Over the last six months I’ve been researching customer support tools that allow for support representatives to retain their personality while keeping the customer experience consistent. What this means is that when someone calls looking for support, they’ll experience the unique personality of the agent but they’ll get the same answer no matter who they speak to. It’s important that the support maintain a level of consistency with customers because otherwise they’ll lose confidence in the product and its support.
There are tools that integrate with various Customer Relationship Management solutions to allow for agents to immediately know who they’re speaking to and what support steps the customer may have already completed – like SalesForce. Other tools allow for both a customer and inward employee facing support experience; this makes it possible to include copy intended for a public audience and material which can be viewed on the same page with the right credentials – like RightNow. Without significant work and incentive, however, neither of these platforms are able to encourage organic use because the agents themselves feel disconnected from the material and administrators require subject matter experts to update the content.
The takeaway is that while there are a lot of tools to use, it’s typically the tools designed for the average user that seem to be the best at reaching their intended audience. I found a few, one such tool is called Yonyx. It’s great for creating conditional scripting that both customers and support techs can use. We never implemented Yonyx, but I did create a platform very similar for in-house use that some teams used. It never had widespread use, but it did find some favor in onboarding new agents since it gave insight into best practices in a very digestible format that users could navigate while on the phone with a customer. We’ve since moved on from the platform, but the lessons were well learned.
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