Experts Corner
Tracy Wetjen Sales Director Technical Support Solutions (TSS) twetjen@techsupportsolutions.com Q.  Are writing skills important in e-customer support?   Absolutely. The customer support professional is the first line representative of your company. What they do or say and how they do or say it reflects on the company. That is why so many companies train on verbal communication skills. Now that most companies are trying to drive support traffic to email and the web, writing skills are becoming just as important.   Support professionals should know a few simple rules that will make their written transactions professional and effective. For example, use the “Subject” line as an opportunity to flag the email to a particular account (from your own perspective as well as the customer’s and, if allowed by your department’s process, include the applicable case or ticket number in the “Subject” of your email. Here are a few more examples: Always use the customer’s name in the greeting. Do not assume that because it is a “reply” email that you can skip this courtesy. Do not use abbreviations or “netspeak”. Such Internet-isms may not be clearly understood by all of your customers. Also, try to asses the level of technical understanding of your customer, and then be careful not to use terms that are above them. Try to ask as many qualifying questions in your initial email that will help you determine the issue, without bombarding the customer with too much at one time. Avoid emotional responses. No matter what the difficulty, emotional responses (or flames) can be avoided by simply taking a minute to collect your thoughts and edit your email. Closing trouble tickets – Many companies use the information that support professionals enter into their database as the “meat” for the customer-accessible knowledgebase. This causes many support professionals to worry that their entries will “not be good enough” to be published on the web. Not to worry. Most companies have technical writing editors, but even in those that don’t, technical accuracy and professionalism of the entry are more important than flowery verbiage!   The place where most companies go wrong is in failing to create a standard or a process for entering tickets, creating knowledgebase entries, or emailing customers. Such standards must be created, taught to the support staff, and be provided in documentation that will leave nothing to chance.