Solving your customer problems without causing more problems

What your agents experience and how they keep track of customer needs is the crucial difference between a business that works and one that works well.

Providing great customer service has always been a challenge, even for the most decorated support agent. Thanks to three factors, this challenge is only growing. First, customer support workflows are growing increasingly complex. Where once it was just a person and a phone, now agents often work with complex, clunky interfaces. Second, customer expectations have risen. Customers now expect agents to provide quick, personal service. This is only possible when the agent has relevant contextual information—who the customer is, issues they’ve had in the past, etc.—without having to ask for it. And third, customers want to communicate with companies via their preferred channels, and want consistent support on all of them.

All of these factors point to the need for companies to improve the agent experience, something that is intensified as companies grow. The good news is all of this is made possible by enabling easy and seamless customer support as part of a centralized support solution.

It’s important to keep in mind that your customers don’t care about your internal operations. They really just want their problems solved. So, solve them. To respond to customer tickets in a contextual, timely manner, agents are going to need relevant information and the ability to respond to customers across channels.

Simplifying agent experiences

Agents need to be able to create a workspace as unique as whatever ticket comes their way. As businesses grow in size and complexity, customer problems become more complicated and nuanced, so you need to provide your agents with the tools they need to resolve these issues without compromising on speed, efficiency, or their own job satisfaction. For example, for a retailer, this could mean having workspaces dedicated to certain use cases for common support instances, such as returns. If a customer reaches out about a return, the agent would automatically have all of the relevant tools (like apps and macros) they need to quickly respond to the customer’s request in a “returns” workspace.

All the necessary customer context

Customers are increasingly reaching out via multiple support channels, which means customer data is fragmented and siloed. In order to more quickly and painlessly resolve customer problems, the agent will need all relevant customer information streamlined and immediately available. Because the fewer times any agent has to say, “wait, who is this again?” or “what have they reached out about before?”, the better off both the agent and the customer will be.

Omnichannel support for seamless interactions

Customers use multiple devices and apps to connect with their friends, family, and yes, businesses. A customer might prefer chat while they’re at work, email on the bus, and calling at home. Omnichannel support allows agents to maintain consistency as the conversation moves from channel to channel by unifying all customer communications in one user interface. But again, and not to sound like a broken record, your customers don’t care about all of that. They just want to reach out to you via their preferred channels, which can depend on the complexity of the issue or even time of day.

Learn more about how Zendesk improves agent experiences for organizations at scale.