The future of customer support departments is rapidly approaching. So, what changes can we expect in 2023 and beyond? What skills will support agents need to keep up? And what key performance indicators should we be tracking when proactive support becomes the norm?
On this month’s episode of The Customer Success Channel Podcast, brought to you by Planhat, I chatted with Declan Ivory, VP of Customer Support at Intercom about how AI is transforming the customer support department.
Declan Ivory is an experienced senior leader with a passion for building and developing high-performing teams and applying digital technologies to support organizations through major business transformations. Over the last 10 years, Declan has held senior support leadership roles with Amazon Web Services, Tableau Software, and Google Cloud. He’s now sharing his operational expertise and strong leadership to support the growth of Intercom’s Customer Support team.
In the past, support departments were just perceived as ticket responders. But at Intercom, that wasn’t enough, and they wanted to transform their support organization. Declan and his team worked hard to introduce a Customer Milestone Framework, which helped them shift from reactive to proactive support.
In our discussion, Declan helps answer some of the tricky questions when it comes to customer support:
- Support has always been seen as a support agent answering tickets, but you have transformed the support organization at Intercom, what were some of the first steps you took to move from reactive to proactive support?
- Ai/Machine Learning is really transforming support, how are you utilizing Ai at Intercom/with your support team?
- There is the traditional way of delivering support – answering tickets, what are some of the new/different ways you proactively do support?
Some key takeaways from this discussion:
- The first thing to do when moving from reactive to proactive support is to get people to take the customer perspective rather than a transactional perspective. When you are looking at the overall customer experience, you can really start adding value for the customer
- AI and machine learning are already revolutionizing support services. However, it’s crucial to remember that the goal is to assist and empower the team, not to replace them.
- AI will change the economics of delivering support. It frees up a lot of time and bandwidth for your support team to add more value from the customer perspective and from a business point of view
Make sure you listen to the full episode and let me know your thoughts in the comments!
