2019 Customer Service Toolkit: Best Practices Guide and Tips

Whether you’re a 40 person startup or a 10,000+ person global enterprise, there are actionable steps that you can take to level up your customer service strategy — and this 2019 Customer Service Toolkit provides the guidance and next steps for doing just that.

This resource provides strategic and tactical suggestions that organizations at any stage can implement. For some, next steps may consist of integrating scalable infrastructure such as automated ticket classification and routing, while for others, next steps may consist of investing in AI-powered auto-triage and bot-based messaging. Use this 2019 Customer Service Toolkit to determine where you are today, what next steps you can take to level up, and what your long-term vision should be for developing a best-in-class customer support organization.

Where you are, where you’re going, and where the world is headed

According to a recent Helpshift survey, over 50 percent of consumers give American customer service a “C” rating or below. This will have serious ramifications for brands in 2019, as customers who have positive user experiences spend 140 percent more compared to those who had poor experiences. It’s imperative that business leaders recognize the impact of customer service on their company’s bottom line, and take measures to level up their strategies accordingly.

The first step to ensuring that you start achieving “A” rated support is taking honest and frequent stock of where your customer service strategy is today. This is why a benchmark survey is the first asset provided in the toolkit.

This 2019 Customer Service Toolkit evaluates your support organization’s:

Support channels and team workspaces
Knowledge management (FAQs and ticket deflection)
Workflow management
Analytics and reporting

Based on your results for each of these categories, the Customer Service Toolkit provides an evaluation, next steps, and continued reading suggestions to help you support both your team and your customers in the best way possible. Depending on where you land, your next step may be one the following:

Getting started with messaging-based customer service
Building simple bots and automations (with and interactive worksheet)
Incorporating bots and artificial intelligence throughout your operations

It’s important to note, however, that revamping your customer service team is about more than just investing in technology. It’s also about investing in agent training and workflows to optimize the use of that new technology.

This is particularly important for teams that are just beginning to invest in messaging-based support strategies. Agents can be grouped by geographic location, function (Operations, Billing, Fraud, etc.), skills, or language. This ensures that issues are routed to and resolved by the most qualified agent as quickly as possible.

Once agents are strategically grouped, make sure to pencil in robust training time to help agents get acquainted with new dashboards, interaction etiquette, and expectations. As customer service as an industry becomes more and more technology-dependent, it’s crucial that support teams are up-to-date and trained on the latest tools and interfaces.

With a strong foundation, the rest is easy

After working through the initial stages of support through this toolkit, you’ll be ready to deploy generic bots, build custom bots, and integrate AI into the full customer journey. This may sound daunting, but in fact it is one of the simplest steps in the entire toolbox. By the time you’re ready for bots and AI, you’ll already have a robust foundation. At that point, you just need to layer the latest technology on top of it.

This toolkit includes foundational knowledge, actionable instructions, and customizable worksheets to help you build bots, use bots, and integrate bots with AI and agent interactions throughout the customer journey.

Download the Helpshift 2019 Customer Service Toolkit for worksheets and step by step readings on how to push your customer service strategy into the new year, using the best technology available today.

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