Monday, 9:00 AM: *Put Out Fires* Start Innovating
For support reps dreading their Monday-morning backlog, their free time is never really free. If you’re managing those teams and you’re accountable for their performance, you may not be getting the R&R you need either. When tickets are piling up on Saturdays and Sundays, how much value are you or your business truly getting out of that free time?
As our constant work culture evolves, technologists and business leaders are developing ways to ease the pain for workers while maintaining a productive business environment. That doesn’t mean investing in a sub-standard support crew on weekends. It means work-life integration: a world where systems work for you, your team, and your customers, allowing them to seamlessly and painlessly move between the needs and obligations of business and life.
The Ups and Downs of SaaS
“In a SaaS or subscription environment, there’s almost nothing more important than the quality of the customer service,” says Micah Solomon, company culture expert and contributor at Forbes. “Your customers have only plunked down a little pile of money, and they have a very realistic option to choose to not plunk down the next little bit when renewal time comes around.”
The B2B SaaS industry has a churn rate that is particularly high. SaaS customers have options, so service experiences can be determining factors as to whether they remain loyal. When the right support expertise isn’t available on a Saturday, by Monday morning, that customer could be gone.
Instead, skeleton crews are overwhelmed by the volume of urgent tickets that pile up over the weekend, which reach critical mass by Monday morning. New tickets coming in Monday are further delayed as teams try to catch up. When half of the week is spent catching up, again and again, that doesn’t leave much time for innovation.
Make Room for Innovation
What if your team’s KPIs comprised boosting loyalty and customer satisfaction rather than simply reducing churn? There are ways your support pros can engage critical tickets during off hours, painlessly and effectively, and there are technologies that solve these problems without your subject matter experts’ involvement at all.
Self Assist
Starting with self-assist technologies, customers can begin helping themselves in a productive way even when service teams are out. As a first line of defense, it’s an innovative way to reduce backlog and empower customers—something most customers now prefer.
Intelligent self assist technology understands the context of incoming tickets and can provide relevant suggestions directly from your knowledge base. Take a step up from your FAQ page for a proactive solution that solves real, nuanced customer issues.
Self assist is a huge win for innovation as well. Less time spent on the Monday morning queue means more time innovating, coming up with new ways to delight your customers.
Automated Triage
Triage technologies automatically segment tickets by severity, VIP status, and more so that the most important tickets receive instant attention. Tickets are routed to the subject matter experts needed most, improving resolution quality and efficiency.
That’s great for customers and your team. Your on-call experts may not be in the office, but they can address those issues immediately instead of walking into them face first on Monday.
Automated Response (AI)
With the right AI solution, urgent tickets needn’t trouble your subject matter experts at all. The right Automated Response technology studies your past resolved tickets to come up with new solutions for customers. Use your knowledge base—including past solutions developed by your experts—to automatically resolve even critical issues so they’re out of the queue before your first sip of Monday-morning coffee.
Give your team a reason to smile when they start their week. Streamline solving problems for customers as you the ease the load for your workers.
If you’re interested in this topic, check out our full suite of customer support technologies and start innovating again — build new ways to delight customers, increase loyalty and retention, and hit those KPIs that got you and your team excited about working in this field from the start.
