I tell you that our walls are too small?
One last word
I want to mention that taking care of customer support is a real job. I still have a lot of things to learn in this domain, but I am very glad I have the opportunity to do it.
I invite all designers to take care of customer support, even for one or two hours during the week. It’s definitely not a waste of time, you learn so much on your product and on your personal work.
It’s also important to share all emails from the support with your team — through a Slack channel for example. Adopting this habit will help the entire company become more customer-centric.
