While technology is a great facilitator in improving the customer experience, the drive and dedication to use it to its full potential, and then to enhance it with the human element and personalized responsiveness, makes all the difference.
Ask.com has been in the Q&A business for more than 16 years, delivering trusted answers to more than 100 million global users (getting closer to 200 million users now) every month. But it wasn’t long ago that the company known for answering the world’s questions was facing a huge challenge in answering its own customers. Eric McKirdy, Global Customer Care Manager, for Ask.com accepted the challenge of turning this around, and less than one year after they found a technology that could facilitate this, they’re nominated for a Constellation Research SuperNova Award for Next Generation Customer Experience.
Here are some highlights from their customer service success story:
- Under Ask.com’s previous support system, the brand routinely saw in upwards of 2,000 support tickets filed each week. That number dropped to 800 per week within two weeks of launching their new customer service solution.
- The previous Ask.com support site knowledgebase received approximately 500-600 page views per day. The new knowledge base receives more than 2,500 page views per day on average.
- Customer service response times have gone down down from 8 hours to 1.5 hours.
- With a mobile service desk, Eric has even answered support tickets while rehearsing on the pipe organ in the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, at 38,000 miles on commercial flights, below sea level in Death Valley, and even at the top of the Empire State Building.
- Eric puts his name and his picture on the home page of the support portal so customers know he personally cares about their issue.
In full disclosure, Eric and Ask.com are Parature customers. We’re very proud that our technology has helped facilitate this success, but we’re even prouder of all their accomplishments to date and their dedication to customer service and improving the customer experience. And the bullets above are just part of a far bigger customer service success story. (Click here to read Ask.com’s story).
If you think the above is pretty awesome, too, please take a second to click through and vote for Eric and Ask.com for a 2013 Constellation SuperNova Award in the Next Generation Customer Experience category and to help recognize a growing champion of great customer service.
