12 creative tips to improve customer support productivity

Teams providing customer support nowadays have more work than they can handle. With numerous ticket backlogs, impatient customers who want their issues fixed immediately, and unempathetic mentions on social media after a single poor customer support experience, put the customer support teams under huge pressure.

As a leader or manager in this pandemonium, you might desire an infinity stone that vanishes the unresolved tickets with just a snap of a finger. However, creating a highly productive environment is the only thing that can make that happen.

Customer support team members should work together more quickly, resolve problems with ease, and enhance customer satisfaction.

In this blog, we will examine the significance of customer support software in enhancing customer support productivity and offer a few creative ideas to improve your team’s efficiency.

Customer support productivity – Definition and key factors

What does customer support productivity mean?

Customer support productivity is the amount of work completed by your customer support team in a given period of time.

Many companies track the number of tickets resolved by an agent or the entire team in a given time to determine customer support productivity.

However, few business owners track customer satisfaction or high-rated customer service interactions to determine productivity.

Why customer support productivity is important?

Excellent customer service team productivity is more important than ever in today’s digital and social media-driven age.

Online reviews influence 90% of customers’ purchasing decisions. It is especially important for customer support teams because increased productivity results in happier agents, which leads to happier customers, and ultimately more revenue for your business.

Factors that influence customer support productivity

Customer support is much more than just taking more calls or responding to more emails. While the number of tickets resolved is an essential aspect to consider, you must also ensure that the customer is satisfied with the outcome. After all, keeping customers happy is the main goal of any growing business.

The three important factors that influence your customer support productivity are:

12 creative tips to improve customer support productivity

1. Set clear roles and responsibilities

Defining your support team members’ roles and responsibilities is the first step in improving productivity. To begin, consider asking the following questions yourself:

• What should our customer support teams be in front of our customers?
• What potential issues will team members face while resolving the issues?
• What are the strengths of individual team members and how to assign them the right roles?

For example, you could give someone with excellent interpersonal skills the responsibility of interacting with customers in person. Similarly, those with exceptional technical abilities can answer customer calls and troubleshoot their technical issues. Assigning your team the proper roles and responsibilities provides a clear path and boosts their overall productivity.

2. Self-service support

Whether you’re a small business looking for a more streamlined workflow or a large corporation looking for a more complex and customized system, selecting the right support software for your needs is critical.

According to research, 69% of customers prefer self-service support to contact a company’s support team.

• For example, with the RoundView self-service portal, you can reduce the number of support tickets for minor questions that customers can look up, and free up your agents’ time to work on more complex tasks.

3. Train support teams well

Empower your customer support team with the tools and information they need to solve problems and make them engage in unscripted conversations with customers.

• Training programs can assist your new team members in learning job-related skills.
• Existing team members can also benefit from such programs from time to time to refresh their skills.

A key point to remember is that rather than training every team member on every skill, identify their key talents, allow them to hone those specific skills, and develop a customer service team of experts.

4. Reduce manual work with chatbots & canned responses

There are numerous tasks that you can automate using customer support software; ranging from self-service to sharing alerts and notifications to customers.

• Chatbots and canned responses are two popular customer support automation tools that can help to reduce manual work.
• Chatbots can help you in assisting customers, generating leads, and closing more sales.
• Canned responses can save you the time and effort of typing the same responses repeatedly. You can create canned responses for chats, emails, or text messages and respond to common customer questions in minutes.

A key point to remember is that rather than training every team member on every skill, identify their key talents, allow them to hone those specific skills, and develop a customer service team of experts.

5. FAQs and video tutorials

Making your customers support themselves for common problems is one of the simplest ways to increase the productivity of your customer support team.

• FAQs, video tutorials, and self-troubleshooting are some options.
• Creating a comprehensive list of FAQs is one of the most straightforward ways to empower customers.
• Video tutorials are a fantastic way to engage and support customers. You can make simple videos to share troubleshooting steps and assist customers in resolving problems on their own.

6. Track performance and optimize

To improve your customer support productivity, periodically tracking performance metrics and KPIs are very important. Some common metrics to monitor include first-contact response time, ticket backlogs, and customer feedback.

• Customer support software that provides insightful reports and analytics about your support operations will be of great help here.

For example, the first contact response rate can help you understand how customers received a response and resolution from support agents or chatbots. Ticket backlogs can help you determine whether your team is operating at peak efficiency or whether you need to hire more agents to meet the increased demand.

7. Setup the right team workflow

When everyone in your customer support team is clearly defined with their workflows, your teams perform best.

• Your support teams should be well-trained in their daily routines, and they should know how to transfer calls to subject matter experts if they are unable to answer customers’ questions.
• You could delegate certain managerial responsibilities to team leaders, depending on the size of your team.
• You could also use smart tools to automate your customer support teams’ daily processes.

8. Route questions to the right agent

Making sure the right agents see incoming questions so they can apply their expertise and efficiently resolve any outstanding issues is a big part of what efficiency in customer support is all about.

• Salesforce survey indicated that 83% of customers expect to be able to solve complex problems by speaking with a single person.

It is therefore essential for businesses to ensure that customer requests are always routed to the right agent. There are several ways to accomplish this, including implementing a well-designed chatbot that automatically routes customer questions to the appropriate agents.

9. Co-browsing

A typical visitor may understand the fundamentals of navigating a website, but when things become more complicated, they become frustrated. Communication breakdown is a roadblock to providing excellent customer support.

• Co-browsing allows agents to view the web screen of their customers and they will both be on the same page. Consider using screen-sharing software for this.

Instead of relying on the customer for information, your team members can obtain things firsthand and continue from there. Aside from the quick resolution, the customer is also empowered to solve similar problems in the future. On the other hand, your customer support staff may find it easier to share their screen.

10. Video chatbots

Another innovative way to boost productivity is video chatbots.

• Video chatbots are chatbots with a human avatar that can converse with and assist your customers.
• By incorporating video into your chatbot, you can give it personality and improve the customer experience.

Although video chatbots are quite expensive to implement, if your customers prefer to watch videos rather than read articles, it may better meet their needs.

11. Omnichannel customer support

In today’s digital world, giving a sense of accessibility is vital. The first step toward accomplishing this accessibility is determining where your customers love to seek assistance.

• To make the customer’s experience easier and faster, consider email, SMS, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter.
• You can also set up a customer self-service area to reduce your team’s customer contact rate.
• An FAQ page, a help center, or a community forum can assist customers in resolving issues without needing them to contact your customer support team.

12.Targeted triggers

Offering support automatically based on a visitor’s behavior is done through proactive chat triggers.

• According to studies, proactive chat can increase customer service efficiency by 7 times.

Understanding your website’s customer behavior is the first step to doing it. Proactive chat triggers help predict when customers need assistance, when they are frustrated, and which pages require additional assistance. It enables you to effectively target your messages to the appropriate customer at the appropriate time.

Conclusion

• 93% of customers will buy again from companies that offer excellent customer service.

Customer support efficiency is more than just speed. While quick responses and resolution times are important, efficiency also includes providing an excellent customer service experience throughout the journey. With the above-mentioned tips, you can improve your customer support team productivity to a big extent; even minor changes can have a significant impact on your company.

We, at RoundView, are here to help if you have any questions about further optimizing your customer support or implementing any of the tips mentioned in this blog. Please contact us or schedule a free online demo!