On Thursday I received a very strange phone call on my work line. Caller ID indicated only that the call had been transfered to my desk from elsewhere within the company. In the past, this has almost always been the calling card of recruiters. They find my profile on LinkedIn but don’t have my phone number. They know I work at Yahoo!, however, so they call the receptionist and ask to be transfered to me.
This time was different, however. I answered the phone, “This is Ryan.” Booming from the other end of the line I heard, “RYAN” in a strong southern accent. What followed could only be described as 5 minutes of nonstop railing against Yahoo! Customer Care. This gentleman had lost the password to his Yahoo! Mail account and over the course of the last week felt he was being given the runaround by our support technicians, going as far as to say that they had been “rude and hateful” towards him.
Working on his last nerve, he somehow found out about Yahoo!’s “postmaster Ryan K”. I’m nearly certain he’s referring to Ryan Knight, the “Ryan K” who took over the Yahoo! Mail blog after I hung up my evangelism cape. He managed to find the number for the Yahoo! Sunnyvale office and asked the receptionist to connect him to “Ryan K”. There’s more than one, so I can only guess that the receptionist rolled the dice and transferred him to me. Fortunately, he found a sympathetic ear.
After listening to him throw the customer care group under the bus for 5 straight minutes, we finally got to the part of the phone call where he would let me participate in the conversation. I asked some questions to collect as much information as possible. I tried to explain some of what might have happened during his dealings with customer care. He explained how important his email account was and how frustrating dealing with our customer care group was. He wasn’t happy and he wanted to make sure I was keenly aware of that fact.
After about 10 minutes on the phone with him, however, something happened. He came to know that I understood his frustrations and that I was equally disappointed with the experience he had been going through. In that instant, the phone conversation immediately lightened up. We each cracked a few jokes, shared a couple of laughs, established some common ground. Over the course of the next 5 minutes I collected a little more information and told him that I’d work my backchannels to get him the help he needed. It was the full 180. He started the phone call with spite and venom and he finished the call hopeful that we’d have this situation resolved for him. He was appreciative and, dare I say it, a bit happier.
Whether you’re dealing with 250 users or 250 million users, you can’t service your customers without talking to them. I mean really talking to them, not handling them with a phone in one hand and a script in the other. Talk to them, get to know them, understand why they’re upset and then make it all better.
