Gaining Customer Loyalty Through Support - A Case Study on WPML Team

How to gain customers' love and improve WordPress products

case study on WPML support

Me and CompanyDat Hoang

● Community & Support of OnTheGoSystems

● Marketing Online

OnTheGoSystems

● WPML● Toolset plugins● ICanLocalize

www.meetup.com/Saigon-WordPress

Agenda

● Why support is a must-have

● How you define support

● What your customers really expects

● How to meet customers’ expectation

● Competitive world/market● Customers are demanding● It’s already a standard in WordPress

oriented businesses● Word-of-mouth marketing● Listening to your clients’ needs can help

you to improve the product

Why support is a must-have

Bottom line of a good support

Source: http://blogs.salesforce.com/company/2014/04/what-is-good-customer-service.html

How you define support

Delivering smilestocustomers

Image source: http://pixabay.com/en/happy-sun-rays-shine-smile-smiley-47083/

What customers expect?

● As fast as possible● Always correct● Strictly on time● Comfortable to communicate (native

languages)

Our attitude

“Our best marketing bet is to have happy customers who renew their subscriptions year after year, and that recommend, blog and tweet about how great is paying for our products, instead of using other free plugins.”

Source: the first training document for new supporters of WPML

Our training for excellent supporters

● Training one-by-one when joining team○ Product features○ Workflow○ Proper language / Clear communication

● Training when a new version is released● Additional intensive and specific trainings

○ Debugging○ Coding○ English○ Support system

Our Support Team structure

● Tier 1 (front-desk team) Collect all tickets and give the first replies

● Tier 2 (senior supporters)Take all complicated tickets that are escalated by Tier 1

● Tier 3 (developers): Take care of tickets that Tier 2 escalates, usually being bugs.

Our working time

● 18 hours per day● 5 days a week● team members

across all continents (excepting for Antarctica)

Image source http://wp-types.com/documentation/user-guides/map-wordpress-posts/

Our supporting languages

● 7 native languages○ English○ Spanish○ German○ Chinese○ Russian○ Portuguese○ French

Our support policy

● Responsive but not too responsive● Clear terms in support policy

What we offer in support

What we DO NOT offer in support

● Certified partners

Our measurement

● Statistics: the team, each individual and each ticket

Our measurement

● Indicators:○ Ratings: Great - Good - Not so good○ Feedback when rating○ New tickets per month○ Average time to resolve per month○ Resolved tickets per month

Our improving product(s)

● Gather feature requests● Give trends about customers’ needs● Gather potential bugs● Gather incompatibility problems

● Build the product roadmap● Prioritize development tasks

Others

● We promise what we (will) do● The customers are kept up to date via email

notifications● Our support forum is public● Good online documentation

At the end of the day● OMG!!!!! I was soooooo close! Pawel - YOU ARE A LIFESAVER!!!

Thank you so much! It works like a charm.● Dat Hoang is customer driven, he has the necessary

competence (and most probably much more) and he SOLVED our problem.

● Denise ha solucionado el problema a la primera. Muy agradecidos.

● Andreas vielen vielen dank :-) :-) :-)')● Andrey, Bсё отлично, быстро отреагировали и так-же быстро

решили.● Bruno, Ótimo suporte! ● 多謝你們的專業支援，特別感激 Luo的協助，謝謝。

What’s next?

All things are great now, can we… ?

Image credit: http://www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/p/keep-calm-and-stop-thinking-19/

Enough room for improving...

Example ideas● Automatic search when posting a new

ticket● Sensitive information in the public tickets● Training and giving supporters badges in

the support forum● Etc.

Discussion

Image credit: http://sweetclipart.com/diverse-people-raising-hands-968

Big Thanks!Dat HoangCommunity & Support Vietnam E: dat.h@icanlocalize.comW: wpml.org | wp-types.com | icanlocalize.com

WordCamp Hanoi, September 6th 2014