Support teams track what goes wrong. Negative CSAT gets categories, trends, coaching conversations. Positive feedback gets noted, appreciated, maybe even celebrated, but rarely gets the same systematic attention. I wanted to know what was actually in those comments, so I pulled 62 days of them: 406 Woo customers who rated us well and said why. What do customers praise when support goes right? And what did our Happiness Engineers (our support team at Automattic) actually do to earn it?
What customers praise
Speed was the clear leader. 86 of 406 comments (21%) mentioned it. Almost all came through chat, where agents picked up within 17 seconds to 5 minutes and typically had the whole thing sorted in under an hour. Email customers praised speed too. What they noticed was how fast someone picked up their thread, not how fast it closed.
“Quick support handled my issue immediately and without any back and forth. Very pleased!”
Knowledge came second (44 comments, 11%): not the fix itself, but the explanation. Customers noticed when an agent went into why something had broken, not just what to do next.
“Amazing – really went into details to understand my situation and my questions, and gave me a professional and detailed answer.”
Patience followed in close third (40 comments, 10%), and it held up even when we couldn’t fix the problem. Nine of those 40 customers never got a resolution. They rated us well anyway.
“They were patient with me even when I didn’t deserve it! Excellent support as usual, thank you!”
What our Happiness Engineers did to earn it
Three habits showed up in the full threads behind the highest-rated tickets.
Read the evidence before asking. The highest-rated interactions started the same way: the agent looked before asking. They went through order notes, error logs and the live site, built a theory, and only then went back to the customer. Basic facts they could find themselves, they found. Every question you skip saves a round of back and forth, and in tickets that adds up fast.
“I really appreciated the extra effort to identify the root cause rather than just providing a quick answer. Thanks to his thorough research, the problem was resolved quickly and efficiently.”
Move the thread forward. In high-CSAT handovers, the next agent read the full history before replying. No re-asking questions already answered, no re-suggesting steps already tried.
“Each person picked up the thread and moved it forward instead of restarting from zero. Nobody sent me a generic ‘deactivate all your plugins’ reply. They read the logs I sent, engaged with the specifics.”
Close the loop. For the best interactions, the problem the customer came in with was where the work started. Agents sent follow-up emails after chats closed and spotted secondary issues without being asked.
“Appreciate the follow up too! I’m quite busy with the business and having the follow up to remind me or see how things went is awesome!”
Speed and knowledge are coachable. Patience is trickier to teach. It’s what happens when someone cares enough, and is curious enough to stay with the problem and ‘close the loop’. That’s worth keeping in mind when looking for the right people to do the job.
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