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My day job is CTO and Co-founder of
Kayak.com
travel search.
Even though we get millions of consumers per month, we send
personal replies to any customer who sends us feedback.
I like to pretend that for every customer who takes the time to
send us feedback, there are one thousand other customers who have the
same issue, but who might not have the time to tell us about it.
Thus I take customer support very seriously.
At Kayak, I require that every employee talk or email
with one or more customers every day. When I've mentioned this to
friends-- that we give personal replies to all feedback and require
even high-paid engineers spend time talking with customers every day--
they think I'm crazy. They think I should push customer support off
to a separate lower-paid team rather than bothering my expensive
engineers. But I will tell you a secret:
Having every Kayak employee talking with customers every day has
been the best thing we have ever done. It is one thing to (a) have a
computer or
IVR
trying to answer customer emails and phone calls and
then (b) having a customer support department trying to address
unanswered questions and then (c) raising the ones they can't handle
to a quality assurance department who helps out, and who then (d)
raises only a tiny subset of those issues to the product engineers.
It is quite another thing to make engineers talk directly to
customers, removing layers of communication. Many brilliant engineers
are empathetic problem solvers but they are also sometimes lazy and
don't like to do anything more than once, including answering the same
question over and over. When their software does something stupid, and
they are thus required to answer the same customer question about it
many times, and they have to look those customers in the eye and see their
problem, those engineers then actually take the time to fix the
problem.
This keeps us honest. It keeps us focused. Rather than adding
a zillions features to Kayak, we refine it every week, trying to
make the product simpler and simpler to use.
We currently have only 24 employees, and yet our software is used
by millions of travelers per month. How can we possibly support that
many customers without having a customer support department? Because
we focus, and continually make our product easier and easier to use.
We view ourselves as master craftsmen. Our goal is not just to make
Kayak the easiest and most useful travel website, but we also strive
to be the best website period. We're not done yet, but you can help us
out by trying the product and giving us feedback. We'll listen and
respond, I promise.
-Paul English, CTO and Co-founder of Kayak.com
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