In a perfect world, we’d all be working smart instead of working hard.
But what exactly would that look like for a modern customer support team?
Well, a big part of working smart is finding and leveraging the right tools that allow you to accomplish more in less time. After all, increasing efficiency can mean higher productivity levels, wider margins, and more money in your pocket.
Implementing a smarter ticketing system for your support team can also boost customer satisfaction and elevate the customer experience to a whole new level.
So, let’s talk about the different ways a smarter ticketing system can drastically improve your customer service.
How Smarter Ticketing Improves Customer Support Experiences
There are a wide range of tools available to help support teams work smarter than ever. A smart ticketing system incorporates omnichannel support tools, support automation, a collaborative workflow, and a mix of human agents and AI-powered chatbots.
Here’s a look at how each of these components can be used to drive better customer experiences.
1. Automated Support Solutions for Greater Efficiency
Modern support technology offers plenty of time-saving and cost-saving tools that allow your team to work more efficiently.
For instance, a smart ticketing system can generate tickets automatically, collect and share relevant customer data in real-time, and ensure the support agent has everything they need to respond to the inquiry.
Automating the simple but time-consuming task of ticket creation allows your agents to focus solely on solving the customers’ problem, rather than taking notes and tracking data.
Capturing all customer information and interactions within a single, ongoing thread ensures your agents always have access to contextual data and can deliver uninterrupted support. This means your team can direct their energy towards resolving complex issues, instead of scrambling to locate the customer’s file.
Another way to ‘automate’ aspects of your support operations is to create a digital self-service solution that customers can access at their own convenience, thereby reducing the number of incoming requests.
2. Omnichannel Support for Consistent Experiences
Businesses that adopt omnichannel support allow customers to use whatever channels are most convenient at the time. However, omnichannel support goes beyond multichannel support (which keeps information in silos) by sharing contextual customer data with all relevant parties.
So, no matter who a customer speaks to or how they contact your team, the customer experience remains consistent across different channels, platforms, and departments.
This not only makes it easier for customers to reach out to your team when they need assistance, but it also allows your agents to maintain a single, ongoing support conversation with each customer.
Since knowledge is shared across all channels and team members, customers don’t have to repeat their issue multiple times. Your agents can respond to any channel from a single conversation panel, which makes it possible to carry on a seamless conversation with each customer – even if they switch channels or communicate with several different support agents.
3. Collaborative Support for Seamless Conversations
The traditional model of tiered support addresses customer problems by continually escalating the issue until a solution is reached. The customer usually speaks to a frontline agent who passes them on to a more experienced agent or transfers them to an entirely different department.
One of the major drawbacks to this model is that it often requires the customer to repeat their issue to multiple people, wait on hold on several different lines, and continually wonder whether the person they’re talking to can actually help.
The collaborative model, on the other hand, is part of a smarter ticketing system that operates on a network of shared knowledge.
Rather than keeping customer information in hard-to-access silos or funnels, collaborative support shares knowledge and interaction history between team members and providers. This serves to streamline communication and encourage collaboration between different agents, departments, partners, vendors, and other experts.
When your agents have seamless access to contextual data, they can deliver personalized, real-time, relevant service on any channel. For customers, the result is much faster service and a much simpler experience. Regardless of who they speak to on your team, they’ll receive the same high-quality level of support and consistent information.
4. AI-Powered Chatbots for Faster, Reliable Service
When humans and robots work together, amazing customer experiences can become the norm. That’s why many of the most productive support teams rely on a combination of human interaction and AI-powered chatbots.
Your agents can use chatbots to ask questions internally, find information more quickly, and automatically respond to a portion of incoming tickets. Meanwhile, your customers benefit from faster service, shorter wait times, and more reliable responses.
Put simply, a well-designed chatbot is good for everyone involved – it makes your agents’ jobs easier and your customers happier.
Smarter Ticketing Allows Your Team to Exceed Expectations
We’ve all heard that it’s better to work smarter than to work harder. However, the key to success lies somewhere in between putting in our best effort and optimizing our processes with intelligent tools.
Smart technology can be used to augment human work and enable support agents to deliver the best customer experiences possible.
For example, Boomtown's smart ticketing system automatically converts customer interactions into a ticket, without your agents having to switch to a different tool or product. Regardless of whether a customer calls, messages, emails, or uses live chat, Boomtown provides the contextual data that makes it easy for anyone on your team to continue the conversation seamlessly.
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