Research shows that customers spend more time online and have higher service expectations post-pandemic* — which means your organization's customer support needs to be better than ever. But assessing your current support journey is challenging — not to mention managing your support teams in the midst of the "great resignation," with more than 70% of support agents saying they've considered quitting over the past six months.
As we explored in our recent webinar with Freshworks, support strategies are in need of an update — but while businesses are eager to take action, it can be daunting to know where to start. Here are four steps to help guide you towards a successful customer support assessment.
1. Look at touchpoints: Identify all of the different touchpoints involved throughout your customer support journey. DMs via your social profiles? Live chats on your website? Phone calls or emails to your support agents? Make a full list, and then think about which components of your support journey could be streamlined to be more frictionless.
2. Audit your knowledge management system: What system are you using for knowledge management? Do you have an existing knowledge base — and is it simple, user-friendly, and able to provide you with data to make optimizations? Continuing to optimize how (and what) information you provide over time is critical to keeping up with changing customer inquiries and evolving behaviors.
3. Evaluate your support content — and assess internal enablement: You've probably heard the phrase "content is king" — and the support space isn't immune. Take a look at your customer support content: how many support articles does your team currently have — for both internal use (helping agents provide answers to customers) and external use (such as public-facing resources that help customers self-serve)? When was the last time you did an audit to assess if they're organized, well written, and accurate?
Further, what internal resources or tools are you using to keep support content manageable (and easily accessible) for your support team? Can they easily search for what they need? Evaluate whether your current support systems and tech stack are helping with internal enablement — both for your general support staff and for your agents.
4. Pin down (and track) the important metrics: You can't measure improvements to your support experience if you don't know where you're starting from, so make sure you have a handle on the important metrics related to growth (common support metrics include CSAT/NPS, time to resolution, ticket volume, and the like).
For example: how many admins does your support team currently have? Do you have metric-driven goals for this year? If so, are your current support systems and technology helping stakeholders meet those key metrics?
As you assess these four categories, it's likely you'll have some questions. One for many businesses? How to balance tech-led and agent-led support. You want to streamline the experience — and, let's be honest, make support more cost-effective — but you also don't want to lose the "human touch" and alienate customers.
Here's the good news: when it comes to providing a better support experience by blending tech-led and agent-led interaction, AI search can help with both. Here's how.