How to get good customer support

In honor of all those people who will be unpacking new computers or new software in a little under a week . . .

Want to get the best customer support? OK, here’s the secret: Put yourself in the shoes of the customer-service person and figure out what you would want to know if the roles were reversed.

This isn’t as easy as it might seem.

It means that you actually have to do a little work. You might need to actually understand a little bit about the product you’re calling about.

It doesn’t mean you need to be a programmer, or know the detailed internal operation of the product or system that’s failing. But you need to be able to give the customer service representative enough information to intelligently research the issue.

For example,

• What, exactly is the problem. “It doesn’t work” won’t cut it.
  
• If there are error messages, what are they?
  
• What were you doing immediately before the error? Exactly. If the support person can reproduce the problem, you’ve made a huge leap.
  
• What is the environment? Operating system? Hardware? Version of product?
  

These simple steps won’t guarantee you good support. Some companies simply are unwilling or too clueless to offer good customer support. But if you don’t follow these recommendations, I can guarantee that you’ll get nowhere.