How CX software helps your support team do their best work. | #customersupport #supporticket

Although most agents enjoy solving customer problems, the pandemic has put them under a new kind of pressure. Mix frustrated customers, soaring query volumes, budget cuts, and new remote work setups, and you’ve got a recipe for burnout.

In 2022, many businesses recognize the importance of workplace mental health, and are taking steps to ensure the well-being of their teams. But the challenge for CX leaders is: how do you prioritize the mental health of your agents without compromising productivity and customer satisfaction?

We studied how the highest-performing CX teams leverage technology to keep team members motivated and customers happy, and published our findings in Freshworks’ Future of CX: 2022 report. It turns out that the best CX teams are doing three key things differently, and it all starts with empowering agents. Here’s how they do it.

Technology keeps workloads manageable.

If you’re like most customer service teams, the pandemic sent your support volumes up and budgets down. Your agents are handling bigger customer contact loads, and this can quickly lead to overwhelmed employees and dissatisfied customers. In fact, for every 100 extra monthly tickets handled per agent, your CSAT scores drop by 1%.

So how can CX teams handle higher volumes with fewer staff members? We recommend complementing your human workforce with digital tools. For example, smart self-service setups and AI-powered bots can resolve simple customer queries without needing agent intervention, or redirect customers with simpler queries to FAQs and self-service articles, keeping individual agent workloads manageable.

There are plenty of misconceptions and poor practices around bots. However, tech-savvy CX leaders are getting the most out of their bots by adhering to one simple mantra: Instead of seeing bots as replacements for humans, they think of them as complementary to their existing team.

Alex Huntley, the Head of Customer Experience at Booktopia Australia, says bots are a way to stay available for customers and extend the reach of service. “An online store never closes,” Alex explains. “But being available for customers 24/7 doesn’t mean that agents have to keep the same hours. Investing in an AI-powered chatbot means that you remain accessible to customers whenever they need, without overburdening agents.”

When CX teams integrate modern technology and self-service setups, agents gain back valuable mental energy that helps lower stress and prevents burnout, thereby reducing employee attrition.

Technology makes work more meaningful.

Managers know that when employees are pigeonholed into repetitive, small-picture work, motivation falls. But when menial tasks are replaced with interesting and important work, employees become more engaged, which boosts morale across the whole team.

This is where modern customer engagement platforms can improve both the well-being of your team and the satisfaction of your customers. Efficiency-boosting features like AI-based ticket classification and automated query routing can save each of your agents up to 1.2 hours a day on waiting to be assigned tasks, freeing them to focus on more rewarding work (like working cross-functionally to fix a complex customer issue) that allows them to upskill and grow.

The right tech setup allows your team to spend just a little bit longer creating more meaningful interactions with customers and gives agents the opportunity to contribute to bigger-picture work like optimizing processes within the department, helping out other agents, suggesting new ways of working, and making a lasting contribution to the team.

Technology keeps teams connected while remote.

On top of dealing with high query volumes and frustrated customers, most CX teams have also had to adjust to remote or hybrid work setups. These setups make it harder to stay on top of all the moving parts of complex queries, which can make collaboration confusing, and cause some tickets to slip through the cracks.

When they can’t easily turn to deskmates with questions, it takes longer for your agents to get the answers they need. And when communication is confined to emails or Slack channels, it’s easy to forget details or lose track of individual cases. A digital-first customer service platform lets your agents collaborate within the platform, and also allows them to carry the conversation over to existing internal channels like Slack or Teams without losing the context of the ticket in question.

When conversations can move naturally across your digital workspace, it’s easier for agents to stay on top of workloads, reach out to colleagues to solve issues, and avoid double-handling or needless back-and-forth. And let’s not forget that open communication channels can also reduce the sense of isolation the pandemic has inflicted on many remote workers.

 Here are a few other things a good customer service platform will allow you to do:

• Send instant notifications on ticket updates
• Tag or loop in stakeholders
• Split tickets and share ownership
• Allow multiple teams to work on the same ticket
• Link similar tickets to keep track of related issues
• Send bulk updates to customers in one go

Our research reveals that seamless intra-team collaboration software can save agents up to 120 clicks per day. These gains in efficiency aren’t just important for productivity, but also for giving your agents a positive working experience. Fewer clicks mean faster query resolutions, but it also means a smoother and more satisfying daily working experience for agents.

Keeping a team connected in a remote world is a daily challenge for customer service leaders, but with the right digital tools, it’s no longer a pipe dream.

Agents who are motivated and empowered in their roles are more likely to create positive, helpful interactions that delight customers. The key to customer satisfaction might just be empowering your agents with the tools to do better, more meaningful work.

Productive agents, happy customers—why wait?

Agent empowerment is just one of the hottest emerging CX trends we’re seeing in 2022. Learn about the other ways your team can use technology to excel in our newest report, The Future of CX: 2022.