In the Sunday Dallas Morning News was a book review of Patricia Sigmon’s "Six Steps to Creating Profit". The reviewer introduced the steps and briefly described them…#4 really hit the button.
#4: Streamline Management Costs
The article went on the discuss streamlining using automation and real time knowledge reporting. So much of the administration of incident management or customer support, the tracking of tickets, can be automated to follow business rules that state when to escalate a ticket, who to assign it to, who to notify and when, what steps should be taken to resolve the ticket and in what order…. the list can be endless depending on your ticketing process.
The best thing about automation is the lack of human error (unless you set up the algorithm incorrectly). That action will take place every time the rule is triggered. There is no need for a customer support rep to remember to do it, no need for someone to remember to check the queue for assignments, no need for someone to whip up an email for the customer who sent in the issue. The system does it all.
How many of you are taking advantage of this type of automation? Think about the person-hours that could be saved when this type of error fraught busywork can be relegated to the computer. If you are a small business owner, or even a medium size business, it makes no sense to waste time in fulfilling ticket movement and notification, or to forget the forward the ticket to the correct person.The up front time investment to set up the automation will pay for itself in no time.
It is very true that automation drives down costs and removes errors but it can actually be much more proactive than that. Automation can sound negative to some customers, but if you marry it with self-service systems that provide a first point of contact with your company they benefit from quick, accurate answers to their questions along with an easy escalation route if they want to email or talk to a customer service agent.