Enhancing Customer Support Team Productivity

We built a Zendesk email assist AI agent and it's handling a full quarter’s work for one human support rep. Here's the step-by-step flow: 1. User sends a complex or nuanced product question to support@voiceflow.com 2. Tico (our AI agent) reviews the question and passes the content and intent. 3. The most fitting knowledge base is tapped via confidence level. 4. A personalized, accurate & highly-specific response is drafted. 5. The draft is slotted into Zendesk as a private comment. 6. Our team reviews, tweaks if necessary, and sends it to the user. This has slashed the onboarding and training time for support staff that's typically slowed down by the complexity of the product. The impact? ✅ Our support team is no longer just keeping up; they’re ahead, delivering faster, sharper responses. ✅ Customers feel understood, their issues addressed with pinpoint accuracy, boosting our CSAT scores. ✅ Tico’s continuous learning means every interaction makes it smarter, ready for even the most nuanced queries. So far, Tico Assist is tackling over 2000 tickets - a full quarter’s work for one human support rep, for less than the price of lunch. If you’re navigating high support volumes with a lean team, this type of Zendesk AI Assist Agent can help blend automation with quality for your customers. P.S. Tico doesn’t just fetch any answer. It pulls from the most relevant knowledge base (e.g. a technical code response for a developer question). From my post last week, this multi-knowledge base strategy is something that I think we will see much more of in CX this year.

$13,000,000 a year. That's what a typical enterprise business wastes on customer support tickets. Most CX teams try to fix this the obvious way. Faster replies, more agents, better macros. We think there are three smarter moves you can take. #1 Stop tickets before they start Across support data we've analysed, almost 55% of tickets are preventable: >Billing confusion ~20% >Feature education ~14% >Password resets ~9% >Status updates ~11% These exist because the product didn't answer the question clearly upfront, so your support team is acting as a safety net for product gaps. #2 Automate routine volume, properly Password resets, order tracking, basic troubleshooting. These don't need a human, but they do need to be resolved correctly. Most AI deflection tools just push customers away. We focus on quality-adjusted resolution. The ticket gets closed and the customer gets their answer. #3 Augment humans on complex, revenue-generating work Your best agents shouldn't be writing the same responses or hunting for information. AI Assist can handle the heavy lifting, surfacing context, suggesting responses, identifying upsell opportunities - so your agents can focus on judgment, empathy, and closing the critical deals. The fix isn't faster agents. It's: 1. Fewer reasons to contact support (VoC intelligence) 2. Quality automation for routine resolution (AI Automation) 3. Enhanced productivity for complex cases (AI Assist) This pattern shows up repeatedly once teams look at tickets by theme, cost, and impact. Not just response time. What would you do with $13m back in your budget?

Here’s the roadmap for the first 90 days as a Customer Support leader: 1️⃣ Quantitative Support Analysis - Identify all areas where support resources are being misallocated or wasted. This might include overstaffed low-value channels, inefficient workflows, or poor escalation management. Re-allocate those resources to high-impact areas (eg. FCR) - Audit and optimize reporting systems to ensure clean, actionable data. Close gaps in ticket categorization, response time tracking, and CSAT/NPS data. 2️⃣ Qualitative Feedback from Customers AND Agents 🙋 Customer Perspective: - Conduct qualitative interviews with your top 10 happiest customers and your top 10 most dissatisfied customers. Unpack what drives satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) in their interactions with support. Spot trends and root causes in the support journey. - Shadow at least 5 live support interactions per week across channels (email, chat, phone) to identify recurring customer needs and operational friction points. 🧑💻 Agent Perspective: - Run qualitative interviews with your support agents. Ask them: * What are the most frustrating tools or workflows you deal with daily? * Which processes cause unnecessary delays or duplicate work? * What changes would make it easier for you to deliver great support? - Observe how agents use your support tools during live interactions. Look for inefficiencies like switching between too many platforms, unclear documentation, or delays in accessing customer context. 3️⃣ Quick Wins to Drive Impact Within 90 Days - Improve ticket routing and prioritization to ensure that critical issues are handled faster and by the right team. Many support teams leave SLAs unmet simply due to poor routing logic. - Simplify the self-service experience. Review and update your KB content to make it more reflective of the questions customers actually ask. - Streamline internal handoff processes between support tiers or other teams like product and engineering. Reduce resolution time by eliminating unnecessary back-and-forths. - Create an agent empowerment program. Provide quick wins for agents by removing common blockers, like slow systems or overly complicated approval processes. An empowered team = faster resolutions. - Highlight support’s wins. Build a repository of customer stories where support played a key role in success. Share these stories internally to drive alignment with sales, product, and customer success. 4. Set the Right Expectations Many companies expect a new support leader to focus solely on efficiency (e.g., reducing costs or ticket volume) in the first 30 days. This often backfires, leading to burnout, poor team morale, and degraded customer experience. Instead, focus on building the foundation: improving workflows, understanding customers AND agents deeply, and optimizing the team’s ability to drive meaningful resolutions. 💡 What’s your go-to strategy for the first 90 days in a new support role? 💪

💡 The moment I realized a perfect CSAT score wasn’t going to get me promoted changed my entire career trajectory. Fast response times and clean ticket queues may make us feel productive, but they don’t move the business forward. Working at Airbnb and Loom taught me something counterintuitive: the best support teams measure success by how many tickets they prevent, not how fast they solve them. So here are 5 mindset shifts that transformed my approach: 1. 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤: Only 1 in 26 unhappy customers complain. Build systems for the silent majority. 2. 𝐌𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞, 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: Swap “How was your support experience?” for “Were you able to accomplish what you needed?” The answers unlock impact, not just sentiment. 3. 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐨𝐧𝐞-𝐭𝐨-𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲: Every interaction improves the experience for many others. One documented solution = 50 tickets/week prevented. 4. 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐞: A strong percentage of free users who contacted support at Loom converted to paid plans. Support can be a great sales channel. 5. 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐦 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐬: Solving today's problems should prevent tomorrow's. Think flywheel, not firefighting. This systematic thinking took my career from tickets to strategy. That's what separates support specialists from support leaders. What systematic change has had the biggest impact in your support work?

Most MSPs don’t struggle with response times because their tools are outdated, or their engineers lack skills. They struggle because their teams are stretched too thin. When service desk engineers are handling too many tickets at once, the cracks start to show. First responses slow down. Tickets sit longer than they should. SLAs begin to slip not because people don’t care, but because there simply isn’t enough capacity to keep up. Over time, this creates a reactive environment. Engineers rush instead of troubleshooting. Follow-ups are delayed. Ownership becomes unclear. And customers feel it often before the MSP realizes there’s a problem. Here’s what we’ve seen across multiple MSP environments: Adding one dedicated helpdesk engineer can improve average response times by up to 35%. Not because that engineer works harder than everyone else but because the entire system regains balance. With the right coverage in place: • First responses happen faster • Ticket queues shrink • Issues are triaged more effectively • Follow-ups become consistent • Engineers get the time they need to resolve problems properly The result isn’t just better metrics it’s better customer trust. Response time issues are rarely a talent problem. They’re a capacity problem. And when capacity is restored, everything downstream improves SLA performance, team morale, and client satisfaction. Sometimes, the most impactful change isn’t a new tool, platform, or process. It’s simply adding the right support at the right time. #MSP #Helpdesk #ServiceDesk #MSPScaling #CustomerExperience #ITSupport #MSPResources

Most startups think great support takes more people. Superhuman proves it takes better systems. They answer 75% of customer emails in under 2 hours. I spoke with Connor Norris, head of CX or their ‘Delight’ team at Superhuman, to learn how they’ve built a lean, fast, and effective support team. Here’s what I found out: -Efficiency isn’t an afterthought—it’s the foundation. With over 600 pre-formatted replies, shortcuts like aText, and a culture that values speed, the team ensures that only 25% of responses need to be written from scratch. -Everyone knows everything. Superhuman doesn’t have a billing team or a separate bug reporting team. Every team member is trained to handle all types of issues, eliminating handoffs and giving customers a single point of contact for faster resolutions.     -Speed is paired with intentionality. Quick responses aren’t enough. Superhuman has a rigorous onboarding process to ensure tone consistency, clarity, and accuracy in every email. This includes deep collaboration with the product team to test new features and predict customer questions before they arise.     -Processes scale as the team grows. From day one, the team documented their workflows, tools, and even tone guidelines. This documentation ensures everyone, including new hires, is equipped to provide the same level of service as the company scales. Superhuman proves that small teams, with the right mindset and tools, can deliver exceptional support. At Atlas, we’re building with these principles in mind: - Our AI agents analyze tickets, help center articles, and external knowledge bases to generate personalized responses—reducing human intervention without losing the human touch. - Our workflow builder allows you to create customer journeys tailored to different segments, helping you scale without breaking a sweat. - And our customer timeline and session recordings let you proactively identify and resolve issues, improving the product experience before customers even need to reach out. The future of support is here—and it’s lean, fast, and proactive. What would it take for your team to hit Superhuman-level speed?

I used to think managing customer support was all about quick responses. 🚀 But I've learned it's so much more than that. I’veworked with a client whose support team was drowning in tickets. 👉 They were responsive, but something was missing. 👉 Customers were frustrated, and their team was burning out. The challenge? They lacked context. Every interaction felt like starting from scratch. 🎯Then it hit me: they needed a bird's-eye view of each customer's journey. We implemented a visual timeline system for them, and everything changed. Suddenly, they could see the full story of every customer interaction at a glance. Here's what made the difference: 🔄 Chronological view of all interactions 📌 Easy task creation and follow-up management 🤝 Team coordination through shared timelines 🤖 Automated tasks based on customer stages 🔍 Quick access to full context for personalized support Their response times improved, customer satisfaction soared, and the team felt more empowered than ever. Looking back, I realize that effective support isn't just about speed—it's about understanding. It's about seeing the big picture of each customer's experience. 🌟 #CustomerSupport #VisualTimelines #SupportManagement

I had a leader enamored with activity. He once told me that he expected, based on his calculations, that each CSM would enter 243 activities into our CRM per month. When I became the leader, we completely rebuilt our Customer Success team structure. As mentioned, the old model focused on tracking activities: number of calls made, response times, training, meetings held, etc. While these metrics were easy to measure, they didn't tell us if we were helping customers achieve their goals. Our new approach centered entirely on customer outcomes. Each CSM now owned specific customer objectives, measured through concrete business results: increased product adoption, faster time-to-value, and expanded use cases. The results exceeded our expectations: Team productivity improved by 35% as we eliminated low-impact activities  Revenue expansion from existing accounts grew by 32% Voluntary team turnover dropped to under 5% Shifting accountability from activities to outcomes gave CSMs full autonomy to design their customer engagement strategy (within reason). We implemented weekly outcome reviews where teams share success stories and problem-solve together. This replaced our old activity-tracking meetings which felt more like performance reviews than collaborative sessions. Team morale was our most significant uplift. When you trust professionals to make decisions and hold them accountable for results rather than checkboxes, they rise to the challenge. Activity does not equal achievement. For leaders considering a similar transformation (and you should): Start with clear customer outcomes, give your team autonomy to achieve them, and measure what matters. The rest will follow.

How we increased a company’s customer satisfaction by 20% in 30 days (with 2 approaches): A leading provider of resin-based household and garden consumer products was unhappy with their current level of customer experience and selected Callzilla - The Quality-First Contact Center to take over the customer support function in their business to change that. We proposed and implemented two different approaches. === Approach #1 - Determine Root Cause Of Customer Dissatisfaction === Step #1 - At the time, they had no methodology in place for uncovering this, so we implemented a post-call CSAT survey. The first CSAT results came back at 69% and showed us the root cause of this dissatisfaction was not agent related but was shipping related. Product shipment were constantly delayed. Step #2 - With this new insight, we proposed process changes and script updates designed to provide more realistic delivery times. Within 30 days, the client saw an increase in CSAT scores from 69% to 82%. Step #3 - Even with these great results, we weren’t done yet. We continued to make script and straight improvements and as a result, the client’s most recent CSAT scores reached 90%, even with several shipping delays still present. === Approach #2 - Tackle System Inefficiencies === When we started working together, agents had to toggle between multiple systems to provide support to customers. The resulting Average Call Handle Time (AHT) was far beyond a reasonable number - Yikes! We needed to fix this ASAP. So we recommended that the client provide the contact center team different access and views of the CRM and order management system to enable the agents to access all data they need in one system. The client agreed and within the first 30 days post implementation, the AHT decreased by 34% and the customer satisfaction score saw a 10% increase to 85.58%. These were possible due to Callzilla seeking ways to achieve Continuous Improvement and partnering with our Client to create Customer-Centric and Employee-Centric solutions.

If you’re only thinking about digital CS as a means to engage your customers, you’re missing a critical part of its value. Internal communication and automation is a severely undervalued use case for digital CS. You should be using digital internally in two ways: 1. Trigger alerts or notifications to internal stakeholders based on customer behavior 2. Automate repetitive manual CSM tasks Utilizing digital like this is powerful. It’s so often overlooked, and this is a huge missed opportunity. Not only does it make everybody’s job easier, but by cutting out so much manual work, it also leads to huge increases in efficiency and productivity. Less copy and pasting or searching for information means more time for more important things. Sometimes that looks like the ability to increase the number of accounts assigned to each CSM, other times it simply opens up time in their week to actually be able to have the strategic conversations we all want them to be having. Here are some examples of how to effectively use both: Alerts & notifications - Notify a CSM 6 months before a customer’s renewal date so they’re planning early for how to retain and grow the account - Alert a CSM if a customer has too many open support tickets or if they haven’t logged in for 30 days - Notify a digital CS program manager when customers renew at more than double their prior year spend - include a reminder to ask their CSM if the account is a candidate to provide a testimonial or case study or become a reference - Alert a frontline manager if one of their CSMs has a sudden increase in accounts with “red” customer health, so they can provide any additional support that team member needs Repetitive manual tasks: - Renewal reminders sent to customers automatically at your preferred cadence - Self-service usage dashboards customers can look at whenever, so they don’t have to bug their CSM to find out how many open licenses they can still assign or how much their team is actually using the product - Pre-populated EBR decks, or better yet, entirely automated EBRs - Anything that currently requires your CSMs to copy and paste the same thing over and over There are unlimited possibilities here! How else have you used digital CS to improve operational efficiency internally? #customersuccess #digitalcustomersuccess #digitalcs #internalcommunication