Live Support Optimization Techniques

Here’s the roadmap for the first 90 days as a Customer Support leader: 1️⃣ Quantitative Support Analysis - Identify all areas where support resources are being misallocated or wasted. This might include overstaffed low-value channels, inefficient workflows, or poor escalation management. Re-allocate those resources to high-impact areas (eg. FCR) - Audit and optimize reporting systems to ensure clean, actionable data. Close gaps in ticket categorization, response time tracking, and CSAT/NPS data. 2️⃣ Qualitative Feedback from Customers AND Agents 🙋 Customer Perspective: - Conduct qualitative interviews with your top 10 happiest customers and your top 10 most dissatisfied customers. Unpack what drives satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) in their interactions with support. Spot trends and root causes in the support journey. - Shadow at least 5 live support interactions per week across channels (email, chat, phone) to identify recurring customer needs and operational friction points. 🧑💻 Agent Perspective: - Run qualitative interviews with your support agents. Ask them: * What are the most frustrating tools or workflows you deal with daily? * Which processes cause unnecessary delays or duplicate work? * What changes would make it easier for you to deliver great support? - Observe how agents use your support tools during live interactions. Look for inefficiencies like switching between too many platforms, unclear documentation, or delays in accessing customer context. 3️⃣ Quick Wins to Drive Impact Within 90 Days - Improve ticket routing and prioritization to ensure that critical issues are handled faster and by the right team. Many support teams leave SLAs unmet simply due to poor routing logic. - Simplify the self-service experience. Review and update your KB content to make it more reflective of the questions customers actually ask. - Streamline internal handoff processes between support tiers or other teams like product and engineering. Reduce resolution time by eliminating unnecessary back-and-forths. - Create an agent empowerment program. Provide quick wins for agents by removing common blockers, like slow systems or overly complicated approval processes. An empowered team = faster resolutions. - Highlight support’s wins. Build a repository of customer stories where support played a key role in success. Share these stories internally to drive alignment with sales, product, and customer success. 4. Set the Right Expectations Many companies expect a new support leader to focus solely on efficiency (e.g., reducing costs or ticket volume) in the first 30 days. This often backfires, leading to burnout, poor team morale, and degraded customer experience. Instead, focus on building the foundation: improving workflows, understanding customers AND agents deeply, and optimizing the team’s ability to drive meaningful resolutions. 💡 What’s your go-to strategy for the first 90 days in a new support role? 💪

I recently sat down with the former VP of Global Customer Support at a $5B org. While there, she cut ticket volume by 25%. I asked her how she did it - and I'm shocked more CX leaders aren't doing the same. BACKGROUND Emily Ebersole, Customer Success Exec was the VP of Global Customer Support at Zapier. She helped reimagine customer support at the org, introducing live chat, automation, and AI - en route to slashing ticket volume by 25% while maintaining a completely flat headcount. But none of this happened with the flip of a switch. Most CX leaders either try to reinvent the wheel all at once or are paralyzed by the thought of innovating their processes. Both lead you to the same place: a dead-end. Instead, Emily took a fundamentally simple yet completely overlooked approach: She focused on one thing first, mastered it, then moved onto the next. First, she optimized for self-service by linking help articles to a contact form that led to a 15% decrease in ticket volumes. Then she made changes to their free user support, which cut another 10% of tickets. With more time and space available, she and her team then, and only then, tackled live chat by reworking the team structure and allocating more people toward high-value service offerings. Only their highest-paying customers had access to live chat to start - ensuring her team could handle the workload while making sure customers would get real value from it. Once proven out, they expanded live chat to mid-tier customers. And then, boom - generative AI hit the masses. Instead of waiting around to see what may or may not be possible with it, Emily and her team dove in head-first to experiment and see how it could help with support. In short order, a team member created a self-serve tool with ChatGPT and embedded it inside of Zendesk. Soon after, they scaled this tool throughout the support organization to drive further efficiency within their operations. TAKEAWAY If you want to improve customer support, you can't boil the ocean. You'll get nowhere fast. But if you isolate one area and optimize it, you gain the momentum, time, and space necessary to move onto another area and do the same. And when you get into the habit of doing this, you not only drive improvement in efficiency and effectiveness - you set yourself up to be ready to act quickly when a massive opportunity (like generative AI) comes along. I recently spoke about this with Emily Ebersole, Customer Success Exec on the CX Innovation Playbook Podcast. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

3 in every 4 customers believe it takes too long to reach a live agent. Now imagine being able to deliver service and helping customers twice as fast as your competition. That's a serious competitive advantage. Here’s how you can make it happen 👇 1. Implement a call-back system to free customers from the frustration of waiting. 2. Use AI-powered chatbots to reduce the load on your team and speed up response time. 3. Equip your team with comprehensive training to handle inquiries more efficiently. In a world where speed is key, imagine not just meeting but exceeding customer expectations. By implementing these strategies, you're not just cutting wait times. You're crafting an unparalleled customer experience.