Support that's off the hook

Every once in a while you see a thread in the forums with players asking for phone support from online poker sites. It's not too surprising; after all, who wouldn't prefer to get an answer immediately rather than waiting for it?

However, good customer support is much more about accuracy than speed. For many reasons, particularly in the worldwide environment of online poker, email customer support is often significantly preferable to phone support.

As with any industry, 90% (or more) of the questions firms receive are from the same small bucket of choices: How do I make a deposit? I forgot my password. Any reasonable support organisation has already developed templates that accurately answer these questions. With modern customer support software, a support rep can send such a reply in a matter of seconds.

Contrast this with the time spent to hear the customer's question, and then to explain the answer over the phone. Furthermore, the customer may forget to ask an important side question (or the support rep forgets to mention an important point). Now the customer doesn't have the full answer and the rep moves onto the next call.

Now, consider what happens when a more complex question comes in. In an email-based support environment, the support rep can search a support database or ask a colleague or manager about the problem. In the meantime, the player is off continuing with his life. If the support organisation has a good escalation and expert-referral plan, the answer to even fairly esoteric questions can be obtained within a matter of a few minutes.

USING TIME WISELY

A response sent within a couple of hours almost always represents excellent support, particularly if that answer is on-point, thorough, and accurate. However, with phone support, you are keeping your customer waiting on the phone while you find your answer. That often inclines support reps to provide suboptimal answers, not find the superior or more-experienced colleague they need, or (worst of all) guess at an answer for the customer.

Once a support person has a customer on the phone, it can be extremely difficult to get them off, short of simply hanging up. Consider the times that you've had to listen to a string of bad-beat stories from an acquaintance (or a stranger) in a bar. Now suppose that person is a paying customer of yours. You are forced to be polite and receptive, but every minute you sit on the phone with him is largely wasted and costing you the ability to tend to another customer.

It's worth noting that the companies most recognised for top customer support in the online poker industry (and here I will be so bold as to include Cake Poker) don't have phone support. They simply do a stellar job of answering their customers' questions via email.

THE LANGUAGE QUESTION

While the US still has the largest single market for online poker, the game is exploding around the world. That means support organisations have to deal with questions in multiple languages on a regular basis. This is hard enough as it is via email, but even more so over the phone. Many people communicate relatively well when writing in a second (or third) language but making the leap to spoken conversation is much harder. This, of course, affects both the player and the support rep on a phone call.

Furthermore, it's impractical for most poker sites to maintain a support team 24/7 that speaks all the necessary languages. However, support teams can use online translating tools to get a rough idea of the intent of emails in many languages. Using that information, they can then send an appropriate template, written perfectly in the sender's language, which may well answer the question.

High-quality customer support in the fluid 24-hour, seven-day world of online poker is no trivial thing to accomplish. But the phone (or online chat, for that matter) is not a silver bullet. Build your support organisation well, with the training, resources and respect it needs to do its job and I think you'll find you do just fine with email.

Five Tips For Effective Support

ATTRACT AND RETAIN TOP SUPPORT STAFF

This may sound obvious, but there is a wide range of quality support staff across the online poker industry. I don't think it's an accident that PokerStars - the largest poker site in the world - made customer support staff quality and serving customers a priority from day one.

TRAIN YOUR SUPPORT STAFF

Too often support team members are thrown into action before they're ready. People now consider any email sent to them by a poker site to be legitimate forum fodder. A poorly written, inappropriate, or incorrect email may end up being read by thousands of people.

EMPHASISE CUSTOMER RESPECT

Realise that your customer support team are often the only people in your organisation with whom your customers have contact; they are the human face of your company. Make sure your customer support team are well aware of this fact.

RESPECT YOUR SUPPORT TEAM

Being a customer support rep is not an easy job and it's not the highest paying career in the world. But it's crucially important to your success. Give your support team the tools they need and make sure they understand the critical role they play in the company's success.

DON'T BE AFRAID TO USE THE PHONE WHEN NECESSARY

There's nothing wrong with a manager making a phone call to a customer when that's what's demanded. I don't think you need to offer phone support on a regular basis but there are times when there's no substitute for hearing directly from someone in authority.