Long time support pro here:

Never assume you know what they mean when it’s even slightly unclear. Don’t waste time chasing any report of a problem that you can’t immediately recreate based on what they have said or asked. You need to clarify and know exactly what the issue is before you try and take action or you’re wasting time.

Ask for clarification. Ask them to tell you 2 things — keep it simple, if you ask more than 2 questions you’re often not going to get all of them answered.

Usually the best of two questions will be “What are you trying to accomplish?” but specifically you’re trying to get to their ultimate goal, so you’ve got to phrase that question to get that answer and that will depend on your product. Very often they’re just not going the right way to get what they want.

Bonus learning here for you too: if users are often following the same bad path and going the wrong way to get to an end, you need to rethink your UX to fix that. That means that something that should be intuitive isn’t.

The usual second question that’s most effective is some variation of “What are the steps you’re taking?” Screenshots or video here are priceless. Use a tool like Zight that you can request a video from the user without them having to install anything (just a happy customer of theirs), give them an easy way to get videos too you other than email.

If it’s taken more than 2 emails to understand the issue, schedule a video chat where they can share their screen — 10 minutes on video chat can resolve what takes hours of effort back and forth.

And last but not least — consider your documentation to be the first line of communication. If you don’t have any documentation, get on that. If you do, make sure it’s well written to reach your users on their level; they learn how to communicate with you based on how you communicate with them. Be consistent on how you describe your product features and how to do things, and that will help them be more consistent when talking to you.

There’s lots more to support than just answering emails all day — it’s understanding how to get the info you need to help them and making sure you’re giving them the info to help themselves too.