Avoiding the Need for an Undo Button

Sometimes in customer experience, everything goes according to plan. You have your pre-meeting call. You discuss previously opened cases/tickets, and you review the customer’s background and concerns. You research and know who’s going to be on a call, what they do, and why they’ve joined a particular company. You lay out a script, not necessarily a step-by-step document, but a general outline of the points you want to make, the concerns you want to address, the things you want to highlight about your company’s value and benefits, and how you want to go about troubleshooting and resolving the problem. Sometimes you get a case and you are able to match up what they are experiencing with the resolution in real time, or in a quick time, or in a simple amount of time, and your response is straightforward to the point and resolves the issue.

But there are other times when you wish you had an undo button. You wish you had a button to undo the things that went wrong. So here’s a list of 6 things you can do to minimize the need for an undo button.

1. Being prepared
Being unprepared is a dangerous thing in CX. That’s something that can happen to everyone unless you are intentional. Perhaps John and James, the sons of Thunder, are out sick, Matthew is on another call, and the other James is on MTO. A new case rolls in, and you immediately jump on the call and find yourself stuck. In your zeal to join the calls and pitch in with the team, you didn’t do enough research ahead of time. Being unprepared can be costly in terms of customer impression, lost time, and reduced customer confidence. In order to prevent the need to hit the undo button, take time to get prepared before the call. This preparation should include the minimum customer research via your CRM tool, background research on the case, ticket, or issue in question, a keyword search within your documentation and solution, and other items defined by your team’s best practices.

2. Make sure the customer is prepared
It is extremely important to make sure that you and your team are prepared for the call, but it is equally important to make sure the customer is prepared for the call too. Be sure to notify the customer about potential prerequisites for the call. For example, be sure to notify the customer if they will need to share their screen, use a specific tool for the meeting, collect and provide data, or have specific OS, application, database, or hypervisor permissions or certain team members available. This will help both the customer and support use their time efficiently.

3. Practicing intentionality to avoid wayward words
Wayward words are a big one. Wayward words occur anytime you begin rambling, or you get angry or anxious, or you become fearful and afraid, and instead of having intentional words that move you towards resolution or closure, you use words that introduce doubt, that cause additional concern. Examples of wayward words include speculating that an issue is a product defect, without substantiated details, oversharing internal information, and overpromising. Wayward words open up the possibility to the customer that you truly haven’t resolved their issue. Wayward words can be eliminated by research and preparation, but also by practicing intentionality. That means staying focused in the moment, being intentional with what you say, instead of being casual, being comfortable with silence, and being okay that a customer isn’t speaking or that you aren’t speaking for a few seconds. Now, that doesn’t mean having two minutes on a call where no one says anything. If you’ve reached a point where there’s nothing else to be said, kindly restate the call agenda, identify the current status of the case, and bring it to a close. Don’t be afraid to say that you don’t know the answer to a question the customer asks and that you will find out the answer and get back to them.

4. Set an agenda
Yes, it’s an emergency. Yes, it’s critical, and the customer’s system, network, or account is offline. Or perhaps they are blocked, and they have a very short timeline. With James on MTO and the others occupied, you do your research and jump on the call, straight from hello into solving the problem or resolving the issue. As a result, you find yourself jumping from issue to issue, item to item, question to question, and person to person, addressing items. In fact, you end up going through each phase of the call at such a rapid pace that it is infinitely harder for you, or them, to do the closing step. So here’s a tip: rather than having to undo later. Start each call with a brief agenda.
a. Name the issue – On today’s call, we will be working to resolve . Provide details about the nature of the issue reported. Seek to confirm that this is the issue in question.
b. Introduce the people – Name the people that are on the call with you from your role. Allow the customer to give introductions of anyone who is on the call from their side. This can also help you with your preparation or with your approach. For example, if you discover that someone handling the call is different from what you originally researched or expected, then you should prepare yourself to be flexible, adequately identify who they are and why they have joined, and plan to ensure you understand and are addressing their particular needs and concerns.
c. Identify additional issues – Confirm the issue in step a, but ask the customer if there are other issues that need to be covered. Recently, our team joined a call where a customer had an issue with configuring our software. The call was very technical in nature, with a specific target and proposed resolution. During this phase of the agenda, a project manager interjected that they also wanted to understand how to meet their tight deadline, handle cutover (go-live activities), and what additional services were available for purchase.
d. Define the approach – On today’s call, we are going to perform what specific actions and how. Bonus points if you can refer back to information shared before the call. For example, Mary, please refer to the case notes where we defined the prerequisites for today’s meeting. We will confirm those actions and proceed to cover the steps outlined in the case to achieve the desired resolution.
e. Confirm agreement – Confirm with the participants that their needs are being met.
f. Close out – Be sure to close things out at the end (see more below)

5. Take notes
During the case or call, be sure to take notes. Particularly in emergency situations, with a lot of moving parts and anxious people, keeping notes is vital. A good set of notes helps avoid forgetting important details, keeps track of additional issues, and questions. As you take your notes, capture important key points, open questions, new insights, or additional information, requests for the customer, to-do items, and actions that need to be taken on both sides.

6. Execute the closing
Being prepared and intentional, as well as having a strong agenda, are foundational to a great call. They can also help prevent the need to hit the undo button. However, if you have these three components but forget to execute the right closing, it can still leave you feeling like you failed. Here are a few things to do to properly close the call.
a. Restate the original intent of the call.
b. Summarize what has been done on the call. Bonus points: tie your summary to the agenda.
c. Restate the value that you’ve provided and how you’ve resolved or will resolve their problem. Even if the call does not go according to plan, be sure to emphasize how the case or call was productive in other ways, such as:
i. Increased understanding
ii. More clarity
iii. Additional debug or troubleshooting information
iv. Potential product improvements
v. Progress towards a workable solution
d. Ask for any final questions or concerns. Identify any next steps and actions
e. Communicate how those next steps and actions will be shared with the team.
f. Remind the team of where they can find all the notes and information for the call. That means telling the customer what their case number is, how to find the case emails, and that they should look out for an email.
g. Ensuring that they have access to the ticketing system.
h. Let them know potential timelines. If the case is closed, let them know that you’ll be closing the case. If the case was not resolved, let them know when you intend to provide a reply and response.

We’ve all had the call that we wish we could take back. Taking these steps can help reduce the number of times you feel like hitting the undo button, running and hiding, or feeling like you need to polish off the resume.