CXOXO Book Club

Week of February 19 - Kickoff! & Chapter 1: CX Isn’t an Afterthought

Week of February 26 - Chapter 2: What You Need to Know Before Getting Started

Week of March 4 - Chapter 3, Part 1 – Picking Your Channels: Email, Live Chat, & Phone Support (p. 20-56)

Week of March 11 - Chapter 3, Part 2 – Social Media Support (p. 56-70)

Week of March 18 - Chapter 3, Part 3 –  Self-Service, Community, & In-Person Support (p. 70-94)

Week of March 25 - Chapter 4, Part 1 – Building Your Support Operations: Types of Support Structures, Channel Strategy, & Setting SLAs (p. 95-126)

Week of April 1 - Chapter 4, Part 2 – Support Levels and Tiering, Ticket Escalation, Tone & Style Guides, Budgeting, & QA (p. 126-151)

Week of April 8 - Chapter 4, Part 3 – Workforce Management, Reporting on CX, Automation, & Moderation Trust & Safety (p. 151-172)

Weeks of April 15 & 22 - BREAK/CATCH UP

Week of April 29 - Chapter 5: How to Hire (and Keep) a High-Performing Team

Week of May 6 - Chapter 6: What to Measure

Week of May 13 - Chapter 7: The Finances of CX

Week of May 20 - Chapter 8: Scaling Up

Week of May 27 - Chapter 9: Creating a Customer-First Company Culture

Week of June 3 - Chapters 10 & 11: Bringing in Help & The End

Discussion and Reflection Prompts

Feel free to answer any or all of these questions, supply your own, journal your responses, think aloud, or any combination of these!

• What is your support origin story?
• Did the definitions of customer experience, support, and success align with your own working definitions? What was different or new to you?
• Does your company participate in all-hands support? If not, what are some other ways you could encourage more of your organization to be involved in the customer experience?
• Who are your target customers? If you're not sure, take a moment to think of a few qualities and needs that your customers share. How can your support team better meet those needs?
• Does your organization have support debt? If you had a magic wand, what are some things you'd do to address your team's support debt?

Discussion and Reflection Prompts

Remember that you can join in at any time and during any chapter! Go at your own pace -- these conversations are ongoing.

Who Are Your Users and Customers?

• Are you friends with your company's marketing team? If not, how might you go about building a lasting relationship with them, allowing you both to better understand your customers?

What Kinds of Interactions Are You Having?

• Do you have customers who don't interact with your support organization? Do you have any hypotheses as to why that is?
• Have you ever had to make an argument for not providing support through a specific channel (like chat or social media)? Bonus questions: did you win this argument? Why or why not?
• Have you ever done an audit of your support volume to discover where requests were coming from and what the main topics were? Did you learn anything that surprised you?

What Are Your Customer Expectations?

• Do you know what your customers' expectations are for the support you offer? Do you feel like your current support offerings align with those expectations?

How Many Customers Do You Have?

• Is your support team set up for scale and automation or for high-touch, white-glove support? Will this need to change in the future?

Where Are Your Customers Located?

• Do you have a solid idea of what your busy times and days are? If your helpdesk doesn't have a built-in report for this, how might you go about figuring this out?

What Is Your Contact Rate?

• What does your contact rate look like (i.e., does it look like the hockey stick curve Mercer described)? What can you implement today for your customers to influence your overall contact rate? Are you noticing any trends in the contact rate in different product areas you support?

Determining the Size and Structure of the Team

• Dreaming big, and assuming you have all the resources and team members you need, what would your Support function look like in an ideal world?

How Much Money Does Your Team Have?

• You've dreamt big -- now let's get real. What can you do with the budget you have to apply what you've learned from this chapter in improving your support offerings? If you don't have an official budget, what argument can you make to your leadership team for building one?

Discussion and Reflection Prompts

Before we dive into Chapter 3, think back to our Dream Big exercise from Chapter 2. Write down the basics of what your dream support function looks like -- don't worry too much about the details, all you need is an outline for now. As you read through Chapter 3, refer back to it occasionally and refine it as you learn more about each support channel.

We'll do the same thing as we go through each chapter and hopefully, by the end of the book, you'll have a solid plan for building a Support Dream Team your agents and your customers will love.

Email

• If email is one of your support channels (or it's a channel you'd like to offer), what are the essential features you need from an email tool?
• Does your current email tool have all of those features? If not, how might you make an argument for migrating to an email tool that does provide all of the essential features your team needs?
• Were any of the email best practices new to you? If so, which might you implement for your team to better serve your customers?

Live Chat

• Considering the pros and cons of live chat, is this channel a good fit for your team and your customers? Why or why not?
• If you're already providing chat support, is your chat tool integrated with your customer data and help desk/CRM? If not, how are you making sure your agents have context in customer conversations and that customers aren't having to repeat themselves?
• Were any of the live chat best practices new to you? If so, which might you implement for your team to better serve your customers?

Phone Support

• Considering the pros and cons of phone support, is this channel a good fit for your team and your customers? Why or why not?
• If you already offer phone support, when was the last time you called your own support line? If you haven't in a while, now might be a good time to do so.
• How was your experience navigating through your company's support phone tree? How long was your wait? Did you know how long it would be before you spoke to an agent? Did anything about the experience frustrate or delight you?
• Were any of the phone support best practices new to you? If so, which might you implement for your team to better serve your customers?

Before we transition into the next topic -- Social Media Support -- take some time to review your Dream Support Team Plan and refine it based on what we learned about email, live chat, and phone support.

Social Media Support

• Considering the pros and cons of social media support, is this channel a good fit for your team and your customers? Why or why not?
• Do you know what, if any, social media platforms your customers are using to discuss your product? Does platform use remain consistent from month to month?
• Social media support has its own unique quirks and practices and, given the much higher audience potential, requires more careful judgment from those offering the support. Are your agents trained to offer high-quality, conscientious social media support to your customers? Do you have social media support guidelines to help your agents offer that support?
• Do you have a specific brand voice for your social media support? Are the agents providing social media support trained to speak in that voice consistently?
• Were any of the social media support best practices new to you? If so, which might you implement for your team to better serve your customers?

Self-Service Support

• In what ways have you implemented self-service support for your customers? Are there other self-service options you could provide to improve their experience?
• If you don't have any self-service options now, which might make sense for you to roll out as a first step toward offering your customers self-service?
• Do you have visibility into how happy your customers are with your self-service options? If not, how might you start measuring their satisfaction with this channel?
• How easy is it for your agents to contribute to self-service options like knowledge bases and tutorials? Do they have the supports they need to build high-quality self-service materials for your customers?
• Were any of the self-service support best practices new to you? If so, which might you implement for your team to better serve your customers?

Community Support

• Considering the pros and cons of community support, is this channel a good fit for your team and your customers? Why or why not?
• Do you already have a community of enthusiastic or power users, even if it’s an informal one? What would it take to provide a formal platform for these users to help and learn from each other? Do you have the staff and knowledge necessary to adequately moderate a community?
• What kind of community would you build? Take some time to think about some basic values and guidelines that would align with your company’s brand.
• If you already offer community support, were any of the best practices new to you? If so, which might you implement for your team to better serve your customers?

In-Person Support

• Considering the pros and cons of in-person support, is this channel a good fit for your team and your customers? Why or why not?
• Have you ever offered in-person support? What did you like and dislike about it? What did you learn from in-person support that might be applicable to the other support channels we've covered so far?

We've reached the end of Chapter 3! We've reviewed, as Mercer put it, the vast spectrum of channels available for customer support. And as Mercer points out, the channel through which you support customers matters less than making sure your overall support strategy is providing the best possible support experience.

Before you move to the next chapter, take out your Dream Support Team Plan. How is it shaping up? Based on what we've learned in this chapter, what support channels can you add or remove? What are your questions going into Chapter 4—Building Your Support Operations?