Better scheduling to Customer Experience

Over the time, it has been observed that calls/remote sessions are one of the most effective ways that a support team exchanges information, collaborate and diagnose issues. So why do they have such a bad reputation? They seem to be getting longer, more unscheduled and generating fewer results. This can result in employees becoming frustrated as they feel that these sessions are taking them away from, rather than adding value to their work.

The fact is, that although many of us complain about them, we can all expect to spend a significant amount of our working time in call/sessions. So why not learn to convene meaningful and productive sessions? In this article, I’d outline some of the key areas to improve the quality and effectiveness of the various calls/sessions you find yourself in.

To begin with, we need to understand that

an effective meeting has a purpose and gets finished in the time allotted.

So before you book a call/session, ask yourself:

• Is this call/session necessary? You need to make sure it’s not a waste of time for the customer and staff.
• What do we want to achieve? Be clear on what needs to be done on the call/meeting.
• Who needs to be there to achieve it? Consider staff availability and expertise to go forward. A support agent cannot tell what’s wrong with the platform :p
• Do I have the physical space and materials to run a call/session? As most of these meetings are virtual, check your network availability and the power backup, to say the least :)
• Is the timing right? Once again, use your common sense and decide the timing or just read down to make it easy!

Now that you have spent some time on the above points, bring automation into the process. There are several apps available which offer the booking calendar and scheduling platform for teams. For example, #Slack comes with built-in reminders and numerous integrations to extend these capabilities. It will help you to stay organized and boost productivity at the same time. If that’s not enough, some of these apps come with instant email reminders for every appointment you book, cancel or reschedule. Furthermore, if you’re using a customer service software like #Kayako, make use of the Canned Responses/Macros and take the manual effort and repetition out the process. and say goodbye to missed appointments :)

P.S. Thanks to everyone who was involved in this effort. Say goodbye to all the painful calls/sessions!