How to never make a VIP customer wait

You’re a busy support leader with a team to manage and KPIs to meet. Up and to the right is a series that focuses on simple, actionable tips you can use right now to meet your goals.

For most companies, providing 24/7 support just isn’t an option. So what happens when a VIP customer has a question during off-hours and you need to contact your engineer who’s out of the office?

You might not be able to afford to staff support all day, every day, you definitely cannot afford to disappoint your most important customers.

The solution lies in taking the time to organize your support infrastructure for just this type of scenario. Instead of a ticket sitting unopened through the weekend, it can be automatically routed to a special queue and while an email notification appears on your engineer’s phone. And if the ticket isn’t responded to in a timely manner, it can be automatically escalated for further visibility. This can all be done with a just a few pieces of functionality: triggers and automations.

Many support leaders already know about triggers and automations. But how many of you explored the extent of what these powerful tools can do to make life even easier for you and your team?

Wait, what are these again?
In a nutshell, triggers and automations are both business rules that can be used to complete ticket actions autonomously. What’s the difference between the two? Triggers act immediately after a ticket has been updated, while automations usually have a time-delay component involved.

Here’s a quick comparison: would you like an email notification to go out to a group after a ticket has been assigned to them? A trigger can do that. Do you want another notification to go out to that same group if they haven’t updated the ticket after a day has passed? That’s an automation! These business rules can automate basic and administrative tasks for your team so your agents can focus on what matters most – helping customers.

Where to start?
Automations and triggers have the potential to get complex very quickly, so don’t feel like you need to jump right into the deep end and immediately start creating them-identifying potential candidate areas for automation is half of the battle.

As an exercise, consider asking your team to assist you in writing down how they currently see your ticket process functioning. Then ask the room some leading questions-for example, are there ticket fields that need to be to set? Are there tags to add that would assist with searching or reporting? The answers could identify operations where triggers and automations could work for you.

Of course, once you identify a potential process to automate, it’s also important to ask: should this happen automatically? If the answer is only “maybe,” start without the automated solution-you can always add it back in later.

Intro to the Deep End

Triggers and automations are a powerful way to affect how you interact with tickets. Don’t miss out on what they can do for you! Learn more about triggers and automations in our help center.