New Emphasis on Direct Messaging
A few years ago, some number crunching showed us that people who contacted us were much, much more likely to buy. So, I put “contact us” buttons throughout the website, encouraging folks to write in.
Email volume immediately shot up, but sales didn't respond. 6 months later, sales did pick up dramatically. It's possible there was a delay in the effect, or possibly there was no relationship. 
It's likely that the correlation had a selection bias: people very interested in buying were those emailing us. The relationship between email volume and revenue has stayed in lockstep every since.
In the past 6 months, we've averaged 30 new emails coming in each day. However, what's changed is that where we used to get 3 Instagram DMs per day, now it's around 40/day. If you factor in questions that interspersed randomly inside comments, there's another 5 on top of that. Youtube comments-that-are-really-questions are around 10 per day. WhatsApp and Telegram add another 20/day.
Direct messaging is now far more important way to talk with potential customers.
People are talking to us more on their mobile devices, and the prefer short, quick exchanges. Sending emails using a website, on your phone, is not much fun. And, people do not like having to create an account with us, to ask us a question. With Direct Messaging, they don't have to: Instagram, Whatsapp, Telegram are “one click” to start a conversation.
And so, a few weeks ago, I changed the “contact us” form to really promote Direct Messaging. I also changed my staff around to have one person dedicated to email (Paul Chan) and email (Mohammed Magdi). They sit next to each other, with mechanical engineer Depp between them, so that most answers can be obtained immediately, which is what Direct Messaging conversations typically want.
I still recommend “send us an email” on our website for extended conversations. Keeping a record is much easier with that, and we can also include videos and photos. However, DM programs have become very powerful, and it's common for a customer with a problem to switch to video chat, point their phone at their Decent, and start making a coffee to show us what their issue is. This works remarkably well, and everyone (us and them) appreciate how much faster issues can be resolved with a quick video chat on a phone. As Mohammed is often responding to DMs at all hours, and through the weekend, he's allowed flex-time, sometimes coming to the office late after a long night of helping someone out.
In China, virtually every company is on wechat, and customers demand instant response. We've had customers demand to return our espresso machine because we took more than ten minutes to reply. WhatsApp has released an API, and there are some Enterprise Software companies helping the rest of world provide this sort of response, as I think it's where the world is going.
As an aside, Depp is going to be mostly-absent for a few months from support, as he takes over a vacant testing & calibration job spot One of our staff members has cancer and has to go for treatment. Depp will learn a lot, and hopefully be back in support in a few months, as we hope the treatment for our absent colleague goes well.
-john
#customersupport #transparency #philosophy
Updated 2021/09/04