Supporting Customers Via Email

Handling customer support

A big pain point I had for a long time was dealing with customer support. My personal inbox was getting clobbered by tons of Candy Japan -related support mails (concerning changed shipping addresses, "I forgot to update my address and package was sent to where I used to live", expired credit cards etc.). I began to fall behind in support requests and as my inbox kept getting bigger it made me reluctant to check my email at all, resulting in even more email piling up. The whole thing felt very unorganized and I realized I need to take control of the situation, as it was starting to have an impact on my overall happiness. My solution was threefold:

1) Switch to a support ticket solution. While still the overall work is the same, now I have a more clear way to mark support requests as having been dealt with, better separation of my personal email from support email and some glimmer of possibility that in the future there is a clear path to delegate this task to someone.

2) I started writing a support manual. If there is some issue that keeps happening, I have started writing those down with clear steps on what to do in those cases. Support is actually easy to do when the response is already known beforehand. 

3) When getting an email, spending some time thinking WHY I received that email and how I could PREVENT similar emails from being sent to me in the future. I realized that many of the emails I get were because customers wanted to change or view their subscription details, so I added a simple page on the site where they can do this without needing to contact me. I will still make any requested changes myself as well, but taking steps like these will reduce emails a bit.

After these I am now in a place where my email support workload is gradually getting smaller and easier, instead of in a place where my inbox just gets longer and longer. Now I can deal with support in about 30 minutes each day and from customer perspective have faster and more predictable response times.