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Customers are very crucial for business development. For steady growth, the company needs to gain customer satisfaction.
Providing the best customer service is the key to gaining customer satisfaction. The best customer service refers to responding to the customers promptly.
This article elaborates on what the first reply time is, tips to reduce first reply time in customer service.
What is the First Reply Time (FRT)?
First Reply Time (FRT) refers to the time taken to provide the first response to the customer issue. The calculation starts from the moment the customer contacts the agent about a problem and ends when the agent responds to the customer. This FRT plays a vital role in customer service. In the digital age, customers are not willing to wait for a long time to get their issues addressed. Automated responses are not included in this FRT calculation. This FRT denotes only the reply given by the human agents.
To calculate FRT, divide the total first reply time in a particular period like a week or month by the number of tickets resolved.
Tips to reduce first reply time in customer service
Provide proper training
To reduce FRT, provide proper training for your team. Only well-trained resources can handle the customer’s issues immediately with confidence. Effective training may involve, a proper onboarding process, and training on products, tools, and services. Employees can be provided with previous customer service issues and solutions which help them to get an overview of their workflow.
Equip appropriate tools
Organizations can equip automation tools for customer service. Numerous automation tools are available in the market. Yorodesk, a help desk automation tool provides various features like ticket management, drag-and-drop options, online form builder, and so on to enhance customer service. To provide the best customer service, the right tool should be chosen by analyzing whether it will satisfy all the requirements.
Set up self-service resources
To encourage self-service, create and maintain a knowledge base. The knowledge base enables users to provide self-service with a lot of solutions to their issues. YoroDesk offers a knowledge base feature that encourages self-service.
Leverage smart automation in ticket management
Smart automation is crucial in enhancing the efficiency of customer support. Instead of using simply automated replies for all customer requests, organizations can try smart automation. This can identify the request type and allocate the ticket to an appropriate team to handle it. This may reduce FRT as agents need not handle all the tickets at one time. Handling segregated tickets will reduce the time to respond to the request.
Multi-channel support
Not all customers have the same interests. Some may prefer email communication, while others may prefer live chats or phone calls for communication. So, providing multi-channel support will enhance customer service by reducing the first reply time.
Create prioritization system
Prioritizing the tickets helps the team handle it to solve the customer request on time. YoroDesk provides options to assign priority while creating requests. Customers have various levels of urgency in their issues. Handling all the tickets together may cause the most urgent ticket to wait for a long time. This prioritization helps the team to handle it in a proper way to resolve all the issues promptly.
Set clear SLAs
Service Level Agreements should be set clearly by mentioning all service-related details. These clear SLAs provide a good understanding for the customers about the organization’s services. In the SLAs, the company may mention their services, the time taken to respond to a customer’s queries, and all other service-related information. Effective SLA management will reduce FRT and improve customer satisfaction.
Set FRT targets and monitor them regularly
Setting a target is mandatory for all tasks. For the customer support team, practically achievable targets should be set. These targets must be monitored regularly. YoroDesk provides a customizable dashboard, in which users can get reports based on various factors like overall tickets, new tickets, resolved number of tickets, unassigned tickets, and so on.
Create FAQs
Create an FAQ page with repeated issues and solutions. FAQs may help the customer to find their solutions. This may reduce the number of tickets generated for all the issues. Repeated issues may be solved when customers get solutions through the FAQ page. This may reduce the operational time of the agent and allow them to focus on various tickets with new issues. When the number of tickets gets reduced the FRT will also get reduced.
Try YoroDesk to reduce your FRT
By leveraging the YoroDesk’s features, the help desk team can enhance their ticket system, prioritization, status updates, and monitoring of the target. YoroDesk provides various automation like reporting system, status update, and email first response which will reduce the average first reply time. With YoroDesk’s customer service automation, organizations can reduce their FRT and enhance their efficiency and customer satisfaction.
