The Value of Ticket Automation in Customer Success
We’ve all seen or heard about a customer success team that’s just “missing something”. Maybe the agents are a little slow to follow up, or they just can’t seem to get your issue requests in the hands of the right person. Mistakes like this happen for even the best teams, but when it’s a recurring issue it’s time to take some action.
For many teams, this means switching to a customer success software solution that features extensive ticket automation capabilities. Let’s look at the value of ticket automation in customer success and how it can improve an entire business…
Automation saves time and money – Many customer success teams that don’t utilize automation have what is called a “routing agent”, or basically an agent that evaluates all inbound tickets and sends them on to the appropriate person. Once fully configured, a sophisticated ticket automation solution can essentially replace this role in a company and, best of all, every ticket is instantly routed. Many companies deploying or updating their automation solution either choose to save money and eliminate the “routing agent” role altogether or reassign them to work directly with customer tickets. Either way, your company works more efficiently and closes tickets faster with automation.
Automation improves efficiency in many ways – Not only does automation route tickets instantly, but it means one less person that is “touching” each ticket. Simply put, the fewer agents that interact with a ticket – even if it’s just to forward it on to someone else – the better because it lowers the chance of human error when working with customers. Machines don’t make mistakes like forwarding tickets to the wrong “Dennis” by accident, only to have them be ignored and receive an angry and lengthy phone call at the end of the day. An automated ticketing system streamlines communication by removing people from the equation.
Automation is easy to track and understand – Like them or not, foundational rules such as who handles what tickets are cornerstones of a great customer success team. They can also be a source of truth for an entire business operation. For example, looking at automation in the B2B industry, a sales leader may be working to upsell a current customer and wonder which customer success rep is designated to handle their tickets. Instead of bothering someone on an evening or weekend, they can use the customer success software to see that the automation rule for this customer has three agents – Betty, Jim, and Patricia – who evenly split all tickets. Sales can now reach out to these three agents directly to get their input on what to focus on for the upsell instead of navigating through middle management for the answer.
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To summarize, ticket automation is tremendously valuable to a customer success team. It saves them time and money through better work processes and improves efficiency by reducing human error. Automation even benefits other departments with its simplicity by streamlining communication and improving internal conversations. Ticket automation is here to stay, and more customer success teams are making it a core component of their operation.
