THE AGENT’S STARTER KIT TO EFFICIENT
Transcript of THE AGENT’S STARTER KIT TO EFFICIENT
T H E A G E N T ’ S
S T A R T E R K I T T O
E F F I C I E N T
C U S T O M E R S U P P O R T
Introduction
Streamline how you work
1.1 Where do I begin?
1.2 What do I do when I’m stuck on a question I don’t know the answer to?
1.3 How can I avoid switching between so many tools for the information I need?
Work quickly and effectively
2.1 Is there a way I can save time on repetitive tasks?
2.2 How can I communicate with my customers quicker?
2.3 Why do I feel chained to my desk?
Work better, together
3.1 Can working with other teams be made simpler?
3.2 How can I take advantage of my team’s collective effort?
Conclusion
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CONTENTS
01
To the outside world, customer suppor t
agents are the face of any business. They
influence how people perceive brands and
are directly responsible for the retention and
churn rates for any organization.
This is not an easy responsibility to shoulder, especially if you’re new to the industry.
There are so many things to learn, so many people to help, and so little time.
This starter kit was designed with that in mind.
Set yourself up for success by simplifying your work.
S T R E A M L I N E H O W
Y O U W O R K
03
Where do I begin?
As a support agent, figuring out where best to begin your work each day is not
an easy task. Everything seems important, requiring immediate attention.
So the question is, how do you prioritize your work when all of it looks
important?
Getting started
Much of what will help you prioritize has to do with the nature and/or the
status of the issue. Here are some basic parameters that will help you plan
your day better and make prioritization simple.
Being par t of a suppor t team can feel
over whelming. It requires familiarizing
yourself with a new product or ser vice,
work flows, new teammates, and an endless
list of new things.
Sort your tickets according to their due-by times
Support teams usually have policies to determine the
due-by time or the SLA of every incoming support
request, depending on the type of issue or the
channel through which it was raised. This timeframe,
being self-explanatory, will let you sort through your
support inbox in the most efficient way possible.
04
The prioritization matrix
Using the relevant parameters, you can
determine the urgency and importance of any
issue and slot it into the Eisenhower matrix.
This method of prioritization will help you
visualize your workload better and help you
work faster.
As part of a regular support workflow, every ticket
in your helpdesk will be tagged with a priority that is
meant to reflect the importance and urgency of an issue.
These tags are one of the quickest ways to organize
your work in the order that makes the most sense. By
structuring your work this way, you can ensure that
you solve every issue assigned to you well in time.
Order issues by ticket priority
Assess the mood of the customer and identify the urgency
When dealing with angry customers, timely resolutions are
not just advisable but absolutely necessary. Such issues, that
require deft handling, will factor into how you plan your day.
Be it a customer response, an internal or 3rd party
update, or any activity that affects the tickets
you’re responsible for, you need to stay on top of
things and prioritize your actions accordingly.
Keep yourself up to date with the activity on your tickets
High
Low
Urgency
Impo
rtan
ce
Low
High
05
What do I do when I’m stuck on a question I don’t
know the answer to?
Planning out your day simplifies how you choose what to work on next, but
there might come a time when you hit a wall and can’t proceed further.
When a support query has you stumped, how can you learn to resolve it
and better equip yourself for similar situations in the future?
Looking in the right places
No matter how difficult a question is, odds are you’ll be able to find an answer
in your helpdesk. Your helpdesk is a wealth of information that you can tap
into at any time to become independent as a support agent, and be well on
your way to getting rid of your training wheels.
Make use of knowledge repositories
As helpdesks grow, support agents internally document and
curate answers to common questions that have cropped up
over time for easy reference. These bases of knowledge prove
to be invaluable resources when you’re looking for answers.
You instantly understand the entire context
surrounding any given issue, letting you answer
difficult questions clearly and comprehensively.
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Learn from past interactions of seasoned agents
If there hasn’t been enough precedence for an issue
to be documented but you’re sure it has happened
before, look for it in your helpdesk. Search for it,
and see how the assigned agent handled it.
If it’s not a specific issue but a broader type of issue
that you need help with, use filters to narrow down your
search results and see what has been done by more
experienced agents in the past. This way, you learn
enough to smoothly resolve interactions with customers
irrespective of whether you’ve found a solution.
The rulebook for dealing with customer frustration
If you can’t solve a customer’s issue in time because you’re stuck, the first
thing to remember is to not panic. In case you’re faced with frustrated
customer, here are a few things you should keep in mind.
• Keep a level head
• Hear the customer out patiently
• Don’t take anything personally
• Empathize actively
• Apologize gracefully, but don’t grovel
• Endeavor to find a solution (ask someone else if you have to)
• Step away for a few minutes to calm yourself down
07
How can I avoid switching between so many tools
for the information I need?
You can’t effectively utilize all the information you have access to if you have
to keep switching between countless tools and applications to get it. Studies
show that multitasking can prove detrimental to speedy work and what you
actually end up doing is switching between tasks.
Now, the costs of switching are high and they add up over time. So how
can you make sure you don’t fall prey to the vicious cycle of constant
switching and lost time?
Bringing your support into one place
All the information in the world won’t help you if you can’t get to it when you
need it. Consolidating all facets of your work is the surest way to guarantee
that nothing is lost in translation.
The cost of switching
According to a University of California-Irvine study, regaining our initial
momentum following an interruption can take, on average, upwards of
20 minutes.
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Going over to another tab to check your notifications via
email is a distraction that is far more costly than it seems.
Fewer distractions mean faster and simpler operation; so
ensure you get your notifications right within your helpdesk.
Don’t leave your helpdesk for notifications
Unify how you access customer information
Instead of switching to CRMs for customer details, payment
gateways for transaction statuses and so on, make use of
the integrations your helpdesk is likely to have and bring
all this data under one roof - right where you need it.
Use a single platform to support customers
Be it anything from an email to a tweet, you should
be using the versatile capabilities of your helpdesk
to respond to queries uniformly and in one place,
rather than using different tools and applications.
W O R K Q U I C K LY
A N D E F F E C T I V E LY
Equip yourself to tackle requests as quickly as they come in.
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Is there a way I can save time on repetitive tasks?
If the work you do starts feeling monotonous, the morale slump ends up taking
a toll on you. It might not be noticeable at first, but it can eventually lead
to a drop in the quality of your customer interactions or even burnout.
Dodging the grunt work
Irrespective of the variety of requests you might be handling, some will be
alike, requiring similar actions or almost identical responses. But you don’t
have to repeat all of them individually every single time.
Once you star t to feel like you know what
you’re doing, the nex t question you should be
asking is whether you’re taking longer about
it than you need to.
Don’t type out the same replies over and over again
When multiple customers raise issues that need the
same response (a refund request for instance), create
or use existing canned responses on your helpdesk
that you can insert with a couple of clicks.
If your helpdesk can suggest articles for you to use
in response, then great! But even simply looking for
an article yourself and attaching its link or inserting
its content into your reply will drastically cut down
the time you spend resolving each such query.
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Use templates to bypass entering information manually
Avoid updating tickets individually
Using ticket templates set up by your helpdesk’s admin
will not only eliminate the excessive manual creation
and entry of tickets, but will also ensure that the
information logged in your helpdesk is consistent.
Clearing out a bulk of the requests in your queue, then
selecting and changing the statuses of multiple tickets all
at once is a much faster way to go about updating them.
If after responding to a customer you need to change
or update attributes of the ticket, instead of going over
every field you should set up automations to complete
all tasks to be performed with a single click.
You should also set up rote tasks like assignments,
categorization, email notifications or escalations
to be automated clearly so that multiple routine
actions can be carried out with ease.
Automate what you can
Metrics to watch out for
Here are some numbers that agents can keep an eye on to gauge how
efficiently they’re working.
First response time - The time taken to send the first response to a
customer request
First contact resolution - The number of requests resolved with just one
interaction
Average resolution time - The average time taken to resolve an issue
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How can I communicate with
my customers quicker?
Conveying your point to the customer shouldn’t take longer than it has to.
Using the right tools and media to enhance the way you communicate
will ensure there is no disconnect.
Bridging the gap
Time being as crucial as it is in support situations, you’ll be best served if you
minimize the time you take to explain solutions. To help you do that, you need
to capitalize on the tools you can leverage to improve how you communicate.
Employ visual aids
Using all the visual collateral at your disposal - screenshots
and recordings, GIFs, videos, presentations and so on - is the
best way to ensure you’re providing the most comprehensive
and the quickest possible resolution for your customers.
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Tools to enhance the way you communicate
Awesome Screenshot - Screenshots and recordings
Ezgif.com - Create GIFs easily
Zoom - Video conferencing, screen-sharing and remote access
If a customer agrees to grant you remote access
to their system, you can step in and fix whatever
was troubling them in an instant, potentially
saving you countless hours in the long run.
Sharing your screen with a customer as you demonstrate
the solution to their problem makes sure that they
immediately understand what needs to be done and are also
equipped to deal with it should the issue crop up again.
Eliminate back-and-forth
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Why do I feel chained to my desk?
Helpdesks today are usually on the cloud. This means accessing them is
easier than it used to be during the age of on-premise software. But do I
still need to find access to a desktop or laptop computer to be able to
support on the go?
Stepping away
Be it on your commute to work or when when you’re in the field, keeping track
of your tickets can be rather difficult when you’re away from your desk. But
helpdesks usually have mobile apps that you can take with you.
Take your helpdesk with you
Stay on top of things even when on the move
Just about any functionality that your helpdesk has on
the web will likely be present in its app version as well.
You can simply login on your phone and do everything you
would on your laptop - from responding to tickets and
taking calls to answering chats and composing emails.
If you’re logged in to your helpdesk on your phone, you
can use it to stay up-to-date with all the activity on
your tickets without having to even go near a laptop
or a computer. The notifications from the mobile
app will make sure you’re never caught off guard
and are always putting your best foot forward.
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For the best mobile support...
Using a mobile app to support shouldn’t mean having to compromise on
functionality.
• Mobile dashboard - get a summary of your work
• Collaborate - share tickets instantly across any apps you use
• Collision alerts - avoid conflicts by knowing when someone else is
working on the same ticket
• Customer details - access customer information without leaving the app
• Time tracking - record time entries and view timesheet reports
W O R K B E T T E R ,
T O G E T H E R
Collaborate both within your team and across functions to provide the best customer experience possible.
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Can working with other teams be made simpler?
Inherently, customer support has a lot of dependencies. If there’s a bug, you
need a developer to fix it. If a delivery is late, you need to follow up with the
delivery team or partner. Then why is collaboration so convoluted and the
primary cause of delays?
Working as team
The way workflows have traditionally been structured, working with other
teams on support - be it internal or 3rd parties - is nothing short of a
nightmare. This is especially true when a support request involves any form
of reassignment or delegation, or simply needs more than one head to solve
the issue.
A suppor t team is of ten looked at as
an island, isolated from the rest of the
organization. The larger mistake here is to
assume that agents can suppor t customers
without the help of other depar tments.
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Reaching out for help when you’re stuck, or simply discussing
something in a ticket shouldn’t take you out of your helpdesk
and make you lose context. Using an internal medium to
communicate will not only reduce your resolution times but
also make your responses more savvy and comprehensive.
Reach who you need to instantly
If more than one agent needs to come together to solve a
request, share the ticket instead of reassigning it so that you
still retain access.
Avoid reassignments
When a complex issue requiring multiple actions is reported,
break it down into actionable tickets and work on them
parallely with others on your team.
Split large issues
Provide consistent support
Link and track similar issues (like feature requests, bug reports
or outages) across your helpdesk so that when there’s a
relevant update, the replies you provide to all your customers
are timely and uniform no matter who the assigned agent is.
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How can I take advantage of my team’s
collective effort?
What is often overlooked is the wisdom that a support team amasses over
time - very little of it is put to use in everyday scenarios. Applied properly, the
work done over time by a support team as a whole can be an invaluable
asset in each agent’s arsenal.
Knowing what your team is up to
Even if your team isn’t remote, it’s no easy thing to be aware of everyone on
your team and their activities. But making the effort to keep up with your
team and making use of their combined output can pay off immensely.
You shouldn’t lose any time solving issues that a coworker
is already taking care of. Let your helpdesk alert you if
you’re duplicating work that’s already been/being done so
that you don’t confuse customers with multiple responses,
or much worse, contradicting ones.
Don’t work on issues that are already being worked on
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Tips for teamwork
Collaborative support teams see up to a 32% decrease in resolution times.
Here are a few tips that will help you foster better teamwork.
• Share knowledge and learnings regularly across the team
• Add notes for your team on tickets and customer profiles for more
complete context
• Build communities and use internal communication platforms
• Integrate people from other teams into support squads for
comprehensive expertise
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The key to doing the best work in customer
suppor t is to understand what customers
expect from you. You can meet and exceed
their expectations by adopting the right tools
and processes in your quest to iteratively
improve your suppor t based on feedback
from your customers.
We hope this guide helps you navigate the waters of customer support
better. Though the work is intense, the truly great agents do it because they
want to make a difference and genuinely enjoy making people’s lives easier.
Freshdesk is a helpdesk software from Freshworks that is suitable for
businesses of all sizes to deliver exceptional customer support.
If you’d like to extend this conversation, reach out to us at [email protected]
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