T H E A G E N T ’ S

S T A R T E R K I T T O

E F F I C I E N T

C U S T O M E R S U P P O R T

Introduction

Streamline how you work

1.1 Where do I begin?

1.2 What do I do when I’m stuck on a question I don’t know the answer to?

1.3 How can I avoid switching between so many tools for the information I need?

Work quickly and effectively

2.1 Is there a way I can save time on repetitive tasks?

2.2 How can I communicate with my customers quicker?

2.3 Why do I feel chained to my desk?

Work better, together

3.1 Can working with other teams be made simpler?

3.2 How can I take advantage of my team’s collective effort?

Conclusion

01

02

09

16

21

CONTENTS

01

To the outside world, customer suppor t

agents are the face of any business. They

influence how people perceive brands and

are directly responsible for the retention and

churn rates for any organization.

This is not an easy responsibility to shoulder, especially if you’re new to the industry.

There are so many things to learn, so many people to help, and so little time.

This starter kit was designed with that in mind.

Set yourself up for success by simplifying your work.

S T R E A M L I N E H O W

Y O U W O R K

03

Where do I begin?

As a support agent, figuring out where best to begin your work each day is not

an easy task. Everything seems important, requiring immediate attention.

So the question is, how do you prioritize your work when all of it looks

important?

Getting started

Much of what will help you prioritize has to do with the nature and/or the

status of the issue. Here are some basic parameters that will help you plan

your day better and make prioritization simple.

Being par t of a suppor t team can feel

over whelming. It requires familiarizing

yourself with a new product or ser vice,

work flows, new teammates, and an endless

list of new things.

Sort your tickets according to their due-by times

Support teams usually have policies to determine the

due-by time or the SLA of every incoming support

request, depending on the type of issue or the

channel through which it was raised. This timeframe,

being self-explanatory, will let you sort through your

support inbox in the most efficient way possible.

04

The prioritization matrix

Using the relevant parameters, you can

determine the urgency and importance of any

issue and slot it into the Eisenhower matrix.

This method of prioritization will help you

visualize your workload better and help you

work faster.

As part of a regular support workflow, every ticket

in your helpdesk will be tagged with a priority that is

meant to reflect the importance and urgency of an issue.

These tags are one of the quickest ways to organize

your work in the order that makes the most sense. By

structuring your work this way, you can ensure that

you solve every issue assigned to you well in time.

Order issues by ticket priority

Assess the mood of the customer and identify the urgency

When dealing with angry customers, timely resolutions are

not just advisable but absolutely necessary. Such issues, that

require deft handling, will factor into how you plan your day.

Be it a customer response, an internal or 3rd party

update, or any activity that affects the tickets

you’re responsible for, you need to stay on top of

things and prioritize your actions accordingly.

Keep yourself up to date with the activity on your tickets

High

Low

Urgency

Impo

rtan

ce

Low

High

05

What do I do when I’m stuck on a question I don’t

know the answer to?

Planning out your day simplifies how you choose what to work on next, but

there might come a time when you hit a wall and can’t proceed further.

When a support query has you stumped, how can you learn to resolve it

and better equip yourself for similar situations in the future?

Looking in the right places

No matter how difficult a question is, odds are you’ll be able to find an answer

in your helpdesk. Your helpdesk is a wealth of information that you can tap

into at any time to become independent as a support agent, and be well on

your way to getting rid of your training wheels.

Make use of knowledge repositories

As helpdesks grow, support agents internally document and

curate answers to common questions that have cropped up

over time for easy reference. These bases of knowledge prove

to be invaluable resources when you’re looking for answers.

You instantly understand the entire context

surrounding any given issue, letting you answer

difficult questions clearly and comprehensively.

06

Learn from past interactions of seasoned agents

If there hasn’t been enough precedence for an issue

to be documented but you’re sure it has happened

before, look for it in your helpdesk. Search for it,

and see how the assigned agent handled it.

If it’s not a specific issue but a broader type of issue

that you need help with, use filters to narrow down your

search results and see what has been done by more

experienced agents in the past. This way, you learn

enough to smoothly resolve interactions with customers

irrespective of whether you’ve found a solution.

The rulebook for dealing with customer frustration

If you can’t solve a customer’s issue in time because you’re stuck, the first

thing to remember is to not panic. In case you’re faced with frustrated

customer, here are a few things you should keep in mind.

• Keep a level head

• Hear the customer out patiently

• Don’t take anything personally

• Empathize actively

• Apologize gracefully, but don’t grovel

• Endeavor to find a solution (ask someone else if you have to)

• Step away for a few minutes to calm yourself down

07

How can I avoid switching between so many tools

for the information I need?

You can’t effectively utilize all the information you have access to if you have

to keep switching between countless tools and applications to get it. Studies

show that multitasking can prove detrimental to speedy work and what you

actually end up doing is switching between tasks.

Now, the costs of switching are high and they add up over time. So how

can you make sure you don’t fall prey to the vicious cycle of constant

switching and lost time?

Bringing your support into one place

All the information in the world won’t help you if you can’t get to it when you

need it. Consolidating all facets of your work is the surest way to guarantee

that nothing is lost in translation.

The cost of switching

According to a University of California-Irvine study, regaining our initial

momentum following an interruption can take, on average, upwards of

20 minutes.

08

Going over to another tab to check your notifications via

email is a distraction that is far more costly than it seems.

Fewer distractions mean faster and simpler operation; so

ensure you get your notifications right within your helpdesk.

Don’t leave your helpdesk for notifications

Unify how you access customer information

Instead of switching to CRMs for customer details, payment

gateways for transaction statuses and so on, make use of

the integrations your helpdesk is likely to have and bring

all this data under one roof - right where you need it.

Use a single platform to support customers

Be it anything from an email to a tweet, you should

be using the versatile capabilities of your helpdesk

to respond to queries uniformly and in one place,

rather than using different tools and applications.

W O R K Q U I C K LY

A N D E F F E C T I V E LY

Equip yourself to tackle requests as quickly as they come in.

10

Is there a way I can save time on repetitive tasks?

If the work you do starts feeling monotonous, the morale slump ends up taking

a toll on you. It might not be noticeable at first, but it can eventually lead

to a drop in the quality of your customer interactions or even burnout.

Dodging the grunt work

Irrespective of the variety of requests you might be handling, some will be

alike, requiring similar actions or almost identical responses. But you don’t

have to repeat all of them individually every single time.

Once you star t to feel like you know what

you’re doing, the nex t question you should be

asking is whether you’re taking longer about

it than you need to.

Don’t type out the same replies over and over again

When multiple customers raise issues that need the

same response (a refund request for instance), create

or use existing canned responses on your helpdesk

that you can insert with a couple of clicks.

If your helpdesk can suggest articles for you to use

in response, then great! But even simply looking for

an article yourself and attaching its link or inserting

its content into your reply will drastically cut down

the time you spend resolving each such query.

11

Use templates to bypass entering information manually

Avoid updating tickets individually

Using ticket templates set up by your helpdesk’s admin

will not only eliminate the excessive manual creation

and entry of tickets, but will also ensure that the

information logged in your helpdesk is consistent.

Clearing out a bulk of the requests in your queue, then

selecting and changing the statuses of multiple tickets all

at once is a much faster way to go about updating them.

If after responding to a customer you need to change

or update attributes of the ticket, instead of going over

every field you should set up automations to complete

all tasks to be performed with a single click.

You should also set up rote tasks like assignments,

categorization, email notifications or escalations

to be automated clearly so that multiple routine

actions can be carried out with ease.

Automate what you can

Metrics to watch out for

Here are some numbers that agents can keep an eye on to gauge how

efficiently they’re working.

First response time - The time taken to send the first response to a

customer request

First contact resolution - The number of requests resolved with just one

interaction

Average resolution time - The average time taken to resolve an issue

12

How can I communicate with

my customers quicker?

Conveying your point to the customer shouldn’t take longer than it has to.

Using the right tools and media to enhance the way you communicate

will ensure there is no disconnect.

Bridging the gap

Time being as crucial as it is in support situations, you’ll be best served if you

minimize the time you take to explain solutions. To help you do that, you need

to capitalize on the tools you can leverage to improve how you communicate.

Employ visual aids

Using all the visual collateral at your disposal - screenshots

and recordings, GIFs, videos, presentations and so on - is the

best way to ensure you’re providing the most comprehensive

and the quickest possible resolution for your customers.

13

Tools to enhance the way you communicate

Awesome Screenshot - Screenshots and recordings

Ezgif.com - Create GIFs easily

Zoom - Video conferencing, screen-sharing and remote access

If a customer agrees to grant you remote access

to their system, you can step in and fix whatever

was troubling them in an instant, potentially

saving you countless hours in the long run.

Sharing your screen with a customer as you demonstrate

the solution to their problem makes sure that they

immediately understand what needs to be done and are also

equipped to deal with it should the issue crop up again.

Eliminate back-and-forth

14

Why do I feel chained to my desk?

Helpdesks today are usually on the cloud. This means accessing them is

easier than it used to be during the age of on-premise software. But do I

still need to find access to a desktop or laptop computer to be able to

support on the go?

Stepping away

Be it on your commute to work or when when you’re in the field, keeping track

of your tickets can be rather difficult when you’re away from your desk. But

helpdesks usually have mobile apps that you can take with you.

Take your helpdesk with you

Stay on top of things even when on the move

Just about any functionality that your helpdesk has on

the web will likely be present in its app version as well.

You can simply login on your phone and do everything you

would on your laptop - from responding to tickets and

taking calls to answering chats and composing emails.

If you’re logged in to your helpdesk on your phone, you

can use it to stay up-to-date with all the activity on

your tickets without having to even go near a laptop

or a computer. The notifications from the mobile

app will make sure you’re never caught off guard

and are always putting your best foot forward.

15

For the best mobile support...

Using a mobile app to support shouldn’t mean having to compromise on

functionality.

• Mobile dashboard - get a summary of your work

• Collaborate - share tickets instantly across any apps you use

• Collision alerts - avoid conflicts by knowing when someone else is

working on the same ticket

• Customer details - access customer information without leaving the app

• Time tracking - record time entries and view timesheet reports

W O R K B E T T E R ,

T O G E T H E R

Collaborate both within your team and across functions to provide the best customer experience possible.

17

Can working with other teams be made simpler?

Inherently, customer support has a lot of dependencies. If there’s a bug, you

need a developer to fix it. If a delivery is late, you need to follow up with the

delivery team or partner. Then why is collaboration so convoluted and the

primary cause of delays?

Working as team

The way workflows have traditionally been structured, working with other

teams on support - be it internal or 3rd parties - is nothing short of a

nightmare. This is especially true when a support request involves any form

of reassignment or delegation, or simply needs more than one head to solve

the issue.

A suppor t team is of ten looked at as

an island, isolated from the rest of the

organization. The larger mistake here is to

assume that agents can suppor t customers

without the help of other depar tments.

18

Reaching out for help when you’re stuck, or simply discussing

something in a ticket shouldn’t take you out of your helpdesk

and make you lose context. Using an internal medium to

communicate will not only reduce your resolution times but

also make your responses more savvy and comprehensive.

Reach who you need to instantly

If more than one agent needs to come together to solve a

request, share the ticket instead of reassigning it so that you

still retain access.

Avoid reassignments

When a complex issue requiring multiple actions is reported,

break it down into actionable tickets and work on them

parallely with others on your team.

Split large issues

Provide consistent support

Link and track similar issues (like feature requests, bug reports

or outages) across your helpdesk so that when there’s a

relevant update, the replies you provide to all your customers

are timely and uniform no matter who the assigned agent is.

19

How can I take advantage of my team’s

collective effort?

What is often overlooked is the wisdom that a support team amasses over

time - very little of it is put to use in everyday scenarios. Applied properly, the

work done over time by a support team as a whole can be an invaluable

asset in each agent’s arsenal.

Knowing what your team is up to

Even if your team isn’t remote, it’s no easy thing to be aware of everyone on

your team and their activities. But making the effort to keep up with your

team and making use of their combined output can pay off immensely.

You shouldn’t lose any time solving issues that a coworker

is already taking care of. Let your helpdesk alert you if

you’re duplicating work that’s already been/being done so

that you don’t confuse customers with multiple responses,

or much worse, contradicting ones.

Don’t work on issues that are already being worked on

20

Tips for teamwork

Collaborative support teams see up to a 32% decrease in resolution times.

Here are a few tips that will help you foster better teamwork.

• Share knowledge and learnings regularly across the team

• Add notes for your team on tickets and customer profiles for more

complete context

• Build communities and use internal communication platforms

• Integrate people from other teams into support squads for

comprehensive expertise

21

The key to doing the best work in customer

suppor t is to understand what customers

expect from you. You can meet and exceed

their expectations by adopting the right tools

and processes in your quest to iteratively

improve your suppor t based on feedback

from your customers.

We hope this guide helps you navigate the waters of customer support

better. Though the work is intense, the truly great agents do it because they

want to make a difference and genuinely enjoy making people’s lives easier.

Freshdesk is a helpdesk software from Freshworks that is suitable for

businesses of all sizes to deliver exceptional customer support.

If you’d like to extend this conversation, reach out to us at love@freshdesk.com

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