Have you ever wondered what sets exceptional customer support apart? Join me in a thought-provoking conversation with Sarah Caminiti, the Vice President of Customer Success at DNSimple. Together, they dissect the subtle yet pivotal practice of shedding assumptions to enhance customer interactions. Sarah, with her extensive background in support, illuminates the path to nurturing customer relationships with patience and empathy. We venture into the delicate balance of communication, refining the art of crafting email responses that empower rather than overwhelm. This dialogue promises to equip you with the strategies to elevate your customer's confidence and transform them into staunch advocates for your brand.
We also tackle the nuances that can make or break the support experience. Sarah shares cautionary tales and the wisdom gained from years of ensuring technical staff connect with customers on a human level. By rejecting the convenience of assumptions, we uncover the power of personalized service that resonates with the individual needs of each customer. Whether you're on the front lines or orchestrating the strategy behind them, this episode is an enlightening guide to fostering a culture of thoroughness and understanding that will redefine the way you perceive and execute customer success.
I'd love your thoughts on this episode! Comment below, and like/love/share/support if you found this inspiring, thought-provoking, or useful!
Transcription
Charlotte Ward: 0:13
Hello and welcome to episode 258 of the Customer Support Leaders podcast. I’m Charlotte Ward Today. Welcome Sarah Caminiti to talk about the danger of making assumptions about your customers. I’d like to welcome to the podcast today, Sarah Caminiti. Hello, Sarah, it’s lovely to have you join me.
Sarah Caminiti: 0:38
I’m so excited to be here. This is my first podcast, so I’m very moved to come Podcast ever, ever. Yes, yes, yes, yes, welcome, yes, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, I’ll try and be gentle, I’ll try and be gentle.
Charlotte Ward: 0:50
Thank you. So do you want to introduce yourself and then maybe talk about what we’re talking about today?
Sarah Caminiti: 1:00
I would love to. I am the vice president of customer success at DNSimple. We are a bootstrapped SaaS that is international. We do DNS and domain management services. It’s a heavily engineered developer company because it’s such a technical product that we are having our engineers and developers in support with us. We practice all-hand support, which is fantastic because the customer is able to talk to the right person. But that’s given me the opportunity to train developers regularly to be empathetic support professionals and they do a great job. But it’s been a journey to get to a solid training spot for that. I’ve been in customer success, customer support, every kind of customer role since I was 15. And once I discovered SaaS, I realized that I could actually make a career out of this and lean into all the things that I love, and I’ve been here for almost 10 years and love every second of it. I’m in Providence, Rhode Island, and I’ve got two little boys, two crazy dogs and my wonderful husband who works on the third floor and it’s a nut house, but we love it.
Charlotte Ward: 2:28
That’s awesome and the audience listening won’t know, but one of the dogs is keeping you company in the room there, so we’ll forgive the odd kind of doggy noise.
Sarah Caminiti: 2:38
Yes, she’s laying on the couch right now, but that could change very soon. Fingers crossed.
Charlotte Ward: 2:45
Awesome. So what are we talking about today?
Sarah Caminiti: 2:48
Today we are going to talk about something that the DnSimple team will recognize very quickly the dirtiest word in support and that is assumptions. I have turned assumptions into one of the core pieces of becoming an aware, thoughtful support professional when I’m training, because it’s such an easy thing to become a victim of when you’re talking to customers and it’s the worst thing that you can do, and I am so excited to elaborate on it and talk with you about it and our shared experiences for it, and I’m just so pumped to be here.
Charlotte Ward: 3:32
Awesome. Thank you so much. This is a great topic, so to drill into it a little bit more with, I guess, most specifically talking about making assumptions about the things that we don’t see in a conversation when a customer comes to us asking for help. So making assumptions about their context, their configuration, their state of mind, all sorts of things. And so I guess the first thing from me is what are the kind of dangers? We open a support ticket and everyone’s I’ve done it and I know you’ve done it because everyone’s done it. You open a support ticket and we go oh, I know what this is. And off you go, you’ve got the answer. You straight in. Who doesn’t love a first contact resolution? Right, and off you go and you unload whatever the solution is or the link to the Knowledge Based article and you think job done, Happy support person, right. And then they come back and they say what are you talking about?
Sarah Caminiti: 4:38
This has nothing to do with anything that I’ve mentioned to you, or even worse. Oh, thanks so much for sharing this with me. I was following the links and then, all of a sudden, this happened and you took them in a totally bad direction, and it’s all because you didn’t take a second to pause, and we call it the due diligence that we do for every ticket. I swear that list is growing by the mile, but it’s figuring out where all the places that I can look to get more of the story and make sure that I am taking the entire picture into consideration before I jump, because the customer doesn’t want, necessarily. They do want a fast reply, but they don’t want a fast reply. If that’s going to mean three days of back and forth trying to fix whatever it is, you have them break or confusion, or I mean it can open up a whole can of worms.
Charlotte Ward: 5:45
Yeah, I think due diligence is a really good way of putting it. We can drive it through values and you can drive it through macros and all sorts of things, but there are some basic steps that any good support person really should go through and I think we’d recognize them. And it puts me in mind of a little bit of a conversation I had well, actually a series of conversations I had about three years ago where I talked to five people in one week about the perfect support email. So often in those conversations these threads were coming up. The first step is you validate that you understand the problem. I think that’s just like let’s make sure we know what the customer is trying to tell us and we validate it. So in your due diligence ecosystem very long list by the sound of it is that number one for you too, or is there more to it? If that is number one, what does it look like?
Sarah Caminiti: 6:45
For our side of things, the due diligence really comes in to play with looking into their account and what’s going on, because this is a very technical product that we offer or service that we offer. Someone could say one thing and it could mean seven different things depending on what it looks like in their system. So, for example, the due diligence is do they have an account with us? First, Are they an authorized user? Because it’s a very secure thing that we have to take into consideration. This is the ownership of domains and their businesses and their websites and stuff. So we take that very seriously. But is the domain even with us? Because they can have an account with us and be asking questions about a domain and if we’re making an assumption and that domain does not live with us, then we’re wasting our time. It’s seeing certain things are turned on. Have they access to this? Have they not access to this? Is their domain even online or is this a web host situation? So it looks like a very long list and there’s like eight or nine points on it, but once you get into the admin panel and you start clicking around, then it happens pretty quick once you get the hang of it. But for the replying piece, one of the main things that I teach during onboarding. But then I mean I mentor all almost 40 employees still on a regular basis and it’s understanding what happened that made them stop feeling confident in their ability to continue on their own and that could be the fourth point that they put in that email. But you’ve got to address what it was that caused that moment of okay. Now I need to step away and send this email and hope that I get a reply back soon, Because I’m really trying to finish this, but I don’t know and address that first and then start to build out the email to solve the problem, connect the dots, anticipate what their next questions are going to be and give them that email where they walk away feeling confident. But they also walk away knowing that you have allowed them to ask questions safely and you’ve provided a kindness to them, and then they feel safe and comfortable to come back. And that’s all you really want in support to have the folks know that they’re going to get what they need, they’re not going to be made to feel bad about asking questions and they’re going to get it taken care of.
Charlotte Ward: 9:53
I think that’s a really important point because I think we can try so hard to be comprehensive and it feels empathic to do that to say you know, really you can get I mean, I’ve experienced it as a customer you get really lovely, well-formed responses back and it begins with I understand and this is the problem validation bit this is what you’re talking about and it might be the fourth point on that email what caused them to click the email button right, which is I understand you were doing this and you were experiencing this error or you validate, you restate and ensure that we are all on the same page, which is going back to that assumptions piece. Right, let’s make sure we begin on the same page, but then you get these really lengthy emails which are if this, then this, and if this then this, and you might want to also try and like the attempt of some support folk in that situation. I can understand the attempt to answer the next question or all 14 possibilities in one email, but it’s kind of it’s over-facing you as a customer, I think, and it does make you feel like, actually, even though what I’m getting is well-formed, nicely phrased and comprehensive, it’s like it really feels like they just want to give me everything so they don’t ever have to hear from me again. I think actually that’s what you’re saying, that they feel comfortable coming back and it’s okay If we get too obsessed with first contact resolution. You’re actually not necessarily pleasing your customers and, like we’ve talked about metrics so much on this podcast, but-.
Sarah Caminiti: 11:34
That’s a good one.
Charlotte Ward: 11:35
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that’s the point, isn’t it? That your metrics don’t necessarily represent feelings and the first contact resolution. If you obsess with it and then you’re hitting a high number there because you’re battering your customers with everything but ultimately they’re just walking away a bit kind of stunned, okay, the problem might be solved, but they don’t feel like they understand it better or they relate to you as a company any better. So it’s really interesting, like the assumption, and I guess that that kind of loading everything in is trying to avoid those assumptions in some ways. So it’s with good intent, right.
Sarah Caminiti: 12:10
It’s definitely with good intent, and something I’ve realized through these years of training is I focus more on the content and the development of the replies than really anything else, because if you put yourself into a customer’s shoes, just like you said, you can give them a 25-point message and feel, oh my gosh, I just spent two hours making this. Like Chef’s Kiss, gorgeous reply. We should probably turn it into a canned response because it was so good. And then the person comes back and maybe you made an assumption about their technical understanding and to them it may have felt condescending or it may have felt like you went way over their head and didn’t consider them at all. I mean, it can go either way, and part of the due diligence is we have the luxury of being able to see sometimes where folks are coming from, and where some of these customers come from tells the story of who they are. For a vast majority, we’re not always right, but a good chunk of them. You can identify technical skillsets based on a few factors outside of those emails. So if you see them coming from this one place, okay, I’m going to not give them a lot, I’m going to take this step by step. Okay, here is. This is where you’re stuck right now, but you’re stuck because you didn’t click on this. So how about you click on it and then get back to me let me know how it went, how you’re feeling, and then we can start talking about what the next step is and give them that personal experience? Because one of the things that drives me nuts about making assumptions is it comes across as you’re lazy and you don’t value the person that you are helping, or you don’t value the person you’re connecting with because you don’t take the time. They’re not valuable enough of your time, or I feel like that’s a terrible sentence, but yeah, I’m not even gonna. It’s probably, but to warrant you spending time with them and holding their hand and making sure that they do it right. And what a crappy feeling to be a customer. And too many places because of the way that the company is set up. You have to bang these out so fast and you have to get through this many things and they’re understaffed and overstressed. And it’s not the agent’s fault, it’s the culture. But that’s kind of the state of things and, like our service, I’m so proud of this. Customer support is the number one reason why our customers stay with us and why they recommend us to their friends. And we are a premium priced service and they wanna pay that premium because they are going to get help when they need it and they are going to get everything solved in the way that it needs to happen. And I’m just so proud of my team for understanding the importance of valuing their time and valuing the customer and how that all comes across by not making assumptions.
Charlotte Ward: 16:03
Mm, yeah, I completely get it. I think the thing that assumptions make you do as a support engineer and then I’ll get on to make you feel as a customer in a second, Because everything you just said, they make you almost robotic, Because you think that I’ve covered steps one through five in my head. I know what I need to do, so I’m gonna supply, even if you’ve typed out yourself. This kind of notion of a counter response is great, right? Even if it was two hours work, like it’s so comprehensive. I’ve covered everything. Boom, there we go, job done. It can become a habit and that can be what you start to do with every email and then basically you’re just writing knowledge-based articles. Frankly, and as a customer, I feel unheard. I feel, as you said, undervalued and it starts to feel very much like sort of a one-size-fits-all support and then it just completely depersonalizes. It doesn’t it?
Sarah Caminiti: 17:15
It’s like off the rack support, yep, and we live in a world where there’s so many incredible products out there, there’s so many incredible companies, but a lot of them do very similar things and is such an opportunity to lean into the value that support brings and provide them with the resources they need to be successful and feel safe and comfortable to do the job well, because the customer feels it and they stay and they tell their friends about it. And the next time they hear someone complaining about a competitor who just kept sending these candor replies which I hate candor replies because you make an assumption when you send it, it’s not customized and they never really feel satisfied at the end then that person is gonna say hey, you know what? I’ve got this great place you should check out, because that’s never happened to me and I don’t think it would happen to you too. And now you’ve got a new customer because of it.
Charlotte Ward: 18:21
Yeah, yeah, there is some and there is more, I think, which we should dig into a little, which is kind of the deeper consequences of making assumptions, though, which is that can also it can not just lead to, you know, dissatisfied customers, unhappy customers, customers who are churning. I think, actually, particularly for a technical product, probably more so for a very technical product and I’m in this space as well it’s quite dangerous, isn’t it? I mean, it can be like you can go off and you can send your customers off down parts which are completely wrong, like there’s the good side of it is that comprehensive response where you definitely have got the answer for the customer, but you’re making them feel a bit undervalued. But there’s the other side, which is I’ve made some assumptions and I’m so confident in my knowledge about this situation that I’m gonna send this solution, but actually breaks things further.
Sarah Caminiti: 19:17
Yep, yeah, and now we’re in a totally different situation. Or another way to do that easily is when you have such incredibly skilled people in their area of expertise and you make an assumption about who this person, this customer, falls into the bucket for, and so the person with the expertise is answering it because that is their area, and then, nope, should have gone the other way, and it’s because you didn’t check these things and it’s not anyone’s. Well, I mean, there is the assumption part of it, but people are trying their best and stakes happen. But if you do the due diligence, if you spend that extra 30 seconds before you you answer those cases, or you spend two minutes trying it out on your end and verifying that, what? they are saying matches, what you see on your end, it’ll change the game and you’ll be able to avoid those situations because, you’re right, technical stuff gets messy fast.
Charlotte Ward: 20:35
It really does yeah, and then you end up with you end up with much unhappier customers and significantly unhappy as support engineers and leadership, on both sides too. And I mean, that’s just messy to unpick, isn’t it? And it’s a huge cost to both businesses as well. I think we often forget that we end up in these kind of spaghetti technical situations. You have to unpick them very slowly, both politically and functionally and technically, and that’s really expensive. That’s really expensive.
Sarah Caminiti: 21:10
A lot of people involved. It’s a lot of layers and it can take some serious time, and usually those are the customers too that, rightfully so, are the loudest and they let people know, and those sorts of things are hard to overcome. A bad support experience of I forgot my password and it turns out that that email address wasn’t the one that they used for the login. Someone will get over that. Someone reading a review will not spend too much time, but a developer looking for a very specific product that will do exactly what they need and have the support that they need, reading a review about how that thing failed miserably because of XYZ. They’re not coming to us and it’s all because of that situation, that situation at just snowballs.
Charlotte Ward: 22:09
Yeah, absolutely Well, I guess we sort of touched on this right at the start, which is kind of how you avoid it. And you avoid it with checklists, and you avoid it with that cultural expectation, as well as written expectation, that we’re gonna go through the hoops necessary to make sure that we’re making as few assumptions. I mean, nobody’s perfect, you’re not gonna get it down to zero but as few assumptions as possible, right?
Sarah Caminiti: 22:38
Yeah, and have the documentation to support it. I am a little obsessive about documentation on the internal side, because if you’re not documenting the edge cases, then those edge cases the next time they pop up you’re in the dark all over again. And you don’t have to be so. We have a rule Anytime you ask a question and slack if a document is not given to you as no, the exact answer is right here, you must have missed it when you were looking for it. And then that’s another thing of why couldn’t they find it in the first place? True, yeah, but then you make a document or you expand on another one that’s relevant and and you put what you learn into the hands of everyone. We don’t ask questions and DMs anymore because too much opportunity for lost information lives there and and for Conversation and for brainstorming and for perspectives and extra context. All of that happens when you have Just an open dialogue with with all of the different folks that that could provide valuable information, and then you you move that to documentation. So those opportunities for assumptions if you were Doing what you need to do and utilizing the internal wiki are Pretty hard to find because mm-hmm, they yeah, walks you through it, the whole process is right there I.
Charlotte Ward: 24:12
I I I’m obsessive about documentation too and I actually think that I Actually think that Most support people are because we’re used to writing so much and and if they aren’t, it’s probably not that they can’t or don’t want, or it’s not probably not because they don’t want to, but I bet there’s like time constraints and things that are stopping them doing it, you know, and resources. Exactly, I love what you just said, because I’m also fanatical about this don’t ask questions in DMs. Like, there is no reason to exchange technical information in a DM. It should be out there for everyone. So I can and I’ve written it down. It was so important when you said that we don’t ask questions in DMs. It’s a lost opportunity to learn and share. I love that. And, yeah, capturing all of that just just Greases the wheels for everyone, doesn’t it? And and that knowledge whether it’s generic technical knowledge for your product or a lot of this contextual Information that is about particular customers, you know, either surfacing that in product screens or in in sales force, on the back end or whatever like get, get stuff written down and into the hands of people. It just gets around so many of these problems.
Sarah Caminiti: 25:25
Well, yeah, it’s and there’s. So there’s just too much valuable information in every single support interaction that you have, and too often it’s underutilized, and so if we can make it as just part of the day to day as possible To identify these things and these struggles that a customer brings up because of a new feature that somebody didn’t think about, I mean, all of these things make such an impact and and really put the customer first, and that’s I mean that’s who you’re making the product for anyway. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, sarah.
Charlotte Ward: 26:03
This has been a super interesting conversation. Thank you so much. But first podcast done and dusted. Was it painful, we did it. This was fantastic.
Sarah Caminiti: 26:15
I’m a. I should have like another one lined up. I should be like one of those celebrities when they’re on their movie press days, where you just go from room to room. I’m fired up, I’m ready to go.
Charlotte Ward: 26:26
Well, come back and do another one with me, won’t you wait? I’d love it. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much. I’ll talk to you soon. That’s it for today. Go to customersupportleaderscom. Forward slash 258 for the show notes and I’ll see you next time.
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