Thursday, May 5, 2022

Several facts about cats (and then something relevant)

"Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice

There are many ways to skin a cat, Cheshire or otherwise. And you can measure room capacity by the ability to swing a cat in it. Just don't let that cat out of the bag¹, or it might get your tongue².

But ultimately it was curiosity that killed the cat³. Which is unfortunate, because curiosity is vital. Particularly in customer service.

Well...if you want your support team to exclusively follow a script and provide pre-written answers, then curiosity is a disruptive influence. You don't need people asking questions or thinking outside the inbox.

But if you do want your team to engage with your customers as humans, to read between the lines, to uncover information you did not know and could never access, then you want them to be curious.

The job of the customer service leader then is to hire curious people and to create an environment in which curiosity is cultivated, not crushed.

Here is what I'm curious about today: What is the one job you wish your customer service tool could just do for you? Let me know.

¹ What is it doing in there anyway? Reading secrets from your diary using a little head torch, presumably.

² And why does a cat need another tongue? Is this some sort of feline tooth fairy equivalent?

³ Unclear whether it was just once or all 9 times.

Mat Patterson
Help Scout

AI, Curiosity, and the Future of Human Customer Service

The future of humans in customer service is not in pattern matching, it's in customer discovery. It's in understanding who our customers are, what they love, what they hate, what they need to get done, and where they get stuck.