Don't Drop the Ball: Four Customer Support Processes That Can Benefit from Automation

When you have to call a customer back, how often does that call-back slip through the cracks?

Do you have a way of knowing when you are about to violate an SLA?

Do you have multi-step processes that have a tendency to stop in the middle or be done out of order?

What happens when a mission critical incident comes from one of your biggest customers?

These are just four scenarios where automation can help you keep your processes in check. These days we need all the help we can get to remember when, how, or why to do something pertaining to our business. Like everyone else, we are incredibly busy. We use our smartphones and online calendars to keep us oriented with our offices. The same type of "calendaring" function can be used to help with customer support processes.

Customer support software with this capability can eliminate some sleepless nights, missed SLAs, handhold important processes, and otherwise really streamline your support function. The less often a human has to remember to do something in the future or in a certain order, the more the chance for error goes down.

Examples:

SLA Deadline:A customer has an SLA that guarantees a response within 24 hours. 18 hours later the SLA is still open. But a notification is sent automatically by the system to the responsible parties letting them know that a deadline is looming.

Autoescalation: A customer has reported an incident that is mission critical. The system automatically escalates the incident to a higher tier of service and notifies the agent involved.

Followup Call: Your agents sometimes need to follow up with a customer in order to close an incident. The system sends a notification for them to call the customer after a specified length of time.

Task automation: You have a process that must be done in order and involved four departments and six steps. A task is created and the first step and agent(s) are notified to begin. Once they finish the step, the system notifies the next person to perform the required next step. And so on. The third step cannot be initiated until the second step is complete. The incident cannot be closed until all tasks are complete.

This is a great tool for compliance. With the government and other regulating bodies increasing the pressure, customers expecting their complaints to be handled appropropriately, and the always present push for higher productivity, this is a tool that could turn your support operation around.

 

3 Top Trends Impacting Customer Support

Well, there are many trends affecting contact centers these days. There has been an enormous push to improve the customer experience and reduce costs. But here are three trends that are causing significant impact:

1. process automation or optimization
2. customer lifetime value management (CLTV Management)
3. more regulations and legislation 

I  have also noted what I call trend 2.5: encouraging customers to use self service channels, but in a way that could be counted under #1.

Process Automation:

For a more in-depth look at this read my blog entry Intelligent Automation for Customer Support. The long and short of this trend is to increase productivity by looking at the processes involved in customer support and automate those that are repetitive, time sensitive, or mission critical. An example is ticket escalation according to a predetermined business rule. If the rule is met, the system takes care of the escalation, it does not depend on a person to notice.

Customer Life Time Value Management:

In CLTV, customers are judged, not only by how much money they have spent with you but a considered estimate of how much money they may spend with you in the future. As you can imagine this is a pretty inexact process because it calls for attempts at precognition, but it is a good exercise to undergo if you need an idea of the possibility of repeat business and whether the money the customer spends will outweigh what you spend to court and keep that customer.

Dealing with More Regulation and Legislation:

This shouldn't come as a surprise for anybody in the financial industry, but there are numerous areas that are becoming more highly regulated. A few always have been but the regulations have become more stringent or onerous, others have not previously been acquainted with the requirement to adhere to a succinct set of rules.

And, as long is there is law in the land, more laws will be passed that could impact your business, including how you interact with your customers, what records you keep, how long you keep them, in what form you keep them, your security plans, and on and on and on.

So along with trying to keep up with what you have been doing, more stuff is coming down the pike. And I say forewarned is forearmed. This doesn't mean jump into a bunch of initiatives to meet regs and legs. But you must remain aware of which way the wind blows and have some preparations in hand to start dealing with them.

The Need for Speed: Process Automation with PhaseWare Event Engine

A NASCAR pit crew can fill a race car with gas and change every tire in fifteen seconds or less.  Ladies and gentlemen, that's how a business should be run.  Customers are like race cars racing through their busy schedules. 

They have their own jobs to do, families to be with, and when they have an issue, they call on you.  They metaphorically bring their race car which has no fuel and bald tires to you, their pit crew.  The faster you work, the faster they can race forward to do more important things, like playing baseball with the kids. 

However unlike a NASCAR pit stop where speed could mean first or last place, your customer service speed means less stress and hassle for the customer which is why there is customer service in the first place.  PhaseWare's Event Engine can give you the speed you need.

With Event Engine, you can set up automatic notifications for yourself as well as your customers.  The notes to you would keep you informed as to what new issues are popping up, how critical they are, and if they need to be passed on to a higher support level. Automatic notifications to the customers keep them informed of the progress on their incident ticket, whether it is open or closed.  The customer no longer needs to wait, twiddling their thumbs while the nagging thought of "I wonder what the problem status is" interrupts their important activities, almost like a race car driver waiting in the pit wondering if his tires are going to get changed. 

Also, when a customer first comes to you with an issue, you don't need to worry about asking a technician to copy the information in order to form a ticket.  Through Event Engine, a ticket is formed directly from the e-mail.  When received, the information in the e-mail is automatically converted into a ticket and the severity of the incident is noted.  With such automation, you have more open agents who don't have to do extra paperwork that keeps them from correcting the problem.  The faster the problem is fixed, the faster the customer can get to what they need to be doing, which is the purpose of customer service.

Therefore, when customers bring their "race car" to you, their "pit crew," be prepared.  Be flexible.  Be agile.  Feel the need for speed.  Get Event Engine.

Is Your Customer Service an Accident Waiting to Happen? Automation Can Keep Your Customer Service Accident-Free.

There was an interesting...oh, let's call it an issue....in Fort Worth, TX last week. American Airlines has a hub there. One of their jumbo jets was just sitting on the ground getting its heavy maintenance checkup when the front landing gear suddenly folded, dumping the nose of the jet 6 feet to the concrete. Ouch.

The damage was bad enough for the pilots' union to issue a statement that the jet may not be repairable (American Airlines denied that claim today).

How on earth could this happen?

Well, it seems that a mechanic went into the cockpit and pulled the lever that causes the front landing gear to retract. Why would he do such a thing? Because to the best of his knowledge the other mechanics had followed the correct process and placed a pin in the landing gear designed to keep it from retracting while it was on the ground being worked on.

The official cause? Miscommunication between mechanics.

In other words, human error.

How much time and money do you spend correcting mistakes caused by miscommunication and human error? Have any of these problems ever occurred in your customer service department?

• A support agent promises a field technician will be on his way immediately. But the work order never gets created.
• An incident ages until it has grey hair because the follow-up was not done. It was forgotten because there was nothing to remind someone about it.
• An agent is the second one to speak to a customer about a particular problem and gives information that conflicts with the first agent's reccomendations.

Let's face it. A million things can go wrong when people and processes cross paths. When the process is too cumbersome due to a large number of steps or the need to use several software applications to perform it, the process will break down. For American Airlines the breakdown means some big bucks to be shelled out and a couple of firings to do. What does a breakdown mean to you? Probably some big bucks and lost business.

First, map your processes and see just how many steps are involved in each. Is it possible that over time extra steps have crept in? Is each step really necessary? Or is it a legacy from the time when Bob used to work here and kept losing documents so an extra step was added to prevent problems caused by Bob's sloppy work habits? And now everybody has to perform that step.

This process mapping will also tell you how many different software applications are involved. Or alternatively, how many processes that would benefit from a software application are being carried out manually. Too much technology on the one hand and too little on the other. You need a happy medium.

A single customer service and support software solution can store all the customer information, keep service level agreements conveniently at hand, perform incident management, and contain a knowledgebase that might have the needed resolution and deflect an incident submission.

That same application can automatically track the incident from open to close including all steps, tasks, and assignments required to complete the incident resolution process. It can automatically alert the appropriate responsible parties when that incident gets passed around to the various departments for those tasks to be performed.

But wait! There's more! (Thank you Ron Popiel)

This application can automatically create reports so you can watch metrics. It has a dashboard that operates in real time so you can easily see how things are going for your support department. With the right solution, even more automation can be done:

• email response
• escalation of high priority tickets
• incident creation from email
• reporting of trending issues or increase activity
• customer updates
• service level violation alerts

With all of that power and none of the confusion or complication from the original process, you can avoid dumping the nose of your plane on the ground. Your customer service will have your customers sitting up and taking notice instead of getting up and taking their business elsewhere.

And maybe you could get some work done around here that doesn't involve putting out so many fires created by miscommunication and human error.

Too bad American Airlines can't automate putting a pin in the landing gear. Oh, and if you want to see a picture of the jet, NBC News has some nice ones right here.

 

5 Gifts for Your Customer Support Staff

Tis the season and all that, when thoughts turn to: "How can I keep my staff morale up yet cover the holidays?"

I offer you 5 capabilities to keep the staff clicking merrily along:

1. Customer information management with ALL customer information in one place and easily found and edited.
2. Incident/Issue management that follows a ticket from inception to resolution.
3. Automated alert system to increase SLA compliance.
4. Knowledge management with universal natural language search to find solutions and other information gleaned from a comprehensive knowledge base, FAQs, forums, notices, and downloads.
5. Self Service for savvy customers who prefer to look it up themselves rather than hold the phone.

PhaseWare offers a customer support and help desk solution that does all of this and more. Travel on over to the main  PhaseWare website to get the full story.

As for covering the holidays....well, I'll leave it up to you. With these kinds of tools that job just got a lot easier.

4 Ways to Add Strategic Value to Your Customer Service Desk

Smart companies have realized their customer support desks have strategic value. The Service Desk can:

 

1. Operate as a profit center rather than a cost center
   
2. Handle business growth without adding headcount.
   
3. Improve communication internally throughout the organization and externally to customers.
   
4. Leverage existing IT investments while implementing next generation technology.
   

 

How?

Since the service desk already has contact with the customer, there is the chance to up-sell or cross-sell.

Through automation and self service, more business can be handled by the same number of staff. Moreover, incidents can be tracked from end-to-end.

Through knowledge management, the same information is available to everyone from the service desk to the self service center. Everyone from customers to internal staff will receive the same answer to a particular question.

Existing IT solutions can be integrated with a next generation customer service solution that can scale with the company's growth.

Mr. Watson! I want to see you: Can you afford to make your customer wait until Monday morning?

What if, when his immediate presence was requested by his inventor boss, Thomas Watson had told Alexander Graham Bell that he was only available during normal business hours, Central Daylight Time, Monday through Friday, but no holidays and no weekends?

I think Mr. Watson would have been out of a job. Yet this is what some companies still think of as adequate customer support. Adequate? Maybe. Outstanding? Definitely not.

Does this type of customer support sound like your company? Maybe you can't justify staffing the phone around the clock. Maybe you think your product is not a critical element of any system therefore support can wait until Monday morning at 9 AM. Maybe once the product is sold, you don't care. But a delayed response to a customer could spell the end of the road with him and anyone he talks to about his lousy support experience. And new customers are more expensive to acquire than a support system that would have kept this now former customer from leaving you.

But does timely customer support have to be a person 24/7? No. There are several avenues that you can leverage besides a telephone support agent to answer your customer's questions during those off hours.

One of the most useful applications in terms of a timely response is a Self Service Center web portal that your customer can use at his convenience. The Self Service Center can be accessed anytime, regardless of the calendar or clock. Here is where a customer can search for a solution to a problem; update the company profile; even log and track a trouble ticket if need be. If all he needed was to reset his password, wouldn't it be better to handle it now rather than later? Like after the customer has left a flaming e-mail telling you what to do with your product?

Next to self service, e-mail is somewhat useful as a standalone service. But what if customer e-mails could be automatically turned into trouble tickets without human intervention? These value added support applications will lead to a very happy and loyal customer without staffing the graveyard shift.

One company that offers such tools is PhaseWare, Inc. The latest version of the Self Service Center has just launched. PhaseWare Tracker 3.0 Self Service Center allows customers to find the information they need to continue working. Additionally, the Event Engine can monitor and escalate e-mail issues without assigning someone to monitor e-mail traffic in real time.

Mr. Bell can now confer with Mr. Watson anytime. And Mr. Watson doesn't even need to be there.