As a business, you always want customers to keep coming back. But the opposite is true when it comes to support tickets. You absolutely do not want customers to keep coming back because their issue was not resolved, or worse, no one responded to their request for assistance. Ticket accumulation can sometimes get overwhelming.
To help you improve your current system, we have pooled our experience to bring you these helpful practices you can establish to quickly resolve support tickets. The quicker you deliver a satisfactory conclusion, the higher your customer retention metrics will be.
Remember, the most important aspect is that this is a team effort; the more agents collaborate on streamlining the process, the better the outcome for your customers.
Funnel the Expertise
Every organization has people who have certain strengths regarding aspects of the business operation. If Sara spends more time dealing with and resolving issues related to invoices, and Dan is the quickest at identifying and managing delivery bottlenecks, then this is a form of specialization. And it already exists in your organization!
The first step is to recognize everyone’s strengths and then align the rest of the team with that knowledge. This is different than hierarchical organization and is not dependent on the seniority of the team member.
Once a ticket is issued, agents can quickly refer to the relevant expert in the problem area. You’ve got the problem solvers ready, just go and find them! Make sure that no one person gets overwhelmed with requests for advice. Each person has to complete their own tasks too.
The ideal balance allows everyone to contribute, but always, and this is fundamental, the resolution starts with the point-of-contact, i.e., your support agents.
Categorize Your Tickets
Coming from the role of experts, we arrive at our support warriors; there is no doubt that the bulk of best practices revolve around the support agents themselves. So, training them is essential to having happy customers.
A key skill for your business’s chat agents is the ability to categorize the ticket properly, so it reaches the most relevant department. So much time is lost when a ticket meanders around before finding the correct recipient.
If your business produces customizable labeling on goods, tagging a ticket with the relevant custom category, such as ‘font size’ rather than ‘accessibility customization’, helps quickly get the problem to the problem solver. The aim is to reduce the chain of communication and revert to the customer with a happy outcome, one that you already have the tools to produce.
Utilize Templates
At the other end of specialization lies the time-tested hack of templates. We’ve all had those chats where the customer can’t find the option that’s right in front of them. We may be flabbergasted now and then by such simple issues, if you can even call them that, but in truth, intuition is different and very contextual.
Ultimately, we are here to help our clients, and that’s the goal. Templates are the best tool to resolve tickets that are about problems that can be simplified into steps with a definite result, one that we have already successfully completed several times.
Care has to be taken to identify which tickets need a template and which need more customized input from an agent. Templates work best at the point of gathering initial information regarding a problem, or for follow-ups via email or message.
Templates are easy to create and only need a few variable fields within the content. Of course, to make the customer feel cared for, each template should use phrases that evoke empathy and a human feel. Don’t forget to include fields for names and other identifying markers like invoice or order numbers.
Standardize Your Process
The support live chat is a great way to let your customers and potential customers know, ‘We’re here and we hear! We’re looking out for you!’ The support chat agents should follow processes that ensure that throughout the entire interaction, that feeling lasts.
Over time, agents and businesses can learn a lot about what your particular clients want. Is it a quick pace of response? Do they prefer more options for resolutions? Is it money back and a goodbye? Nature of business, region, and user profiles, all these can influence a chat support interaction.
So the agents should be trained to standardize the process according to these variables. The aim, as is evident in all our tips, is for the customer to come to rely on a level of professionalism from every interaction with your business. There are always going to be star-performing agents, but the best chat support systems deliver reliability and uniformity, always in a good way, of course!
Audit Your Backlog
When tickets start backing up, it can create a lot of stress for both ends of the support chat. Customers are unhappy with having to wait, and agents are overwhelmed with helping as many people as quickly as possible.
Periodic ticket audits help to identify which tickets need immediate attention, which can go to template resolution, and which, and we hope this is rare, just simply have to be abandoned.
Though ticket tagging helps streamline this process, many times, a few details in a customer issue can be overlooked. Did the agent accurately tag an overseas replacement order, but miss the fact that a public holiday is going to decrease available working days? An audit can pick that up. And quickly rectify this oversight, which, let’s be honest, can happen when backlogs are piling up.
Expand Your Knowledge Base
Even though we are champions of chat support and one-on-one customer engagement as the best mode of customer retention, we know that a mix of tactics works best. A knowledge base is a centralized and organized content hub for your business website.
It contains useful information in the form of articles, how-to guides, FAQ-style trainers, you get the idea. A customer visiting your website clicks on the Help and Support button, gets directed to this dedicated hub, and, usually, all their problems find a solution.
This one place on your website contains the sum of knowledge about all the products or services you offer. Curating this knowledge base requires constant updating. And your chat support agents are your sage seers in this regard. Agents spend all day listening to customers and thus become a fount of information on what topics can go in the knowledge base.
So use this valuable resource and reduce the time it takes for a customer to get the answer they are looking for.
Summing Up
It goes without saying that the fast resolution of tickets makes for happy customers. Any business can have hits and misses, but the real mettle is turning a lump of coal into a gold nugget (unless you’re in the coal business, in which case you can invert the analogy).
Follow our tips and enhance how you bring delight to your customer, a lofty pursuit worth excelling in.
