Meet Klaus

Klaus is a QA platform - with all the functionalities you need to ensure that your CS is high quality and rated a 10/10 every single time. With a smart app that uses AI to help discover the highs and the lows within a company's customer service. They are the perfect people to talk to about CS quality! We sat down with Valentina, Klaus’ very own Empress of Remote and Support Quality, to learn more about quality assurance and how to implement it. 

As for Valentina’s role within Klaus, she ensures that Klaus stays functional as  a remote-first company. But it doesn’t stop there; she is also in contact with clients and helps them to refine their approach to quality within CS. Because assuring quality isn’t a one-size-fits-all kind of deal. 

You can influence people, the processes, or the product, and most companies will focus on one of those at a time. For example, if your product is very complex, you might start with helping in-house support reps level up. However, if your support organization lacks consistency, then you’ll focus on reviewing processes to find the stumbling blocks that add friction to everyone’s work. The solution may be more training for support reps, or a new way of solving tickets. Either way, you are going to make that decision based on data, not guesswork. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

First things first, how do we define quality?

Quality is a relative thing - there’s no definite calculation or formula; it’s yours to define. So where do you start when defining quality or excellence for you? It depends on the company's goal, vision, and tone. The most important thing when defining CS quality is the customer. 

What does the customer expect? ‍

To know this, you need to combine human intuition with hard data. Get your support reps involved, and dive into the data.  Lo and behold, this is where weWow and Klaus align. Data and people - the perfect blend.

Let’s get analytical; the power of numbers. 

Scaling can’t happen without in-depth analyses. But the larger you get, the more difficult it is to get the right info. In a company of 5, you can ask your colleagues for insider info on everything they do. Skip to a company with over 50 support reps, and you’re in for a different game. The amount of data flowing from that many people and the additional analyses you need to run is tough. 

What topics come up, what are the sticking points, where do support reps get lost, and where do customers get lost? In these types of situations, you need an analytical powerhouse. Queue Klaus. It uses its analysis power to show you the tickets you really should take a look at.

However, you can’t let AI determine it all. Once the important pieces of information are highlighted, a human touch is needed to draw conclusions. For example, if your CSAT score takes a nosedive, there isn’t a standard explanation. Is there something wrong with the delivery party? Was there a bug? Or was there another factor outside of CS that caused the issue? 

Context is key. 

By keeping your service representatives in on the loop, you can gain incredible amounts of information that help explain the numbers provided. CS reps are in the middle of everything; they know what customers are saying and have insights into what can be improved. 

Combining their insights with aggregated data to separate anecdotes from trends allows organisations to take better strategic decisions around product improvement, using different channels, or adapting processes. If you need to prove your point to a specific stakeholder (the board, management, marketing department, or product owners), you need the data and the stories to back it up. 

Empower your support reps. Klaus allows support reps to dive into data. Was that single weird call really a one-off thing? Or is every customer from Brazil experiencing problems? Your support reps will be able to see trends and act upon them. 
‍
And those aren’t the only benefits. By truly listening to and empowering your support reps, you create a culture in which people are more motivated and more understanding of incoming data, resulting in more proactive employees and an open and more mature team.

Let’s get practical. What steps can I take? 

- Create a quality baseline: Get your team together and choose five tickets that were handled amazingly and five that didn’t go so great. Review them with your team and create a baseline for you to build upon.

- Involve the whole team: Involve the support team in the QA process. The feedback you obtain from your service representatives should be sent to the relevant department. This empowers your team whilst also giving the company much-needed feedback.

- Share information: Create a collaborative team dynamic. In a lot of companies, support reps have a very individualistic role. They have to solve X amount of tickets, and that’s it. support reps feel more secure when they know they’re not doing it alone. A faster and freer movement of information will make your team better than a sum of their parts. They will find it easier to ask for help, troubleshoot as a group, or even just vent (vocalising frustration to the team is better than to the customer!).

- Use the right tool: Intuitive and easy-to-use quality software can make the team more aware of what is happening and get them more involved.

- Put the numbers into context: Get both sides of the story. Humans are hardwired to relate to stories. However, we need data to put stories into an overarching narrative that represents reality - without it; we’ll make up a story on our own. Marrying the data and the support reps' experiences makes sure that it is sound. Without the data, the story is an anecdote; without the story, the data is just a bunch of numbers.

So are you ready to get to work? Or do you need a little more help? Don’t worry; you find out more about Klaus and customer service quality assurance here. And you can reach out to us or our friends at Klaus for more information and any help you need!