Support Driven Highlights: Do you invite the customer to ask you or use the royal "we"?

Hey, Support Driven Community. 👋🏻

We’re starting to highlight some questions and answers you’ve all shared via Slack on our blog. We want to showcase your unique perspectives beyond just Slack.

If you’re not familiar with our Slack community, it’s full of 8,000+ members who care about customer support. We ask for advice, share our expertise, and have fun virtually connecting.

Let's get into this week's highlights.

Has anyone experienced grief around leaving a job? How long did it take for you to move out of the heaviness of it?

"Absolutely. After about 1-2 months when I started feeling settled in to my new role and began building solid relationships with my new team, the heaviness subsided. It took longer than I thought it would. 4+ months later and I still think about my previous company/team often, but am so much happier where I am now."

- Community member

"Yeah, I felt sad after leaving my job this time last year. I really liked the job and working with the team, but interpersonal issues made me quit. I felt sad for about six months, and regrettably no longer keep in touch with many folks there, but I do still miss them all."

- Community member

"The heaviness wore off as soon as I realized the rest of the company was still heading towards a direction that I didn't care for. The culture shifted away from being "people first" and I came to terms that I knew I wouldn't have been happy. I reminded myself of what I have had since and where I have grown. It took a couple years and I still have my moments of grief, but I am better for it."

- Community member

When responding to customer emails, do you typically invite the customer to ask you or use the royal "we" for anything else they need? E.g.: "Let us know if you need anything else." or "Let me know if you need anything else."

"I would sometimes switch to “ask us” more so if approaching the end of a day, and I knew I would not be around for replies”.

- Mathew Patterson, Customer Service Evangelist at Help Scout

"Mmmm good point. I have two contracts and in one it's always the royal we (email).
In the other one we do chat and it's more informal so we go by me (I) unless there's already a couple of agents there.
In the email contract I'm a manager so when I jump in usually nobody does after that, but always a we."

- Community member

"I like saying me because I think a customer would appreciate ownership when it is feasible. But if your team shares tickets, I think it makes sense to use us. I like using "we" when i'm working with the customer on something and making it a team effort/we're in it together mentality."

- Tanya Leung, New Features Specialist at Later

"It depends, I typically use I/me when I'm the only agent on the ticket (first replies, follow-ups in a specialty queue) or when I'm taking point on a case (triaging as a lead or specialist), and we/us when they've been in contact with another agent already and may speak to someone else after me."

- Daniel Slater, Program Optimization Lead at PartnerHero

See you next week with another roundup of Q&A highlights! If you’re not already part of the Support Driven Slack community, join here.

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