By Vincent Degove (www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-degove-40514894), ex-Head of Customer Services at Trainline (www.thetrainline.com) Trainline is well-recognized as a company that changed the approach to customer service. They answer quickly & precisely. The customer experience is at the heart of their business. Vincent worked for more than 4 years in Trainline’s (ex-Capitaine Train) customer services department and gives us insights about how to set up a tremendous customer-oriented infrastructure.

1. Generating customer satisfaction
Vincent Degove // ex customer XP @trainline_eu
twitter.com/vincevlo
Lessons from a few years of customer service

2. Usually ,customer service…

3. Customer service, as we know it
No proper follow-up
No one takes the responsibility
Standardized answers
Limited tech expertise
Suggestions from customers not heard
Vivaldi

5. Let’s try to do it properly.
What do customers expect from a customer service, by the way?

6. Be a PRO
Know your stuff and make the customer feel understood
Provide the accurate answer (if there is a question)
Solve the problem (if there is a problem)
1

8. Be fast
That’s the only “quality” sign that customers really care about
They don’t like to repeat themselves or be redirected.
2

10. With competence and speed alone,
your customers are like:

11. Be human (and do the extra-mile)
Write without spelling or grammar mistakes
Write with (real) empathy
Care about your customers and do the small extra step.
3

12. Your customers:

13. Challenges of customer service in startups

14. Huge growth
1
Source : https://twitter.com/jsduxvi

15. You don’t want to triple your support team every year.
Solutions :
Diminish the contact rate (good)
Improve support efficiency with better tools (good)
Trying to improve support efficiency telling them just to work harder (bad)
Triple your support team every year by outsourcing it (very bad)

16. Double share of support: your software product + real life
Remember the “be a pro” part?
2

17. Example with Trainline…

18. Low margins
Some Business Models do not work
if a majority of customers are not autonomous
3

19. Good intentions.
And now, how do we do this?

20. The main secret for good customer support is…

21. People.
The support girls and guys.

22. Say hi to some working class heroes.

23. How do you build up a good support team?

24. Commitment and vision from your bosses.
Support is an essential function of the company.
It is a real profession, with valuable skills.
(And skills have a cost).
A

25. Hardcore hiring process.
Skills? Evaluate them (with tests).
So we look for a:
● Typonazy
● With empathy
● That explains clearly
● And has a tech sensibility
● And loves travel
● And has the “little crazy thing”
B

26. Training
C

27. A little bit more than customer support:
Customer Experience Specialist
1. Ensure the customer is "wowed" by his experience
2. Make sure the voice of the customer is heard and the company is customer oriented

28. Customer support by email

29. Yes, only written, no phone
Phone is what customers ask the most.
But good support for real questions can hardly be achieved by phone.

30. Zero Inbox™ FTW

31. Writing guidelines

32. Honesty

33. Never lie or distort the truth (even slightly).
(But don’t “shoot yourself a bullet in the foot” neither saying an uncomfortable truth that you could avoid.)

34. A promise is a debt.
Underpromise, overdeliver.

35. Reply to this email and to each question.

36. Bingo.

37. Improving the Customer Experience:
The best support is no support

38. Do tech support and not customer service
Don’t pay people to repetitively push buttons.
This is to be done by computers, or your users.
Your job is to assist your customers in using your product
(not use a hidden one for them).

39. Our work? Be lazy
Why the customer needs to write to us?
Behind each contact, there is a product solution.
(Or a bug ;))

41. Customer should be able to do all actions by himself
We don’t do them for him. We only support the app (in case of problem)

42. Let’s take out one by one contact reasons

44. Even when it’s not our fault

45. Prioritizing issues
We could spend a lot of time doing metrics.
Or just know what are the most annoying things in the inbox, tackle the first one and pass to the next one.

47. Customer support & experience team is one of the entries on
the roadmap of development teams.

49. Have fullstack developers dedicated to customer service
Two missions:
Improve internal tools and workflows
Implement Product changes that lower contact rate

50. Self help with the FAQ
It answers faster than we do.

52. Keeping all the company close to the customer

53. Everyone on Support

54. If we sum it up…

55. Customer service obsession
1
Outsourced
Abroad
Far from the product
Outsourced Done internally.
Abroad Native speakers.
Far from the product We build the product.
2
Standardized
Impersonal
Anonymous
Standardized Human.
Impersonal Nice. Honest.
Anonymous Strong identity
3
Incompetent
Powerless
Helpless
Incompetent Technical experts.
Powerless With the appropriate tools.
Helpless Responsible. Autonomous.
4
Slow
Hierarchical
Isolated
Slow Fast
Hierarchical No hierarchy. No control.
Isolated Widespread amongst all employees.

56. ←Interested in more? Read this book.

58. Thanks!
♥