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Online customer service for a long time has revolved around issuing tickets – with helpdesk software predominantly built to keep track of long-digit reference numbers. This clearly shows the importance of processes over people taking the focus away from the customer and conversations.
Any typical ticketing process in customer service usually looks like this:
It all starts with a problem with a product or service that needs resolving.
You contact the company or service provider through a customer service number, a form, or an email address.
In response, you get a multi-digit ticket number that sets a precursor for all future conversations with the service rep.
This surely makes logical sense for companies, but the reality for customers is less than ideal.
A next-generation conversational helpdesk system needs to allow brands to deliver relevant and personalized customer service experiences across all channels – which conventional ticketing system fails to deliver.
We feel this limitation of ticketing workflows reduces your customer to a number before solving their problem, and we think this is an impersonal way to treat customers.
With the landscape fast evolving, customer service won’t be the same in the coming years. With the volume of service requests rising, customers’ expectation for more proactive support from customer service teams has been increasing, requiring more automated and intelligent help desk systems and processes that work across the channels.
We often hear this coming from our customers and prospects and want to offer them the power and flexibility of a ticketing system that could increase their team’s efficiency yet not compromise on the customer experience.
This article will talk about the fundamental principles that simplify customer service without compromising the experience. When integrated with your customer service, the principles bring process and people together where conversations are as important as tickets.
Eliminate Queues, Not Tickets With an Advanced Helpdesk System
Until now, most companies had to choose between two broad types of customer service ticketing software:
One that worked on a traditional email-based ticketing tool that compromises the quality of customer experience (even though efficient.)
Another is a fast and messenger-based support tool that offers a high-quality customer experience but lacks the flexibility of a ticketing system to accommodate the rising complexities of businesses.
While using such a conventional customer service software, questions become tickets, and people become numbers. But these reference numbers don’t provide solutions to problems. Only people do.
Once the questions pile up:
Questions stay in the queue until the final issue resolution.
Agents start to cherry-pick and leave tough questions to attend later.
No one owns the queue, so no one cares to answer.
This traditional model usually focuses on just one operational metric, i.e., “time to close a ticket.” This approach usually falls flat in meeting customer expectations, often resulting in loss of customer lifetime value.
Conversations and Customers Come First
Contrary to the conventional ticketing systems, at the heart of any good customer service is not the issuing of ticket numbers but the ability to segment, prioritize, and assign issues as they arise. That agility allows customer service teams to stay on top of requests and ensure customer resolution within the allotted time.
We have tried to end this painful choice with a customer service solution that comes with a range of value-packed features. Our customer service solution comes with an intuitive dashboard with an omnichannel core built to handle the most complex customer issue seamlessly without compromising efficiency and performance – collectively putting customer service complexity to rest.
Empowering Agents of a Customer Service Software
The core pillars or features make handling complex queries simple for offering a world-class customer service experience at scale.
#1 The Most Advanced Routing
Gone are the days when we would distribute the workloads evenly across active and available team members. This system would not work when there is a high volume of customer queries and a high threshold of service requests.
This operating method results in slower response and poor customer experience and does not work for a conversational approach based on modern communication channels.
The logic behind routing is to give direct ownership of the conversation to the customer service agent. Mobile Service Cloud works on this principle for the same reason: the questions that flow to a queue often lack an owner – leaving the customer unattended.
Understand and Meet Customers' Need for Speed
To ensure no customer is left unattended in the queue, we have launched a two-stage feature called Advanced Routing.
The routing rules applied here are additional parameters which utilize a combination of rule-based and skill-based elements that ensure no customer is ever left unattended in a queue. So, no cherry-picketing happens when questions pile up.
In a rule-based routing, the additional rules scan for the sender details like name and subject from the e-mail sent or a part of it. The bottom line is to prevent service reps from handling unwanted messages like spam from landing in their customer service Team’s Inbox.
If the pre-established criteria are met, the incoming conversation moves straight to the Archive or Unwanted Inbox without human intervention.
Additionally, you can assign conversations to agents based on their skills and priority. The main advantage is that these Triggers work on all incoming conversations across all channels – a unique feature in Mobile Service Cloud.
Secondly, Skill-based routing ensures agents don't pick and choose conversations. They are in turn responsible for the conversations assigned to them. This enables teams to be at the heart of customer conversations rather than getting lost in a pile of tickets.
#2 Smart Inbox Management
As mentioned earlier, ticketing queues have no real owner and lead to tickets piling up in the queue until final issue resolution. This creates a huge pile of questions, with no clear way to prioritize whereas, only a fraction of them needs your attention right now. The easier route for any agent with a pile of questions is to cherry-pick the easier ones and keep the complex ones later.
The Inbox connects all your channels to make life easier for your customer care team, save costs, and improve your service quality at the same time.
The Personal Inbox can be a mix of different channels. So, individual agents can manage their omnichannel inbox. This gives direct ownership of the conversations and allows faster response within the SLA (response time).
One inbox to manage multiple conversations allows multi-channel support on a single interface with great ease. Having all channels in one clear overview will enable agents to engage in every conversation regardless of the channel.
With smart inbox management, agents have only 3 options:
o Snooze: when an agent hits the snooze button, it does two things: it sets a new SLA to the customer and a new timeline for the conversation to return to the agents’ inbox.
o Archive: this is used when a conversation needs no further action. However, when a new reply message comes in to an Archived conversation, this conversation moves out of the archive and is routed again to the right agent.
o Forward: agents can forward a conversation to a colleague. This transfers ownership (and SLA responsibility) to a different agent.
This results in giving great control over your inbox and thereby not leaving any conversation unattended!
The Best Messenger-based Helpdesk, Now With the Best of Ticketing
With these ticketing triggers, advanced routing parameters, and a personal inbox to manage it all, you can unlock all the critical workflows that traditional ticketing tools provide without compromising on the conversational, engaging front-end experience of a modern messenger.
With all these added features, the experience becomes considerably better than the experience offered by traditional email-based ticketing systems.
Mobile Service Cloud puts the customer at the center of every conversation; offers you the right tools to help you provide a superior customer experience and reduce pressure on your customer care team.
After all, you don’t need to reduce your customers to a number to resolve their problems. All they need is assurance that only the resolution of their issue (within a given moment) can bring.
