Tips to Start Successfully Swarming
Customer service expectations are on the rise. Customers expect fast resolution times and stellar support when they reach out for help. The Intelligent Swarming methodology is becoming a more relevant and effective option for companies over implementing the typical tiered support system with your customer support team — where tier 1 receives incoming support calls and when they can’t answer the customer question, they send it to the second tier of the support team. This often results in customers having to repeat themselves with each new tier and can add to frustration and a poor customer experience.
If you’re new to the concept of intelligent swarming, there are a few things you should consider before implementing it on your team. This highly collaborative method involves a team of support people brainstorming to provide the best answers possible, but how do you do this effectively?
- Identify support workflow
- Audit routing tools and processes
- Review collaboration tools and processes
- Start small
- Pinpoint metrics
Find out more about each of these aspects by downloading the infographic
Intelligent swarming is when you bring support agents and subject matter experts together. The idea is that instead of siloing customer questions to one person or department, the swarm of intelligence produces a better answer faster as people work together to uncover the best solution. When the answer is found, the agent passes it along to the customer, then that solution is documented and made available to all agents so that the next time a customer asks that question, the best answer is readily available.
The swarming model is all about collaboration. Essentially, it allows agents to glean from the collective intelligence of the entire company and everyone inside it. There’s no passing a customer along to the next agent, which simplified the customer experience while still providing the best solution possible. It doesn’t leave just one person with the issue to resolve but opens up the information door to many other experts within the company who possess specific knowledge about a particular subject.
Intelligent swarming provides a way for more team members to contribute and create value within the organization. Because everyone is encouraged to participate in providing customers with solutions, it can increase employee satisfaction and loyalty. It also increases the effectiveness of problem-solving for customer issues which increases customer satisfaction as well. It works extremely well to solve problems that haven’t been solved before which continually increases the intelligence and efficiency of customer support teams over the long run.
