I’ll admit, I’m bitter about my recent experience with my cable company, but it’s opened my eyes. For years at my house we’ve been putting up with crap like intermittent service during big games, a stubborn DVR box that works only when the stars are perfectly aligned, missed recordings because of “unknown technical difficulties” and only the rarest of opportunities to talk to a real human being when we need help. Not to mentioned we get absolutely zero monetary refunds to cover our emotional damages from getting so worked up. When we finally called to find out how we can get more for our money (and threaten to take it elsewhere), we were not-so-politely told deals like that are stubbornly reserved for new customers only. I didn’t feel so much shocked as I did betrayed.

I Would Like Some Cheese with My Whine, Please.

Alright, I’m just going to say it. What about me?

I’ve paid for their service for years, and even sent them business a couple times. I trusted them to give me the best quality possible, and haven’t cancelled our account when they’ve fallen short on their promises. And then when I so desperately need them to come through for me, they made me feel like I was two inches tall and not worth their time. #bigcompanyfail

It got me thinking how different big brand loyalty is from small brand loyalty. As part of Paste, I thought about how we try to make the most out of our users’ brand loyalty. Since we’re such a small company, we have every opportunity in the world to make each experience a positive one. Of course, it’s ideal that our users never get frustrated enough to contact us complaining, but if they do we want them to feel like their problem is the only one on our plate.

We’ve Done a Few Things Right.

I must say how awesome our users are. There are lots of reasons they e-mail us, but they’re almost always sure to give us feedback of both the positive and constructive variety.

This, for example:

“I adore Jumpchart and found it very useful indeed. I downgraded because I am a designer by trade and am not often involved in the IA of a site. If I need it again in the future however, I will definitely re-upgrade. I have also recommended Jumpchart to associates.

A couple of things that would make the tools more useful to me personally would be to have the ability to:

+ Add a header and footer to each page (with things like a search bar and registration sign-up elements)
+ Associate a design comp with each page

I hope this feedback is helpful and thanks very much for the wonderful service!”

(Full disclosure: When this user e-mailed us, we were in the middle of launching our newest features, which included design mockups, so she didn’t know about the goodness headed her way.)

That support e-mail validates for me that we’re doing something right in the brand loyalty department. That this user would come back to us instead of searching for something else speaks volumes toward the success our attention to customer service has seen. And I think as a big company you’re just not able to give each customer the attention they need to feel special. It’s one of the benefits of being the small guys.

But how did we do it?

We’ve made absolutely certain to respond quickly to all support inquiries. We do everything in our power to go above and beyond when answering questions about how a feature works. We’ve showered our users with gifts of free space, free memberships, and even some of these to show our appreciation for feedback and loyalty. But the most important thing to me is that we didn’t discriminate who we gave what to based on how long they’ve been a customer, or how much they’ve used our products.

We love our new customers, but we have our older customers to thank for being where we are today.

Mask it with appreciation instead.

When those simple questions are sent to support and you’ve already answered those same questions three times on your Help page, take a deep breath, and be comforted by the fact that your users care enough about finding the answer to e-mail you. They’re seeking personal, timely interaction, and when you’re able to quickly and easily solve their problems, it only adds to your credibility.

Learn from it. Why are they asking you this question?

Explore your options. Have you already answered it in your help section? Maybe you didn’t cover it well enough. Maybe you were a little confusing. Maybe you assumed it was self-explanatory.

If you’re frustrated with being asked the question, your users are frustrated with having to ask the question. Eliminate their frustration, and yours will be eliminated, too.

After all, solving problems is why you develop apps in the first place…

A few weeks ago Netflix emailed me and said if they were’t used by a certain date, they would be automatically applied to my account. Great. Simple. Easy.

Only one problem. Once this happened, I found out that you can only apply one gift subscription at a time to your account. So as of the last week, all 11 subscriptions began ticking down in value as if they were being used, but couldn’t be applied to my account.

I assumed that I could call customer service and get this taken care of, but of course the person answering the support line didn’t have the authority, (nor could they gain it, evidently) to retroactively apply my free months in a logical way. Frustration began to creep in, but then something magical happened. The hack.

The customer service guy (I want to say his name was Matt maybe?) suggested an alternative. First, he asked if I had any friends I could send them to. Sure, I have a couple. Second, he asked what I thought about taking the time to manage a couple extra queues.

Over the next couple minutes, he explained what he would do if he was my position. His advice wasn’t from the manual, and it wasn’t, I’m sure, taught to the support people by Netflix. But he solved the problem. It wasn’t slick, and it was kind of a pain in the butt for me, but the bigger point is that it worked.

The reminder is this: when people call support, they’re seeking solutions, not answers. There’s a big difference. Matt could’ve easily told me “There’s no way to apply those subscriptions to your account,” but giving me a solution to my problem allowed me to get what I really wanted.