“Only entropy comes easy,” said Anton Chekhov,
who probably wasn’t thinking about this week’s widespread
issues triggered by outages in a popular cloud services platform, but
was still bang on the money.
Outages and service interruptions are
inevitable. No system has perpetually perfect uptime. For customer
support teams, outages are both a tough day at the office and an
opportunity to stand out.
Several studies have shown that recovering
well from a failure in service can lead to a higher customer satisfaction level
than never having a failure at all — the “Service Recovery
Paradox.”
Emily and I chat how customer support teams can prepare for and
respond to inevitable service interruptions, like those caused by the Feb. 28,
2017 AWS outage.
Building a full incident
handling plan is a big project, but you can quickly make a significant
impact on the customer experience by focusing on communicating with customers.
The elements of great
outage communication
During the stress of a major service outage,
it’s easy to forget that your
customers are often in an even more difficult situation. They are impacted by the outage, but they
also have far less information about what is happening. In many cases, they
also have their own customers that are asking them for answers.
By being an accurate, clear and timely source
of information, you can reduce their stress significantly. Communication during
an outage should:
- Inform the
customer: Let them know what is
happening and what that means for them
- Build their confidence: Let them know the situation is being taken
seriously and actively worked on, so they can safely do other work in the
meantime.
Make your communication
accessible
Great communication starts by making sure your
message can be received. Your artisanal, exquisitely handcrafted status message
means nothing to people who never see it, so wherever you store your status
updates, make sure your customers know where to look.
- Link to your
status page prominently in key locations like
your contact
us page, your support/operations Twitter account, and your help
documentation.
- During an incident, push out messages on
your primary support channels,
acknowledging the issue and linking people to the status page as the source
of updates.
- Keep your status page on separate
infrastructure to minimize the risk of
an incident taking down your service and status page at the same time.
12 guidelines for writing
great status updates
In my own career, writing status updates
during major incidents have been some of the most nerve-wracking moments.
You’re working under pressure, often with limited information, writing to an
audience of justifiably upset people.
Do your future self a favor and plan for
surprises — think ahead about the most common types of outages, and
come up with some sample updates as a base to work from.
Write versions that will fit into an email, a
status update and even a tweet, and put them into your outage action plan,
preferably in one of those glass boxes with a tiny hammer to break them out
when an emergency strikes.
Acknowledge the issue
When you know a significant number of your
customers are impacted, get an initial message out. Nothing shakes customer
confidence like a status page that is showing “all good!” when major problems
are occurring.
Empathize
Show some genuine understanding for your customers,
who have been at best delayed and perhaps much more heavily affected. Avoid
cliches like “we apologize for any inconvenience” and go for something more
specific and honest.
Be clear on the scope of the outage
It’s not always possible, but the more clearly
you can define who is being affected, and in what ways, the easier you make it
for your customer to understand if what they are seeing is the same issue
you’re reporting on. If it’s a particular area of an application, or a
geographic location, share that information.
Focus on customer impact
Describe issues in the way the customer is
affected, instead of the internal cause. So “customers are unable to pay for
goods” is better than “our payment gateway is down.”
Give alternatives where possible
If there are workarounds or backup options
available that will work in the meantime, make those known.
Don’t lay blame; take responsibility
You’re still responsible for your customer’s
experience, even if the fault is with a third-party system you use (and sometimes
you can even solve
problems outside your domain).
But do give important context
Mentioning a third party can be useful
information if it gives your customer a better picture of what’s happening and
how that will affect them. “We’re in contact with our payment gateway, and once
we know more from them we’ll update you here.”
Write to your audience’s technical level
Provide as much detail as will be helpful, but
no more. Too much technical detail can be confusing and unhelpful if much of
your audience won’t understand it.
Use consistent voice and tone
Communicating in a single voice makes the
messaging clearer and builds up your customer’s confidence in you.
Don’t over-promise
It can be so tempting to say “we should be up
in 5 minutes!” ... but outages can develop so quickly that it’s better to
reserve specifics for when your technical team have triple-confirmed it.
You can add personality, carefully
You don’t have to turn into a corporate robot
when things are going wrong. As long as you’ve got honest, clear communication
covered, a little empathetic gif sharing can help you connect with your
customers.
Follow up regularly
Even if you don’t have new information to
share, consistently updating your messages helps those affected know that
you’re still working on it, and they haven’t been forgotten. Pick a cadence,
and stick to it, and don’t forget to sound the all clear once the situation is
resolved.
Example: Outage update
language
To get started, here’s an example of how you
might pre-write some responses. Use this as a template for your own prepared
responses.
Problem: Generic error messages throughout the app, some people able to
use the app, others not. Widespread issues affecting people varied ways.
A good status update title: “Some customers seeing error messages and
unable to use your product.”
This describes the issue in the way your
customer will experience it, and in the language they’d use if they contacted
you.
A bad status update title: “Database errors when connecting” or “Servers not available.”
These are too specific and require too much
knowledge to be useful for most audiences.
Example status detail: “Some customers are seeing intermittent error
messages throughout their account. We’re aware of the issue and are working on
it urgently. Incoming messages are being safely received and stored, but won’t
show in your account until the problem is resolved. We recommend not sending
any outgoing messages at the moment.
We’re really sorry to be holding you up today!
Please know our engineering and operations teams are working hard to get
everything up and running and we will update you right here in 15 minutes with
the latest information.”
This covers what the customer is seeing, tells
them what is affected, lets them know if they need to change their usage, and
tells them when to expect the next update.
A few of our favorite
outage tweets:
Writing empathetic, informative communications
is tough. Writing them for public view in fewer than 140 characters is tougher.
Hats off to the teams behind these tweets!
We will be up and running
once the Internet is feeling better. Please sit tight!
Hi all, some Adobe
services are down due to the AWS outage: http://bit.ly/2ll864T Here's a puppy stampede to take your
mind off of it.
What a day! The #AWS outage is resolved
and Adobe services are coming back online. Big thanks for your patience (and a
puppy high-five!).
Amazon S3 is back up,
which means we're back up, which means it's time to spin some of these mixes: http://8tracks.com/explore/celebrate/popular …
Outages are stressful for customers and for
the teams supporting them, but having a plan and some thought-out sample
language can help make things easier. Customers will always appreciate the
companies who communicate clearly during outages, even when the problem itself
isn’t easily fixed.
Mathew Patterson: After
running a support team for years, Mat joined the marketing team at Help Scout,
where we make excellent customer service achievable for companies of all sizes.
Connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
https://www.helpscout.com/helpu/outage-status-update/?utm_campaign=HelpU&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=72675070&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8li-RAGmOUqp9x0PXeB2ObS6Vd4WrKhaQs1LLfb03J9Ub8QRJhdqMoZgc1AA0L5cILaA1NzIwSTuCFH9-9olEyN7q69ncr66ZiZ0doudaiUYHfORY&_hsmi=72675070
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