On Being Superman

I surf in an Internet of one.

That’s what most people view their experience on the Internet.  Millions of people surf the net every day, but it’s primarily a solitary experience. I sit by myself, many times with headphones on, staring at my screen, alone in a room.  Even if I’m on my laptop at a coffee shop, I’m still primarily ignoring the rest of the human race and focused on my solitary exploration of the Internet.  In those times when I have a problem, or I need tech support, I only tend to care about my experience and I want help, right now!

Let’s take a look at the other side of things, the support/moderation side of things; we often see hundreds of tickets in an hour.  Let’s face it; the Internet is a big place; lots of people go there.  Even though it seems as though it’s been in our lives forever, the Internet is really in its infancy.  Stuff goes wrong.  Sometimes stuff goes really wrong, a lot.  That’s where companies like Metaverse Mod Squad come in.  We are often the first line of contact for our clients when things go wrong.

Now, let’s consider the average customer support agent when something goes wrong.  He or she sees a massive amount of tickets suddenly flood onto his or her computer screen.  The agent thinks, “I’ve got to get through all of these as soon as I possibly can.”  Not in a grumbling way, but in that, handle the emergency and get it resolved, kind of way.  And, essentially, that’s the agent’s job.  But sometimes fastest isn’t always best.

The extraordinary agent sees only the top ticket in the queue.  It doesn’t matter how many are behind it one, ten, a thousand, a gazillion… Does not matter at all.  The reason it doesn’t matter is because the extraordinary agent understands that the user that submitted that ticket isn’t interested in any of the other tickets waiting; the user wants to feel special because they surf in an Internet of one.  The extraordinary agent also realizes that it’s too easy to cut corners for the sake of speed, and cutting corners for the sake of speed is usually why tickets get back for not having completely resolved the issue.  World-class horse trainer Pat Parelli says, “Take the time it takes, so it takes less time.”  That can be applied to everything, especially customer support.  By taking the time to answer a support ticket as thoroughly as possible, we come close to eliminating the chance the user will respond with anything other than, “My problem is fixed, thank you.”

The time difference between getting through that ticket as quickly as possible and really helping serve the customer’s needs can be as little as the thirty extra seconds it takes to really read what their problem is, rather than scanning it.  I see every new ticket as an opportunity to be someone’s hero, to be superman for even a few seconds, and I didn’t even have to come from Krypton.  All I had to do was take the time it takes.