A Simple Framework to Guide Customer Support Responses
Customer support is one of the most important touch points in your customer relationship. It’s the moment when your customer comes to collect on the brand promise your sales and marketing teams have made.
Handling customer support interactions gracefully is a make or break moment in the relationship.
But at the same time, reps are handling dozens of requests every single day — answering calls, writing emails, chatting. It’s tough communications work.
Here’s a simple framework I put together to ensure that every customer interaction is customer-centric. The framework is applicable to any form of communications, although you may find it easier to apply the framework to written responses.
Overview of Framework
The focus of this framework is communication, but communication by itself is only one aspect of a customer interaction — so don’t forget to apply things like proper problem-solving in parallel.
Stakeholder
Before you start writing, think. Make sure you know who will be using your response and have a sense for how they might be using it.
- Who: Who are the stakeholders/parties involved?
- What: What are the responsibilities of each stakeholder?
Empathy
You’re still not writing yet, continue getting yourself into the headspace of the person with whom you are communicating:
- Feeling: What is the customer’s tone? What is the customer’s state of mind and level of frustration? Take a moment to understand the feelings of your customer and try to understand where this feeling is coming from, especially if it’s a negative one.
- Thinking: What are the customer’s assumptions on the product/understanding of the tool? Assess the customer’s technical understanding of the question they have and how they align with product intent/what is described in our documentation.
Value
You’ll start drafting at this stage, but first ask yourself: Am I adding value to the conversation? If you have no value to add, it may be worth troubleshooting again.
Now consider:
- Emotional: Can I say something that will improve the customer experience? Have I addressed a negative feeling that was uncovered in the customer’s question?
- Technical: Did I cover every concern/question/misunderstanding in the ticket?
Impact
After your first draft is written, review a second time, this time checking for impact:
- Reaction: How will the customer perceive my response?
- Action: Plan ahead - do you know what you need to do after your customer replies?
This framework is intentionally short. It’s not that any of these steps are particularly difficult, they’re just easy to forget when we’re busy and feeling a little overwhelmed.
Good communication is valuable because it’s rare, and being on the receiving end of thoughtful communications is a delightful experience.
When I shared this with my co-workers at HubSpot, one very common response was that this is a great framework, not just for customer support, but for anyone trying to tackle complex questions via email. Life is stressful, busy, and we’re all suffering from some amount of information overload. Thoughtful communications are one of the kindest ways to make the lives of your customers and colleagues just a little bit more pleasant.
