Customer Service Starts with Listening

I see a lot of reports and discussion in the space of customer service, specifically how companies can improve their customer service. I want to show a very simple example of how simple it is to wow users in your business.

Yesterday, I discovered a bug in Plancast. This service is something I’ve been using since BlogWorld Expo and it’s a nifty way to follow the events your friends are planning to attend. It’s like Facebook Events on crack, but very simple and easy to use – and free.

This bug was very minor and relatively innocuous to the average user, but working for a software company myself, I wanted to inform them of this so they can fix it. Developers can’t catch every bug and this one looked like it was only a simple oversight.

I submitted a simple message to them  to inform them of this bug in the interest of making the service better. To my surprise, minutes later, I received a response from Peter Sauer to acknowledge my feedback and commit to fixing it. Awesome.

The lesson here is that you can have kick-ass customer service without a huge infrastructure. As long as someone who is passionate about the brand and the users is on the other side, there’s a good chance you’ll do it well. No complex social CRM, no complex ticketing software, no complex systems – just a channel to listen and the commitment to respond to people’s feedback.

Well done, Plancast! With service like this, your startup is bound to grow. If you want, you can follow my plans on Plancast – I’ll work at leveraging it even more in the future.

Sidenote: Notice how I completely plugged Plancast without any means or interest in doing so. Good customer service pays off when you do it naturally and organically within your organization. It earns you fans and advocates without even meaning to. If you want to be blogged about favorably, give rockstar service. It’s that simple.

Tagged as: business, consumer advocacy, customer service, experience, feedback, Help, Plancast, social media, Startup, Support