November 8, 2022

3 techniques to reduce backlog

Wouter Janssen
CEO & Co-Founder

If you've been in the Customer Support game for a while, then you know that the process of creating effective flows to reduce backlog can be complex. From user stories to bugs and everything in between, there's no shortage of items on any given support's backlog. However, there are ways to manage this complexity so that your team can deliver service faster with less stress—and one of them is implementing AI-powered (self) service tools into your workflow.

AI-Powered Self Service

  • AI-Powered Self Service. When customers need answers to their questions, they don't want to wait for a human being to be available on the other end of the line. They want access to the information they need right away. This is where AI-powered self service comes in—the ability for customers to find answers on their own without waiting for a human customer support representative (CSR).
  • FAQs and knowledge bases are two ways that businesses can implement AI-powered self service into their customer support processes:

• FAQs provide straightforward answers from common questions frequently asked by customers; these are often displayed as cards or buttons within a chatbot user interface (UI). The key here is that these resources are static; if you have multiple people answering questions about different products or services, it will be difficult for them all to keep content up-to-date across all platforms and devices.

• A knowledge base allows CSRs more control over what information gets shared with each individual customer based on what kind of ticket was opened—so if someone calls looking specifically about product X but doesn't mention any issues with product Y or Z, then only those pages would appear in response!

Automatic Routing

Automatic routing helps you to reduce the time spent on manual routing and allows you to see the status of your tickets. It’s AI-powered, so it can learn from your past tickets and suggest the best route for your next one. It’s also self service, meaning that we take away the tedious work involved with creating a route for each ticket, leaving you more time for other tasks.

Automatic routing is great because it’s automated! This means that there are no more miscommunications between driver and dispatcher about where a ticket needs to go or any delays caused by human error (which often leads to missed deadlines). In addition, since everything happens automatically without any extra effort on your part we know that every ticket will be completed in an accurate way—no matter who picks up the issue or what their previous experience level may be.

Reporting

A big part of managing your backlog is creating actionable reports. This will help you see what items are in your backlog and how much time each item is taking to complete. You can use automated reporting to make this easier, but it's important that you tag the issues well so that they show up in the right reports regardless of the person who created them. If there's a team member who clearly tags things differently than others on your team, then it may be useful for them to learn about consistent automatic tagging.

Reporting makes it possible to proactively update your service center fix "bugs" that would otherwise go unaddressed, saving a lot of money.

Conclusion

Hopefully, we’ve given you a few new ideas about how to reduce your backlog. We know that these three techniques are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to automating your workflows and improving productivity, but they can be great starting points for companies looking to get started with AI or automation.

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