David Chansard, Afnic Customer Service Representative, interviews himself

David, tell us about yourself

I’m an open book – my name is David Chansard (for anyone needing convincing, I can produce a copy of my ID and proof of residence dated within the past three months; p22 https://www.afnic.fr/wp-media/uploads/2022/10/Afnic-procedure-guide-VE.pdf).

No diploma, no particular school other than the school of life.

I’ve worked for Afnic since 14 February 2000. Driven by a sense of service and human contact, I’ve held various customer support posts for both internal and external clients.

What does the position of customer service representative at Afnic involve?

I follow-up on help requests from our clients, by phone and by email:

I’m the point of contact for registrars, accredited resellers of .fr and French overseas domain names (https://www.afnic.fr/en/domain-names-and-support/everything-there-is-to-know-about-domain-names/registrar-directory/).
I’m in contact with holders (https://www.afnic.fr/wp-media/uploads/2020/12/Guidepratique_Titulaire_VA.pdf and resellers/web agencies, not forgetting the general public (yup, those average Janes and Joes), so that’s a lot of people!

I’m all about the helping hand, coming to the rescue, giving advice, getting you out of a tight spot, and always going all out to find THE solution. Doing good, basically, because good begets good, I’m pretty much the Gandhi of .fr… I mean I don’t quite measure up to that great man, but I’m working on it.

Skills needed? A good ear, a kind heart and quick reactions

The keys are to listen, to understand the context and to adapt my reply to the person so that they don’t take their business elsewhere. Guiding lost souls through the twists and turns of the web – that’s one of my callings.

Now this one’s important – it’s also good form to be responsive and to pay special attention to following up, and to persevere, that usually pays off.

… and a flair for investigation!

Whether it’s examining an accreditation request from a registrar or part of operations connected with the life of a domain name, my job also involves a lot of analysis. This analysis can sometimes be a full-blown investigation, when it comes to crazy complicated recover procedures (compulsory transfer to a new holder) in particular  (page 17 https://www.afnic.fr/wp-media/uploads/2022/10/Afnic-procedure-guide-VE.pdf) or to certain technical issues that require my colleagues to step in (team work, you see?!), cases that have us pulling our hair out… but hey, management gives us a capillary bonus!

So what about the operational side of things?

My day-to-day missions involve a large operational aspect. For example, there’s the qualification procedure (checking holder eligibility), recover operations (and yes, compulsory transfer, we’re back to that!) as well as code requests for domain names whose registration is subject to prior examination.

Talking of which, I’d like to send a personal message on that last point to resellers/intermediaries/service providers:

when a town council asks you to register the name of their municipality, for the love of the web (or the DNS), list them as the holder rather than making the request under your company’s name, as is often the case. It’s a waste of time for everyone involved to be honest, and causes general discontent and frustration, so please do try to bear it in mind!

In any case, and this is just good practice, there’s no reason you should be the holder of your customers’ domain names.

When you receive my requests for additional information I’m sure you’ve all thought to yourselves: what a pain that Chansard is!

Except that I’m actually just putting into practice the still too-little-known .fr naming policy.

To sum up, I would like to say that my colleagues and I sadly do not have super powers (not even a cape and tights) and that we can’t disclose everything (data privacy is a big thing for us), but I can assure you that we do our utmost to make your digital lives easier or, at least, a little less complicated and that we are always delighted to provide solutions, advice (within the limits of available stock, of course), and all this with integrity and professionalism.

And the warm thanks we receive when we announce: “it’s solved!” just melts our hearts like butter.

And on that note, I fare thee well until our paths next cross… on a call or at one of the many trade shows we attend to present you with the hidden treasures of .fr domain names!

And don’t forget: our support service is available 24/7 by phone on +33 (0)1 39 30 83 00 or by email to support@afnic.fr