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The Coffee Booth: October 18 | Scrappy, Not Crappy

  • 13 October 2022
  • 65 replies
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The Coffee Booth: October 18 | Scrappy, Not Crappy
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bharath.chakravarthy
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My favourite question of the session and I’m sure @jamesallnutt has heard me say this a number of times on our calls 

Q4: 😀 Effectively categorizing your support teams can help set a strong foundation to the overall support experience (and thereby, customer experience)- what are the ways in which you would categorize your support teams?

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option 

This is for sure, one of my favourite topics during the implementation phase where our customers are in process of deciding the groups.

The support team can be categorised in a number of ways, but I think it eventually boils down to how you want to report on it.

Some examples are categories by Level, like L1, L2, escalations, etc. OR by Geography, thereby allowing tickets to go into the right team, especially if you have a single team working in shifts. Some customers, just end up having one single big group, and use features like Agent Shifts and Skill based assignment to ensure the ticket reaches the right agent within that group

A
Userlevel 5
Badge +6

My favourite question of the session and I’m sure @jamesallnutt has heard me say this a number of times on our calls 

Q4: 😀 Effectively categorizing your support teams can help set a strong foundation to the overall support experience (and thereby, customer experience)- what are the ways in which you would categorize your support teams?

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option 

I’d start with effectively categorising the questions that come in- what is “effective” could really differ for different businesses. 

Could be based on region, product, complexities etc- is this a good starting point?

Bernburgerin
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My favourite question of the session and I’m sure @jamesallnutt has heard me say this a number of times on our calls 

Q4: 😀 Effectively categorizing your support teams can help set a strong foundation to the overall support experience (and thereby, customer experience)- what are the ways in which you would categorize your support teams?

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option 

This is for sure, one of my favourite topics during the implementation phase where our customers are in process of deciding the groups.

The support team can be categorised in a number of ways, but I think it eventually boils down to how you want to report on it.

Some examples are categories by Level, like L1, L2, escalations, etc. OR by Geography, thereby allowing tickets to go into the right team, especially if you have a single team working in shifts. Some customers, just end up having one single big group, and use features like Agent Shifts and Skill based assignment to ensure the ticket reaches the right agent within that group

Or by language.

Or for calls by overflow groups (starting with a small group that has the same people plus additional people in the overflow group.

finn
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Aaaaaannnnd, the last one for the day: 

Q5: 🌈Great service experiences are likelier to lead to repeat customers. But if your agents aren’t equipped well to delight customers, it’s a moot point. What are some innovative ways in which you would facilitate training for your support team?

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option 

 

 

A5: The training session should be held by both the most experienced agent and the one before the new agent. The experienced agent can transfer the experiences that come from complicated cases. On the other hand, the one before the new agent can increase their knowledge while telling the processes, and policies, and comfort the new agent by empathizing with him/her. 
Secondly, the average capability of the team should be determined. The agents who are below the average should be trained again.
The best example cases may be shared with others. I mean, sharing positive emails, call recordings, or the satisfaction survey results can attract the team's attention to these examples. This may be natural training. 

Bharat and community members, thank you so much. I really appreciate your help. These kinds of brain storms helped me a lot.💡

alyssia.correa
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This conversation is the need of the hour, especially with the holiday season beginning! Can’t wait to read all the insights during this coffee chat! ☕️

Alyssia, Freshworks Community
bharath.chakravarthy
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While we wait for everyone to join in, let’s start with some representation to see how global our audience is today. 

Drop in a message to show which part of the world you’re joining in from and if possible, teach us how to say “Hello” in your language 

bharath.chakravarthy
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Great, so here’s the first question for the day

Q1: 🎧 A common challenge faced by many customer support representatives is not having an answer to a query. What processes do you have in place to ensure situations such as these are handled in the best manner?
 

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option
rashmi.nag
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Hey everyone! Lovely to be a part of this Coffee Chat. I’m from India as well and we say “Vanakam” in Tamil (the language I speak) :)

Cheers, Rashmi || Team Refresh Community
bharath.chakravarthy
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Great, so here’s the first question for the day

Q1: 🎧 A common challenge faced by many customer support representatives is not having an answer to a query. What processes do you have in place to ensure situations such as these are handled in the best manner?
 

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option


A1: Personally, I’ve always felt an internal Knowledge Base is indeed the best way to ensure that an agent has an answer at their finger tips. Having said that, a KBase can’t be built overnight and will have to be laid, brick by brick, article by article.

During the implementations, especially for customers who don’t have a KBase yet, I’ve always recommended the agents contributing to the KBase on the fly, by just converting their replies automatically to drafts under the Solutions tab.For queries not on the KBase, the agents can always the Freshconnect (Threads) feature inside a ticket to have a quick collaboration with others agents with the context of the ticket.

 

@bharath.chakravarthy - that’s very true and an important point. How often do you recommend updating the Kbase? and how do you resolve for urgent issues that the agents don’t have knowledge to? 

It’s one of those where there isn’t one right  answer, but honestly, I think a review once a quarter is good. 

The content contribution should be a continuous process, but the review and publishing of the articles can happen once or twice a quarter, I’d say. 

rashmi.nag
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Such great learnings from you all! 

My question would be - how to ensure that your Kbase is not just yet another place with ‘content overwhelm’ (lot of information which is either not structured in the best way or doesn’t have good search functionalities) for both agents and customers?

Cheers, Rashmi || Team Refresh Community
bharath.chakravarthy
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Keep those comments coming in for all the questions, folks. This is great :) 

Here’s the second question

Q2: 🎄With the holiday season looming, how have you and your org made it easier for agents to deal with several customers at a time on a regular basis?

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option

A2: @bharath.chakravarthy Do you refer to deflecting tickets over a portal or additional temporary agents?

That’s an interesting, question.

I’d actually pick the former. Actually deflecting tickets using a bot or a good FAQ portal is more cost effective, especially for those WISMO (Where is my Order) kinda questions. 

Not having to have an agent answer a ticket and still keep a customer happy, that’s a win-win right? 

S
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I am a huge believer in gamification! 

I’d design some fun programs (that also serve as team bonding sessions) to focus on building empathy, listening skills, and putting agents in customers’ shoes.

bharath.chakravarthy
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My favourite question of the session and I’m sure @jamesallnutt has heard me say this a number of times on our calls 

Q4: 😀 Effectively categorizing your support teams can help set a strong foundation to the overall support experience (and thereby, customer experience)- what are the ways in which you would categorize your support teams?

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option 

This is for sure, one of my favourite topics during the implementation phase where our customers are in process of deciding the groups.

The support team can be categorised in a number of ways, but I think it eventually boils down to how you want to report on it.

Some examples are categories by Level, like L1, L2, escalations, etc. OR by Geography, thereby allowing tickets to go into the right team, especially if you have a single team working in shifts. Some customers, just end up having one single big group, and use features like Agent Shifts and Skill based assignment to ensure the ticket reaches the right agent within that group

Or by language.

Or for calls by overflow groups (starting with a small group that has the same people plus additional people in the overflow group.

Definitely, language is a key driving factor as well, especially if just dividing based on Geography can’t solve that. 

For calls, yes, definitely would advocate having a fall back queue with ‘EVERYONE’ in it, especially if one is the business that demands ‘a human voice’ instead of ‘voicemails and call backs’

A
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@manns @zach Would love to hear from you and join Bharath too 🙂 Thank you and looking forward to learning from you as always. 

K
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Great, so here’s the first question for the day

Q1: 🎧 A common challenge faced by many customer support representatives is not having an answer to a query. What processes do you have in place to ensure situations such as these are handled in the best manner?
 

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option

 

A1. I believe most customer support representatives are trained to give certain responses and sometimes they are limited to almost a script. Most often, in my experience customer support doesn’t take the initiative to find the right answer.

It helps to say you don’t know the answer and you will get back or that you will follow up and get back. That extra mile always helps and is a welcome change.

A
Userlevel 5
Badge +6

Great, so here’s the first question for the day

Q1: 🎧 A common challenge faced by many customer support representatives is not having an answer to a query. What processes do you have in place to ensure situations such as these are handled in the best manner?
 

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option


A1: Personally, I’ve always felt an internal Knowledge Base is indeed the best way to ensure that an agent has an answer at their finger tips. Having said that, a KBase can’t be built overnight and will have to be laid, brick by brick, article by article.

During the implementations, especially for customers who don’t have a KBase yet, I’ve always recommended the agents contributing to the KBase on the fly, by just converting their replies automatically to drafts under the Solutions tab.For queries not on the KBase, the agents can always the Freshconnect (Threads) feature inside a ticket to have a quick collaboration with others agents with the context of the ticket.

 

That’s a nice workaround in the absence of a thorough Kbase  🙂 As you rightly said of course, nothing quite like having a Kbase set up! 

K
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Great, so here’s the first question for the day

Q1: 🎧 A common challenge faced by many customer support representatives is not having an answer to a query. What processes do you have in place to ensure situations such as these are handled in the best manner?
 

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option


A1: Personally, I’ve always felt an internal Knowledge Base is indeed the best way to ensure that an agent has an answer at their finger tips. Having said that, a KBase can’t be built overnight and will have to be laid, brick by brick, article by article.

During the implementations, especially for customers who don’t have a KBase yet, I’ve always recommended the agents contributing to the KBase on the fly, by just converting their replies automatically to drafts under the Solutions tab.For queries not on the KBase, the agents can always the Freshconnect (Threads) feature inside a ticket to have a quick collaboration with others agents with the context of the ticket.

 

@bharath.chakravarthy - that’s very true and an important point. How often do you recommend updating the Kbase? and how do you resolve for urgent issues that the agents don’t have knowledge to? 

bharath.chakravarthy
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Q1: 🎧 A common challenge faced by many customer support representatives is not having an answer to a query. What processes do you have in place to ensure situations such as these are handled in the best manner?

 

A1: A clear escalation path to either a senior technical team member or senior customer success manager who would have the answer required. We use Scenario Automations for this. This allows us to seamlessly hand the ticket to another agent to provide a feedback on what we should be saying. It also means we have the ability to pull a report on escalated tickets - and learn where the team does not have answers and setup appropriate training to fill these gaps. 

That’s bang on right, James. I think you’ve also answered Ishan’s question partly there. A proper escalation process, especially on call, that is continuously adapted based on feedback via frequent trainings.  

A
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Q1: 🎧 A common challenge faced by many customer support representatives is not having an answer to a query. What processes do you have in place to ensure situations such as these are handled in the best manner?

 

A1: A clear escalation path to either a senior technical team member or senior customer success manager who would have the answer required. We use Scenario Automations for this. This allows us to seamlessly hand the ticket to another agent to provide a feedback on what we should be saying. It also means we have the ability to pull a report on escalated tickets - and learn where the team does not have answers and setup appropriate training to fill these gaps. 

That sounds like such a great way to handle this- especially your point about using this intel to fill training gaps.

Small follow up question- how frequently would you recommend these escalations be reviewed? 

Thanks so much for sharing, James. 

bharath.chakravarthy
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My favourite question of the session and I’m sure @jamesallnutt has heard me say this a number of times on our calls 

Q4: 😀 Effectively categorizing your support teams can help set a strong foundation to the overall support experience (and thereby, customer experience)- what are the ways in which you would categorize your support teams?

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option 

S
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My favourite question of the session and I’m sure @jamesallnutt has heard me say this a number of times on our calls 

Q4: 😀 Effectively categorizing your support teams can help set a strong foundation to the overall support experience (and thereby, customer experience)- what are the ways in which you would categorize your support teams?

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option 

Wow great question. Looking forward to your answers and @jamesallnutt others too. Would love to hear

Bernburgerin
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My favourite question of the session and I’m sure @jamesallnutt has heard me say this a number of times on our calls 

Q4: 😀 Effectively categorizing your support teams can help set a strong foundation to the overall support experience (and thereby, customer experience)- what are the ways in which you would categorize your support teams?

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option 

The way your customers understands it. If your customers for instance should fill in fields on a portal these fields should make sense to them (not only to your agents). Otherwise, they will need to be recategorize later.

bharath.chakravarthy
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So, keeping up the momentum, here’s the next one.

Q3: ➡️ Service outages are bound to happen time-to-time. What is your 3 (etc) step process to handle panicked customers who come knocking?

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option 

So, keeping up the momentum, here’s the next one.

Q3: ➡️ Service outages are bound to happen time-to-time. What is your 3 (etc) step process to handle panicked customers who come knocking?

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option 

 

Honestly, during downtimes, I’ve always felt that the first thing we need to address is the ‘emotion’ of the customer as opposed to the ‘issue’ of the customer. Letting the customer finish their point, not interrupting them and making sure they feel heard solves most of the troubles.

Once that’s done, we can get to actually providing a solution / ETA for the issue itself, and if you need more information from the customer, now would be the best time to ask it.

If the issue takes longer than expected, using a bulk reply option to all tickets connected a the bug (tracker) can be used to keep the customer updated periodically. A company wide status page can also help in such situations

The first point is often understated- although I completely understand it’s easier said than done when we consider the volume of tickets and how overwhelming it can get for agents too.

We are all humans and feelings are important. Yes, for mundane tasks (ro)bots can take over, but if you feel really distressed you want to talk, cry, whatever...


Products, automations, bots and everything aside, we are ultimately in a people business :)

My experience in Customer support surely has made me much better human (hopefully my friends and family can vouch for that 😃 )

bharath.chakravarthy
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Aaaaaannnnd, the last one for the day: 

Q5: 🌈Great service experiences are likelier to lead to repeat customers. But if your agents aren’t equipped well to delight customers, it’s a moot point. What are some innovative ways in which you would facilitate training for your support team?

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option 




This is an interesting one as well. Ironically, although I manage the Customer Onboarding team now, my personal favourite way to train an agent on the product has been to be hands on in support for a couple of months.

Coming back to the question though, I’ve always found a good healthy combination of self help articles, pre-recorded videos and live sessions is the best way to train a new batch of agents.

Also, try to have someone from the last training batch in your current one. They are the ones who went through the training most recently, and hence, will be able to give insights on what worked for them and what didn’t.

Bernburgerin
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My favourite question of the session and I’m sure @jamesallnutt has heard me say this a number of times on our calls 

Q4: 😀 Effectively categorizing your support teams can help set a strong foundation to the overall support experience (and thereby, customer experience)- what are the ways in which you would categorize your support teams?

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option 

This is for sure, one of my favourite topics during the implementation phase where our customers are in process of deciding the groups.

The support team can be categorised in a number of ways, but I think it eventually boils down to how you want to report on it.

Some examples are categories by Level, like L1, L2, escalations, etc. OR by Geography, thereby allowing tickets to go into the right team, especially if you have a single team working in shifts. Some customers, just end up having one single big group, and use features like Agent Shifts and Skill based assignment to ensure the ticket reaches the right agent within that group

Or by language.

Or for calls by overflow groups (starting with a small group that has the same people plus additional people in the overflow group.

“Some customers, just end up having one single big group, and use features like Agent Shifts and Skill based assignment to ensure the ticket reaches the right agent within that group” → I personally would find one big group overwhelming – especially on the agent availability dashboard.

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