Managing a successful support team for POS/Merchant Processing can be tricky.

BOLD’s growth over the past 10 years is directly related to the amazing talent we have brought on board, and one team, in particular, is the Client Services (CS) Team. Each CS Team member is trained and mentored by colleagues during their onboarding process. The team has adopted a culture where each person is encouraged to ask and answer questions. This is what makes our client services team so unstoppable and why I am excited to provide an insider’s look into this three-part series as to what makes BOLD Support so powerful.

The main benefits of this blog is to share how our team works and the tools we have found helpful when supporting our partners and merchants.

Multiple Channels for Support

Support via Email

Perhaps the most popular form of opening support cases for our partners is the use of email. Cases that come in via email directly hit our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and land in a Case Queue managed by our team. Cases that we receive via email provide smoother comprehension and the ability to resolve high-level issues with a sense of urgency. It also allows us to route or assign Cases to team members that specialize in that particular issue cutting down on the Case Age Lifecycle. 

Routing of Incoming Emails

While the entire team is responsible for the queue, we have found that assigning one or two people (our “Queue Masters”) to assign Cases to team members drastically reduces the amount of time new Cases go untouched. This helps keep our initial response times within our goal of three hours (depending on the severity of the issue). 

BOLD Unwritten Rules

• Goldilocks Communication – Not too much, not too little- just right. 
• Too much information can overwhelm and even confuse a partner/merchant. They might not know the inner workings of a process and to find out may cause stress when it is not needed.
• Too little information causes multiple attempts to communicate. Questions come up and partners are left unsure if what we’ve told them is verifying/answering their question completely.

Tools
Salesforce (Service Cloud)
Email to Case

Support via Phone 

Support over the phone allows us to build a personal connection with our partners. Not all ISVs and VARs have the time to pick up the phone to call into a support number, but a verbal conversation is the preferred method for many of our partners.

Giving the Right Answer over the Phone

The Client Service’s job is to provide our partners with an answer or resolution when they need it. However, in such a technical industry dealing with various point-of-sale softwares, we have trained our team that there is nothing wrong with saying “I do not have an answer for that now, but let me speak to someone that can answer that right away.” Providing service just based on the speed of response can sometimes cultivate a culture where the first answer is not always the correct answer. We encourage due diligence to alleviate future headaches for our partners and their merchants.

Routing of Incoming Call

Similar to our email system, incoming calls also end up in a phone queue. Each team member is responsible for logging into the queue when available and out of the queue when they are away from their desk. Each team member has visibility as to which rep is available and makes sure the phones are covered before logging out. Depending on the prompts the user selects when calling, the call is routed to the proper channel based on severity of the call. Should a voicemail be left, the reporting and transcript immediately hit our email Case queue described above where it is assigned to the first available representative. 

During uncommon times when the calls outnumber our available reps, BOLD has integrated a solution that allows our busy partners the chance to remain in the queue while they await a callback. When this solution is used, our phone system immediately rings the first available representative and, when answered, automatically places an outbound call to the partner. 

BOLD Unwritten Rules

• It’s okay to say that you’re not sure, and want to find out that information for them. Trying to answer incorrectly or beating around the bush because you want to perceive you are “all-knowledgeable” is a waste of the partner’s and your time.
  • Find the answer quickly – don’t keep them on hold – offer to call them back once you have found an answer. If they would rather hold, great! Check back every 5 minutes or so to gain trust

Tools
GoTo Connect
Salesforce

Portal/Online Support

Opening Cases via Online Forms

Another popular channel for our partners opening a Case with BOLD is our partner portal. Perhaps the largest benefit this has for the Client Services team is the fact that incoming Cases can be automatically categorized and assigned to the proper channel bypassing our Email Queue. Depending on the form being filled out, our System can predefine the Case Category and walk the partner through necessary fields for opening the Case.

Providing a Partner Knowledge Base

Along with the ability to open Cases, a knowledge base (linked here) is available for our partners to quickly find documents, QRGs, and answers cutting down on the amount of inbound calls/emails our services team receives. 

Tools
Salesforce Communities
Salesforce Knowledge Base

(Coming Soon)

Part 2

How BOLD Categorizes and Organizes Incoming Cases
Managing Vast Amounts of Information

Part 3

Managing Multiple Team Members
Taking Advantage of Customer Feedback Tools

Questions on implementing some of these tools for your team?

Contacts us below and we can get you started.