Interview with the Head of Customer Care

Who are you and what do you do at world4you?

Fabian: I’m Fabian, Head of Customer Care. Since January 2021, I’ve been responsible for the professional and disciplinary management of our Customer Care team. In total, our team consists of 16 employees.

What does the typical process look like when a customer contacts Customer Care?

Fabian: Generally, our customers have the option to contact us both in writing and by telephone. This means either via email, a ticket in the customer area, or over the phone.

We divide our assistance into 1st Level Customer Support and 2nd Level Technical Support. All incoming calls first land in 1st Level. Here, about 80 % of inquiries are answered directly. These often relate to billing questions or domain inquiries, such as searching for an auth-code or the requirements for registering a domain.

Technical inquiries are also handled here. To a customer, many things may seem technical, but for us, they are often part of our daily business. Questions like "Which outgoing and incoming mail server should I use?" also land in Customer Support because our team is well-positioned and has solid technical knowledge. More complex matters that cannot be resolved in the first level are forwarded to Technical Support. There, specialized technicians take care of resolving the customers' concerns.

In the written department, our ticketing platform processes incoming emails. Based on keywords, these are assigned to individual queues and processed according to the employees' skills. For example, an email with the request "I have questions about my invoice" is forwarded to the billing team. For questions regarding a WordPress instance, the request is forwarded to the technical department.

What else does Customer Care do that people might not think of?

Fabian: Another area of responsibility is the maintenance and care of our FAQ portal. There, we regularly update articles and continuously provide new content based on recurring customer inquiries.

Can you describe an especially challenging situation and how you handled it?

Fabian: When I started three years ago, the staffing situation certainly presented a major challenge. Customer Care was based exclusively at the Linz location, and we realized that the applicant pool was limited. Recruitment was difficult, and processes often took a very long time. Eventually, we decided to look for new employees in Vienna as well. Initially, it wasn't easy: the team in Vienna consisted of one or two employees, and leading a hybrid team across two locations and remotely was new to me.

As a manager, it’s naturally easier when you see your entire team in the office every day. We now have six employees at the Vienna location, and it’s working very well. What’s special is that the employees regularly commute between the locations. There are colleagues who travel back and forth between Linz and Vienna almost every week because they want to.

Do you have more situations like that?

Fabian: Yes! As a service department, we have less flexibility due to our service hours. Nevertheless, we try to offer a certain level of openness regarding working hours. Colleagues can generally choose their start time freely. What matters is that everyone is present starting at 9 a.m. when we become available by phone. Working hours end at either 4 p.m. or 6 p.m. On Fridays, some colleagues finish at 12 p.m. on a rotating basis to have time for private matters like administrative tasks or sports.

Of course, we also deal with challenging situations daily. The more smoothly our backend and frontend systems function, the fewer customer inquiries we receive. In recent years, we’ve made progress in cross-departmental collaboration and sharpened our focus on customer concerns. Good networking among ourselves allows us to be aware of problems quickly and offer help.

A major challenge we see is fraud prevention. I dedicated a lot of time to this topic last year. It wasn't yet clearly established in the company who was responsible for fraud issues. As a hoster, we are repeatedly targets of fraud attempts and phishing. In the past, we often received customer inquiries about phishing: customers received an email and were unsure if it was genuine or not – and naturally, they called. In recent years, we’ve made improvements to the spam filter, and fraud prevention in the ordering process has also been improved.

What special measures does your team take to resolve customer concerns and ensure satisfaction?

Fabian: I believe we aren't a traditional support team; we often go the extra mile to solve individual customer requests. As a hoster, we are actually only responsible for operating the infrastructure. Nevertheless, we are faced with problems on the customer side that we can solve thanks to our expertise. It is often difficult to identify from a distance where the customer's problem lies. The customer can often find it hard to explain, which is understandable for us. Therefore, it’s always helpful when we receive screenshots or similar. In technical support, we therefore offer remote support, where we connect to a laptop, PC, or mobile device and support the customer directly, for example, when setting up a mailbox.

Good accessibility is also important to us so that the customer receives answers quickly. I know this is often challenging for my colleagues, but they have my highest respect and recognition for their daily work. They always manage to keep a smile on their lips and be there for the customer with empathy. I’ve been working in support departments for 12 years myself and know the stressful nature of this work. However, that’s also the beauty of the job: no two days are the same.

How has the work in the Customer Care team changed in recent years?

Fabian: Customers have certainly become more demanding and expect not only more support but also faster support. Response time is of critical importance. As our customer base grows, so do support requests. As a manager, I bear the responsibility of maintaining the support level while protecting employees from overload. For this reason, we have hired more employees over the last three years, and we are now 16 people strong. This is also clearly reflected in the average waiting time, which is currently under 45 seconds. In January 2021, it was still over 4 minutes.

Which personal qualities do you think are particularly important to be successful in Customer Care?

Fabian: First, I want to emphasize: there is often a barrier in the job market where people feel they don't fully meet the requirements. Many then unfortunately decide not to apply at all. With us, the most important requirement is that the social skills fit. In first place is empathy – the ability to put yourself in the customer's shoes. Even with inquiries that you might find funny yourself, it is important to show respect. For the customer calling, it is a personal matter to receive help; otherwise, they wouldn't contact us. Our goal is to help.

Communication skills are also important. Conveying technical knowledge in simple language can be challenging. We have customers from a wide variety of industries, such as bakers, electricians, firefighters, and many more, all of whom have different levels of knowledge. We always try to explain the next steps to the customer visually or with comparisons. It often amuses me to hear the creative comparisons my colleagues use in their daily business.

How would you describe to your circle of friends or family exactly what we do at world4you?

Fabian: If you want to run a website, you first have to secure the naming rights. And for the naming rights, you have to buy a domain. Behind that, however, you need a server that is reachable 24/7 so that this website is accessible at any time. We take care of registering the domain with the registry and provide the servers. While it would be possible to set up a server at home that runs all the time and host your website on it, it wouldn't be cost-efficient in any way. That’s why we offer the necessary infrastructure.