Thursday, April 21, 2022

Little hits of dopamine (triggered by computer screen)

Aggravations and Opportunities

Your inbox may be crammed with confusion and complaint, but there is also the delightful drip drip drip of dopamine hitting your hypothalamus when you close out conversations¹.

Another under-appreciated benefit of the one-after-another nature of customer service is the opportunity to experiment easily.

What would happen if you answered questions in a different order? If you prioritized certain customers or categories of question? Try it and see. The queue is internal so your customers typically won't know the order you are using anyway.

Why not switch up your usual greetings or closing sentences? Go wild and use a second exclamation point or throw in a gif. Assign someone to watch for easy to answer questions and respond within minutes, or to work exclusively on those stubborn queue-barnacles that everyone has been avoiding.

What process have you been following so long that nobody remembers why it was setup that way? Could you work faster if you used a second browser or tested a different tool?

When a conversation is usually resolved within a day or two, even if it all falls apart the impact will be limited and you can switch back for the next conversation.

How can you be a queue scientist this week? If you try something new, let me know how it went (good or bad). I will send some sweet Help Scout swag to a few people who try something new.

1 Losing those regular quick wins was a surprisingly big adjustment when I moved out of a full time support role.

Mat Patterson
Help Scout

The Taming of the Queue: 14 Support Queue Management Tips

Understanding and managing the power of the queue is critical to a sustainable customer service organization. Here are some practical ways to get that queue under control.