Customer service shows whether you mean it.

We can spend a lot telling people who we are. Then the customer gets a standard reply to a question she never asked. I think customer service belongs in the growth discussion, because this is where we see whether the brand keeps the promises marketing makes. It is also where we find the questions the next ad and product page should answer.

The customer wrote down a problem. Read it.

A customer message can be short while the need behind it is quite large. The person may wonder whether the product fits, be using it incorrectly or feel disappointed. A standard answer to the wrong question is still a bad answer. Starting with a warm hello helps very little.

Read what the customer is trying to do and ask when something is unclear. A friendly answer still needs to match what the product can do and what the company can help with. Adding a heart does little to repair a false promise.

The comments become part of the experience.

Imagine someone stopping at an ad to understand whether the product is suitable. She reads the comments and finds exactly the question she has. The answer becomes relevant to more people than the one who asked. A clear explanation can help the next person move forward.

The same happens with an evasive or mechanical answer. Everyone reading gets a small demonstration of how the brand handles a reasonable question. I see those conversations as a visible part of the customer journey. We paid for people to stop at the ad. We should make an effort when they actually have something to say.

A follow-up question should help the customer move forward.

Dragging out a conversation for more comments just gives the customer extra work. If she needs a simple answer, give her one. If we need to understand the situation better, ask. She wrote to move forward, not to help fill our engagement report.

A useful rule is to read the answer with the customer’s goal in mind. Does this make the choice easier? Does the person get a clear next step? If the question needs handling privately, do we explain how to take it forward? I want care to show in the help we give, even when the answer needs to be short.

Recurring questions are material for the next brief.

When the same misunderstanding returns, I want the information to reach the people making ads and running e-commerce. Perhaps the creative makes an unclear promise. Perhaps an image, size explanation or usage guide is missing. Customer service then has concrete evidence for an improvement.

Make the questions easy to collect. Save how the customer describes the need, which answer helped and where the information should have been in the first place. Use the patterns in the next brief or page review. The next customer may never need to ask, while the team learns more about how people think.

Lots of comments can also mean people are pissed off.

The number of comments says very little unless we read them. An ad can be full of activity because people are unhappy. Good answers can help readers, but I would never promise an automatic CPM reduction or better profitability because of them.

Follow whether customers get help and what their questions say about the offer. If we want to know whether a new way of answering affects advertising, we have to investigate it. We hardly need to invent an algorithmic explanation to justify giving someone a proper answer.

Give the people answering more than a script.

Good help needs product knowledge, access to the right information and the ability to solve things. That is difficult if the person replying has only a collection of standard answers and no authority. I also want a clear route forward when someone else on the team is needed.

Templates can help the team work consistently. The person using them still needs room to read, think and act. If the same question keeps coming, it should go to the person who can change the ad, page or product. Otherwise we only get faster at answering a problem we keep creating ourselves.