The rise of automation and bots has led to some seismic changes in the career landscape for many support professionals and support leaders have had to rethink the role and structure of their teams. With a greater impact on your customer satisfaction and bottom line, it’s increasingly important to invest in your human support team as a strategic lever in your business
The Business Benefits of Human Support
When it comes to complex or emotionally-charged issues, bots are no substitute for a human.
- Offering personalized, one-to-one human support is essential for keeping both your customers and your team happy in the long term.
Keep It Personal With the Right Tone of Voice
Create a set of guidelines that your team can use to stay aligned
- Tailor your tone of voice to the situation at hand
- Remember that your human support team is made up of humans
- Embrace the human element of your voice
Map out career paths
Having clearly defined career paths gives people something to work towards
- This will not only help your team to advance their careers but it also shows that their career growth is something you’re prioritizing as an organization
- Mapping out these career paths means that you have a better chance of retaining your team in the long term
Treat humans like humans
If things feel overwhelming, your support reps have time to step away from the inbox and go for a walk, and they’re not constantly in thrall to their numbers
- As a manager, you also need to be deliberate about making your team’s escalation paths clear
Ensure only complex queries reach your team using the Conversational Support Funnel
By cleverly utilizing proactive and self-serve support to provide efficient, tailored support where possible, you can ensure that only complex issues reach your human support team.
- You can protect your team’s bandwidth and reserve their time for queries that will be more impactful and satisfying for them to work on, while simultaneously ensuring that high-priority queries get a fast, efficient response.
Helping humans do what humans do best
Get the most out of your people & help them to grow
Supercharge your team’s efficiency with automation and apps
Automation allows you to minimize essential but time-sucking administrative tasks
- Integrate your customer communications platform with the other essential tools in your support tech stack so your support reps can surface important insights right in your messenger – without ever needing to switch tools or dig for data
3 human strategies to support your support team
The rise of automation and bots has changed the career landscape for many support professionals.
- Because bots are handling the simple, repetitive tasks, humans are left with the more complex and rewarding stuff, with less of the boring admin, leading to more challenging and robust support careers.
Engage and Retain Your Customers
Utilize human support for tricky or sensitive issues that can’t be solved with automation
- Routing problems to a real person is essential for maintaining customer happiness
- Bots and automation are not always the answer
- Build real long-term customer relationships by building personalized, tailored problem-solving
Engage and Retain Your Support Team
Use proactive and self-serve support strategies to ensure that only complex queries reach your team.
- This approach lets your team focus on the things that only they can do, empowering them to specialize and hone their problem-solving, technical, and empathetic skills, so they can upskill and progress their careers.
Rethink your metrics to properly reflect the work
Dealing exclusively with complex queries can be, well, complex.
- To get a fairer, more human picture of how the team is performing, they use a range of metrics as well as internal quality reviews to ensure that they’re always meeting their own high standards.
