Strategies to manage difficult situations with key customers Rachael McBrearty, Alex, Ravi May 5, 2022 Previous Item Next Item The pandemic has taught us innovative ways to connect with key customers more than ever before. When an organization thinks about key customers, they also think about how we break down and understand how they serve them. Are key customers someone who brings in the share of revenue, someone who makes us more profitable? Is it simply someone bringing in a share of recurring revenue, a level of profitability we have with them, or someone that also satisfies the following: Customer lifetime value Level of influence and/or authority in the market Number of referrals they make Level of alignment and commitment to shared partnership goals Focusing on the key customer simply allows you to focus on your mission, vision, and products that will be the most influential to the overall success of your business. When we think about managing difficult situations of key customers, we try to anticipate what the challenges are. When we think of the customers, we think about them in a multifaceted way. We should also think about those key customers from a market segment perspective. We align with the customer's business process and help them set up their business rules. Every business or organization has to have a support team. An organization always needs help from the support team, not just technical issues, but just support and questions. As we know B2B software support has evolved over the last course of years, so you have to be very closely working with your product and engineering teams as well as within the support. mean you have to respond very quickly and make sure that we're listening to customers and taking their feedback and pushing it into our product team so that they can prioritize. Take some time to understand the business use case, for why the customer is requesting that feature in that functionality. Once you get the best understanding of what exactly they're trying to accomplish, think about these implementations. Even if you can't accommodate it in the immediate future, you can at least get an understanding of what they want to do. Also letting the customer know we're on it, letting them know that it's been escalated to senior leadership is super important for them knowing that we're on it and that we care. Another important factor is to Identify a broader customer requirement, when a lot of customers are reporting the same type of issues, the support team must understand what kind of tickets they are getting and why they are getting those tickets. When we do this proactively, doing that will bring up some of these things and will be helpful, this helps make your products better. Top CX Metrics: The first important metric is to do a CSAT survey for our support, and how our customers feel about the experience is super important. The other is the Practical side of the business, the relationship between support issues and retention is also a factor, look at churn, we do say it is a result of not dealing with issues properly. The third thing is for Employees, always keep the focus on a decent workload on the team. More shuffling, ups and downs in staffing due to any reason, also affects so one should be aware of these metrics and make sure that they are taking care of their employees. Best way to measure churn – Customer churn is a SaaS business metric that measures the number of customers that any business loses over a fixed time. Churn or retention is a very important part, and turn is not always attributed to lack of support necessary. We have to beat down deep in terms of what's causing the churn. There are several things that you have to look at in the churn to figure out why customers are turning. You can’t solve a customer churn problem until you’ve identified its source, so understanding Why You’re Losing Customers is an essential step. Strategies for mitigating avoidable and the unavoidable Avoidable and Unavoidable –There are other organizational challenges that people might have also that might result in churn, which we have no control over. Work with a chart of avoidable and unavoidable things. So, one of the things is how much is avoidable and unavoidable. Avoidable is what we focus on because that is something we can control. On the other hand, unavoidable are things that are beyond our control that are going to cause churns and that we have no control over. Freemium Business Model – In this digitization era, we can see a new or transforming concept of B2B or B2C. Now organizations can customize the business to use their operations with different models, like the Freemium model. With this businesses can provide Free premiums for their customers, these basic features of the products would be provided by the organization which helps customers to understand the effectiveness and quality of products or services. Once the customer downloads the product or starts using the services, determine the level of help that can be given to this customer to make sure that they're able to use it. Work on the backend, and send them information about the product or service or other help. Companies measure how much a customer wants services. When the customer evaluates products, they must see how much knowledge there is here. Finding information by hand, or self-help is more appreciated by the customers. The company should be more proactive, and able to identify the most important information that should be provided to them. So, the challenge for the companies is to be able to identify. what they need to provide to their customers more in a more proactive manner, whether it's to our knowledge center or whether companies are approaching them. So that is where the most supported model is evolving. Companies use all of the interactions and use the data to bring out the escalations. if a company sees an issue, starting to happen to be able to get in front of that, if it's something that's not new that starts to impact certain customers who have certain setups. In SAAS, it’s much easier to remotely monitor what the customer is doing. It is leveraging your solutions for the right and from a support perspective in terms of monitoring escalations. It's keeping a pulse on what sort of issues we're seeing, how frequently they're occurring and what types of subjects matter to those tickets that are coming in from these. Customers are concerned if we see a trend where a certain question is being asked more than once will surface in our CSM. Companies should escalate that and make sure they get what they need from a wider product operation perspective. It's also keeping an eye out for critical operations that are ongoing and may be affected by issues that come up. Also think sometimes about how we work with our customers, how we alert them, how we communicate with customers when we communicate, we're just not bothering them every single time, make sure that they're not overwhelmed, we have to keep that in mind that we are not the only vendor they're dealing with. Companies also focus on the training they are offering for people to deal with very difficult conversations and difficult scenarios. When a customer is upset and frustrated with an issue that they gauge is severe and critical, even if that's not the actual understanding from the support team in terms of product knowledge, Maybe it's not that severe in terms of how to fix it. But it feels like a major issue to the customer. be ready to empathize with their needs, understand their needs, but also be able to address them in a way where you understand their concern but still move them forward. make sure that your employees for troubleshooting are fully well versed on how to troubleshoot the product, and how to look into specific pieces of features. At the same time. They have to also be aware of when the threshold is to escalate an issue. Another thing that is also important in training is getting the motion down where a support agent can gather as much information about the issue as possible. Before jumping on a call with a customer. Should never jump on a call with a customer half-cocked or half prepared because that is not going to be a good customer experience. Believe in transparency, always let the customers know what the truth is, that's not hiding behind the trees. The team has to be transparent with the customers. The other thing that is very critical is it's a white box approach. Which means the customer needs to know what’s going on? Sometimes customers are not worried about or don't get annoyed by the ladle resolution, but they get annoyed because they don't know how you're resolving the issue. Customers want to know the root cause, so the support team should help and tell them about the issue and resolve the investigation process. So as we get more digital as we get smarter than able to serve up answers digitally, that has a huge opportunity to create raving fans with support.

Knowledge Intelligence with Ascendo AI

Download AI-Powered Slack Support Conquers Customer Service Chaos and Boosts Agent Productivity Breakthrough case study reveals how a high-growth SaaS company achieved 100%+ faster customer resolutions and a 100%+ productivity boost using Ascendo's AI-powered support platform within existing Slack channels. Please enter your business email ID Please enter a valid name with alphanumeiric value Drowning in Slack support chaos? As a high-growth SaaS company, you know the struggle: hundreds of channels, endless questions, overwhelmed agents. But what if Slack itself became your secret weapon? Ascendo's AI-powered platform unlocks the hidden potential of your existing Slack channels. Imagine this: Agents get instant AI support: relevant solutions, knowledge base suggestions, all within Slack's familiar flow. Lightning-fast responses: customers feel heard with under 1-minute first replies, no more ticket queue frustration. Supercharged agents: resolve issues 100% faster, freeing up time and boosting morale. Team-wide learning: Ascendo captures expert solutions, continuously improving its knowledge base for everyone. The results? The case study reveals: 300+ Slack channels tamed: transformed into efficient support hubs. Customers thrilled: exceeding expectations with lightning-fast service. Agents on fire: 100%+ productivity, empowered to excel. Ready to experience the Ascendo Advantage? Download our case study to see how AI can elevate your customer experience and unleash the full potential of your support team. Escape the chaos, unleash your team's potential, and join the Ascendo revolution today. Download now AI-Powered Slack Support Conquers Customer Service Chaos and Boosts Agent Productivity Ready to learn more? Contact Us

Junior Agent Troubleshooting a Problem to Resolution

The Future of Service Support-Unveiling the Power of Knowledge Intelligence Speaker: Bret Allinson April 17, 2024 Previous Item Next Item This podcast explores how Knowledge Intelligence is transforming the way support content is created. By leveraging AI, knowledge can be captured, analyzed, and delivered faster, improving the information provided to both customers and product teams. The video features Bret Allinson, a seasoned service leader with extensive experience. He emphasizes the critical role knowledge plays in service support and the benefits of unlocking and reusing it. AI is highlighted as a game-changer, enabling the rapid creation and publication of highly relevant content. Key takeaways include: Faster, More Relevant Content: AI significantly accelerates content creation and publication, ensuring timely and relevant information is always at hand. Unlocking Knowledge Potential: Knowledge Intelligence goes beyond traditional methods by unlocking and reusing existing knowledge across various customer interactions, leading to greater efficiency and improved customer satisfaction. Multiple Knowledge Applications: The video explores three key areas where knowledge is utilized: summarizing existing knowledge for reuse, generating new knowledge from interactions, and proactively using knowledge during customer support. Measuring Performance: A "business value index" is introduced as a metric that considers knowledge usage, sentiment analysis, and AI utilization to measure knowledge effectiveness. Empowered Teams, Enhanced Products: By leveraging knowledge from closed cases, support teams gain valuable insights to improve their productivity and resolve customer issues faster. Furthermore, knowledge analysis can be used for product improvements, allowing the support organization to play a more active role in product development. About Speaker : Bret Allinson is a visionary and resourceful global technology business leader at Veritas Technologies LLC, a leading provider of data protection and availability solutions. He leverages capital, technology, best practices, and empowers the right people to create long-term value for the organization and its clients. He is passionate about strategically growing sustainable organizations for profitability and service excellence. He had extensive experience at major companies like Avaya, Xerox, HP, and Dell.

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Ascendo for SAP Ascendo AI employs generative AI to offer comprehensive insights that extend beyond mere symptoms and resolutions. This advanced system predicts a comprehensive range of pertinent details crucial for precise issue handling. From forecasting Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) to evaluating customer effort and performing sentiment analysis, Ascendo ensures accurate and holistic issue resolution. The Power of Ascendo AI Generative AI Knowledge Intelligence Resolve issues as they arise. Know what questions come from customers and how agents are responding. Connect with an existing knowledge base or automatically create new knowledge from conversations. Improve only the knowledge that is required to meet your Self Service and agent quality goals. Predictive Support Insights Ascendo AI continually learns from interactions, giving it the capacity to recognize emerging trends and provide actionable insights for service enhancement. As time progresses, the AI-driven recommendations evolve, becoming increasingly refined and effective in providing guidance for optimal support strategies. Debug Engine Ascendo AI acts as a robust debug engine, specializing in predicting root causes for even the most unique issues. It goes beyond surface-level identification, delving down to the level of individual parts. Additionally, the AI suggests the optimal technician for a given problem, streamlining the entire support process for efficiency and effectiveness. READY FOR PROACTIVE SUPPORT? Connect Now First Name Last Name Email Phone Submit Thanks for submitting! Our Challenge Complex Customer Support cases Complex customer support cases have long been a thorn in the side of businesses. The need for quick and exact resolutions often leads to a cycle of escalating calls, waiting times, and incomplete answers. An aging workforce and the rise of hybrid work environments only worsen the problem. Knowledgeable experts leave the company, and the information nexus shifts further from effective solutions. Sign up for free Our Joint Solution Ascendo AI, a co-pilot for technical support teams that transforms the support landscape. Ascendo leverages AI to extract meaning from every interaction, guiding users through step-by-step problem-solving processes and delivering effective generative AI solutions. It offers real-time, predictive guidance that eliminates the need for consulting multiple sources or transferring tickets. Engineers receive highly accurate game plans with over 90% accuracy. Ascendo transforms customer support by offering accurate, efficient, and innovative solutions that empower support teams and enhance customer experiences. With the ability to integrate seamlessly into SAP Service Cloud and access data from various sources, Ascendo becomes a reliable tool in the hands of support professionals. In conclusion, Ascendo AI represents a significant advancement in the field of customer support, addressing the challenges posed by complex cases, remote work, and outdated information. Its ability to extract insights from interactions and provide tailored, AI-driven solutions revolutionizes the way support teams engage with customers, leading to improved customer satisfaction and business success. Contact us Our Promise

Download AI Search Revolutionize customer support with Ascendo AI search. Go beyond chatbots, find answers instantly. Please enter your business email ID Please enter a valid name with alphanumeiric value Scaling Technical Support Smarter: Anjuna Security’s AI-Driven Success Story In the dynamic world of cloud security, delivering cutting-edge solutions isn’t enough—technical support must match the pace of... The Future of AI in Technical Support: Big Ideas for 2025 As we step into 2025, the role of AI in customer support is not just about keeping pace with change; it’s about reshaping the very... Our Blog Here is your go-to guide on what's latest and greatest in delivering superior customer service with the power of artificial intelligence. Catch some invaluable industry insights, and take it forward on your social media channels! Read all More White Papers Auto categorization 01 Ascendo brings to you one of its most utilized and successful components, Auto Categorization, that is built on state of the art Natural Language Processing techniques and Deep Learning algorithms. AI Based Modern Support Experience 02 Businesses these days receive hundreds and even thousands of customer queries daily. Get started to transform complicated client communications on Slack to smooth, AI assisted interactions 03 Should Companies use Slack or Teams with Their Customers? Escalation Management Guide for proactive support teams 04 The term escalation refers to the action where the issue and the details of a customer interaction is sent higher up the chain, sometimes to the CEO level. View All Ready to learn more? Contact Us In a full support operations platform, the journey starts from the casual information exchange to self-service. In a way, this is the first step in the customer support journey and drives further levels of deeper engagement as the journey continues. Often, this is an afterthought and the focus is only on chatbots. To avoid early escalations and ensure a smooth support experience, it is vital to get familiar with the initial stage early on in the journey. At Ascendo, we want to learn from every customer interaction throughout this journey. We bring to you one of our most useful and advanced components, AI Search. For Ascendo, AI Search is a cognitive way to interact as compared to the conversational way of interactions using chatbots, which is equally important to the latter. We offer this choice to our customers and do believe that support experience encompasses providing customers choices so they can interact in any way they choose. Understanding the Problem: Data in the real world is very convoluted and keeps evolving with time. As products and tools continue to improve, the number of issues and types of issues also increase. These issues keep changing with product changes and can evolve into something similar to what was faced before or extremely unique to how the product has evolved. Almost every industry today suffers from exponential growth in issues. The complexity of issues keeps raising the graph of data points. This pattern hardly stabilizes with growth in product stack and integrations. Currently, support agents tend to spend more than 50% of their time evaluating the problems, let alone finding the right solutions. Solutions can be generated from various data sources that spread around the business. The origin of these solutions can also be very different. This leads to the first major challenge in the support industry, that is, gathering knowledge from widespread information sources. The second challenge is to find the needle in the haystack. The time and efforts required to look for the solution among a million solutions continue to rise with each new solution added to the stack. Current solutions offer little to the customers as they have many obstacles that come their way. Some of them include: Too many Data Marts and Warehouses to be managed Solutions keep evolving and often become outdated Current Search Solutions are key-words focused and miss the context and intent behind the problem Different Solutions can point to the same problem, but are often considered to be different - hence the knowledge stacks keep increasing unnecessarily It is a difficult task to make the knowledge available to the end customers There is no guidance for the agents to dive deeper into the solutions Ascendo Search Engine: Ascendo aims to make the support experience as easy as possible for its customers. The solution has to be simple, smart, efficient, fully integrated with data sources, and most importantly requires little effort and time for users. The solution also has to bring expert knowledge into learning and has to be a continuous learning engine. The feedback loop could simply confirm and enhance automatically created root causes that groups multiple problems into its own bucket. Ascendo provides a No-code and expert-enhanced solution that can be easily plugged into your website and is prediction ready! Download the full whitepaper to read more on this. Download now Support With AI Search

Experience Dialogue How to Attract and Hire Diverse Talent Speakers: David Leighton, Niharika Srivastav April 7, 2022 Previous Item Next Item Whether it is a small or a larger organization, diverse talent or hiring should be important for real growth. Diverse hiring helps to gain a global perspective within the organization. Also, with hiring different age groups, cultures, and genders, we can provide diversity to different clients with different ideologies, social values, and work culture asterisks. Diversity Hiring is one of the factors that reduce the monotony in the business workflow. By doing so make your business more effective and attractive. Diversity helps to develop the organization not only on an international basis but also on an international basis. An overall improvement can be found in quality and efficiency in the organization when people with different experiences and skills come together to accomplish a specific objective. When a group of talented people and a diverse team present their ideas in different ways, then the result is also successful. Start promoting diversity in the workplace! When you get options of different thoughts on the same subject, then the depth of the subject emerges. This will help in increasing the business revenue of your business simultaneously. Top Reasons why Diverse talent is important. 1. To target the global market, a diverse workforce would be your strength. 2. With diverse hiring, get a multilingual task force. 3. It will help to boost business's success. 4. Promote innovative thinking skills in organization through diverse hiring. 5. Get different ideas and think together at a single workplace. In any organization when people with different ideologies, ages, gender, culture, and values work on the same team, it will give rise to a small competition that can motivate the employees to work harder. After all, good and healthy competition has always been the driving force behind the success of the organization. So, the question is- “How to Attract and Hire Diverse Talent?” Here is an Experience dialogue that Ascendo AI is trying to facilitate! Our speakers for the dialogue- David Leighton and Niharika Srivastav engage in an insightful conversation to bring to you their unique take on several topics related to Hire Diverse Talent .

Maximizing ROI with AI in Customer Support Team A Guide for Heads of Support | Transcription Previous Next Good morning, Anita! It's a pleasure to have you here today. Thank you, Kagan, for the introduction. Anita brings extensive experience as an executive and independent board member in many technology companies, with a particular knack for maximizing return on investment. It's fantastic to have someone with such a background, having been associated with Vio, Flex, Texas Instruments, and currently serving on the boards of Power Integrations, Exro, and Svako. Her expertise, coupled with a finance major from Waton and a computer science background from Virginia Tech, will undoubtedly enrich our discussion. Anita, I was thinking we could approach today's discussion from the perspective of a head of support evaluating AI tools and working with vendors to identify the best fit for our team. Additionally, we'll delve into how to present these findings to our executive team to secure funding and ensure success. Does that sound good to you? Absolutely, sounds excellent. Anything else you'd like to add before we dive into the slides? No, let's get started. This is a critical coaching moment, and it's crucial for people considering adopting new technology to view it holistically and understand the concerns of all stakeholders. Exactly. Our audience primarily consists of heads of support in medium to large enterprises, so our discussion will cater to their needs. Are the slides being shared now? Perfect, let's proceed. Today, we'll discuss why ROI on AI is crucial, navigating internal dynamics, expectations from vendors, and positioning the AI tool to senior-level executives to garner support for the project. We have a lot to cover, so let's see how far we get. Anita, anything to add? No, this agenda looks good. Let's dive into it. It's essential to address the skepticism surrounding ROI on AI, especially considering past projects' unclear results and use case ambiguity. Absolutely. As a support leader, it's vital to address this skepticism first. Do you have any suggestions on how to begin? Each organization has its risk tolerance and regulatory concerns. Understanding these factors and quantifying potential risks and costs are crucial first steps. So, essentially, I should start by identifying and quantifying risks and costs by consulting various stakeholders, including those knowledgeable about regulatory issues, security risks, and industry-specific challenges. Exactly. Once we've addressed these concerns, we can move on to identifying specific use cases and their potential ROI. Right. And then, I can work with vendors to calculate the ROI for each use case and present this data to our CFO. What should I keep in mind when presenting this to the CFO? Be transparent about costs, risks, and realistic timelines for ROI. Be prepared to answer questions and be open to multiple discussions. That makes sense. Once the project is underway, how do I ensure continued buy-in from stakeholders and the CFO? Transparency is key. Provide regular updates, be honest about progress, and be prepared to address any unexpected challenges constructively. So, maintaining a transparent and constructive relationship with the vendor and stakeholders is crucial for success, even when things don't go according to plan. Absolutely. Building strong relationships and handling challenges effectively will ultimately lead to success for everyone involved. Thank you for your insights, Anita. I believe our listeners will find this discussion valuable, and we look forward to exploring their questions in our next session. I'm happy to help. Thanks for having me, and I look forward to our next discussion.