A pretty wild experience

How do you know your support team is doing well? CSAT maybe, or response times. Customer Effort Score? They can all be helpful indicators. But here's a new metric to consider: "Customers going on Reddit to talk about how great our service is".

I came across this Reddit thread recently: ZSA Voyager Customer Support. It's a small thread on a subreddit for a specific mechanical keyboard, a group of customers celebrating how good ZSA is at customer support. One customer, Doomtrain86¹, made the case clearly.

I have simply never experienced anything as good from any company ever. you have a feeling you are talking with someone who actually cares that the problem gets fixed. It's a pretty wild experience.

Isn't that what we all want our customers to feel? What does it take to deliver service so good that people are inspired to write about it? We don't have to guess. I interviewed ZSA founder and CEO, Erez Zukerman, on Season 2 of the Supportive Podcast.

You should listen to the whole interview, it's worth your time, but here are a couple of relevant quotes. One was Erez talking about "ticket deflection":

"It's a whole subset of technology where the stated goal is to keep the customer from getting to support. I think that's really optimising for the wrong thing. When you buy one of our keyboards, you get a game code. We could build a very nice automated system where you put in your order number and you get the code. We chose not to. To get the game code, you have to write in, and a human will reply: 'Hello. Thank you. Here's the code.'"

He's deliberately creating an opportunity to talk to customers, the opposite of deflection. Elsewhere in the interview, Erez explains his theory of support:

"The classic example is: 'Your call is important to us.' Really? If it were, you'd probably pick up by now... For us, what does it mean to actually walk the walk? It means money — support people should be paid fairly, compensated for their skill, their responsibility, their authority, their power over your business. And they should have real authority... support is not 'to be notified' when something new comes out. Nothing gets out the door before support says: okay, we like this, we get this, green light."

Could any company do this? Yes...and no. Yes, because there is no technical constraint on delivering quality service. There's no patent preventing any company implementing it.

But also no, because there are factors that make this type of service more accessible:

• High-value products at relatively low volumes, so there is margin to spend
• Opinionated products that attract customers with similar needs
• A small number of products that the team can know very deeply
• Highly skilled staff
• A business that doesn't have large external investors to satisfy

It's also easier for a small company to do, because there are fewer pieces to put into place. Erez puts it this way:

"A company at 10 people and the same company at 100 people has the same name, maybe even some of the same people. It is not the same company. It is an entirely different entity. It's not a kitten that's now a cat — it's a kitten that's now an elephant. It's a different animal."

But ultimately, you need leaders at the top who believe that service matters and are willing to invest in making it possible, even before it pays off. What would it take to get your own Reddit thread of praise? What stops it from happening?

¹ Is it a train that is doomed, or is it someone who has got Doom running on a train? Maybe powered by potatoes.