As I mentioned in my last post, in my day job, I work in support. One of the tricks with support is to get people to tell you what the problem is. Many people will tell you “It’s not working” which leads to me asking “What’s not working?” to which I receive a reply of “It just doesn’t work” …. this can get tiresome but the longer you work in support, the more you realise that you need to be patient with people and encourage them to inform you of the problem.
I logged in with one of my alts today for the first time in about a fortnight. I do get offline IM’s, so if there were any support issues with any products from my alt, I’d have seen them, right? No wrong, there was a support issue, I didn’t respond to it, I did get it as an offline IM, the problem was that the person didn’t tell me what the problem was, the offline IM read “Yo”. The person who had sent the “Yo” message had tried to purchase an item, twice, but had not received the item. I didn’t know this at the time, because it wasn’t explained to me, but I should have replied to the message to see why they were contacting me.
Now I get a lot of offline IM’s and I’ve got into a bad habit, I’m in the habit of ignoring “hi” and “Yo” . What this incident has taught me is, that like my day job, I need to respond to vague reports and respond to them. On Ciaran I ask people to send me a notecard because in my experience, when someone fills in a notecard they tell you what the issue is, however I don’t have these messages on my alts, but even on Ciaran I receive IM’s of “Hi” and “Yo”.
The thing is if you’re a merchant or landlord, you are in the customer support game and you should be prepared for people to contact you who aren’t providing you with enough information to deal with their problem.
Now my advice here to customers, please let people know what the problem is, please don’t just send an IM of “Hi” or “Yo” because the merchant or landlord or whomever will probably be receiving a lot of messages, their time is short so providing them with good information is important.
If you’re a merchant, consider that everyone who contacts you is likely to be a customer or a potential customer, even if their IM is merely “Hi” or “Yo”, it’s a lead and if you don’t respond, to that person your support is poor, even though the person sending you the message hasn’t explained the problem.
I’ve discovered before, via checking my transaction history, that people have had a problem with delivery. I once had to contact a person who had purchased an item that was mod/copy six times. They explained to me that it wasn’t copy as advertised, it was but the problem was that my default texture wasn’t copy. In order to use this product you needed to delete my default texture, the product would be of no use to someone with my default texture, but instead of contacting me, they simply purchased multiple copies. I refunded them because I noticed it, but it would have been better if they’d contacted me. Second Life is odd like this, some people are too shy to contact a merchant if they have a problem, my advice, please don’t be shy, but do try to be informative.
In the case of my alt’s poor service, I’ve compensated the customer, the moral of the story really is, all communication is important.