The Six Must-Haves for a World-Class Support Operation
How to stack your tech-stack
I’ve been quite the software/tool procurement expert these days. Despite feeling like I am deep in the throes of demos, negotiations, approvals, more negotiations and 3 page long write-ups, I can’t help but reflect on the incredibly-positive impact some of these decisions have had on our CX operations here at Calendly.
Our Support team is high-functioning, world-class and (slowly becoming) famous for the experience we provide. That is 90% due to the incredible team and passionate managers. However, 10% of our success can be attributed to our tech stack, fully loaded.
Let’s get into it:
1. Stella Connect— Customer Satisfaction + Resolution Rate. I’ve written about them before and I’ll likely do it again. I’m a huge advocate of Stella Connect and what it’s done for the operations, morale and work-flow of my team.
To me, CSAT is the most indicative KPI to measure. You can experiment all year long with different targets for response time, requester-wait-time, and time-to-full-resolution, but the numbers you are aiming for are arbitrary unless backed by the measured results of that experience. Stella Connect allows my team to work hard and get real-time, genuine responses from the customers they are interacting with. It allows an engaging and simple opportunity for our customers to provide incredibly helpful and specific feedback. No limit to “yes, I’m satisfied” or “No, I’m not satisfied” but instead, a scale to allow for the in-between feedback that is incredibly crucial.
2. Solvvy Inc. — Self-Service and Deflection. Solvvy and I went through the ringer. We did a lot of data analysis and needed a lot of proof of their concept, but their team was amazing at working with us to get us what we needed to move forward.
At Calendly, we want to make self-service as easy and accessible as possible for our users. We believe in a tool and an experience that takes the work out of connecting with others so you can accomplish more. Solvvy is a tool that steps in front of a user attempting to contact support and intelligently recommends answers before allowing them to do so. One last chance for self-service. It doesn’t just pop the article link in their face either, by the way. Instead, they use Machine Learning to provide actual snippets of information directly from the articles for a smooth and seamless experience. We’ve recently added this modal into our app, so all Calendly users have access to our Help Resources with the click of a small blue icon. Since we’ve rolled this out (only 7 days) we’ve seen a 103% increase in Instant Resolutions. This means that of all the users that click into the Solvvy modal to ask a question, now over 50% of them are finding their answers and not creating a support request. (Previously it was about 20%.) As the software continues to learn from the interactions with our users, it gets better and smarter at providing them the answers they need. Huge win!
3. Zendesk Enterprise — Ticketing. Ah, Zendesk. To be frank, (and my team at Zendesk knows I feel this way), Zendesk hurts sometimes. They have the V1 of everything you can think of, everything you might need to operate properly, but sometimes it feels like they don’t have it all the way. A jack of all trades, but a master of most? But of course, you are almost most critical of the thing you can’t live without. Zendesk has been good to us and continues to work with us to be better.
We just recently moved over to Zendesk Enterprise. With this, we’ve been able to utilize some of their tools that will allow us to scale our team and stay connected to our customers simultaneously. We use ticket tags to appropriately categorize each interaction, Service Level Agreement qualifications to keep on top of promised response times, triggers to create leads in Salesforce or assign open tickets for agents on PTO, and much more. The insights tool allows us access into almost all of our reporting as generally as tickets solved or as granularly as international volume by time of day. With Zendesk Enterprise, we just implemented a V1 of their conditional fields tool, allowing our customers to provide more information about their issue upfront, hopefully making our responses even more thorough and reducing the back and forth. We also have begun taking advantage of multiple brands, to allow us to create a second Zendesk instance for internal ticketing. We use live chat, automations and much more. A ticketing software/CRM is an absolutely necessity for support organizations - just make sure you understand the needs of your department and that this tool can make those things easier for you.
TBH, I’ve been recently intrigued by Kustomer, a CRM platform that positions itself as a mixture of customer-centric CRM experience and easy to create automations for “personalized, efficient and effortless customer service.” It shows you the entire lifecycle of your customer, from all channels and helps to automate your business needs from start to finish. I’ll be keeping an eye on them as our team grows.
4.Trello/Confluence — product feedback + department broadcasts. I have always loved Trello, as making lists and moving things off of them is essentially the blood running through my veins. However, I’ve been recently (maybe a year ago) introduced to Confluence, an Atlassian product as well, that has made the other fiber of my being (creating detailed write-ups and reports) incredibly easy.
Every Monday, using a Confluence blog post, I compile a high level weekly review on what the team has been up to. Important metrics to be following on a weekly basis and detailed accounts of projects in flight are separated by impressive customer feedback and updates on staffing. I also used Confluence for every write-up/proposal I’ve done for all of the technologies listed above, and more. I look at, update, and move things around on Trello four times a day making sure all stakeholders are aware of any recent updates on things that are happening. A lot of my projects take time, and require the input of others, so being able to make check-lists, set deadlines and loop people into the millions of plates I’m juggling makes my day incredibly easy, and fulfilling. When that “Done” list grows and the “In Process” list shrinks, it doesn’t get better than that. *High five* *Muscle Flex*
In another fashion, we use Trello to compile, keep track of, and communicate feature requests to our Product Team. We’ve recently rolled out a Trello board divided by squad, that allows our CX Specialists to be able to coherently keep track of our users’ ideas and compile evidence of their validity. Our PM’s rely on this board, as well as communication from the Specialists embedded in their squads to understand both the detail and impact of these requests.
These two tools are imperative to your operations as there is always so much more going on (usually at the same time) than just handling support requests. You need to be moving and shaking, so stay organized!
5. Lessonly — On-boarding and internal training. Another recent software purchase alongside a great experience. Between the on-site visit and detailed on-boarding from both the Sales representative and our CSM, we’ve been working hard to roll this out internally before the end of the year.
One thing we all agree is incredibly important here at Calendly is product (and customer) knowledge across all departments. We want everyone here to be comfortable speaking to the benefits of Calendly, or different features it provides to any time of user we may encounter. We also know that we’re a bunch of smart, ambitious, self-starting individuals who do best by learning on their own time, outside of a conference room, not staring at a slide deck. Lessonly is a very intuitive, easy to follow, engaging tool that allows creators to build lessons that teach any and all things necessary to be successful in any role at any company. V1 is our user education certification, and we are working on moving our on-boarding process and manager training to Lessonly in the beginning of 2020. We’re pumped.
6. Calendly— Scheduling and customer calls. I recognize this “last but not least” tool has earned me a collective “duh!” However, I can assure you this is a genuine plug and not just because I work here. Calendly’s team is filled with top notch, driven, dedicated and passionate employees who love the product and the users. More than anything though, the tool allows for simple, worry-free connecting for all of your scheduling needs.
The CX team uses Calendly internally for offering escalated customer calls, enablement calls for certain instances of our Salesforce integration, and any other one-off request where we think screen-sharing will provide the best experience. We also use it for in-house shadowing, a program that allows Calendly employees in other departments to watch and learn from 30 min to an hour of time spent shadowing a CX specialist. This has proven to be incredibly informative in both them understanding the pain points and pointed ways in which our users ask questions about Calendly, but also to shed some light on our current process and perhaps help us improve those as well. We use it for scheduling one-off “coffee chats,” scheduling office hours, and much more. In order to easily schedule, track and make sense of your team’s availability, you need Calendly. Trust.
So there you have it: My productivity pack. My 6-layer cake. My starting line-up (and also bullpen). My Top 6 on Myspace. My must-haves for Customer Experience — but, what do I know?
