It happens all too often. Support calls end up taking way longer than they should—either because it takes forever to ask enough questions to narrow down the actual problem, or because sometimes the customer just isn’t that tech-savvy.
There are all kinds of reasons why a company might want to reduce support call times. Shorter calls are less frustrating for customers, less mind-draining for agents, and mean shorter queues for others calling in.
So how can you shorten support call times?
1. Skip the game of 20 questions.
Your agents likely ask a lot of questions before they get to the root of a customer’s problem. What’s the router model number? The modem? How many devices connected? The list goes on—and if the customer needs clarification or guidance on any of them, the minutes are going to disappear.
The ideal solution would be to skip the questions altogether. And to do that, you’ll need to have a network diagnostics solution in place that can run and retrieve all the answers for agents before they have to ask.
2. Help customers show, not tell.
We all know the saying: A picture’s worth a thousand words. Nowhere is that truer than on a support call! Instead of enduring complicated explanations that may or may not help agents see in their mind’s eye what the customer is seeing, look into ways to help them see it with their own eyes.
For example, solutions like LiveView can cut down on talking time by allowing customers to share pictures and live video directly with the support agent. That way, the agent can see for themselves what might be happening with the customer’s network—and they might spot something they wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.
3. Give agents the power to test and make changes...
Sometimes, agents just can’t get the answers they need from a customer, or the customer doesn’t know their way around a command prompt. And for those situations, it’s helpful for the agent to be able to go in and make the changes themselves.
When that happens, make sure your agents have access to a trusted tool that can help them gain direct insight into the customer’s home network. That way, they can see for themselves what’s happening, and can sometimes skip the questions process altogether!
4. ...but avoid remote-access installations wherever possible.
Remote-access solutions made WiFi problems much simpler to resolve than, say, a truck roll—but sometimes, even that can hit a bump in the road. Maybe it’s taking too long to guide the customer through a complete download and installation; maybe their home computer can’t even run the software once it’s downloaded.
Instead, try looking for a solution that lets you either limit installations to a super-simple process like downloading from a phone’s app store, or even using a web browser.
Hint: That’s exactly how RouteThis works! Get the details on that here.
5. Give customers ways to solve problems themselves.
This might seem a little like the low-hanging fruit of cutting down call times. After all, if customers can solve their own problems, they won’t call in as much—and aren’t all calls that don’t happen automatically shorter? But hear us out.
It’s not uncommon for us to hear from our users that when they have self-service support options for customers, even the calls that still happen don’t take as long. That’s because the customer has already done a scan to find any initial problems—and the RouteThis app shares that information with the support agent on the call, so they can skip all the back and forth and just get right to a solution.