Language is the currency of support. It allows us to produce results when talking to customers over the phone, via chat or over email. But, just as it can allow us to repair bridges that are broken, it can crumble them down, if used improperly. There is no quicker way to lose a customer’s trust than giving them the wrong information or speaking to them in a way that makes them feel disrespected or like you don’t care.

We released Zulip Server 2.0.3 today. This is a bug fix release, containing a few dozen cherry-picked changes since Zulip 2.0.2.

Sometimes even the most experienced agents will face a customer service issue so complex that it leaves them stumped. That’s understandable—after all, as the technology driving many products and services becomes increasingly complicated, the need for guidance from experts on other teams has become commonplace.

After the security incident at Matrix.org, we have decided to publish a new Riot.im Android app on the Google Play Store out of an abundance of caution. The fresh app is still called Riot.im but internally it has a different application identifier (im.vector.app). Because of this new id, the new app appears in Google Play as a completely different application. This also prevents an automatic update from the old to the new application.

One of the most frustrating experiences is to finally win a customer, only for them to stop using your service after a few weeks or months. You spent all that time and money trying to win them over, and the result suddenly vanishes. While there are plenty of reasons for this, one of the biggest is your customer onboarding. If your new converts don’t know what to do or how to use your product or service, then they’re not likely to stick around.

From email to helpdesk, businesses come a long way. As your business expands, so do the needs of your customers—you have to expand your support to social media, you need to be mindful of all the small changes you make to your automation rules, strengthen security, etc. When you’re using a system that works well for small businesses but isn’t designed for scale, it might fail to perform when faced with heavy data.

Great customer service agents are invaluable in any business. Not only can they make your customers happy in an instant, but they can completely change the perception of your company. Finding these great agents, however, isn’t easy. Here are twelve customer service skills all great agents need and what you should look for when building your team…

Defining good customer service can seem to be a bit of a moving target, especially in this era of ever-increasing customer expectations. But the forward-thinking companies leading the charge in this new reality—such as Zendesk strategic partners Guru, Lessonly, and Stella Connect—are keenly aware that it’s their customers who get to make that determination, not them.