Why Is Frontline B2B Customer Support So Hard? Part 2

Let me turn to B2B support.  Sandgarden pays a unicorn company that everyone knows the name of to provide SOC2-as-a-service. Putting aside the product itself - as this is a post about the support of the product - it was an unhappy experience.

Today we made the decision to begin saving background checks in our own network vs. having background checks stored by this vendor.  Why?  Because we’re not sure if we’re renewing with them, we’re testing another vendor for background check automation, and want to ensure we have anything.

In any case, we logged into the UI to test downloading a report.  It redirected us to the external vendor it uses.  It had specific instructions that said, “if you’ve never logged into C____ before, please click reset password”.  So that’s what we did!  Sure enough, the application messaged us back “no email address found”.  

I then logged back into the unicorn UI and tried to open a ticket.  I wasn’t able to; I was FORCED to chat with a bot.  Okay, fine.  I told the bot exactly what the problem was as evidenced by the screenshots.  

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Fail #1: it got information out of their knowledge base without correctly assessing what I said to it and comparing against the documentation. Why did it fail?  First of all, we delude ourselves into thinking chat is chat.  It’s not.  It’s prompt engineering.  That’s right: every time we chat with an AI bot, we are attempting to become prompt engineers.  That is doomed to fail.  This is delusion, and we don’t even realize what we are asking of our customers!  Then, the bot for sure isn’t smart enough to assess whether what I’m asking is actually solved by documentation.  The best it can do, apparently, is make me angry, assess that it failed (by prompting me, of all things!), and then redirect me to a human.

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Now the human has been notified.  I receive a fairly prompt email to that effect, and well-tailored.

Hi Elizabeth,

Thanks for getting in touch with V____ Support! My name is Vegard and I'll be helping you with this C____ login issue!
I appreciate that you sent over the screenshots.

If you try to open V____ in an incognito browser login, and then open https://v____c____.co/login in a new tab, are you then able to login to C____?
If not please let me know and I'll be happy to investigate!

Kind regards,

Vegard

Technical Support Specialist

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I then respond with: 

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Hi Vegard,

Just did it in a private browser and I'm getting the same error.  See screenshot below, and thanks!

Liz

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A day later, he writes back:

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Hi Elizabeth,

Thanks for getting back to me, I see from the screenshot that the URL you are on is https://app.c____.co/forgot

If you try to go to https://v____.c____.co/forgot which will look like this:

Do you then get the same error?

I look forward to hearing from you!

Kind regards,

Vegard
Technical Support Specialist

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I try his suggestion and it results in the same error.

I let them know.

4 DAYS LATER, that’s right - 4 DAYS LATER - I get a response from someone named Paige.

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Hey Elizabeth,

Are you the one that registered for C____ in the first place? :)

Kindest Regards

Paige

Senior Technical Support Specialist

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Oh my goodness does this make my blood boil.  #1 - I’ve signed every email Liz.  Please just call me Liz.  #2 - Why is there a fucking smiley face in the note?  #3 - Why is there NO REFERENCE to where the last rep went, nor what we were talking about?

I don’t know either.

I respond back:

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Hi Paige,

I don't understand the question, sorry. We have never registered with C____. We only tried to access it directly now to download reports. 

It has also been close to two weeks without a resolution on this ticket.  Can you please advise asap?  We need those reports.  

Thanks,
Liz

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A day later:

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‍Hey Liz, 

Im so sorry, it looks like Vegards email musnt have come through, as he did reply on Friday to you, let me leave that before for your viewing! 

I have also reached out to our wider team to just double check what permissions you may need to register, as I can see you are an editor in the sytem, but I want to check if you need to be an admin in order to complete this. As soon as I hear back from the team I will pop you a message!!

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Oh goodie.  #1 - nice job on the spell / grammar checker! #2 - It’s not even English in some places.  I honestly don’t know what some of it means.  #3 - POP ME A MESSAGE?  AM I A PIMPLE?  I pay you 10K a year for a sub-par product.  Don’t POP ME A MESSAGE.

I write back:

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Hi Paige,

I responded to Vegard's note.  The email said that I tried the new URL that he suggested and we had the same error.  I will add that your UI redirects to the first and not the second.

Please note that multiple admins have tried to login with this flow and it's failing for all.

Thanks,
Liz

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Again, a day later:

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Hey Elizabeth,

You will have to reach out to the one that bought the V___<>C____ background check, as that person should be able to login to C____ and add additional members :) 

Kindest Regards

Paige

Senior Technical Support Specialist

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Holy moly, Paige.  You didn’t follow up as promised with the wider team.  I don’t know why you’re asking me to do this.  You obviously didn’t bother to check to see who originally bought V____ + C____.  If you had, you’d know he’d left the company.  And all of this is ancillary to the main question which is why the fuck isn’t your redirect within the product working and why did Vergard have me do that work if IT WASN’T GOING TO WORK IN THE FIRST PLACE!  I don’t know, either, in case you were wondering.

I respond, immediately:

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Hi Paige,

To the best of my knowledge, we have never logged into C____.  The person who bought V____ is no longer at the company.

PLEASE - can you help us debug why we can't get in, email over the reports, or escalate to someone who can?  It's been at least two weeks with no resolution, we need these reports, and I'm incredibly frustrated.

Liz

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God bless her soul, she’s back in 45 minutes for this one:

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Hey Elizabeth, 

Let me reach back out to our technical support engineer, who might be able to help us further! :) 

Kindest Regards

Paige

Senior Technical Support Specialist

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I’m sorry… so you actually DON’T know how to solve this problem?  That’s what this email says: I have no idea how to resolve this problem and honestly don’t care because if I did, I would have done this in the first place.  ALSO PLEASE STOP PUTTING FUCKING SMILEY FACES INTO YOUR EMAILS.  If you had a brain, you would see that I am upset.  Smiley faces do not make me happy.  They ESPECIALLY do not make me happy in a B2B setting.

To Paige’s credit, the next response came in the next 9 minutes:

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‍Hey Elizabeth,

Another update. my technnical support engineer has reach out to the C____ team we have here to see how we can get you access! As soon as we hear back from them we will let you know :) 

Kindest Regards

Paige

Senior Technical Support Specialist

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I’ll even forgive her grammar and spelling errors for this one, BUT NOT THE SMILEY FACE!  

I will also add that I have been ccing the person who needs the background checks on every email.  Paige does not reply all.  Paige just replies.  This is yet another thing I must check for when I write her back, and is yet another step I must execute in adding the person back on cc.  It is at this point that I decide I hate Paige.

15 hours later:

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Hey Liz, 

I have managed to send a reset link to your inbox now :) 

Kindest Regards

Paige

Senior Technical Support Specialist

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IT WORKS!  MIRACLE OF MIRACLES! ^*   Also, good job Paige, in using the name I sign with!

My response (of course having to manually cc Ben back into the thread):

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Thanks, Paige.  I'm logged in.

Could you please also do the same thing for ben@sandgarden.com?  He is the one who needs to download the reports and have perpetual access.  He is cced to this note.

Thanks,
Liz

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And then, just as my hopes were rising…

THREE DAYS LATER, PAIGE RESPONDS AGAIN:

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Hey Liz, 

Let me reach back out to the C____ team to see if they can help get this user added :) 

Kindest Regards

Paige

Senior Technical Support Specialist

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12 hours and 16 minutes later:

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Hey Liz, 

I have sent out a reset email to Ben's inbox :) 

Kindest Regards

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Please note that Paige has continued to remove Ben from the emails, so I have to forward him this one.  The good news is that Ben is able to login, and responds accordingly.  Paige then writes:

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Perfect! 

I hope you hae a great day and rest of the week ahead! :D

Kindest Regards

Paige

Senior Technical Support Specialist

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Oh Paige.  A giant smiley face?  Really?

In any case, one might think this saga had come to an end.  It is true that we did login and grab those background checks, although it remains a mystery to this day as to why the V____ <-> C____ integration actually doesn’t work, in addition to how V____ hasn’t built transition support when an admin leaves an org (mind boggling for compliance automation tool).  

But one would be wrong.  it was not over :) (<---- SMILEY FACE!).  Because 6 hours after Ben responded, I received a feedback email:

I immediately click on it and give the feedback:

1. That the issue actually wasn’t resolved.
2. That our original agent went MIA.
3. That it took 13 days (that’s right, count it: THIRTEEN DAYS) before we could get what we needed.
4. That the customer had to do most of the legwork and pressing to ensure the problem was resolved.
5. That if we ever needed anyone to get into C____, we have to go through this entire process again because the V____ product still doesn’t take into account personnel turnover.

You know what?  I got a response back.  I got THIS response back:

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Hi Elizabeth. 

 Thank you for your honest feedback — I  appreciate you taking the time to share it. I’m sorry to hear that your experience hasn’t met expectations so far, and I understand how that must have been frustrating.

 I completely see how the lack of continuity and clarity in the earlier part of the ticket may have caused confusion. To give a bit of context, Vegard — who was originally handling your request — went on annual leave, and I picked the ticket up in his absence. I tried my best to step in and assist by continuing from where things had been left off.

 In this particular case, the reason things took a bit more time is that the original purchaser of the C____ integration was no longer with your company. That meant we couldn’t make the switch directly to you or Ben without additional internal processes, and I needed to coordinate with a few other teams here at V____ to get things resolved properly behind the scenes.

As for your note about the ticket history — I completely understand how that may have felt. I did review the history and then followed up with a few key questions and steps to help narrow things down, which helped confirm that you weren’t the original purchaser. Once we clarified that, I was able to move things forward with the right internal teams and get this sorted.

And thank you as well for your feedback about the tone of the messages. The smiley faces were just intended to come across as friendly and approachable, but I understand now this isnt the tone you wanted.  I’ll be sure to take that into account going forward with any of your future tickets.

Your experience truly matters to us, and I’m committed to making sure you receive the clear, helpful support you deserve.

Kindest Regards

Paige

Senior Technical Support Specialist

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I didn’t write back to Paige.  Someone had to break the cycle.  I’m instead taking it out in this blog post.  

I could sit here and rant yet again about how Paige didn’t call me Liz, that this email STILL isn’t grammar or spell-checked, that she didn’t acknowledge that we were kept in the dark about what was going on, that she didn’t acknowledge removing my co-worker from the thread.  

I could compliment her for the amount that she did explain - for the first time in the entire ticket it was actually coherent - but I won’t, because this email is OBVIOUSLY WRITTEN BY SOMEONE ABOVE HER.  And I also won’t because why couldn’t she have simply told me this in real-time?  That’s LITERALLY ALL SHE HAD TO DO!  Just tell me what’s happening.

Instead, what will I say?  I’ll tell you: V____ broke every rule of soliciting post-ticket resolution customer feedback. Oh my goodness.  The cardinal rule of asking customers for feedback is that YOU DON’T SHARE IT WITH THE SUPPORT PERSON!  And if you do, it CERTAINLY should be shared anonymously and filtered through a manager!  

What if I hadn’t been as kind and metered as I was?  Or what if I had said the experience was so bad that the rep should be fired?  Paige may be awful at her job, but she doesn’t deserve to read something like that without someone softening the blow.

To the company’s credit, I love that I got a note back on my feedback, and a semi-tailored one at that.  But wow does the way in which it was routed damage and further erode an already frail relationship.  I’m sure nobody realizes we are up for renewal in a handful of months.  If someone miraculously does realize it, I’m sure this ticket history won’t be reviewed.

Net: this company should be able to do better than 13 days and 20 emails to resolution.  Right?

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^* Free Sandgarden demo direct from the CEO for anyone who emails me as to this reference!