Professional life, personal life – Balanced or Mixed?

Most professions in this world are not oriented with the personal attitude and personality of a person. For example, a civil engineer may be excellent at his job – planning, constructing, and so on. But, in real personal life, he may be liberal, relaxing.

There are a very small number of professions that involve great personality influence also. We can even say it this way, “these professions rely greatly on the real personality, the attitude of the persons being in those professions”. One concrete example of such a profession is “Product Support”. This role needs no personal, professional life balance because it’s already a mix of both.

What we are not talking about in this blog?

So, let’s tell you right here – This blog is not going to have keywords such as empathy, inquisitiveness to learn, problem-solving etcetera, that are used as constant keywords for product support roles.

So, what are we talking about?

This blog is going to encompass 5 elements that a product support person should have in his real life, which has a great impact on his profession. In short, it’s all about understanding the real personality of a person who aspires to become product support.

1) Thirst for winning the game.

Customer support is a game. It’s the game of happiness. An ideal product support person should have the capability to first understand the mindset of the customer, how he is talking. Normally, customers would come frustrated with the support person. This person should make his mind that the frustration is not with him but with the problem in the product. As said, it’s a happiness game. Now, it’s in the hands of the customer support to listen, grasp, find solutions for the customer. At the end of the day, he should make sure that he has turned the frustration into happiness.

So, the recruiters should look for this tendency in a product support aspirant. One who loves to bring happiness in people surrounding them, one who works to change the unhappy mindset of a person to a happy mindset is good to score.

Rating – 20% Done.

2) Lover of the product.

What? Love? Does it sound weird? Then ask these questions to yourselves, “Do we fight for what we love?” , “Do we work hard for a thing we love?”. If the answer is yes, the same ideology applies here – One who loves the product, will support it and play the happiness game for it.

Though it’s not mandatory for the aspirant to be well-versed with the product, it’s important that the recruiter should understand why the person wants to support their product. What are the things he loves about the product? How he heard about those products and so on. It’s one of the very crucial elements that the recruiters should look for in a product support aspirant.

Rating – 40% Done.

3) Being a friend or being friendly?

Would you like to be a friend or friendly to the customers?

This is another question to be asked to a product support aspirant. Though sound similar, there is a big difference to the context. If the support aspirant likes to be a friend of the customer then there is a high chance that they may get hurt during a rough stint, may be biased about picking tickets, apprehensive about giving solutions. Ideal product support should be friendly to all kinds of customers and all types of customers. Asking this question helps the recruiter understand the emotional intelligence of the aspirant and move it forward.

Rating – 60 % Done.

4) Proper/prompt communicator in general.

Normally, product support persons are required to be efficient communicators. Though it’s valid, it’s essential to first know whether they are proper and prompt communicators.

Want us to show real-life examples? How many times would we have got emails saying, “We will update you on this regard” but never would’ve got one?

Remember what we said in the beginning? The professional side of the product support person lies heavily on the personal side of them. Now, coming back here, it’s crucial to study this in the aspirant – “Are they a prompt communicator in their general life?” If this question may trigger the consciousness of the aspirant while answering, we may tweak this to be indirect. “Tell me about any incident where you were the point of contact to perform activities”, “Tell me about any event when you needed to collaborate with your friends/colleagues to complete a task”. Some questions like these will help us find and understand whether they have been a prompt communicator.

Rating – 80 % Done.

5) Affinity toward hearing stories.

Product support person would need to listen to a lot of use-cases, workflows, business models in a day. Forget about working on that. First, they should have big ears to listen to. Now, putting this into account, the recruiters should find the tendency of the support aspirant. Do they like to hear stories? Do they have an interest in knowing more about general stuff? The recruiter may tune the questions like, “Who are your friends?”, “What are their parents doing?” etcetera. This will extract the mindset of the aspirant and help the recruiters move the needle forward.

Rating – 100% Done.

You’ve got complete product support person. Now, score high on customer happiness and satisfaction with the team.

If you have reached here, then you may be also interested to know the “5 key ingredients to become a successful presales engineer”. Check this blog