Response Time: Vol. 7

You satisfy your customers, but can you satisfy our curiosity?

With Maartje Daems, Customer Support Manager at Plug&Pay.

Please tell us a little bit about your company and what you do there.

I’m a Customer Support Manager at Plug&Pay. Plug&Pay makes it easy to create an effective checkout flow for your product in just five minutes. You don’t need a complicated webshop if you only have a few products – you just need one optimized checkout flow per product. We also add some neuromarketing techniques to your checkout flows to boost your conversion rates and increase your average order value.

What’s the most valuable thing that working in customer service has taught you?

Lots and lots of patience. Sometimes, customers can be rude even though you didn’t do anything wrong, they just had a very bad day and you just happened to be there. Being angry or annoyed doesn’t help. Just take a few breaths, keep your conversation as positive as possible, and you’ll be fine.

What’s your greatest productivity hack?

Waking up early and starting the day with a few cases that take some time to figure out. When the rest of the world wakes up, I’ve already resolved my most complex cases of the day and I’m ready to help more customers.

What gif best describes your mental state right now?

What’s the best customer service you’ve ever experienced?

Once, a company told me not to buy a laptop at their shop – they told me it was cheaper at another shop. I never went to that other shop. It was cheaper, but they weren’t that nice.

What’s the worst customer service you’ve ever experienced?

I bought something from an American online store. They did ship to the Netherlands, but returning it was a nightmare. I could only return it with a specific postal service, which wasn’t available in the Netherlands. They thought that me driving to Germany (a four-hour drive) was a perfect solution. It took me more than a month and at least 10 probably very annoyed support agents to return a package.

“Showing empathy and understanding why something is important to a customer is something that a bot won’t ever do as well as we do”

Is a burger a sandwich?

Yes.

What’s the strangest thing a customer has asked you?

Today a customer asked if we could pay for his wedding, and I wasn’t even surprised.

What can you do that a bot will never be able to replicate?

Showing empathy and understanding why something is important to a customer is something that a bot won’t ever do as well as we do.

What do you doodle when you’re on video calls?

Cats. Always cats.

What’s the one piece of advice you would give to your peers in the customer service industry?

Focus is everything. Only handle one conversation at a time so you don’t get distracted. Create rules so you’ll see the most important conversations first. It will take too much time and headspace to scan and prioritize conversations yourself. Use that headspace to provide better help to your customers :-)

What book are you reading at the moment?

Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. A book that everybody should read, honestly.

What’s the best thing a customer has ever said to you?

It’s happened more than once that customers want me to work at their company because “I will be able to fix everything.” I will never do it – but it’s a great compliment.

What words make your skin crawl?

“Per my last email.” Just don’t use it. Ever.

What’s your most used emoji in customer chats?

It’s 🎉! I usually have a lot of good news to share.

“When our customers are successful, so are we”

Do you identify more with the title “customer support,” customer service,” “customer success,” or “customer experience,” and why?

Customer success. When we support our customers, we always try to go the extra mile for them. When our customers are successful, so are we.

What do you wish people knew about working in customer service?

We’re not a bot, not just an anonymous chat, we’re human! We can talk like we would in real life.

Conversation closed… for now 😏