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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
bharath.chakravarthy
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The Coffee Booth is now OPEN! 

 

✅ New Host

✅✅ Topic of conversation 

✅✅✅ Date & Time

 

A little bit about me

Been with Freshworks for 7.5 years, starting in Chennai in the FD support team and since then moved to Berlin to be the first full time onboarding specialist. Currently, I lead a team in the CAA function in Berlin and work currently as both an Engagement Manager and also a Solution Architect for the CX product suite.

I’m a keen photographer who loves to travel, hunting for that perfect frame (the Budapest Parliament building was one such frame); also a cricket purist who loves watching the longest format of the game and plays professionally here in Berlin.

Excited to speak with you all and host MY first coffee chat - show some love in the comments!

 

Here’s the low-down:

🎧 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?

🎄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?

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

😀 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?

🌈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?

 

Date: October 18

Time: 6 PM BST | 10 AM PT

Duration: 60 minutes

Event link: Right here - this is a TEXT-BASED conversation!

RSVP and we’ll send you a calendar invite!

 

65 replies

bharath.chakravarthy
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Hello, everyone.

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, or as is it said conveniently here in Germany, Guten Tag :)

Welcome to this super exciting coffee chat titled - Scrappy, not crappy: Creative ways to address customer challenges

I'm your host, Bharath, signing in from Berlin, Germany

jamesallnutt
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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. 

Global Platform Support Manager @ Opus2. All opinions are my own. Occasional Mini Painter.
A
Userlevel 5
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To all our academy members who registered, thank you! The Coffee Chat begins in 35 minutes from now (6 PM BST/ 10:30 PM IST/ 10:00 AM PT)

Come join us!

@amandal  @jobelleyu 
@tze @Julia 
@harshaa.sridhar @jasmin 
@jaideep @Giovanna Carvalho 
@fmaka @waitingroom 
@theguru_clozano @berniesbest 
@finn @Amberdawne 
@JHarris @justin.mitchell 
@Michael.Seaman 
@carsonautri @Always Learning 
@AudreyStaton @vp25 
@TheHoff @vishaal.pinisetti 
@Bernburgerin 

 

 

Bernburgerin
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I am an hour south of Frankfurt. So it is Jou in kurpfälzisch 😉

S
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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

I think having a constantly updated Knowledge Base will obviously help in making these scenarios as infrequent as possible.

But when they do happen, I would think transparency from the support agent would be appreciated by most customers.

I know I would always appreciate it, as a customer, if I’m told that an immediate answer isn’t available but the support team is doing their best to resolve my query/ problem soon as reasonably possible!

jamesallnutt
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Howdy @bharath.chakravarthy @jasmin from the US 🖐🏻

Looking forward to seeing what’s going on. 

Global Platform Support Manager @ Opus2. All opinions are my own. Occasional Mini Painter.
bharath.chakravarthy
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Userlevel 5
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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
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Userlevel 5
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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.

 

What about while in direct communication with a customer on call or otherwise? 

That’s a great question. Typically, on channels, a KBase / FAQ link can still be sent, but for telephony, I’d definitely suggest to take the decision based on the severity of the issue.

An important skill for an agent is to also know how to buy time, thereby to be able find the right resources internally to get the answer. We’ve all been on those 1 hour long support troubleshooting calls trying to debug the issue on a remote session as well, but even then, I’d say, communication is key from the agent, with a proper L2 process in the background that the agent can leverage. 

 

Bernburgerin
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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...

finn
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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: If an agent doesn’t know the answer and wastes the customer’s time that would be the worst scenario. When I checked the feedback from the customers I noticed that the customers who complained about the service or policies never accuse the agents. They empathize with them. Therefore, the agents should be aware of the customers’ empathy and sympathy towards the CS agents. That is to say, if the answer is not found immediately, the agents can kindly say that they will be back to the customer with the solution asap. That will be the best option.

S
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Guten Tag to you, Bharath! Hallo, @jasmin :) 
We say “Namaste” here in India!

Looking forward to this

I
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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.

 

What about while in direct communication with a customer on call or otherwise? 

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

My two cents:

Ticket deflection is the best way to answer tickets :)

Having a good customer support portal, with proper messaging and expectation setting through automated email notifications will allow us to buy some time for the agents (mostly operating on limited staffing owing to the holiday season).

bharath.chakravarthy
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Userlevel 5
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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

bharath.chakravarthy
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Userlevel 5
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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?

That’s a good question. 

I’d actually suggest a simple first step - differentiate between a Knowledge Base and an FAQ page.

Often, people misunderstand the difference between the two. A KBase is meant to have long ‘how to setup XYZ’ sort of one-page instruction sets, whereas, an FAQ is meant to be short and in a Q&A format. 

That way, customers can have that mini-sized bytes, and agents can use that in chats as well. 

 

S
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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 

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.

finn
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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: Balancing the number of agents according to the volume. Most companies tend to think that the best way to handle the volume is by increasing the workload or work hours. I think they miss out on the fact that (a recent study also shows) when an agent is demoralized by a yelling customer the agent can bounce back in 40 mins in the best scenario. That means the mentioned company will provide the worstest service in the next 40 mins. This also affects the agents' long-term work motivation. I always support the idea that a happy agent means good service - good service means a happy customer.

rashmi.nag
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Excited for the Coffee Chat session today! Looking forward to hearing from @bharath.chakravarthy and the rest of our community! 🤩

Cheers, Rashmi || Team Refresh Community
jasmin
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I am near Frankfurt in Germany. So, we say “Hallo” 👋

rhea.desouza
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Hello @bharath.chakravarthy and Community

Looking forward to the next hour --- I am joining in from India🎉

Cheers | Team Freshworks Community
Giovanna Carvalho
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Guten Tag everyone!

I’m in Brazil and here we say “Oi”

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

I think having a constantly updated Knowledge Base will obviously help in making these scenarios as infrequent as possible.

But when they do happen, I would think transparency from the support agent would be appreciated by most customers.

I know I would always appreciate it, as a customer, if I’m told that an immediate answer isn’t available but the support team is doing their best to resolve my query/ problem soon as reasonably possible!

I definitely would second that. Honesty, combined with the effort shown by the agent to solve the issue at the earliest will please most customers out there 🙂.

Thanks, Sanjana for your valuable inputs. 

 

Bernburgerin
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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 can fully second what others have written here already: develop and use a knowledge base is crucial. Analyse on how it is used to see whether your agents contribute to it, use it, find it helpful.

Bernburgerin
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Userlevel 3
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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 

A3: 

  1. Listen to them and ensure they are feeling understood.
  2. Open a ticket.
  3. See whether others have reported the same.
  4. In that case create a tracker ticket.
bharath.chakravarthy
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Userlevel 5
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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 

A3: 

  1. Listen to them and ensure they are feeling understood.
  2. Open a ticket.
  3. See whether others have reported the same.
  4. In that case create a tracker ticket.

I cannot agree more. 

Especially, on calls, it is so crucial to be able to create the ticket during the conversation and have another team work on it in parallel, as opposed to wait until the end of the call to pass it on.

That way, the agent can keep the customer engaged, while the respective team works on fixing the issue in the background. And if it is a global issue, nothing better than that tracker you were referring to. 

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