Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

The warnings say robots are coming for our jobs, but it’s more accurate to say they—AI-supported automation, that is—are taking over tasks that should be automated anyway. Taking the rote functions out of a customer service agent’s job is the perfect way to leverage AI, but support roles must evolve parallel with the technology.

Have you ever opened an email with a subject line written in all caps, and the first sentence sounded something like “I have never been so frustrated in my life as I am with [your product here]!!!”? If you have, you aren’t alone—many of us every day respond to angry customers and do our best to de-escalate the situation, gain back their trust, and help them use our products.

Just trust me. You’ve heard it before — maybe in a movie scene, or from a partner in crime, or an especially tough coach. Just-trust-me! In today’s marketplace, products may be a dime a dozen, but trust — well, that’s worth its weight in gold. In fact, statistics suggest that a landslide 83% of customers are more likely to recommend a trusted company to friends, and 82% will be more inclined to use that brand more often. It’s a relationship.

Feedback in business is crucial to growing and improving. It’s beneficial for any business to take a closer look at what is working and what could use improvement on a regular basis. But how do you do that? Where do you start?

The basic goal of customer service is the same for every company, regardless of industry or business model: to provide customers and clients with the assistance and answers they need. That being said, the process of providing that assistance can look very different within different companies. This is especially true when comparing businesses operating on B2B and B2C models.

Choosing a customer support solution is an important decision. It can make or break your team’s ability to assist customers and have a major impact on the level of service you offer. And while there are plenty of great options available, most of them aren’t designed to be a one-size-fits-all solution. This means it takes some time and research to find one that’s right for your business’s needs.

How many of you measure the impact of support tickets on the company revenue? If you are like most companies that offer support, you measure the success of the support channels based on: the number of tickets they solve, the time it takes them to solve the ticket, client satisfaction.

Reflecting the importance of providing excellent self-service to manage rapid growth and satisfy customers, you might want to launch tier 0. What is tier 0? It’s the self-service tier; the support available to customers that does not require directly interacting with a customer advocate. This includes the knowledge base available in an online help center, the product training that is available to customers, as well as assistance that is available in the product’s user interface.