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Mark Zahra takes over for the first episode of 2018 to discuss a topic he has grown passionate for; customer service.
Having been involved in support for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin for around 3 years, growing from a support engineer to head of support, and now being part of the team preparing the EDD Bookings plugin for its re-launch, Mark strives to improve the customer service their team provides.
As part of his research, he came across a Facebook live video hosted by HelpScout CEO Nick Francis, in which Nick interviews Customer Service expert Shep Hyken. After getting in touch with the two, Mark reached out to Shep who agreed to be a part of this Mastermind.FM episode.
Shep gives us a brief overview of his background and what led him to becoming a customer service and experience expert, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author, as well as being inducted into the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame for lifetime achievement in the speaking profession.
Mark goes on to ask Shep a number of questions regarding how support differs between large companies such as Amazon and the smaller teams in the WordPress eco-system. This leads to a discussion about the words “satisfied” and “fine”, and how these are not words you want to hear as the individual providing support.
The discussion then turns onto customer loyalty, first and last impressions, and how you should be handling upset or irate customers. For anyone that has provided any form of customer service, you would know that these situations are inevitable, so knowing how to deal with them is of utmost importance.
Last but not least, Mark and Shep discuss a few tools that can be used for customer service, from chat to social media. Shep goes as far as to discourage the use of a ticketing system, which is something that is widespread in the world of WordPress plugins and themes. Can this change in the future with the introduction of other tools such as live chat and chatbots?
There are also a couple of fun, short stories from Shep’s experiences thrown in there that we’re sure you’ll love. If you don’t, well then, customer service isn’t for you.
Shep Hyken is the Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations.
Featured on the show:
- Shep Hyken’s website (Shepard Presentations)
- The Customer Focus
- Twitter: @Hyken
- Facebook: Shep Hyken – Speaker
- LinkedIn: Shep Hyken
- Youtube Channel: Shep Hyken
- Google+: Shep Hyken
- HelpScout Facebook Live Video – Nick Francis & Shep Hyken
- We Made Support a Priority, and It Paid Off – Mark Zahra
- HelpU, by HelpScout
