Another revelation in the lab

Faster, in support, is better. But it’s not all that matters, is it?  Better still is a support system that helps individual customers while also collecting, interpreting, and sharing new information that will result in vital product and service improvements.

So I propose we measure Time to Revelation as well as Time to Resolution. How often is your support org collecting surprising information? Identifying a mismatch between what you think customers want and what they actually want? Spotting a new type of customer your marketing team had not previously targeted? Explaining a strange product use case by asking the right question to the right person?

When a customer emails or messages in for help, they are making a deliberate information exchange. Their question for your answer, handed over at the point of contact. During that exchange, however, there is often an accidental information transfer too. Customers may reveal something about how they think about your product, what they feel about your business, how your competitors operate.

Customers are like bees flitting about for support-answer nectar, accidentally bringing informational pollen with them. If your support team is paying attention, and has a system to collect it, then that pollen can be worth multiples of one happy customer.

Here’s what you’d need to make it work:

Requirements for revelations

• Support staff who are curious and observant
• Product and marketing staff who let support know what they are interested in learning from customers, and why
• Management who build in enough slack time to allow support to ask more questions, rather than rush to an answer
• A tool or system to record and share revelations
• A process for using those revelations, and letting support know about it.

P.S. Top 5 Historical Revelations:

1. The Rosetta Stone allowed the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs

2. Germ theory enabled enormous improvements in medicine

3. B J Novak’s face appeared on products worldwide

4. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution explained how new species evolve

5. West Elm Caleb got found out