Case Handling Best Practices - How to not just survive but thrive!

In this article I cover case handling best practices. Some people just seem to be able to work and resolve their cases (tickets/incidents) like a skilled ninja, whereas others struggle under the pressure. This article will show how you can not only just survive the pressures of support but thrive! You will come away seeing your customers in a new light, ready to deliver the best customer experience possible, while having fun and treating cases like solving fun puzzles. From the series "A Guide to Being the Best Customer Support Person"

Case Handling Best Practices

You process, update, and solve cases like a skilled professional! How do you do it?

• You treat every case as your very first case, working it with passion and dedication, and not becoming jaded as though “it’s just another case.” (Avoiding burn-out.)
• You aim to get the customer a quality update or solution as quickly as possible.
• You always maintain empathy for the customer.
• When a customer updates a case, you respond ASAP and within 24 hours
• Your updates are human, meaningful, and never robotic.
• There is no “trouble” in troubleshooting for you. Figuring out the answer for a customer is like a fun puzzle to you.
• You aim for a great CX in every case.

Thriving Under Pressure and Handling Your Cases Like a Pro

For those with a little more time, here are some additional thoughts on this topic.

Burnout, Apathy; Call it what you want, the pressures of being the person solving other peoples problems, as well as the never ending stream of new cases each day can, if you're not careful, become demoralizing on the human spirit, no matter how much of a bubbly person you are.

You can find yourself falling into a rut, no longer motivated to solve that next customer service call with as much passion as you had when you first became a support person. Even worse, rather than doing all you can to find solutions quickly, past hurdles and internal realities with engineering or product management can have you buy into... "this is just the way it is." You begin to let cases fall into the "customer support black hole." You find yourself just going through the motions with each case. Following process for the sake of process. Days, weeks, or even months can go by between some updates, and customers find themselves typing in ALLCAPS to get an update out of you.

What can you do to break through that burn-out barrier, and not just survive the daily pressures, but thrive under them?

I don't want to sound cliché, but in my experience, it does come down to some tried and true methods. As you read through the articles linked throughout, really try to understand the 'spirit' of great customer service. For example; Don't just say 'the customer must win', believe they must win!

• Each day before you start, don't look at your backlog as a long list of work, rather spend some time thinking about your customers and their challenges. If you were in their shoes what would you want to be done today? Now you are in the right mind to become their hero!
• Most customers just want to know that you are still there for them, even if you don't have much of an update to give. Think about this: When you are standing in a long line at the supermarket, bank, or coffee shop, isn't it nice when the service person looks up and acknowledges you? Even better if they say, 'sorry for the delay, I'll be with you soon.' It's not much, but you appreciate it. Now contrast that with the person who never looks up to acknowledge anyone in the line. You can see the effort they have to make to avoid your stare. Maybe they naively imagine if "I don't acknowledge them or their frustration they don't exist." That approach only feeds into people's frustrations. So be open, honest, friendly, and communicate, communicate, communicate to everyone in your queue often, even if it's to just give a quick "I'll be with you soon."
• Treat it like a game or puzzle and try to have fun with it! Case handling and problem solving are definitely as complex as any puzzle. Some of my most successful support engineers liked to play a game of seeing who could solve the most cases. When your goal is to have fun and creative while upholding best practices, you and your peers can really thrive, even on the most challenging days.
• Innovation: Maybe you can be innovative and find new and better ways to solve issues more quickly. Ask yourself, if I had a magic wand, or an "easy button", what would it do? Share your idea with product management. Maybe they can turn that idea into an enhancement. You don't need magic, maybe just some innovative ideas from you. If it's a broken process, not product, just apply the same approach and share your ideas with the business.
• Be determined to be the best support person you can be. When you know that you are delivering the best you can, you will in turn experience the sense of personal joy doing it! You can wake up revived and ready to take on the most challenging of customers every day, despite the hard knocks you may have received yesterday!
• You don't want to be treated like a number, so don't act like a robot! This is what nowadays is commonly referred to as "Being Human." If you want to be treated with respect by customers, don't copy n paste the same messages, templates, or scripts over and over. A customer might feel like you don't care about them or lack genuine empathy if you do that often. I know all you are trying to do is to save time and get through all the work, but that often backfires with each customer feeling like they are not important. You can still use canned messages, templates and scripts, in fact I recommend you use these as the base of your responses (not the entire message), just remember to personalize each one with a little bit of you! Within the template sprinkle in a few words, phrases or updates that could only come from you, and your customers will love you for it.

More in this Series

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Whois Anthony Johnson

A former small business owner with 20+ years in large global customer support organizations. With first-hand experience working with hundreds of support professionals, the common mistakes made, and the lessons learnt. This enables Anthony to speak with authority on the best practices that proved successful in enabling support teams to thrive and deliver a customer experience that results in high CSAT and low Customer Effort.