Fig. 1: Support employee talking to a customer
Therefore, we regularly face the challenge of providing the highest possible level of service and knowledge as the number of customers continues to grow. A system change in support as well as new online services have emerged from this motivation in the past three years. In this article, we would like to give you a behind-the-scenes look at our support and highlight the popular services.
LINEAR Support - starting point 2019
Our long-standing customers surely remember that in the past, all phone calls were answered personally from our main phone line and - if available - forwarded to one of our support staff. If no employee was instantly available, a callback was arranged. As the number of customers increased, it quickly became clear that this process was no longer effective, as both our customers and we lacked transparency and traceability. Waiting times to resolve a request were also increasing in proportion to the number of customers, so it was obvious to work on new, more effective ways. So, to meet the greater demand for support and at the same time offer high quality, a system change was needed.
The structure of our support
Our support basically consists of two areas: “first-level” and “second-level” support. All incoming calls are automatically handled by a “first-level employee”. These colleagues try to solve the request quickly and competently. Requests that take longer to process, e.g. due to their complexity, are transferred to “second-level support”. The second-level colleagues work “in the background” and are not directly involved in answering the calls. This gives them the time they need to thoroughly review inquiries and develop expert as well as targeted solutions. However, inquiries that cannot be resolved here are forwarded directly to the development department through a new ticket system.
Introduction of automatic call distribution
To ensure that calls are answered quickly and routed to the right person, Automatic Call Distribution, or ACD, was introduced. ACD is a system that automatically routes incoming phone calls to an appropriate employee or department; basically, like a personal switchboard operator, but digital and automated.
With the introduction of ACD, we therefore enable our customers to reach the appropriate support specialist directly to deal with the individual concern quickly. At the same time, this leads to a more efficient distribution of inquiries and ensures that the majority of calls can be answered directly. In this way, we are now able to answer over 70% of calls directly and provide quick assistance. In the rare case that all lines are busy, the caller has the following options:
- Wait on the line until a support employee is free again (Ø waiting time 2:15 minutes).
- Alternatively, the caller receives the suggestion at regular intervals to leave the waiting loop by pressing a button on his phone and to be connected to one of our employees from the “extended support” team. The employees of this team log the support case and create a support ticket from it. Afterward, the next free support employee takes over the support ticket and a callback takes place as soon as possible (Ø duration until callback: 73 minutes).
No matter which alternative the caller chooses - in the end he always reaches a personal contact!
Keeping track - our support dashboard
To keep an overview of all incoming phone calls, we have developed a support dashboard that displays all important information about the current call volume in real time.
This allows every supporter to see how many colleagues are currently available. It also shows how many callers are currently on hold or how many calls have already been answered. This transparency helps us to distribute the workload evenly among the support staff and ensure that waiting times are as short as possible.
A new transparent ticketing system
The ticketing system we developed makes it possible to map the processes described above and integrate necessary automation. For example, our customers are automatically informed by e-mail about the processing status of their request, and thanks to the unique ticket number, our support staff can respond quickly and competently to further questions. The processing status of the ticket is thus clearly identifiable and documented at all times. A support ticket can have the following statuses:
1st level support
First level support tickets in progress
2nd level support
Second level support tickets in progress
Waiting
Tickets on hold (e.g., further info needed from customer)
DEV
Tickets that have been forwarded to the development department and are being processed there
Done
Completed tickets
All tickets are processed chronologically in the order they are received and are always given a deadline. This way, no request remains unanswered!
The processing history of each ticket is also fully documented. Each time a customer calls, the system automatically checks whether there are any open inquiries in the system. In this way, unnecessary searching for possible references is avoided. This creates transparency on both sides - for our customers and for us.
As a result, 75.4% of support requests were resolved on the same day in the past six months, which is also reflected in the positive feedback from our customers.
Learning from customers
For several months now, we have been gathering experience and collecting feedback from our customers regarding our support performance. This helps us to critically observe and further improve our processes. Our goal is to provide the best possible service for our customers. Here, too, transparency is important to us for everyone involved. You can see the results of the first few months in Figure 4.
Working in the service area, which often involves dealing with problems, is challenging. But if our employees do their job well and the user receives a satisfactory solution in the end, both parties are satisfied and motivated to continue working.
For this, we would like to say thank you on behalf of our entire support team!
Cooperation with our LINEAR Partners
In some of our export countries we have strong partnerships with our LINEAR Sales Partner. They are also offer a professional support to customers in their region in the corresponding national language. So customers in these countries have the possibility to use direct support in their local language and the responsible support in turn has the possibility to get direct assistance from our support. In this way, we transfer our know-how and the quality of the support to our partners and thus to our customers in the corresponding countries.
Ideas and suggestions
In the exchange with our customers, especially during support calls, we often receive great ideas for improvements in the software. To systematically keep track of these ideas and suggestions, we have also created a new platform: the LINEAR Idea Channel. Here, customers now have the opportunity to make suggestions for future developments and to vote on other suggestions. Thus, you can directly influence the software development at LINEAR.
In this way, we learn directly from our users and can improve together. By the way, you can try it here in our new LINEAR Idea Channel (actual only in German, but feel free to send ideas also in English).
Thank you for your valuable feedback and constructive criticism. We promise to continue optimizing our processes and services for you.
Building knowledge - training and e-learning
Support and training are closely linked at LINEAR, which is why they are organized in a joint department accordingly. Therefore, we have decided to identify and implement potential for improvement in the area of training as well. In this way, we not only enable our customers to use the LINEAR solutions efficiently, but also ensure that tasks can be solved independently by the customer: help for self-help, so to speak. At the same time, this reduces the workload of our support team and saves the customer money by reducing the use of chargeable support.
In our individual trainings, experience has shown that intensive half-day trainings are the most effective, which is why these 3-hour online trainings are very popular. In addition to individual training, we have been offering free online tutorials for some time. Even though this option has been used extensively in the past, we have revised the entire e-learning concept again. On the new e-learning platform, customers now have access to software training courses that can be worked through in sensibly structured courses. Each course consists of several short videos combined with texts as well as associated sample projects. Courses that have been started are displayed in the individual customer profile and can be continued seamlessly. The extensive offer therefore enables targeted training on specific topics. In addition, the portal offers a forum where users can exchange information about course content or specific questions and provide mutual support. Here, too, the support team provides rapid assistance with questions about the courses. Our e-learning portal is available to all customers free of charge around the clock and is constantly being expanded.
Conclusion
Through various measures, we give each and every customer the opportunity to use our solutions efficiently, to solve tasks on their own or with the help of our support, and thus to master their daily challenges. We ourselves learn every day through the important input of our users and improve continuously. Finally, we promise to continue this path consistently together with you and look forward to your feedback.
