Answering questions is part of the job. Solving problems is the part that customers remember. A customer who arrives worried and leaves with their problem fixed, or at least with a clear plan, will trust the business again. A customer who is passed around, asked the same questions three times and left without an answer will often leave for good and tell others why.
What problem solving means in support
In support, solving a problem usually follows the same path:
- Understand what the customer is experiencing. What do they see, and what did they expect?
- Find the real cause. The first thing a customer says is often a symptom, not the cause.
- Fix it, or find who can. Some problems you can solve yourself in a minute. Others need a supervisor, a technical team or the payments team.
- Tell the customer clearly what you did or what happens next, and when.
- Record it so the team learns and the next agent knows the story.
The four lessons in this section
- Asking questions to find the real problem. A simple order of questions, plus first level troubleshooting: checking the app version, the network, the account status and what changed recently.