On-demand: How to scale delightful customer experiences with self-service support

Thanks so much everyone for attending! We had some really great questions in our Q&A. We couldn’t get to all of them, so I’m reposting them here for community discussion!
 

1. How do you go further up the “support funnel” and partner with CS to help customers with self-service support? I’m thinking along the lines of the support FAQ’s and in turn CS’s training assists with proactive self-support.
2. I work for a start-up that’s an online marketplace so we have two types of users! Any recommendations for dealing with 2 separate user experiences?
3. How do you differentiate between going through the chat flow, vs a support ticket? Do you have a ticket form to get directly in touch with an agent, and then the chat bot that contains self-service (possibly with AI)? Or how do your customers know what option to take?
4. How do you balance human led vs AI led support strategies? When looking at support platforms these days, businesses like Intercom & HelpScout appear to have taken strong stances about what they think the best approach is.
5. What percentage of users actually are willing to use self service before wanting to have a human interaction to have their questions answered, users tend to be lazy and reluctant to talk with an AI bot (even though it works)

“4.) How do you balance human led vs AI led support strategies? When looking at support platforms these days, businesses like Intercom & HelpScout appear to have taken strong stances about what they think the best approach is.”

I don’t believe there is a one size fits all approach and most companies that advertise an “AI first” stance absolutely rely on human support teams under the hood.  The way that I see it is low stakes vs high stakes interactions. Low stakes = great use for AI and High stakes = keep it human.

Start by tackling the low hanging fruit of questions you know an AI bot can definitely answer and then go from there. Have a teammate go through the flow and see if felt natural or if they felt frustrated. As you scale use metrics like CES (customer effort score) to measure the effort customers go through to reach a human which will surface in the scoring and feedback.
 

Over time the human interactions are going come at a premium so you’ll want to reserve those for delivering above and beyond customer experiences.

Hope that helps!
-Kenji 

2.) I work for a start-up that’s an online marketplace so we have two types of users! Any recommendations for dealing with 2 separate user experiences?

To manage two different user experiences effectively you should identify types of users, as you’ve already done. You could then categorize them, for example by creating separate inboxes for your two different user types. This can help to streamline communication and ensure that the correct team is helping the correct users.

Next I’d recommend using automation features like auto-tagging, custom fields for additional user information, and specialized workflows. You can tailor these to your user groups, ensuring that each type receives the appropriate level of support and service. For example, Auto-Tagging via rules can automatically categorize incoming conversations based on specific criteria such as keywords or user attributes. For example, creating a tag for "Buyer" or "Seller" to easily differentiate the type of user.

I hope this helps as a starting off point! 🙂

Best, 

Naomi O. 

3. How do you differentiate between going through the chat flow, vs a support ticket? Do you have a ticket form to get directly in touch with an agent, and then the chat bot that contains self-service (possibly with AI)? Or how do your customers know what option to take?

For Front, only customers on our Scale & Premier plans get access to live chat. By default, when they click their in-app chat widget, they are brought through the chat bot flow. Our hope is that they’ll be able to self-serve through that, and if not, an agent will pick it up and reply. All other inquiries are done through our form/email, and an agent will respond. Our customers only have access to the support that comes with their plan. We also push self-service by embedding documentation links in the app.

I hope that helps! LMK if you there are any follow-up questions!

Cori

1. How do you go further up the “support funnel” and partner with CS to help customers with self-service support? I’m thinking along the lines of the support FAQ’s and in turn CS’s training assists with proactive self-support.

First, I’d recommend using the data available to you (i.e. support tickets, tagging data, customer feedback) to help identify common issues, which you can then use to develop comprehensive, user-friendly FAQs/KB (Knowledge Base). 

Once this is in place, establish a feedback loop where the team can suggest updates/new content for the FAQs/KB based on interactions with customers. Conduct regular training sessions with the CS team to ensure their familiarity with the latest self-serve tools and resources to enable them to guide customers more effectively.

Finally, encourage your customers to use the self-service tools by highlighting the benefits (i.e. faster resolution times), and actively seek feedback from them as well.

This should give you a solid foundation for the team assisting with proactive self-support. I hope that answered the question but please let me know if you were looking for something different, we’re always happy to help!

Anthony