Issuetrak Serves Customers Faster with Chat

Business Challenge

Based in Norfolk, Virginia, Issuetrak develops, sells, and supports software for tracking business processes, tickets, and operational workflows. With over 2000 customers in multiple countries around the world, the goal of Dan Flowers, Director of Technical Operations (now CEO), is to helm a team of analysts providing the best customer service on the planet. Issuetrak consistently boasts a satisfaction rating over 96%, with last year’s number closely approaching 97%. The goal is always to improve and be the best.  

Issuetrak always advocates using their own software to support business processes and workflow. So when Issuetrak launched Chat as an offering in version 10.2, Flowers jumped at the chance to implement it with the Support analysts. “We wanted to utilize another vector for our customers to reach Support and get an expedient response.”  

Solution

Even with an average speed to answer of less than 60 seconds, sometimes customers don’t want to pick up the phone and go through the process for just a quick question. “With Chat, customers don’t even have to send an email, just type out the question and get an immediate response,” said Flowers.

Additionally, analysts are able to handle chats while on the phone, so while it might take a moment to get to an analyst by phone, analysts can be responding to a chat while on hold, or waiting for a process to complete. However, if the call is complicated, or the analyst is on a remote session, they can easily transfer the chat to another analyst directly from the chat portal with no disruption to the customer. With Chat, more customers quickly get the answer they need.

The other important aspect to implementing Chat was a tight integration between Chat and creating issues within Issuetrak. The chat transcripts are forwarded by email to an incoming email box setup in Issuetrak to automatically create issues. Analysts then can follow up on those issues when necessary. Additionally, because Support uses the Surveys module, customers have the opportunity to give feedback, just like with any other issue.

The team chat feature allows analysts to talk amongst themselves, to ask for assistance, and bring other people in to look at an issue. Flowers added, “It’s all about making sure that everyone has the answers, getting the right solutions.”

Another feature is the ability to see what a customer is typing, even before they hit send. “It sounds spooky, but is pretty cool, because we can articulate a response seconds after the customer hits send, rather than minutes.”

Flowers continued, “It keeps us two or three steps ahead, so while a customer is making sure their question is perfectly worded, we can be working on getting them the response they need.”

Among other diverse features of Issuetrak is proactive chat, where the system reaches out to ask a question on certain pages before a customer chooses to engage chat. “We tested a lot of different things. Finding out what works and what is appropriate, yet not irritating is important. We’re still testing some of those features,” Flowers said.

Benefits

Flowers has found that his team of analysts are able to provide a higher level of service, and faster service with this new mechanism. “That’s pretty powerful.”

The reporting from Chat is also powerful. “With the Chat dashboard, I can see transcripts of every analyst’s conversations. That stays forever, so I can enforce quality. I can see how long customers had to wait, how many analysts the chat bounced between, how long it took the analysts to write a response, and what they told the customer,” Flowers said.

”I guarantee, when you’re able to get a response in five seconds as an answer to your question, that’s got to leave you feeling pretty good. We’ve loved it, and so have our customers that have used it.”
-Dan Flowers, Director of Technical Operations

Flowers also sees analytics like available time per analyst, and who’s logged in at any given time. Additionally, he was able to give granular permissions to the Support Manager to run reports without giving her full control over the system. “It’s always good to segregate who has the power,” Flowers said.

Another benefit from using Chat is the ability to direct the customer’s browsing session. “Analysts can direct the browser of the customer from the Support site directly to the Knowledge Base article that solves their exact problem. There’s no email, no link. They’re just instantly taken to their solution, both in documentation and supported by the analyst chatting with them. That’s an amazing new level of service that’s instantly helpful.” It also saves the analyst’s time because they don’t have to type out all the instructions.

Finally, implementing Chat has allowed the Issuetrak documentation to be thoroughly updated. That way, any Issuetrak customer that wants to include Chat within their site has the most accurate and up-to-date resources available.

In the future, Flowers is also hoping to implement dedicated chat queues called widgets. They’re currently running only a support widget, but ongoing plans include adding a sales widget on the Issuetrak website for customers and future customers to be able to ask questions of an account manager. This would also allow an account manager to easily transfer a technical question across widgets to the Support team.

“That gives us a lot of power to open up clear communication and break down silos, all while giving customers accurate and fast responses all from a single portal.”

If you would like to see how Issuetrak Chat can work for you, talk to one of our product experts today.