Brandon Bruce & Ell Marquez - How To Train Your Customers: Changing the Course of Support

I by the way if you do have any difficulty seeing the slides the link here at the bottom is access to all of my slides and you'll be able to follow along on your own device but welcome to how to train your customer in this talk we're going to kind of go over not just the arc types that you see those things that we all love to laugh at but ways to engage and interact to educate your customers or to train the Dragons that you encounter on a daily basis everyone in here has been a customer at some point in time unless you have just literally walked in here from like some sort of collective commune you've been

to a grocery store fast food restaurant something and bought something maybe you've been that person who stood in the grocery store aisle looking for soy sauce and you're standing on UC manage UC mustard you see ketchup it's a condiment it should be here where is it and you start getting upset and frustrated and you go and grab the stock boy by the years and go where is it where is my soy sauce and he goes it's it's one aisle over right here with the Asian noodles you just had to walk one aisle over yeah if you haven't experienced that god bless you you're great we love you in support you're the you're helpful my name by the

way for the introduction part is Brandon Bruce I am the customer support manager for Linux Academy previous to that I was an OpenStack administrator and a Linux this admin for Rackspace also I worked in kitchens for nearly 20 years and if you want to deal with high-pressure customer support have somebody throw food back at you have to be able to push out a dish every 20 minutes and have it be perfect a hundred times a night so you kind of become a dragon trainer you start creating these safe playgrounds for everybody to learning because hey they've got knives they've got fire they've got hot oil they need to feel safe and they need to be able to learn

but they got to do it quickly and kind of become a fireman I like the term someone else coined that again about me that I was putting out dragon fires so firemen kind of works because that's what we end up doing to move on though we're going to start talking about the issues and I'm gonna cover six basic issues now there are plenty that you're gonna see in your career as a support tech or support engineer but these are some of the six basic ones the first one we don't really know what his issue is this is captain coop this is and will be Captain Caveman he's right there this guy always has a complaint but it's all he's got he's got

nothing else to tell you he just yells at you that something is broken and comes at you with a club instead of the scalpel you know there's no troubleshooting no effort on his part whatsoever he's going to need constant poking and prodding in order to keep him on task in order to get him to help you he needs your patience he does not need you to tell him he's wrong if you tell him he's wrong you're going to devolve into that three-year old type argument up it's your fault no it's your fault it's your fault no it's your fault don't engage that just help him learn because if you can explain the outcome to him

and show him how to do it he can follow simple steps he just needs a little bit of help and you'll know what captain caveman when you start hearing the site is slow if you've worked in support you've heard this somehow in some version maybe the site is slow or your application doesn't work how how does it not work how is it slow give me something instead of just pushing back on them and going in your job go in the direction you know thank you for bringing it to our attention I'd love to deep dive into this with you how about we both start opening up our our networking tools you know here's how to get to it on your browser and then

have them give you data back show them what they're looking for and they will return that back to you illustration and setting expectations goes miles with the Captain Caveman but the next issue we have is we've always done it this way now this guy does some troubleshooting but if you haven't seen office space he's a Milton Wadhams he continues to show up to work 16 years after being fired because he has always done it that way he doesn't know any different but it's not his fault either we've created this this is 100% of support created issue because he's been desensitized by cookie cutter statements that we make all of us where you say you just need to flush

your cash it's your cookies turn it off turn it back on again all of those comments with just no data behind them creates a Milton because that's what he's gonna do is get come back and go hey it works when I go to YouTube it's not my internet because I've got 100 megabits because we used to say that if if you went around for that it used to be a complaint that it had to be your internet with slow you're getting 2g or 3G connections now it's not so much an issue but that argument used to be huge now it's cookies in cash you'll see that they'll come back and say I flushed my cookies I got rid of my cash it's all

gone so it can't be that what he needs is proof that the next step that next little thought that next obvious troubleshooting thing will actually work for him so instead of stopping here and going okay yeah it's not your Internet we got it something like a great you know how to troubleshoot other sites - all right let's have an engaging conversation how about you try this type of tool like a traceroute run traceroute on google run it on YouTube then run it on our site tell me what the difference is between those here's what it looks like on my machine give him the data back and show him how to make that comparison he will start

doing more of the work for you and give better feedback the next time but then there is woe is me these are the ones that always feel like something is their fault it may not have any type of real correlation and in fact they are the correlation versus causation type of argument they believe that that thing that they did months ago is the reason why things are broken today they may be right but most of the time they are absolutely wrong they are so deeply entrenched in their own depression about this problem they give you no real data their arguments look like my account is locked I'm sorry I paid late last year but I was sick my dog died all these

other things that have nothing to do with it what's the real problem it's in the first sentence that's it everything else is useless information to support but it's the exact opposite for the e or the you are the first sentence is useless everything that's important to them is those next three four sentences that come after and if you can appreciate their in their issue their actual emotional issue they'll let you fix that first physical issue the first real problem so you turn back to them with hey I'm sorry I you sound like you've had a really rough time I what I did is I've went and looked into your account it was locked because it looks

like you put in the password wrong twelve times so we have a protective system where after brute-force attacks we lock it but I unlocked it for you you're good to go by the way how's your dog doing something like that anything eating it shows that you read the rest of his statement we'll reach out to an ER and just go miles with them but they do need you to hold their hand and walk them through everything step by step they need to feel like you care about them now the exact opposite of a knee or and I'm going to assume that everybody in here has a healthy meme of dick meme addiction and you're familiar

with Karen yeah Karen wants to talk to your task manager she does there's no winning with a Karen just straight out upfront you're not going to win this person over she's going to hate you by the end of it even if you fix everything you are not going to do it right so accept that when you start and that you are working more in will call it shades of grey how much she hates you she's gonna hate you but is it a little less than when she started like I said she's the polar opposite of your she does not want you to hold her hand she does not want you to explain everything to her

because if you're explaining it to her then you must be too stupid under yourself doesn't make any sense but that's the way she thinks so just fix it and get her going that's the best you can do Terran is also notorious for wanting to talk to a higher level whatever it is whether it's a manager a system administrator versus an engineer whatever she wants that next step I have not been able to use your site for over a week now this is ridiculous I need an action and you speak with an actual engineer the others has gone on for too long I'll be cancelling my account and telling oh yeah she loves to threaten by

the way I didn't mention that but Karen will threaten you with everything she will tell you that she will find you and you know slashed your tires all those things she is that wicked person I say she men can just as easily be a Karen we can call them Cory if you like they they both exist but the best way to deal with her so she's told you her problem I've taken a look at your account I had corrected the issues already you are all set to go by the way here's a screenshot of me in your account it is working now please test it and verify that's it it is a business transaction with Karen

there is no emotion here there is no I care about you because she does not want to hear it which it just doesn't just give her the fix and send her on her way but Karen is a little more in-depth than the others Karen creates the trap and yeah there is no good answer for the trap and the trap looks something like this if you can't fix it just give me my money back now you hear that phrase and you're going each person reacts a little differently just viscerally just that gut reaction you can't fix it well that's my ego I'm hurt yeah I can fix it or just give me my money back all right I can get this

woman away from me just give her the money whatever you have that visceral initial reaction reaction urge you not to take either one of those because the firt let's say you offer to fix it say I can fix this for you well I didn't say I want you to fix I want you to give my money back can't you freaking read okay well I'll give your money back when you don't even know how to fix it do you why don't you give me somebody smarter and you get that fight so I tell you Captain Kirk that nonsense take the unseen third option okay I fixed it for you and by the way here's some compensation

for your lost time again she's not gonna love me but I want to give her as few things to fight with me about I wanted to hate me a little less tomorrow that's it speaking of hate all of these have talked about guided effort things that we can do but what about those little situations where say company policy won't let you do the work you need the customer that dragon to do something you know you want me to do it what why do I pay for you those type of people these are your entitled they believe that they paid for you to do everything for them but what about if like one of the big ones I see is cancel

my account now for me we have to have people actually do the physical act of canceling their account why because they're giving up access to a paid service you have to do that work so what do you do with it well as support we need to start drawing a line because enough of us I'm sure we've all made that that small patina of taint choice where you go all right this one time I'll do the one thing just to get this person going but you know what now you put a marker on yourself and the next time that person calls in and they go oh well you know Dave did that for me last time why can't you do it now you made

everybody else on your support team look bad because you were trying to be helpful and it's not that you were wrong you should be helpful but we have to start drawing the line somewhere and these guys will push and push and push and destroy a support team from the inside out because they believe they deserve whatever they want we have to draw a line with them and again much like Karen you're not gonna win the only way you win is if you build a better team within yourself within your own infrastructure finally we have I did exactly what you said and it's still broken these are and if you've ever had to deal with them

the teenager you gave them directions you know you made sense when you talk to them but somehow they just can't follow directions but it's not that they're not trying don't confuse these with people who are unintelligent because they do they understand what you're saying they just aren't getting it doesn't click with them yet and that's where you come in these are the ones that you can actually change these are the ones you can start building on and make them better because you can show them a process so say you take this if you run Linux these comments should make a little sense to you you may have even seen it I took this one directly from a ticket now what

I told them was open up terminal or putty at no point did I say type putty into the terminal but it happened why because I was dealing with a teenager and I didn't realize it and what they need are those clear-cut directions not my initial reaction was oh my god I can't believe he did that oh okay but once I pulled it together it's like all right cool but he's got the terminal open already or it did step one let's celebrate that all right man well you've got it open here's what we're gonna do this is how SSH works and here's the SSH command and this is the host and this is the IP address and this is duh and I

outlined it for him and I showed him what that looks like and what I found was about a week and a half later that guy was on our forums teaching someone else how SSH works that's what a teenager they become these big huge cheerleaders that go out there and shout for your company and do your job for you which is great cuz I love getting paid for someone else doing my job that's a plus speaking of people who will become and these are kind of an ancillary archetype because they don't really come into your tickets they don't come on the phone these are going to be your war boys the witness me you know they want

to be seen they're not interested so much and having a problem fixed they're not interested in your tickets your phone they're going to play by their own game and do whatever they want most likely through social media they're going to shout and scream and their tech their their tags and their post will look something like that and they're going to go find not just your company but they will find the highest person they can who happens to be on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn or whichever one there whatever format they're going for either they're gonna shout out how bad support is is it true probably not but these people can be turned around just like a teenager but

these guys are smart and you can't ignore them you can't put them off you can't let them sit because like that like moldy sock in the back of your room the longer you let it sit the worse it gets these guys will become a festering pool against you but you reach out and do something like that bring them in engage them in the medium that they attack you in and offer to do something special for them these are the same guys that when you give them stickers slap it on their laptops right away they put your t-shirt on and take pictures with it they find your stuffy's and they do weird Instagram posts with them they are those people because if

you reach out and you engage them and you make them part of your community they love being included but the moment you close them out they will burn you and that kind of comes to what is actually our final issue that we all still have a job to do we have to come together it's easy to get up here and identify these problems and to even tell you how I go about fixing them the hardest part is if you found something in any of these that works for you to turn around tomorrow or Monday or whenever you go back to work and actually put them to use because it's hard to come out of our very isolated

feeling and support I know support is a draining event it is hard to do and it takes a special breed of people to be that kind of insane try just a few of these methods and see if your day just gets a small bit easier that's what I really encouraged because no I love that dog I didn't actually find that picture but I love that dog every time I see it it makes me laugh yeah it's it's okay for us to vent it's okay for us to have these like oh my god I can't stand this guy type moments but you have to take that next step afterwards you can't stop there and that's the biggest part is supporting

each other having talks like this is great because it allows me to come out here and go hey you guys aren't alone so if you need somebody you know here that's my info you ever hit a point where you need help you need someone just to vent at and give you direction I'm happy to talk speaking of which I'm trying to watch my time because I know the next person comes on in like five minutes so I'll take a few questions now and then if anybody has any more we'll move outside anybody cool all right thank y'all very much Thanks