I remember setting up a website back in the 90s for a construction equipment company. They had no way of easily tracking leads from the website versus people who just saw them in the yellow pages or something. So, their solution was to have a fake salesman's name on the website.<p>People would call and ask for him, and the caller would be told he was out of the office and someone else would be happy to help out. Meanwhile they'd know right off the bat how that customer got their number.
I think the point of creating a "fake" person is so everyone involved can provide the support when ever they are available, and it looks like a unified source. I've done this a few times and it works very well, rather then having different people constantly responding.
Ah, a page out of the Citibank playbook. (<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703545604575407160128452040.html" rel="nofollow">http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870354560457540...</a>)
It looks like the lesson to take from this is not to create a fake persona for customer service, but to provide exemplary support. Other than the customers looking for a date, I doubt that satisfaction would be lower if "Alla" was actually "Daniel".
This reminds of of a story. I once worked at a place that would transfer solicitors and similar callers to our fake employee Helen Wait's voicemail (pronounced hell 'n wait). "Can I speak to somebody about where you buy your paper products?" "Sure, let me transfer you to Helen Wait."
When AOL was Q-Link, we did something similar; all of our newsletters were written by "Jenny Crocker" (Betty's daughter, we decided). It was convenient to have a representative character that always spoke in a consistent voice, yet could be staffed by multiple people. At first we were coy about whether she was real, but it eventually became an in-joke among the entire user base.<p>Ronald McDonald isn't just one clown, either.
I have to agree with martey here: the way you did support is fantastic, creating a fake persona is not. People like honesty and hate being fooled. If your customers found out about Alla, I think they would be very upset. Especially the ones who asked her out!
Back in the early 90s, I worked for a very small (12-ish people) technical graphics software company. The CEO and lead coder would help with tech support calls when we were slammed, but he would use a pseudonym to make it appear that we were a larger, more established company than we were.<p>I think that it may have been a more appropriate facade then, but there are quite a few precedents for very small companies providing stellar service and support now so customers should be a little less anxious about buying boutique software.
In Boston there is a column for gay men to write anonymously to for help and advice with their medical issues (especially sexual and psychological).<p>It's called "Ask Dr. Cox". (hurr, hurr)<p>"Dr. Cox" is actually a pseudonym for a small group of physicians who respond to the questions. Nevertheless the idea of having a single "name" and "face" to address your concerns to seems to be working -- and it helps these doctors contribute to a much-needed service without occupying too much time from any one of them.
We had done something like this for my first attempt at a startup. We had this product in India, and my name as well as those of our co-founders can be spelled in many ways. This can be confusing. So we picked a name which is like the most common name in India, which nobody gets right.
>She was also asked on a couple of dates.<p>Maybe things were different in the 90s (well, I know they were) but celebrating the success of your support offering based on gender isn't great advice to offer others.
Wow,
Myabe it depends on the business but I used to work in customer service in a retail company's call centre and we used to send out letters with our own names on them.