How to get started with Ticket Deflection
21 May 2024
7.5 min read
If your customer service team is being overwhelmed with customer queries and tickets, then you might be looking into Ticket Deflection as a strategy. The idea is clear – the fewer customer cases your team has to handle, the better.
Ticket deflection refers to the use of self-service tools like knowledge bases, FAQs, chatbots, and community forums to help customers find solutions on their own, reducing the number of support tickets submitted. The benefits of ticket deflection include enabling customers to resolve their queries independently through self-service options and AI automation, which ultimately improves efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Reducing the number of tickets that hit your team inbox creates a virtuous circle. Fewer tickets means that your agents can get to customers faster, and they can also spend more time ensuring that problems are resolved, reducing tickets further.
It’s clearly a great idea, and ticket deflection is a popular concept. But be careful. As one of our customers recently told us:
"A Ticket Deflection strategy is not compatible with great customer experience.”
What does that mean? Well… if you do everything you can to deflect tickets, you could be putting lots of obstacles in your customers' way that prevent them from getting their issues resolved.
In short, you might be successful at deflecting tickets because customers, or potential customers, get so frustrated they leave your site and never come back. That's why we always advocate to push for ticket resolution.
But with that warning in mind, let's talk about how to do Ticket Deflection effectively, and our Ticket Deflection Maturity model.
Preparing to deflect
Measure the before, so you can measure the after
In order to see if any deflection tactics are working, you have to set a benchmark. This is not going to be perfect because you will have natural fluctuations in ticket volumes, and if you are a growing business everything is likely to go up. Tracking ticket volume as a baseline metric is essential for understanding the overall demand on your support team. But it’s important to have something to compare.
You should also measure metrics like ticket deflection ratio, support ticket deflection rate, support deflection rate, and self service score to evaluate how effective your self-service resources and deflection initiatives are at reducing support requests.
Measuring these metrics can help you clearly demonstrate the financial impact of your ticket deflection efforts to leadership.
Understand what customers are actually asking you
To have the biggest impact with any ticket deflection/reduction strategy, you need to look at what your customers are actually asking you. You can use AI tools to categorise these by intent (which is something we offer, incidentally), or you could just take a sample and start categorising them yourself. By analyzing customer support tickets and each support ticket, you can identify patterns and recurring issues. It's important to spot the same questions that come up repeatedly, so you can address them efficiently. This analysis is crucial for resolving customer issues more effectively through self-service and deflection strategies.
Take the attitude that your customers are smart.
It’s tempting to assume your customers are lazy idiots, when it feels like you get the same question time and time again, and customers could find the information for themselves if they only tried.
No doubt that is sometimes the case. But in most cases customers have at least tried to look up the answer before they’ve started bothering you. Empowering customers to find answers independently through well-designed self-service resources is crucial for improving their experience and reducing unnecessary support requests.
The assumption of lazy stupidity is at the heart of some bad ticket deflection tactics we spoke about above. When a customer reaches out to speak to you, you instead assume that they did look on your website, they did search your help centre, and they did read all the articles connected to that keyword, then you are on a better footing.
After all, lazy people don’t want to wait 15 minutes for an agent to come online when they can spend 5 minutes looking it up themselves.
The Ticket Deflection Maturity Model
If customers are coming to you to answer a question then we have to assume they couldn’t Either they couldn’t find it because:
A) the answer wasn’t in any of your help articles or FAQs
B) The answer was in your help articles, but was really difficult to find, or was unclear
C) The answer could never be found in a help article because it is unique to that customer.
Work out which is true for each case, and then we can start stepping up the maturity scale and see where we are.
Level 1: Make the information available on your website
If you never published shipping information, the chances are you would be getting plenty of questions about it. As soon as you put a page about your shipping policies with information about where you ship, who the carriers are, what the costs and timelines are, etc. then the number of tickets about those topics would drastically fall. Knowledge bases and a self service knowledge base can centralize this information, making it easy for customers to find answers on their own.
A well-organized help center can further support customers in finding answers without needing to contact support.
That’s a positive form of deflection, but it’s one we tend to gloss over because it’s so simple.
Take a look at what your customers are asking and for each one check if the information is available on your website somewhere.
Level 2: Make information easy to find
If the information is on your website, but people are still contacting you, then look at how easy it is to find that information. Does the snippet of information have its own page on your site? Can you search on your helpdesk and find it within a few clicks, or is it buried halfway down a thousand word article? Robust search functionality in your knowledge base or help center is essential to help customers quickly locate the information they need.
You should also send customers links to the relevant articles in confirmation emails and other communications if you think it’s information they’ll need later.
Again, look at what customers are asking and if you are giving out the same answer word for word, then put it right at the top of your FAQs. After all, it is now a frequently asked question!
Step 3: Provide self-service tools
In general if people can do something themselves in 5 minutes, they will do that rather than wait for someone to do it for them.
Take returns for example. We don’t (yet) live in a world where having items picked up from your home is standard. If a customer is returning an item, it means he or she is packing it back up, taping it, printing a label, and dropping it off somewhere. This is where self-service widgets come in. Automated tools and automated workflows can streamline routine support tasks such as returns and order tracking, making it easier for customers to resolve their issues without needing to submit tickets or wait for support agents.
Allowing customers to use a widget on your site to enter their details, their order number, and then print off a return label is a great way to deflect tickets. These tickets are often about lost order numbers.
Another example is order status. Providing a widget where customers can check on their order will reduce (or deflect) a lot of those “Where Is My Order” questions, and certainly the ones that can be answered by sharing a tracking link. These solutions help reduce support tickets and generate cost savings for the business by minimizing the number of support requests that need to be handled by customer support agents.
Step 4: Use AI to automatically resolve queries
When we talked about issues where the answer could never be found in a help article because it is unique to that customer, we meant things like:
An order has got stuck in transit and hasn’t moved for several days
An order says it’s been delivered but the customer hasn’t received it
Part of an order has arrived but there is no information on the rest
In these cases, the customer is often coming to you BECAUSE they have checked their order status and seen that something has gone wrong. If your chatbot’s first answer is to ask them to check the tracking link then it’s being really annoying.
If instead, using AI and deep integrations with carriers and order management systems, the chatbot can check the order status, compare that with what the customer is saying then it can start to see a mismatch. AI powered chatbots, ai agents, machine learning, and natural language processing all play a crucial role in understanding and resolving customer queries by analyzing intent, context, and providing accurate responses.
For example if a package hasn’t moved for several days, it could follow a business logic that if it has not updated for 5 days, then a replacement could be automatically issued.
When an order is supposed to have been delivered, then the AI can confirm that with the customer, and again issue a replacement. It could go a step further and authorise a refund if that’s what the customer wants, and at the same time compile the information to send to the carrier to claim compensation. Seamless integration between your support systems ensures that these resolutions happen smoothly and efficiently, improving the overall customer experience and resolving customer issues quickly.
This is exactly what DigitalGenius does for our customers, among many other things. It’s still a ticket in the system, but it has been deflected away from human agents by being handled by a bot. The bot is following the same logic that an agent would follow, and for these repetitive tasks it can achieve them faster. There are times when it will get stuck and an eventuality that hasn’t been foreseen will crop up, at which point the ticket can be passed to an agent. But the agent can see more context and information from the DigitalGenius platform and can solve the issue faster. Content quality in your knowledge base and support documentation is essential for effective automation and self-service, ensuring that both AI and customers have access to accurate, up-to-date information.
These strategies help support agents, customer support agents, and support teams by allowing them to focus on more complex issues rather than repetitive support requests. By tracking the number of deflected tickets, tickets submitted, and support requests, you can measure the effectiveness of your support ticket deflection efforts and optimize your processes. Implementing a self service portal and self service deflection strategies empowers customers to resolve customer issues independently, improving ticket deflection rates and overall support efficiency. These approaches not only improve ticket deflection rates but also contribute to greater operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
FAQ Page Best Practices
A well-crafted FAQ page is one of the most effective self service options for reducing support tickets and enhancing customer satisfaction. When customers can quickly find solutions to their questions, your customer support team can focus on more complex issues, and your overall support costs decrease. Here are some best practices to ensure your FAQ page becomes a powerful tool for ticket deflection:
Keep it concise and organized: Structure your FAQ page with clear headings and straightforward answers. Avoid overwhelming customers with lengthy explanations or technical jargon—quick answers help customers find solutions without needing direct assistance from your support team.
Use relevant keywords: Incorporate terms like “support tickets,” “customer support team,” and “self service options” throughout your FAQ content. This not only helps customers find answers more easily but also improves your page’s visibility in search engine results, driving more users to your self service resources.
Provide instant solutions: Address the most common support requests with direct, actionable responses. The faster customers can resolve their issues, the higher your ticket deflection rate and the better the customer experience.
Make it easily accessible: Place your FAQ page in prominent locations on your website—such as the main navigation, header, or footer—so customers can access it whenever they need help. Easy access is key to enabling customers to self serve.
Regularly update content: Keep your FAQ page fresh by adding new questions, updating existing answers, and removing outdated information. This ensures customers always find the most relevant and accurate knowledge base articles, which helps maintain high deflection rates.
Use AI-powered chatbots: Integrate ai powered chatbots into your FAQ page to provide automated answers and guide customers to the right solutions. These tools can handle repetitive queries, offer instant solutions, and further reduce the number of support tickets needing human intervention.
Measure and analyze performance: Track metrics like ticket deflection rate, customer satisfaction, and search queries to understand how well your FAQ page is performing. Use these insights to identify gaps and continuously improve your self service content.
Optimize for mobile: Many customers will access your FAQ page from their smartphones or tablets. Make sure your page is mobile-friendly, with responsive design and easy-to-read formatting, so customers can find solutions on any device.
Use clear and concise language: Explain even complex concepts in simple, easy-to-understand terms. This helps customers find solutions quickly and reduces the likelihood of them submitting support requests for clarification.
Provide additional resources: Link to related knowledge base articles, community forums, or contact options for customers who need more help. This ensures that even if a customer can’t find the answer in your FAQ, they have a clear path to further support.
By following these best practices, you empower your customers to resolve their own issues, reduce the number of support tickets, and improve overall customer satisfaction. A strong FAQ page not only increases your ticket deflection rates but also supports your customer support team by allowing them to focus on more complex queries. Remember to regularly review and update your FAQ page to keep pace with changing customer expectations and ensure it remains a valuable self service resource.
Conclusion: start with why
As we’ve said, ticket deflection should be about allowing the customer to solve their issue faster on their own. If you set out to do that, and always place yourselves in the shoes of a customer, then you can do ticket deflection successfully.
If, on the other hand, you set out just to reduce ticket volumes, then you can jeopardise the customer experience by making them jump through unnecessary and unhelpful hoops.
But also work out which tickets you are trying to reduce and why. If you take a targeted approach and tackle a ticket type at a time, and measure the volumes, then you can start to see the impact of your initiatives. These efforts can result in significant cost savings and demonstrate a positive financial impact for your organization by reducing support ticket volume and operational expenses.
If you are ready to look to step 3 and 4 and start building tools that customers can use to resolve tickets themselves, then speak to our team today.
