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Call centers receives a huge volume of calls every day, most of them are queries from the customers who are facing some sort of problem with their products or services.
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Introduction • Call centers experience a huge volume of calls every day, most of which are queries from the customers who are experiencing some sort of problem with their products. • Ideally, call centers agents would like to resolve the issue on the first call itself. However, this is often not possible, because different problems require different subjects of expertise and more complicated problems cannot be handled by lower tier employees. • In such a scenario, a ticket is generated detailing the issue, and circulated right up to when the issue gets resolved. This process is systematic, ensures that no query is lost and keeps the customer notified of the status of their query.
There is a possible downside to this, though. With the number of queries on an ever increasing slant, the queue of tickets generated keeps getting longer and longer. • If they are not handled at an equally fast rate, the accumulation of tickets can cause a whole lot of problems. Another problem that happens is, the tougher issues get sidelined because employees prefer resolving the easier issues. • The pipeline becomes haphazard and the solution procedure leaves some issues behind. As a result, the response time for some of the tougher issues becomes way higher than it ought to be, thus causing customer satisfaction rates to fall.
The call center’s technical support personnel get buried in accumulated tickets, the quality of service provided drops and the company starts losing money because of this. • To help you out with this scenario, there are certain ways to implement procedures so that ticketing can be escalated quickly and efficiently. • The most prominent need is to be organized, and set up a ticket queue management process that works according to the requirements of your company. • Response times need to be focused on, so that issues are resolved well in time and communicated properly to the customer. • In addition, other factors such as priority, technical difficulty, available resources, etc. have to be taken into account when opting for ticket management platforms.
Select a Priority Module • It is almost impossible to satisfy all your customer all of the time, no matter how quick you are. • Customers want solutions instantaneously, and while that is nearly impossible, the least you can do is find a priority module that suits your case. • For smaller teams, it is generally better to opt for first-come-first-served modules, so that no tickets ages too much before being resolved. • Larger teams can go with a “pick or choose” model which assigns greater priority to tougher problems and tries to resolve them first. • Another method is by “weighted customers”, that is, by prioritizing paid services over the free ones and higher-investing customers over lower-investing ones. • It is important to pick a procedure that works for you.
Enable self-service • Most issues are repetitive. If one customer faces a generic issue, chances are, a hundred other customers will face the same or very similar issues. • In such cases, a very effective way to cut down the queue is to allow customers to access the frequently asked questions portal that guides them on the resolution of basic issues by themselves. • By empowering your customers in this manner you are not only reducing your own workload, but also created a gradually increasing repository of all the issues experienced, which can then be studied to ensure that those same problems do not occur on subsequent versions of the product.
Label ticket status correctly • Setting the right ticket status is essential. Any error in this first step results in chaos down the line and diminishes the quality of service. • Status need to be kept continuously updated and clearly visible, so that agents know the exact status of a problem and can work on it accordingly. • Creating explanatory labels like “New”, “Pending”, “In-Progress” or “Resolved” can help the employees at the organization understand which tickets need work, and agents can inform the status of customers accordingly as well. • It allows you to set priorities as decided and ensures that tickets are not lost in the grind as they go through several layers of analysis.
Use technology to automate workflow • Today, we have the benefit of software to make our operations more efficient and save time and resources. • Workflow automation allows the tedious and repetitive parts of the job to go on without the need for human intervention. • In this manner, it opens up agents’ time to stay on the top of newly generated requests and trying to resolve them as soon as possible, or generating the appropriate tickets. • It can send out broadcasts to keep employees aware of a situation and provide timely notifications to spur agents on to finish work within deadlines. • Further, it minimizes human error and allows for a smoother flow of tickets from generation to resolution.
Segregate and segment your support tickets • With growing complexity, tickets will have to be categorized into different segments for better processing. • Creating different categories allows you to assign experts to resolve cases which fall directly under their domain, thus ensuring an optimal usage of the resources available to you. • Other than that, agents can search and retrieve tickets much faster if they are segregated into categories. • It allows you to stay organized and understand the performance of each aspect of your business.
Provide training and education to your support staff • There is no magic formula to resolving cases quickly – the team that has better knowledge and better resources will capitalize the market and provide better quality of service than the team that is lagging in these aspects. • According to reports, teams where agents are empowered with specific training in the skills required perform 3.4 times better than normal basic-level employees in teams. • Make sure that your team is well versed in the technologies that can make life easier, and have access to all the essential data to make proper, informed choices.
Set up a multi-layered support system • Support teams deal with different types of cases every day. Some of these cases can be solved with the basic knowledge imparted to agents, while some require greater expertise. • To solve this problem, the best idea is to create a tiered structure where the first tier is agents who will receive and escalate the ticket to the second tier, comprising of experts in different fields. • The first tier is responsible for deciding which department the problem should be escalated to, and keeping track of it to inform the customer. • In this way, the difficult issues don’t lie around waiting for someone to pick them up. Response times are improved, and resources are used optimally.
Always keep the customer in the loop • Customers want to know what is being done about their complaint or query. At all times, a ticket must have a publicly accessible status flag. • Agents can consult the status flag and inform the customer how far along their ticket is, whenever an inquiry is made. This helps the customer to stay relaxed and assured that their query is being looked into. • Further, they can understand roughly how long it would take for the issue to be resolved. • Not being able to declare the status of the ticket leads to dissatisfaction among the customers, and can negatively impact your business because the customers will think that nothing is being done about the concern they raised.
Provide an historical view • Tickets are escalated from one person to another. When a new person is assigned a ticket, they need to be able to see all the ticket history to be able to make a correct change. • They need to have access to all the status changes that have taken place prior to their taking charge, as well as any updates that might have been recorded on the problem. • This view needs to be made accessible without the person actually having to communicate with everyone who has previously been in charge of that ticket. • This also helps the expert deliver more personalized solutions to the customer, since they are aware of the customer’s previous interactions with reference to that problem.
Take data-driven decisions • It is impossible to improve your performance unless you can quantifiably measure your performance. • The first rule of improvement is to lay down key performance indicators that capture the essence of what you are doing, and give you an indication of which areas need work. • Some of the KPIs commonly used for ticket escalation routines are the average response time, ticket close rate, average handle time, average resolution time, etc. • Without the data, decisions become based on instinct rather than the possibilities. Taking data-driven decisions is the way forward for any company looking to improve their ticket escalation methods.
