Answer, anticipate, elaborate

Adam Levine (or was it that Lost guy) was onto a good thing with his moves like Jagger. Mick knows that getting what you want is not the same as getting what you need, and great service means going beyond giving people what they ask for.

You can’t always get what you want But if you try sometimes, well you might find You get what you need

One of my favourite response patterns is “Answer, anticipate, elaborate”. What I mean is:

• Yes, answer the actual question they asked
• Anticipate follow up questions that your answer could lead to
• Elaborate on those questions and point the customer to the right help or resources.

Often a customer will ask a question that you can easily answer in full, but by their phrasing you can also guess where they are next going to get stuck. If you can anticipate that, and help them in advance it saves them time and avoids them feeling dumb by asking another question.

It saves your time too, because you will already have investigated their issue once and probably understand what they are asking. If they come back later with follow up questions you’ll need to go through that all again (or your teammate will). Don’t forget to actually answer the question they asked though, even when they really need to do something different than what they asked for.

Here’s an anonymised, real example from a Campaign Monitor support incident:

Customer – “We liked your system, accept that it would be very difficult to send e-mails from recent signups because we would have to upload lists daily to send out our recent sign-up e-mail. Your program just isn’t compatible with ours. Because we’ve only used your system for a few days we’d like a refund. ”

Agent – “Thank you for getting in touch about the refund. We’d be happy to refund you for the monthly payment you’ve made and just charge you for the one sent campaign, though, I wonder if there isn’t a way I could be of help to you so that you are able to have your subscribers added to your Campaign Monitor lists automatically.

Is the method described at <help topic link> for adding subscribers from an existing subscribe form not possible for you? Could you please send us the URL of your subscribe form and let us know issues you are having getting it to work with our system? ”

I love this answer. The agent immediately reassures the customer that she can definitely get her money back. That answers her question right up front and likely puts her into a more receptive mood to hear further advice. Then the agent goes on to address her underlying problem with some specific suggestions, and to ask for more details so she can help further. The customer is happy and the situation has improved from a refund to a probable returning customer.

Some customers won’t be so helpful in explaining why they need a refund, but that just means confirming that yes, a refund can definitely happen but also asking if there is any problem that could be addressed.

Next time you answer a support ticket, think about answering, anticipating and elaborating. Then tweet me to let me know if it helped.