According to Microsoft’s study, 56% of respondents, drop a business after just 1 bad service experience. So it’s not something you can overlook.

But here’s the kicker—achieving exceptional customer service isn’t just about fancy tech and streamlined processes. It all boils down to your frontline support heroes—the ones who make it happen.

Understanding the Agent Efficiency paradigm

Getting agents to work smarter, not harder, isn’t just about fancy tech upgrades. Research keeps telling us the same thing: customers get ticked off when they’re stuck dealing with slow and inefficient support reps, even if you’ve got all the bells and whistles like IVR systems and chatbots.

So, what’s the real issue here? It’s all about how much time agents waste hunting down the right info to help out customers. That’s why you need to switch things up. Let’s focus on making knowledge management a breeze, so your agents can do their thing without all the hassle.

It’s all about how efficiently your agent handles tasks and helps customers out. We’ll also dive into what exactly makes up agent productivity, but first, let’s take a look at something called the Agent Efficiency Pyramid.

The Agent Efficiency Pyramid

To navigate the complexities of improving agent efficiency, imagine a pyramid structure that gradually increases productivity as you reach the top. At its base lie fundamental knowledge management principles and workflow policies, which serve as the bedrock for what comes later. These principles put a lot of focus on consolidating knowledge into a centralized repository and streamlining processes for scale.

Imagine a pyramid that shows us how to make agents work better. Picture it like this: at the bottom, you’ve got the basic stuff—the core ideas that set the stage for everything else. We’re talking about policies like putting all our knowledge in one easy-to-find place, cutting out pointless searches, and making sure everyone is on the same page about the workflow. That’s where it all starts.

Download the full eBook guide on “How to build a customer support team”. This eBook has additional resources for further study.

The form can be filled in the actual website url.

How do you measure productivity in service?

Measuring productivity in service-based industries, such as customer support, involves assessing the efficiency and effectiveness of various operational processes and activities. Here are some key metrics and approaches commonly used to measure productivity in service:

Service level

Service level measures the percentage of calls answered within a specific time frame, typically expressed as a percentage. For example, a service level of 80/20 means that 80% of calls are answered within 20 seconds. This metric indicates the responsiveness of the service operation.

Average handling time (AHT) 

AHT represents the average duration of a customer interaction, including the time spent on the call or interaction and any related after-call work. Lower average handling time values generally indicate higher productivity, as agents can handle more inquiries within a given time period.

First contact resolution (FCR)

FCR measures the percentage of customer inquiries or issues resolved during the initial contact with the service provider, without the need for further follow-up or escalation. Higher FCR rates indicate greater efficiency and effectiveness in resolving customer concerns.

Contact volume

Contact volume refers to the total number of customer interactions received by the service operation within a specific period, such as calls, emails, or chat sessions. Analyzing contact volume trends helps assess workload and resource requirements.

Occupancy rate

Occupancy rate measures the percentage of time that agents spend actively engaged in handling customer interactions or performing related tasks, such as documentation or training. Higher occupancy rates suggest efficient utilization of agent capacity.

Utilization rate

Utilization rate measures the percentage of time that agents spend in productive work activities relative to their total available working time. This metric considers both active engagement with customer inquiries and non-contact-related tasks.

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) score

CSAT score reflects customers’ satisfaction level with the service quality and their overall satisfaction with the support received. It is often assessed through post-interaction surveys or customer feedback surveys. Higher CSAT scores indicate better service outcomes and customer experiences.

Net promoter score (NPS)

Net promoter score measures customers’ likelihood to recommend the service or organization to others based on their recent experience. It provides insights into customer loyalty and advocacy, which are key indicators of service quality and long-term business success.

Quality assurance (QA) metrics 

QA metrics assess the quality and accuracy of agent interactions based on predefined criteria, such as adherence to call center scripts, resolution accuracy, and compliance with service standards. Monitoring QA metrics helps maintain service consistency and identify areas for improvement.

Employee satisfaction and engagement

Employee satisfaction and engagement metrics, aka. agent experience, such as employee surveys, turnover rates, and absenteeism levels, indirectly reflects the productivity and effectiveness of service operations. Satisfied and engaged employees are more likely to deliver high-quality service and contribute to positive customer experiences.

Key Strategies for Enhancing Agent Productivity

Improving agent productivity is crucial for contact centers aiming to enhance customer satisfaction and streamline operations. The strategies outlined by various experts provide valuable insights into optimizing workforce management and fostering a positive work environment. We’re going to classify them into broader groups as shown in the pyramid. So, you can implement them as you need to, focusing on different aspects of productivity.

Culture

Culture, in a business setting, comprises the environment of the workplace. However, it’s got nothing to do with the physical environment. Rather, it focuses on the vibes of the company both including and excluding employee behavior and mindset. Here’s what fosters a culture of

Celebrate successful performance

Recognizing and celebrating agents’ achievements fosters a culture of positivity and motivation within the contact center. Regular acknowledgment of agents’ successes reinforces desired behaviors, boosts morale, and cultivates a supportive environment where individuals feel valued and appreciated.

Show management support

Active participation from managers during surges in call volumes demonstrates care and support for frontline agents. By assisting with workload management and providing additional resources during peak periods, managers alleviate stress, boost morale, and foster a sense of camaraderie within the team.

In addition to these traditional methods, many managers now leverage modern tools, such as AI meeting note-takers and other AI platforms, specifically designed to enhance active participation.

Facilitate career development 

Providing opportunities for skill development and career advancement demonstrates investment in agents’ future growth. By offering training programs, mentorship opportunities, and clear pathways for progression, organizations foster a culture of continuous learning and professional development, increasing employee engagement and loyalty.

Prioritize continuous learning

Implementing e-learning programs enables agents to upskill and improve productivity while minimizing time away from customer interactions. By offering self-paced training modules and resources, organizations foster continuous learning, enhance competencies, and adapt to evolving industry trends, ultimately driving better service outcomes.

Encourage regular breaks

Burnout is a real challenge for customer support agents. Allowing agents to take frequent breaks prevents that and maintains productivity levels. By promoting work-life balance and encouraging self-care practices, organizations support employee well-being, reduce stress, and enhance long-term performance and retention.

Support remote work

Allowing agents to work from home promotes flexibility and trust, which can enhance productivity. By providing remote access to systems and resources, organizations accommodate diverse work arrangements, increase employee satisfaction, and attract top talent regardless of location.

Encourage competition

Publicizing individual performance figures incentivizes competition and boosts productivity among agents. By recognizing top performers and fostering a culture of achievement, organizations motivate individuals to excel, drive performance improvements, and deliver exceptional customer service.

Tools

Although it’s in the middle of the pyramid, Tools have the fastest implementation to returns funnel among these categories. Mostly because tools aren’t dependent on modifying human behavior.

Invest in communication tools

Investing in communication tools like contextual intelligence-enabled headsets facilitates real-time collaboration and reduces call handling time. By equipping agents with advanced communication technologies, organizations improve responsiveness, streamline workflows, and enhance service quality, ultimately leading to greater customer satisfaction.

Integrate systems for real-time information

Integrating agent contact management systems with customer records provides agents with personalized service and increases efficiency. By consolidating customer data into a unified interface, organizations empower agents to access relevant information quickly, personalize interactions, and resolve inquiries more effectively.

Measure effectiveness

Combining productivity metrics with customer satisfaction scores identifies top-performing agents and areas for improvement. By evaluating performance holistically, organizations gain insights into agent effectiveness, customer experience, and operational efficiency, enabling targeted interventions and continuous improvement efforts.

Invest in wireless headsets

Untethering agents from their desks with wireless headsets improves mobility and productivity. By enabling agents to move freely and access information on the go, organizations enhance responsiveness, reduce call transfer rates, and improve overall service quality.

Prioritize agent comfort

Choosing comfortable headsets supports productivity and agent satisfaction. But that’s just one part of the things an agent uses throughout the day. By investing in ergonomic designs and lightweight materials, organizations minimize discomfort, reduce fatigue, and create a conducive work environment conducive to focus and productivity.

Optimize IVR usage

Using IVR intelligently streamlines customer interactions and improves efficiency. By collecting relevant information upfront and routing inquiries to the most appropriate agents, organizations reduce handling times, enhance first-contact resolution rates, and improve overall service delivery.

Offer multichannel interactions

Providing opportunities for agents to engage in various types of interactions keeps them motivated and engaged. By diversifying tasks and offering cross-training opportunities, organizations foster skill development, increase versatility, and adapt to evolving customer preferences.

Manage channels in a Universal Queue

Breaking down silos between communication channels enables agents to handle inquiries more effectively. By consolidating interactions into a unified queue, organizations improve visibility, streamline workflows, and deliver consistent service across channels.

Provide instant access to knowledge

Implementing knowledge management tools enables agents to access relevant information quickly, improving efficiency and service quality. By centralizing knowledge resources and providing intuitive search functionalities, organizations empower agents to resolve inquiries more effectively and enhance customer satisfaction.

Provide regular feedback

Listening to calls frequently and providing agents with both positive feedback and constructive criticism supports their development and performance improvement. By offering personalized coaching and development opportunities, organizations foster continuous learning, service skill development, and career growth.

Unify customer information

Centralizing customer data eliminates time wasted searching through multiple systems suh as intergated CRM, improving efficiency and service quality. By providing agents with instant access to comprehensive customer profiles, organizations personalize interactions, anticipate needs, and deliver proactive support.

Utilize Social Media

Monitoring social media mentions prevents overload and improves productivity in managing online interactions. By setting queue limits and prioritizing interactions, organizations streamline social media management, enhance responsiveness, and protect their brand reputation.

Process and Policy

Process and policy form the basis of a productive team. If you’re policies aren’t optimized for efficiency, tools, and culture will mean very little if any. Your policies are the bedrock for more advanced paths to take toward overall efficiency.

Adapt to demand 

Reassigning agents across different interaction types based on demand optimizes resources and ensures efficient handling of customer inquiries. By dynamically allocating agents to address fluctuating workload patterns, organizations can maintain service levels, prevent backlogs, and keep agents engaged in meaningful tasks.

Empower agents

Providing agents with access to their own performance scores enables self-evaluation and continuous improvement. By encouraging agents to monitor their progress and identify areas for development, organizations empower individuals to take ownership of their professional growth, leading to enhanced performance and job satisfaction.

Implement self-service options

Implementing self-service options for simple queries reduces agent workload and improves efficiency. By enabling customers to resolve routine inquiries independently through intuitive interfaces or automated systems, organizations streamline operations, reduce handling times, and enhance overall customer satisfaction.

Implement flexible shift patterns

Offering agents flexibility in scheduling promotes work-life balance and enhances job satisfaction. By accommodating diverse lifestyles and personal commitments, organizations empower agents to manage their time effectively, resulting in higher productivity, lower absenteeism, and improved employee retention.

Involve agents in scheduling 

Increasing agent involvement in scheduling improves adherence and engagement. By allowing agents to participate in shift planning and decision-making processes, organizations promote autonomy, increase job satisfaction, and create a more collaborative work environment.

Maintain occupancy during low-volume periods

Utilizing workforce management solutions ensures agents remain productive during quieter periods. By scheduling non-phone-related tasks or back-office work during troughs in inbound activities, organizations optimize resource utilization, minimize idle time, and maximize productivity.

Implement structured coaching processes

Reviewing agent performance regularly and providing constructive feedback supports development and performance improvement. By offering targeted coaching sessions, organizations address skill gaps, reinforce best practices, and empower agents to excel in their roles.

Simplify processes with unified interfaces

Integrating systems provides agents with a comprehensive view of the customer, streamlining processes and reducing handling time. By centralizing customer data and eliminating the need to navigate multiple systems, organizations improve efficiency, enhance accuracy, and deliver a seamless customer experience.

Wrapping up

When it comes to making agents super productive, you’ve gotta go all in. That means tackling the main problems head-on and making sure your team has all the info they need. When businesses focus on managing knowledge better, they give their support folks the tools they need to knock it out of the park with customers every time. 

And hey, as tech keeps changing, you’ve gotta stay quick on your feet and ready to try out new ways to make agents more productive.

Until next time, happy serving!

The post 25+ ways Increase Service Agent Productivity appeared first on Fluent Support.

If you have a customer service promise and understand the importance of it, you are on the right track. But if you don’t have any or don’t know the importance of a service promise, I have bad news for you. Without a service promise, you are hurting your company and doing a disservice to your customers.

Now you would be thinking, what is a customer service promise, and how will that affect my business? In this blog, we will cover full details of customer service promises and how you can benefit from them.

What is customer service promise?

No matter what small or big promises you make to your customers, customer service can amplify your customer experience. If you stay committed to your promises, it will increase your brand reputation. But if you fail to deliver short on even small stuff, it can affect your brand negatively.

A service promise solely focuses on customers, what type of experience they will get from you, and how you will deliver it to them. Customer service promise is your bond.

A customer service promise provides a clear guideline that defines-

• What can customers expect from your business
• How are you going to deliver on your promise
• How customer experience should be delivered by every team

When you consistently offer a great customer experience through even the smallest repetitive interaction, you can create loyal customers. This is how trust is built between you and your customers. When you provide great interaction every time a customer contacts you for help, you can develop faithful customer relations.

Why is a service promise important?

A service promise helps you define your goal for your business and set a standard for your employees. Here are some main benefits of customer service promise:

• Put a clear goal ahead for your business
• Set standards for employees on how to operate
• Set guidelines for delivering a great customer experience
• Inspire a consistent level of good customer service across teams
• Help you to recognize interactions that should be rewarded
• You can easily target and work on a specific goal for better change
• Increase overall brand reputation
• Consistent service promise develops customer loyalty

Transparent businesses that stand firm on their service promise to attract new customers easily and provide a greater customer experience than their competitors. Thus increasing sales and higher customer satisfaction.

How to develop customer service promise for your business?

Most small business owners ignore service promises while starting their business. But it is essential to build the foundation of service before building your teams. When you have a clear service promise statement and guide, you can comfortably implement it across your organization.

When you break promises even the small ones can affect your customer relations. Customer trust and your brand reputation can be damaged along the way. When you make a promise to your customers, you have to keep them or don’t make fake promises.

A half-truth is still a lie and there is no excuse for broken promises. A service promise is still a promise, and it should not be taken lightly. 

To develop a service promise, ask yourself these questions first:

• What are you offering to your customers?
• How are you going to deliver that?
• In which ways your team is going to offer service to customers?
• How are you going to differentiate your service from your competitors?
• Why should your customer choose you other than your competitors?

Answer to these questions will give you a clear understanding, and you can start developing your customer service promise foundation.

To develop an effective service promise, ensure your service promise is understandable by your teams and your customers. There are no definitive rules for service promises. It varies from industry to industry and business to business.

The above questions are the first step to understanding your business approach and what customer experience you want to offer with your product or service. Today’s customers treat every product purchase as new connections like they have with family & friends. They want more than a product; they want to feel a connection with your brand. 

Customers want a service experience that is fulfilling and personalized. They want you to improve their lives through your products or customer service experience. The only way you can do that is by becoming more human and personal, using customer service experience to keep your service promise.

How do you manage service promises?

To keep your service promises, you must communicate clearly between your teams and your business. 

But how can you manage your business service promises without increasing customer expectations? Follow these steps to maintain bureaucracy around the company and deliver service promises as they are promised to your customers —

Implement service promise on your brand voice

Brand voice is your brand’s tone across all mediums, from your website copy to our brochure and social media. How you present your brands in front of the world matters. 

Implement your service promise in your brand voice. If you make it clear from the start, customers will know what to expect from you. When your service promise is aligned with your brand voice, you don’t have to feel the pressure of high customer expectations.

Have a clear tone of service

Customer tone of service is how you communicate with your customer. It helps you have a positive communication voice from your support team and across other customer service channels. You should align your tone of voice with your customer service promises.

Train your employees on service promise

Having your team’s clear understanding of your service promise is crucial. The best way to do this, having a dedicated training program on brand voice, customer tone of voice, and customer service promises. 

Train your people on your service promise, and coach them on how they can implement service promise into their day-to-day work and interaction with customers. Support them along the way.

Tell them to collect feedback from customers after every interaction. Build a system to recognize repetitive interactions that deliver continuous great customer service and reward those team members doing the hard work.

Create direct guidelines and easy-to-access resources

Small or big does not matter; if you have to manage people in your business, write clear and direct guidelines on service promises for everyone. You can add other aspects but make it understandable for every team.

You can also offer an in-house resource where employees can search for related information, ask questions, and learn more about your business service promise. This will reduce all kinds of back and forth and save time for you.

What is a brand promise examples?

Do you ever wonder what is the common aspects of Amazon, McDonald’s, Nike, or Coca-Cola? It is their commitment to their service promise.

What are these promises? Let’s have a look for inspiration!

Amazon: deliver the broadest selection of products and services at the lowest prices with exceptional customer experience

Amazon is among the best e-commerce brands for its vast selections, fast delivery, and great customer service. They are obsessed with customer service and aim to deliver an excellent customer experience every time consumers interact with them.

Nike: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world.”

If you have a human body, then you are an athlete. That’s what Nike believes, and they carry the same value with their service promise. Nike did not mention their product in the service promise statement but clearly stated what they think and how they will help you.

McDonald’s: “Our mission is to make delicious feel-good moments easy for everyone.”

Same as Nike, McDonald’s uses its service promise to connect with you on a personal level without mentioning its products. They are not selling foods; they are creating moments for their customers.

Coca-Cola: “to refresh the world in mind, body, and spirit, and inspire moments of optimism; to create value and make a difference.”

Do you see a common thing between famous brands? How they are not focusing on products but easily communicating with people with understandable service promises. Coca-Cola is staying true to its service promise through its content and brand voice. You will meet the same service promise every time you interact with them through channels. Coca-Cola is not just a drink company; it’s a lifestyle brand.

Moving forward

A service promise is fundamental to any business operation to win an exceptional customer experience. Craft your service promise meticulously and train your employees on how to implement it through their daily customer interaction.

Make sure, you truly believe in your service promise and stand firm on delivering it to your customers daily. Faithful customer relations require you to tell the customer service truth and nothing but the truth only. It is a guarantee that customers have come to expect and makes them loyal to your brand.

The post How to Develop Customer Service Promise for Small Business appeared first on Fluent Support.

This article will cover what makes a great customer support team, how to build a team from the ground up, and what you need to make it happen. We’ll also cover how to determine whether you need a support team in the first place.

So let’s get started.

Signs you need a customer support team

A customer support team is a link that connects your marketing promises to the end users. This is a crucial task that needs the utmost care and expertise. That being said, not all support teams are created equal. 

The reason to say this is that in some industries, the whole sales (mainly Gross and or, Net sales) and revenue process depends on the effectiveness of their support teams. For instance, IT service providers and technical product manufacturers rely heavily on their support teams to smoothen out customer onboarding and pre/post-sales queries. Due to being highly technical, these industries must invest in customer support to ensure no customer need is unattended.

On the other hand, products and services that rely less on IT or other technologies can go easy on customer support spending. That doesn’t mean they can do without a support team completely. In this day and age, that is nearly impossible.

As a general rule of thumb, here are some signs that tell you when it’s time to build a dedicated support team.

Stagnant customer base

When your customer base is not on its usual growth trend, it usually indicates some or other shortcomings of your business. Even if your product or service is perfect for the market, you can still face this problem. Similarly, a decline in product or service quality can also cause this. 

A dedicated customer support team can solve this issue by making your offerings more accessible. The team also boosts the reliability of your business, even if the product itself isn’t up to the mark.

A small number of repeat customers

As the 80-20 rule suggests, 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your user base. However, if your returning user base is small or is in decline, it indicates you are not caring for your existing customers. A customer support team can significantly impact this.

First off, a support team makes it easier for customers to reach out with problems. Solving these problems makes customers feel valued, which is the prime factor in maintaining repeat sales and acquiring new customers.

Ignored customer queries

Customers can face myriad difficulties while using your product or service. It’s obvious that they will seek out help if and when these difficulties arise. If you cannot keep track of and solve these issues as they are submitted, it’s time to invest in a dedicated support team. 

For example, if your product incurs pre-sales questions or the onboarding process is complex, you’re bound to receive a lot of queries. For a small business, this might not be a big hassle. But as your business grows, eventually, you will need to scale your support efforts, and that is where a dedicated customer support team is most needed.

What makes a great support team?

Now, if you’re facing some or all of these issues, you will likely need a dedicated customer support team for your business. But what makes up for a great support team?

Well, there are some general factors that need to be present for a customer support team to be effective. They are as follows,

Collaboration

The effectiveness of your support team largely depends on the collaborative abilities of your support agents. The easier it is for your agents to collaborate, the smoother your team will function. Customer support is a team game and being able to collaborate within the team is an essential trait for support agents.

Communication

Customer support is, for the most part, communication. Your support team must understand and communicate with customers with varying issues that will come in each day. The communication skills of your support team can go a long way to set you up for success.

Conversely, poor communication will have a severe negative effect on your customer retention and satisfaction metrics.

Scalability

Your team needs to be versatile enough to handle increased customer queries. This is considered scalability. As a business grows, so do the customer base and related queries. To match the demand, your support team needs to be able to adapt to the increasing number of requests. 

However, this is only possible to a certain extent. You’ll have to expand the support team or allocate more resources at one point or another. To keep the process reliable, it’s a good idea to keep expansion plans ready as soon as necessary.

Fair contribution

Lastly, an effective support team is built with fair and equal contributions from all its members. That is to say, each and every support agent must give their best to ensure the highest quality experience. Teams that work on mutually respectful work ethics tend to perform way better than those that are riddled with stragglers. Fair contribution from each member is crucial to maintaining a highly productive team.

Building a technical support team from scratch

Starting a customer support team from scratch is not easy. You have to consider many factors and plan ahead for efficiency. Not to mention taking into account the unique needs that are specific to your business and your customers.

Define the goals

The first and foremost step to building a technical support team is to define clear goals for the whole team. Only when every agent is working with the same goal will your team deliver quality support on a large scale. 

For instance, your team’s definition of goals should reflect the core values of your business. Take WPManageNinja, for example. They boast of their 24/7 hands-on support to deliver the exact solution a customer is expecting. This applies even more so when managing holiday sales rush. So to define a clear goal, their support team believes no problem is too big or too small. If a customer needs help, they will get it. 

Speaking of expectations, a support team must always keep the customer’s needs at the top. This includes following up on customers regularly. Customer support is meant to offer a streamlined experience for every user, no matter how easy or complicated their problem is. This reinforces the idea of valuing your customers. 

Similarly, it’s important to study the overall customer expectations in your industry. Some industries reward fast solutions, while others value attention to detail. As a business, it’s essential you figure out what these expectations are to develop the most effective goals to aim for.

The last crucial part of the support team’s goals should be to adhere to any legal requirements that apply to your industry. For support teams, this usually means service level agreements that can vary between countries and their respective industries.

Choose proper channels

For small businesses starting off with customer support, it’s tempting to say, “We’re available wherever and whenever”. Reality is not that simple. For a small team or one that’s just getting started, this is actually one of the biggest support challenges.

When picking the best channels, you need to keep in mind two important factors,

Channels your customers are using: The platforms your customers prefer should be the first place you begin offering support. If your business is using the Facebook business suite, it’s obvious that you need to be available on Facebook to answer customer questions. Selling products on Facebook and telling people to email you for support is a fast way to lose most customers. 

The standard practice: As a basic rule, technical support solutions are best handled over emails as they can contain files and large exchanges. Emails are a good option to address highly technical issues.

On the other hand, questions about retail products or purchasing options are small back-and-forth conversations with minimum technicality involved. Live chat with an expert is much more effective than sales calls or emails in this regard.

Hire accordingly

Your team starts with its agents. You can’t expect a highly effective technical support team from the ground up without hiring the proper people. Things to consider when hiring for your new support team are,

Ideal support agent personality; While this might be a broad category, it’s important to maintain uniformity in your agent personalities. The ideal agents usually have well-developed customer service skills, i.e., communication abilities, empathy, and meticulousness toward details.

Technical proficiency; Depending on your industry, your support agents might need specific skills to handle customer queries. For instance, agents in a software firm need to understand and master the software products to solve issues in them. In addition, they’ll need to be familiar with the tools you provide your support team to function efficiently.

Smooth onboarding; When hiring, it’s important to evaluate not only the skills they bring but also the time required to bring them up to speed. New hires need to be able to learn fast and cope with the changing demands. This is especially difficult for a support team built from the ground up because there aren’t many peers that can guide this process. 

Measure proper metrics

Even before you hire and start building your technical support team, it’s crucial to pick the right metrics to evaluate their performance. While these metrics shouldn’t be the only goal your team needs to achieve, it is definitely the driving hand that will guide most decisions. These metrics or KPIs are crucial to evaluate the team’s performance properly. To determine these metrics, you need to consider the following,

Why these metrics; The most common metrics measured for support teams are CSAT and NPS. When tracking these, it’s important to understand what these metrics signify in the first place. CSAT tells you the level of satisfaction your customer support team is generating. Similarly, tracking average handling time will tell you how proficient your agents are.

Who sees the reports; From a business standpoint, every team has an ROI. However, not every department is concerned about ROI. It’s crucial to remember who is evaluating the metrics when choosing the metrics in the first place. 

Provide the right tool

Lastly, you must consider the tools you want to use to maintain your support system. An effective tool, for instance, a team helpdesk has a huge potential to streamline the whole support process. Conversely, a slow and complex tool will waste time and effort of your support team. Things to consider when choosing your tech support system include,

Functionality; This includes looking at the essential features a support team needs. Most notably, automatic agent assigning, canned responses, agent activity tracking, waiting-time tracker, and detailed admin reports.

Scalability; When building a technical support team, it’s crucial to consider the tool’s scalability. If your business is growing fast, a tool that charges by the agent or the number of tickets is not a good option. You should go for options that don’t apply a growth tax to your team. 

Speed; Customer support is time sensitive, so speed should be one of the top priorities when considering tools. In general, self-hosted help desk solutions are way faster and safer than SaaS solutions.

Ease of use; Last but not least, the tool should be easy to learn with a mild learning curve at most. The more complex the tool, the harder it is to train agents and even harder to gain peak proficiency. Ideally, your tool should be simple to use and learn. 

Wrapping up

So we’ve covered when you might need to build up your own support team and what you’ll need to plan for it accordingly. That being said, each business is different, and so are the customers. It’s crucial to fit this plan to your business and what your customers expect to get the best results. 

While it might not be as simple as hiring some agents and setting up a ticketing system, it’s not much more complex either. A well-informed plan and an attitude to give your best are sometimes all it takes to run and maintain an excellent support team.

Hope this answers all your questions about building a technical support team. Until next time, happy serving!

The post 5 Steps to Building a Technical Support Team appeared first on Fluent Support.

Companies that insist on being customer focused have to track average handling times for the simple purpose of evaluating the support team’s efforts. In this article, we’re going to look at what average handling time is, why it’s important, and how you can measure it to improve your customer support strategies.

What does AHT mean

Average handle time or AHT is basically the time it takes to resolve a customer support interaction from start to finish. This includes the time to submit the first response, time on hold, and the time it takes to follow up and close the conversation.

This measure can vary significantly depending on the channel you’re using. Emails have a lesser average handling time compared to calls. We’ll elaborate on the ideal wait times for each channel later on. 

Why it’s important to measure AHT?

Measuring average handling time is important because it is easily quantifiable, as in you can measure and evaluate it with reliable accuracy to compare aspects such as,

Speed

Speed is an essential part of providing excellent customer support. Measuring average handling time means you can effectively evaluate how fast your customers are getting responses from your support team. In customer support reducing waiting times is essential for customer satisfaction. Average handling time gives a quantifiable measure of how fast your support team is.

Productivity

Average handling time also measures the productivity of your whole team. While fast responses are good, you still need to make sure your team is functioning at optimum capacity to handle your customer queries. The more productive your team is, the less handling time is needed.

Proficiency

To balance out speed and productivity at a sustainable level, your support agents need to be proficient at their job. A support agent can respond and resolve support tickets only when they can solve the issue. This largely depends on the difficulty of the customer’s requests and the capability of the agent. Usually, low average handle times mean a highly productive team with good proficiency in their tasks.

Formula to calculate average handling time

As we’ve mentioned, average handling time includes the time to submit the first response, processing time, holding time, and following up. While it’s true, not every channel has the same figures for these times. So, we’ll show you how to calculate the average handling time for the most common channels customers use.

Calls

Calls are the most elaborate among customer support channels and have the highest expected average handling times. That’s mostly because only calls involve more moving parts than other channels. To calculate your average handling time for calls, the equation is,

So, if you’re team spent 1000 min on the first response, 300 min hold time, and 700 min following up on 1500 calls you’re average handling time will be,

AHT = (1000+300+7000)/1500 = 5.53 min/call

Tickets and Emails

Unlike calls, the average handling time for tickets and emails is easier to calculate. Mainly because emails and tickets do not entail holding times. To calculate all you need is the total time it took to resolve an email or ticket. So the equation for calculating AHT for emails is,

So if your support team resolves 500 emails or 600 tickets within 100 hours, your average handling time will be,

AHT = 100*60/500 = 12 min/email

Or,

AHT = 100*60/600 = 10 min/ticket

Chat

Similar to emails and tickets, the average handling time for chat-based support interactions is easy. You just have to take into account the time to resolve a chat interaction. So the equation is,

So, if your team has spent 72 hours resolving 1200 chat requests, your team’s average handling time will be,

AHT = 72*60/1200 = 3.3 min/chat

What is a good average handle time

In light of what we’ve covered so far, it’s obvious that every industry will not have similar average handling times. This is due to a number of factors such as,

• Complexity of issues; Technical and digital products usually entail more complex issues and require more time to effectively solve.
• Type of requests; Handling time also depends on the requests customers make. A simple pre-sale question will not take as much time to resolve as a refund request will.
• Proficiency; Whether handling complex or simple requests, AHT by large part depends on the company’s philosophy towards customer support in general. Your company’s policies for customer-facing jobs have a huge impact on AHT and similar metrics.

From TalkDesks 2021 KPI Benchmark we can see that standard average handling times for retail and consumer goods companies are at 3:29 min, for the manufacturing sector that time is 4:13 min.

Sources: Zendesk, HubSpot, GetMindful

3 tips to reduce average handling time

As promised, now we can take a look at how you can reduce this average handling time for your support team. The following strategies can significantly reduce average handling times,

Proactive support

Proactive customer support is a strategy to anticipate your customer’s needs before they ask for a solution. This strategy can not only improve your average handling time but also contributes to customer retention and reduces churn rate. 

Proactive support also saves time for the customer support agents because they are always prepared for the customer’s expectations.

One important aspect of proactive support is that it reduces the overall number of queries that are submitted to your support team. This reduces the net total time your team had to spend on resolving customer complaints.

Resources and Knowledge base

Similar to the proactive strategy, having well-organized resources and a knowledge base can also reduce average handling times. It reduces the number of tickets that are submitted to your customer support team on average. 

Customers expect companies to have resources properly arranged so they can get ahead of issues without having to wait for an agent. Alongside reducing waiting times for trivial troubleshooting questions it can reduce the hassle for your agents too. Being able to find the solution on the fly can significantly reduce the time needed to resolve a customer request. 

Efficient helpdesk

A key part of your support agents’ speed depends on the customer support help desk you provide them with. Fast refresh rates and easy-to-navigate dashboards are important to keep the process simple and flowing. Page load times can contribute to holding times that ultimately increase your average handling time. 

An effective help desk plugin can reduce these losses and increase your team’s overall efficiency. When choosing the best help desk for your business you should evaluate the redundancies in user experience for smoother handling.

Factors for a good support ticketing system are,

• Fast loading times
• Integrated dashboard
• Agent activity tracking
• Automation, etc.

Wrapping up

Average handling time is a very crucial metric to measure your customer support team. It’s one of the most important KPIs for support managers. Companies that track average handling time and optimize to reduce it are way more likely to succeed. This is in part due to higher satisfaction rates that improve retention and reduces churn.

To improve your support team’s AHT it is not enough to just focus on the agent. It’s also crucial to focus on the resources and tools you provide for them to use.

Because more often than not an agent’s response can only be as fast as your system allows it to be. Hope you can implement average handling times in your quarterly evaluation. 

Until next time, happy serving!

The post What is Average Handling Time in Customer Support? appeared first on Fluent Support.

Every business goes to extra lengths for that customer. Companies are investing big money to create and improve their customer experience. No one wants unhappy customers to share their frustration on social media about their bad customer experience.

A happy customer is more likely to become a loyal customer. Only a positive customer experience can make a customer happy.

But what is customer experience? How can any business with limited resources provide a great customer experience for its customers? How can they balance the pressure of customers’ expectations and other business goals while doing this?

In this blog, we will cover the definition of customer experience, why it is important for your business, the difference between good & bad consumer experience, and how you can measure customer experience to increase your revenue. 

What is customer experience?

Customer experience (CX) is everything about how a customer feels about your brand, products, and business.

The main ingredients of customer experience are products and people. It focuses on the relationship between your business and your customers. No matter how small or big the interactions are, everything is included in the CX.

When a customer views your advertisement, reads your website copy, emails, or other text from you, contacts your support for help, or calls, these customer contacts are what we call customer experience. How customers view these interactions defines your business customer experience. Every exchange between customer and business creates great (sometimes bad) long-lasting relationships. The deeper the relationship goes, the more the brand gets customer loyalty.

Customer experience happens in these ways-

• Customer perception about your brands before they buy anything
• Their sales experience when they buy your product
• The quality of your products or service
• Customer support or service experience after purchase

A great customer experience is a key factor for a business’s success.

Importance of customer experience

Customer experience directly influences 3 business metrics:

1. Customer retention
2. Customers lifetime value
3. Customers loyalty toward your brand

In a competitive market, connecting with customers and retaining them is more challenging than ever. Excellent customer experience can help you sustain and accelerate growth. It also promotes brand advocacy and increases loyalty among your user base.

Present-day, the internet favors customers hugely. Now anyone can share their experience with millions of people through one Facebook post, tweet, youtube video, or a viral TikTok. Virality can amplify anything, from a great interaction with brands to a bad customer experience. One bad experience goes viral and puts a wrong impression on your brand reputation.

Now customers crave personal connections with brands. You can quickly lose to your rivals who understand client experience if you are not focused. Customers have unlimited options and one click away to choose; they want more than quality products or services. If they try to reach your customer service or support and can’t get in touch or face a bad experience, they will not hesitate to turn to your competitors.

A great customer experience will increase customer satisfaction, positive reviews, and organic growth through word-of-mouth marketing. But how can a brand provide an amazing customer experience to its customers? 

First, get a clear picture of good & bad customer experiences.

What is a great customer experience?

What makes a customer interaction a good customer experience? You should make it easy for your customers to do business with you. How can you make it a great customer experience? Make it seamless for customers to do what they want to do with your products and services.

Every positive customer experience has these elements which make every interaction great:

• Your products or services serve quality instead of just a cheap market alternative. Quality always wins. If it can’t fulfill customer needs, then the whole experience will be crushed. Your product design should be intuitive. Your service benefits should be appealing and valuable if you are offering services.

• Your marketing is realistic, aligning with customers perceptions. Every business should have realistic expectations about its products.

• Your self-service tools are available online. Make them searchable and resourceful. Help your customers to help themselves quickly access your knowledge base, documentation, and guides.

• Focus on proactive support. Identify issues before customers face them and provide solutions before they ask.

• Your pricing is visible in every sales copy, website, or cart. Transparent sales are the best way to influence buying intended customers.

• All your teams are in the loop in every customer interaction and can quickly access information about any customers in real time. It helps your teams avoid conflict and reduce customer frustration over repeating the same information to different persons for every inquiry.

• Customer support is the center of attention for your business. It is the central part of the company, and every team plays the part of the support team. Everyone is aware of customer experience in every user’s onboarding process & makes sure customer needs are taken care of.

What is a bad customer experience?

Bad customer experience happens when a customer faces a problem onboarding to your business. Then, if they can’t reach your support for help, it will be an even more frustrating experience for them. Bad customer experience happens from poor customer service. We wrote about thirteen bad customer service examples in our previous blog. Here are a few reasons make most of the bad customer experiences:

• Long wait times over the phone and many agents-to-agent touchpoints.
• Employees without proper understanding of customers problems.
• Overused automation without human contact points.
• Not enough coordination among teams makes customers repeat information every time they connect with different persons.
• No visible contact option on your website or brochure.
• Ignores customer complaints and never reaches them for solutions. Do not take customer feedback seriously.
• Rude employees and no empathy for service.
• No personalization on customer support. People feel like talking to bots.

How to measure customer experience?

Customer experience can make you stand apart from your competitors. But to achieve great customer service, you have to measure and analyze ongoing customer experience to the teeth continuously.

There are no tangible ways or frameworks to measure and analyze consumer experience. Every industry is different, and its customer demographics are too. You have to deep dive into data, analyze little pieces, and run numerous experiments on the go.

Here are some ways you can start your customer experience by measuring and analyzing:

1. Run customer satisfaction surveys

Start your measuring experiment by collecting data directly from your customers. Run customer satisfaction surveys right after closing a support ticket or call. You should get a clear insight into your customer satisfaction score (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score (NPS). 

CSAT will give you an understanding of customer satisfaction through different touch points. NPS will give you an insight into customer perception about your brand and how likely they will recommend it to their connections. It will help you decide your future steps. You can use the data to follow up with customers later time.

2. Calculate customer lifetime value

How much a customer spends money with your business is an important metric you should always calculate. We wrote about customer LTV in our latest blog. Read it; you’ll learn why it is vital for your business and how you can calculate your customers lifetime value. 

3. Analyze your churn rates

Churn rates tell you how many customers you lose in a certain period. If your churn rate is higher, something terrible happens with the customer experience. Keep an eye on your churn rates. Learn what causes churn rates and how you can reduce it.

4. Learn more about customer effort score (CES)

CES is a customer service metric, and it tells you how many touchpoints a customer has to face to resolve an issue. It gives you insight into your support system and how you can make it fast for customers to reach suitable people for solutions.

5. Use community forum for customer feedback

Community forums can be a great resource for businesses to collect customer feedback. You can access everything from feature requests to customer’s pain points, support problems, and organic customers suggestions about your product/service. You can use the community forum as your focus group to test new changes and get feedback instantly.

6. Time to resolution (TTR)

TTR gives you insight into the time needed for your customer support team to resolve a customer issue or close tickets. Find out how much time a customer needs to wait for an answer from your agents. Measure the average time. Most customer frustrations happen over long wait times. The shorter your TTR time, the more remarkable will be the customer experience.

7. Analyze Support data

Customer support data can be used to measure and analyze CX further. If recurring issues regularly come through tickets, you should review the problems and provide solutions immediately. It will save time for both your support agents and customers. A streamlined process will decrease support tickets and provide an excellent client experience.

Conclusion

Companies are now investing a lot in great consumer experience. In today’s world consumers hold more power than the sellers. Client experience revolves around how your business interacts with them, how fast you’re solving their problems and how easy it is to onboard with your product or service.

Measure customer experience by collecting customer feedback, running customer surveys & gathering customer support data, and analyzing it. It is a never-ending process. You have to keep analyzing and improving customer experience every day. Because one bad customer experience can affect your brand image. Investing time and money in a good CX experience will attract loyal customers in the long term, thus increasing revenue.

The post What is Customer Experience & Why It’s Important? (And How to Measure It) appeared first on Fluent Support.

Good customer service is meeting and exceeding customers’ expectations. Excellent customer service is when you provide the same service every time a customer contacts your support. For your business to succeed, you should always prioritize customer service and invest in providing a great customer service experience.

But what is good customer service? How can you deliver good customer service? This blog post will cover what good customer service is and how many ways you can deliver excellent customer service.

What is good customer service?

Good customer service means following everything in the rulebook and outside of the rule book to meet customer expectations and try to exceed customer expectations. The goal of good customer service is to build loyalty among customers.

Customers want fast replies when they connect with your support. Sometimes they want that in their preferred channels anytime they want. Often customers will prefer to solve their problems by themselves, going through your knowledge base and self-help resources. 

Your support agents should be friendly and helpful to customers. When your agents empathize with your customers that leave a positive impression on their minds. That’s when customers will gravitate towards your brand every time they purchase. 

Great customer service helps you make regular customers into loyal customers. 56% of customers said they’d spend more on a brand they’re loyal to even if cheaper options existed elsewhere (compared to 34.5% in 2019). Today, providing excellent customer service is one way to build long-term relationships with your customers.

12 practices to deliver good customer service

Bad customer service can ruin your company’s reputation. Great customer service can help you stand out from your competitors, gain a significant market share and win the heart of frustrated customers. Here are 12 ways to deliver excellent customer service to your customers:

1. Listen for understanding

The first thing of great customer service is listening to your customers carefully. Listen to your customer to understand their problems.

Customers contact you when they don’t find any solutions after trying by themselves. Show that you hear when they take their time to contact you. Customers will recognize your effort, which will open up them more.

Do not push your thinking on customers or assume their problems without hearing. Actively listen, repeat the problem to them in your words and show them you understand their problem. Then jump in to solve that. Listening increases the chances to solve customer problems more effectively. 

2. Provide omnichannel support

Today’s digital landscape gives your customers the ultimate freedom to share their experience with your business with the world using just a tweet. If a customer gets a complaint about your business, they will surely share their frustration on social media.

You can’t control the conversations outside your support system. But you can indeed control how to handle the situation. You can jump into conversations or reply to complaints to offer solutions on social media. People prefer channels based on the complexity of their problems. Be flexible and offer support to customers in their chosen channels. 

Train your agents to handle support through multiple channels from the start. If customers open a ticket with your web portal, give them the flexibility to reply to tickets via email or contact agents with video chat if the problem is needed. Your support agents should be able to make the transition smoothly every time they connect with your customers through various channels.

3. Be empathic

Empathy is a golden asset in the customer relationship business. Customers expect you to be empathic and flexible while doing business with them. Being empathic will help you relate to your customers, connect with them deeply, and give you the opportunity to have their loyalty.

People connect with people, not companies. If you can show them a more human side, they will connect with you quickly. Always put customers first, even when you are busy. Train your agents to be more empathic and show that using your words. For example:

“I understand what you are feeling right now; even I would feel that if I was in your situation. Let me help you…..”

You can see what words can do if you use them properly. Having empathy can drive superb customer service and boost organic word-of-mouth marketing. Empathy is the easy way to cultivate a loyal customer base for your brand.

Here is a perfect example of this from pet food brand Chewy:

4. Be creative while solving problems

Not all customers use your products or service in the same way. Customers will use it the way they see it fit. Customer problems will be different as well. You have to provide them with solutions.

Great customer service comes from making it the ultimate goal to help customers succeed. You should be determined to do that no matter what. Do not just follow the same ways to solve every problem. 

Become creative and find alternative solutions for customers’ problems. Suppose it needs you to go outside of company policy but can help your customer, then never hesitate to do that. Customers will recognize your dedication and come back to do business with you from time to time.

5. Deliver fast support

When a customer contacts your support for help, always assume it is their last resort to get help. Typically people will not wait for your support staff to attend their ticket and reply after 24 hours. When a customer contacts you, they expect a fast reply.

Most businesses fail in customer service at this point. Customer expectations will always be high. 66% of customers believe valuing their time should be the most important thing for a business.

You should put a system where your support team can run every day’s support work efficiently. Invest in a suitable help desk that can provide speed, solid integrations, and instant communications with customers through multiple channels. 

Deliver fast support through omnichannel and proactive support by analyzing the demographic of your customers. New generations are more comfortable with email and social media. The old generation prefers phone calls for customer support. Train your support team for both of them. But do not rush to end the call or resolve the ticket without adequately solving the problem. Use automation wisely where the process slows you down. Speed is the quickest way to achieve great customer service.

6. Personalize customer service

Personalized customer service can help you boost great customer experience. When customers contact your business, they expect a human to reply to their email, not a bot with automated replies. 

Customers feel frustrated if they are not treated as individuals rather than a ticket in your dashboard. It is a human behind the ticket sharing him/his problem with you. Always recognize that when you are having conversations with your customer. Customers expect you to know who they are, 

Do not follow pre-written scripts in phone calls or set automated questions for live chat. Instead, put empathic people in your team and train them to personalize customer support for every customer. Use a help desk system like Fluent Support, where you can see previous conversations, purchase history, or membership details about customers right into their submitted tickets with a profile photo, name, and email. 

A help desk system like this will help your agents know about customers and their relationship with you. They can handle them more flexible way using the information and personalized customer service.

7. Help customers help themselves

Not all customers contact support immediately after facing a problem. Most users search online to find solutions and read company f.a.q’s or knowledge base to learn more. Contacting support is the last step for them. And this percentage is not tiny.

Around 81% of customers try to find solutions by themselves before contacting support. Providing self-service is a perfect way to serve this demographic. But not all companies are taking advantage of them. A knowledge base with detailed articles, video guides, or f.a.q’s can empower your customers and reduce daily tickets.

Resources like this can be an excellent asset for customer support to point users in a support ticket in the right direction. Researchers found that 71% of customers want the ability to solve their issues by themselves. Use knowledge base for complex issues, automated chatbots for simple queasy delivery, and f.a.q for general queries for customers looking for self-service. When you make it easy for customers to help themselves, it will also relieve pressure from your support team. But if your customer still needs human help, make it easy to directly connect with your agent from the knowledge base.

8. Collect customer feedback and analyze

Customer data can help you immensely when it comes to great customer service. Customers’ needs are different in every industry. That’s why you need to collect customer feedback to understand your customers and their needs.

Reach out to your customers and use surveys to collect customer data. Always run surveys before closing support tickets. It will help you determine customer satisfaction and learn about your overall support team’s efforts.

Learn what types of customer data you should collect and how to collect them. Measure your customer service from time to time to deliver excellent customer service perfectly. Accurate customer data will help you improve your support team’s performance and can help you build great products or services through customer suggestions.

9. Be proactively helpful

Anticipating customer needs before they contact your support means proactive support. When you have customer data and preferences, you can analyze them to resolve issues before they arrive or during their first encounter.

Being proactive can boost your customer satisfaction and increase sales. It can save time for both customers and you. Sometimes customers will ask for one thing while not aware of their actual problem. If you can anticipate and solve the problem without asking, they will feel like you value them. When customers reach this level of satisfaction, they will become repeat customers.

10. Become a product expert

Good customer service comes from agents who know the product in and out. As a customer support agent, your work is related to product or service troubleshooting. Product expertise should be your priority.

Train your agents to become experts in your product or service. Your agents should know about the features, enabled use cases, and possible use cases and be aware of the benefits. If they have proper knowledge, they can show it to customers, influence their future purchases and help them get the most out of customers’ purchases.

Agents should be able to do all types of troubleshooting and fix problems within maintaining contact with the product team. Most times, customers will not be aware of certain features; it is your job to tell your customers about them and show them how they might solve their issues.

11. Empower your agents

Invest in your support agents. Your agents are the main bridge between your customers and your business. Take care of your support staff. Empower them to make decisions to help customers no matter what company policy says. The goal should help customers get most of their purchase value.

Train them regularly so they can develop their skills. Great customer support comes from skilled agents. Provide the necessary tools to accelerate their daily workload. Give them access to customer data analytics so your agents can make informed decisions. They will know what areas the support team needs to improve and how customers interact with the help desk. It will help develop their customer service from good to great.

12. Maintain a Positive tone

Maintain a positive tone while talking to your customers. Customers can be angry or rude; your agents should not react negatively. Sometimes a conversation can turn in the wrong way and customers may argue. But your agents should not change their tone in the conversations and maintain their positive attitude.

People can notice tiny changes in your tone, which can influence their decisions. Train your agents to use emotional intelligence. It is the ability to read and react to people’s emotions. The higher emotional intelligence you have, the higher chances you can influence customers to have positive impressions about your brand. It will help you retain customers and reduce customer churn.

A positive attitude towards angry customers can make them happy customers through great customer service. Treat your customer as the center of your world. Your attitude will reflect it naturally. Being a customer-centric company can help you stand apart from your competitors.

Conclusion

Delivering good customer service is vital for businesses to get ahead of their competitors. Always try to under-promise and over-deliver support for great customer engagement. People want to be treated like humans. Humanize your customer support, train support agents properly, and provide innovative self-service tools. 

Being empathic and proactively helpful can accelerate good customer service transcendence to great customer service. Your end goal should be to make your customer happy as a business.

The post 12 Ways to Deliver Good Customer Service appeared first on Fluent Support.

Now if you’re wondering what’s so wrong with it here’s our take,

Why does “happy to help” sound bad?

It’s all to do with how humans process language in different contexts. The purpose and intent of the conversation play a vital role in it. So what exactly happens when you say happy to help or, happy to support or, happy to assist?

To be fair, there is nothing overtly wrong with the phrases other than questionable grammar. It’s just that they’ve become lines that have lost all power to communicate anything. Mostly because it’s been used over and over and then too many times even after that. A similar case is with “Thank you for your patience“

Hence, when someone uses these in a customer support context it sounds more like a filler episode than an engaging conversation. This is reason enough to avoid using it and maybe even invest in finding more engaging alternatives.

Alternatives for “Happy to Help”

That is exactly what we cover in this article. We picked out alternative phrases that you can use that sound less canned and more authentic. 

“I’m glad we were able to solve your problem today.”

“Reach out to us at any time”

“We appreciate the opportunity to help you today.”

“We’re here whenever you need us.”

“I’m glad to see it worked out.”

“Happy to be of service.”

“We’ve got your back.”

“Feel free to get in touch with us”

“Pleasure is ours.”

Wrapping Up

Customer support is a game of communication. All that you say matters. So if you’re stuck in between cliches, the time to fix that is nigh. It’s understandable that breaking a habit isn’t easy. However, you don’t need to make it happen overnight. As long as you try to do it in your head you’re good to go. 

The support guys on our teams have an easy fix for this and it’s by far the simplest you’ll find. 

Sticky notes to the rescue! 

Try putting up sticky notes around your workstation with phrases you want to use in your customer conversations.

In the case of chat, you can always store saved replies/canned responses to handle this sort of thing. Check if your help desk is up to the challenge. There are a variety of customer support plugins available so be specific.

It might seem counterintuitive at first to read responses off a note, a bit synthetic even. However, if it works a couple of times that’s enough to get you out of the habit of using the same phrase again and again. Keep practicing and the change will come.

Until next time, happy serving!

The post “Happy to Help” and 5 alternatives! appeared first on Fluent Support.

How can business measure their customer service? Here comes customer service metrics. A company’s customer service metrics indicate how well it meets its customers’ needs. You can use metrics to track where you are, what is going well with your customers, and where you need to improve.

If you are wondering what metrics you should follow, take a seat back. This post will cover the benefits of customer service and ten metrics you should follow for positive success.

Why should you measure your customer service?

Business runs marketing funnels, advertise, and can have great sales. But if you are not measuring your efforts, you don’t know if it impacts your business or how it impacts. If you don’t evaluate your customer service, you can’t tell if it is working or not, and what you have to improve or not.

Customer service metrics help you understand overall customer happiness around your brand and answer if they will buy more from you, refer you, and how your support team is performing. It also helps you understand your customer service objectives and make them suitable for your business.

Customer experience data will tell you exactly where you need improvement, how your agents can perform better, and help you make an informed decision. Learning how to measure customer service will help you understand what is working well for you, so you can invest more in those areas to double the results. This will help your business to gain loyal customers in the long run.

10 metrics to measure customer service performance

Here are some top customer service metrics you should implement in your day-to-day work. Collect the data and analyze it as recommended below.

1. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

Businesses should find out how satisfied their customer is with their customer support. CSAT, customer satisfaction score helps you identify that. On a 1-10 scale, you can directly ask your users how satisfied they are after chatting or resolving a ticket with your customer service agent.

If that is below 5, you should evaluate your customer support team and determine why your customers are not satisfied with your customer service agents. Ask straightforward questions like:

• How much are you satisfied with our products/service?
• How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the service you received?
• How would you rate the agent interaction?

Make the survey process easy to participate in and collect answers to get a good CSAT score.

2. Average Response Time (ART)

The ideal data to collect is between a customer starting a chat or opening a ticket and an agent responding. Customers expect a fast reply when they contact your support team for a solution. It is a vital customer support metric you should continuously monitor. If the average response time is high, there is a problem with how your agents handle users. Get right to the root and solve it.

Use automation and chatbots to answer basic or frequently asked questions in a customer’s chat or tickets. Proper use of automation can help you build better customer service. Build a better knowledge base and F.A.Q to point to customers when necessary.

3. First Contact Resolution (FCR)

If you want to measure your customer support agent’s efficiency in resolving tickets on the first interaction with your customers, then try to collect data about first contact resolution. It gives you data about how many customer problems are resolved in the first chat, call, or ticket. You can also collect data about how many average replies it takes for a customer to solve their problem.

In other words, it shows how capable your agents are of understanding and resolving an issue at the first contact point. If you follow FCR data, you will know your agent’s capacity and knowledge. You can use these service metrics for individual performance in the agent performance report. High FCR also means your support team is performing well above the line. If it is low, your support agents need proper training and resources to resolve customer issues.

4. Number of Touchpoints

While collecting first contact resolution data, it’s essential to know how many times a customer had to go through returning interaction to solve the same problem. Users are not happy to get transferred from agent to agent for a solution. The issue should be resolved on the first contact.

Find out:

How often have users had to go through various channels for the same problem?

How many agents had to attend to the issue to resolve it?

If your agent-to-agent transfer is high, then there is a problem in your internal support system. Make your support solution easy and ensure your agents follow the required instructions. The low number of touchpoints is a positive indicator of your customer service performance.

5. Customer Effort Score (CES)

This is a new kind of customer support metric you should consider monitoring. It helps you determine how much effort a customer can dedicate to solving their issue with your support team. The more effort users have to spend, the more frustration they will endure.

Your goal should reduce the effort and make it easy for your customer to do business with you. The easier it is, the more loyal customer you will cultivate in the long term. To calculate customer effort score:

Ask your customers for an answer that can be answered with numerical information.

Find out the average score.

Do not evaluate CES as individual data but combine your data with other metrics for actionable results.

6. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

We already wrote about the Net Promoter Score in our blogs. It is a high-performing customer service metric you can monitor to find out your loyal customers. You can measure how your customer service performance affects your customers with NPS.

You can ask the question:  “How likely are you going to refer this business and our product/service to others?” and gather answers on a 0-10 scale. Put the average answer and find out the NPS of your brand. The higher the answer is, the more likely these customers will become your repeat customers and positively affect your business.

If the answer is low, find out the issues making your customers unhappy. Start working to fix the problems.

7. Customer Service Abandonment Rates

How many times does a customer have to call or get a ticket reply for a solution?

Many times customers will abandon customer service due to frustrating waiting times. Find out the answer from the volume of your daily tickets and waiting time. Divide the number of abandoned tickets from a particular time with that time’s total tickets. You will get your abandonment rates. If that is high, you should talk with your support about what is happening.

You should hire agents immediately if there are not enough. If automation or AI chatbots can help you fine-tune your first contact point, then do so. The goal should be to lower your customer service abandonment rates. If customers are unhappy with your services, they won’t come back.

8. Customer Churn & Retention Rate

These metrics are opposite to one another, yet both are related. When customers are happy with your customer service team, they are more likely to come back again. This shows how many customers you gain after a certain period.

Customer churn rates tell you how many customers you lost after a while. If your customers are unhappy with your customer support team, more likely they are not going to make a second purchase from your business.

These two metrics are hard to measure because you have to collect data within a considerable time frame. You can calculate the retention rate by subtracting the number of new customers from the total at the end of a period. After that, divide the number of customers you retained by the total number of customers at the beginning of the period. This is your customer retention rate.

To calculate the churn rate, subtract the number of lost customers from the total at the end of a period. Divide the number by the total number of customers at the beginning of the period.

9. Customer Ticket Request Volume

You want your customer to contact you about their problems. But if ticket request volume goes high at a specific time, you should immediately investigate what is happening. Sometimes broken features, bugs, or complicated processes can trigger mass tickets. This can turn into a support ticket backlog.

Always pay attention after any product release or feature update. Compare support ticket volume by day, week, and month. Optimize your service, product, or website for efficient use. Train your support agents to make them ready to handle mass tickets if the issue arrives.

10. Average ticket handling time

Find out how much time your agents are taking to handle a single ticket. If they are taking a shorter time, they are efficiently doing their job. But do not take these metrics seriously alone; consider a few other metrics because sometimes agents can rush into resolving tickets without thinking about customer satisfaction. Use the data with the overall customer satisfaction score to determine if it is worth it.

Conclusion

Review your customer service and compare it to the above-mentioned customer service metrics. Using various KPIs and metrics, assess your customer service performance and take action when you see poor customer service. Do not follow metrics blindly. Take action to improve your customer service and track metrics to see how you’re doing.

The post 10 Ways to Measure Customer Service appeared first on Fluent Support.