In my ‘previous life’ I was a process improvement specialist at a large corporation. One significant project I was involved with was transforming a project based engineering department into a production based department.
We implemented a queue system to handle engineering drawing completion. Turned the department upside down.
While the project improved efficiency and resulted in $1.5 Million of additional revenue per year, it also revealed human nature.
Human beings are such fickle creatures. If necessary and possible, we will cheat the system to serve our own interests.
Your support desk will be no different.
Customers will ‘jump the queue’ in order to get served right away.
Little do they realize that the queue is a necessary thing that ultimately benefits them.
Queue jumpers will send you an email, or a Facebook message instead of a support ticket. They think that bypassing the system will get a faster response.
Sometimes that may be true, but this behavior – left too long – will cripple your support desk.
Here are three things you can do to proactively reduce the tendency to bypass your ticket queue.
1. Use a ticketing system on your support desk.
A proper ticketing software – like Sonic Reply – will introduce a gated control process that will ensure each customer gets served in the proper order. This is the most important thing you can do to improve customer support and overall customer satisfaction.
2. Collect customer service metrics.
Metrics are data points that tell you how well you are (or are not) doing in a process. Customer support metrics like ‘time to first reply’, ‘time to close’, and ‘customer satisfaction rate’ are important measures that can help identify problems in your customer support process.
3. Educate your customers.
Your home page should include a clear explanation of the importance of following the correct process for support. Most people don’t understand the need for a ticketing system.
Sonic Reply was built for our business. Now you can use it for yours. To learn more about the features of Sonic Reply and how it can benefity your business, click here.
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