WHITE PAPER How to Use a Ticket Systemto Efficiently Manage CustomerService Issues and Improve Customer Satisfaction Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet Etra Notros: Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet Et Alla Notros
Introduction Say Goodbye to Managing Support Operations with Emails & Spreadsheets You know support and service operations are essential to your business. Top-tier service leads to higher customer retention and stronger and more profitable customer relationships. Unfortunately, many support organizations are not maximizing the potential revenue and efficiency that can be driven through streamlined service operations. Many centers still rely on email and spreadsheets to manage inquiries. Manual processes that sap the time of skilled employees by cutting, pasting, monitoring and responding to email and phone inquiries is expensive and almost always results in delayed issue resolution, missed service inquiries and unmet Service Level Agreements(SLAs). An integrated system, centralized ticket repository and automated process that logs every inquiry and streamlines support workflow ensures that every SLA is met, no service issue is missed, and CSRs are maximizing their time. In addition, companies lower support costs and maintain less CSR headcount, all while raising customer satisfaction and issue resolution rates. More Ticket Resolution, Less Time with Parature Ticket Who Uses Parature Ticket? Regardless of industry, organizations are clamoring for a tightly integrated ticket life-cycle system that improves resolution and response times while lowering costs. Internet Retailers Brick and Mortar Retailers Government Agencies Political Organizations & Officials Gaming & Media Companies Higher Education Institutions Non-profits and Associations Technology Companies Professional Services Companies Health Care Companies Parature Customer Service software is designed to do just that for companies in multiple industries, from small businesses to large enterprises. Parature s Web-based products help companies provide top-tier multi- channel service with an integrated suite of service applications that drive profitability and efficiency of service operations through faster issue resolution. By providing support where your customers are, from phone to Facebook, and letting them choose where, when and how they interact promotes a strong brand a crucial component for success in today s increasingly collaborative and social Web. Parature Ticket is the Parature module that automates, routes and tasks all submitted service and support inquiries according to your organization s unique workflow in real time so your organization can improve the quality of the support interaction for the customer and the overall productivity and profitability of your service center. Parature Ticket is completely integrated with the whole of the Parature Customer Service software suite and helps support organizations manage the entire lifecycle of customer issues, from submission to resolution. Companies also receive a complete view of support history and activities along with reports and analytics to help your organization continuously improve your workflow and overall support operations.
How Parature Ticket Works Each time a customer connects with your organization and creates a ticket, the ticket is then routed, in real time, to the appropriate CSR, organization and queue, based on rules and parameters defined by the organization. The ticket is also stored automatically in the centralized data repository so every ticket can easily be searched, accessed, managed and reported upon. Parature Ticket maintains a complete historical record of every inquiry, resolution time and associated ticket process for improved reporting on a variety of metrics. Regardless of channel, a ticket can be used to document conversations from separate channels into a single incident. Parature provides easy and rapid configuration of rules and defined parameters for automatic routing of tickets to the appropriate organization, queue, and CSR. Rules and parameters are defined by the Parature end-user organization and can be changed and instantly deployed to reflect process, staff and workflow changes. Routing and defined parameters can be based on your unique process, including agent skill set, customer priority, issue severity, and more. Once the ticket is routed to the appropriate place, agents access the ticket and resolve the issue based on the unique workflow and prioritization of your organization. Parature Ticket provides each agent and manager access to permissions-based information through individualized portals. For example, individual agents may see incoming tickets, related customer information, customer history and, a task list ranking tickets according the rules predefined during deployment. Managers are able to take advantage of a complete view of operations in the support center, including agent productivity rates, current outstanding tickets, and what each agent is addressing. Managers can also configure portal views to receive real-time updates of metrics and reports with Parature s in-depth business analytics capabilities. Providing Parature users with the ability to provide service through multiple communication channels is the bread and butter of the Parature solution. Parature enables customers the ability to extend support activity to every channel Home-Grown to Packaged Web-delivery, Parature Makes a Big Impact Quality support helps us grow our base of subscribers and reduce churn, which helps the bottom line. With a glorified email system, it took many days to respond to the majority of tickets, leading some customers to submit duplicate tickets. Director Customer Care iwin.com Before Havok began using Parature, we supported our customers and deployed our products through many different systems including ftp sites, a custom ticketing system and custom FAQ Web pages. Combining the use and maintenance of these disparate systems in a single interface, by way of Parature, has been a real boon for Havok. It has allowed us to grow our support system, while increasing our efficiency and decreasing turnaround times for our customers. Support Lead Havok A person had to answer every email. The tipping point was a large beta release where we had more than 9,000 email requests in three days. That was when I knew we needed help. Simply put, Parature is 50 percent of my work force. With Parature, I am able to utilize fewer CSRs, keeping my staffing budget low. Senior Manager Customer Service IGN Entertainment
available to customers today, so businesses can be where their customers are and give them the power to choose when and how they conduct their interaction. Parature supports channel communications through the Web, email, phone, Web-based product embedding, Facebook, Twitter, Chat and more. Organizations can configure customer forms to gather pertinent and analytical information to speed up resolution and provide the CSR with the required details to complete the task efficiently and quickly. Every business s workflow and SLA requirements are unique. Parature- generated forms are dynamic in nature, meaning that as the customer or agent fills out the form, the Parature system dynamically populates and adapts to information provided to capture all required information to ensure the issue resolution workflow is as efficient and fast as possible. Parature s EasyAnswer feature also provides organizations with a helpful tool for facilitating issue deflection and promoting self-service resolution. For example, while a customer is in the process of filling out a Web-based form, the Parature system uses keyword identification to search a knowledgebase and automatically return articles and other helpful information aimed at solving the customer s issue prior to ticket submission. Then, the customer can determine if the information is sufficient or choose to continue with ticket submission. IGN s Got Game with Parature Ticket Gaming company IGN Entertainment uses Parature Ticket in conjunction with other modules of the Parature Customer Service software suite. The company which receives on average 12,000 inbound requests a month enjoys high customer satisfaction and loyalty rates, which it attributes, in part, to its service operations. Prior to deploying Parature, IGN had to manually respond to every email. Now, IGN s support group enjoys self-service issue resolution rates of 92 percent, and satisfies 57 percent of logged tickets with auto-responders. IGN also estimates that as its business grew, without Parature, the company would have needed to add approximately 10 CSRs with all of the associated costs. With Parature, IGN was able to avoid a large spend and improve its service operations. EasyAnswer, and the corresponding knowledgebase, greatly reduce the number of inquiries and tickets logged by customers overall. As a result, support organizations avoid the need for additional headcount and associated costs. For example, Parature customers ExtendMedia and IGN Entertainment greatly improved self-service resolution rates after deployment. ExtendMedia went from fielding an average of 100 calls per month to 20 because of a rise in self-service, and IGN s self-service channels resolve 92 percent of all customer service inquiries today. Parature Ticket s Email-to-Ticket and Auto-Responders also help promote self-service resolution and can be configured to update customers on status, time-to-resolution and outages as well as provide directly emailed knowledgebase articles. Currently, IGN resolves 57 percent of all logged tickets with auto-responders. Organizations greatly improve the number of tickets they complete daily, weekly, monthly and annually, substantially reducing customer wait, response and resolution times which keeps loyalty and satisfaction rates high. For example, gaming company and Parature user iwin.com was able to shorten ticket response rates from 1 to 2 weeks to a matter of hours. In addition, ExtendMedia was able to shorten customer wait times by 80 percent and software company e-mds, another Parature customer, decreased its average issue resolution time by 80 percent.
With individual agent views, automated ticket prioritization and routing, overall productivity of support operations increases greatly. Parature customer TMA Resources was able to increase overall support productivity by 25 percent, largely in part to reducing manual and administrative processes, and when iwin.com s subscriber base doubled, the company added only 1 new CSR headcount because of the overall efficiency of the company s support organization. Parature Ticket Features & Benefits: Centralized Ticket Repository: A centralized database that holds all tickets and customer information for a 360 degree view of every issue submitted, in process and resolved, so no customer inquiry is ever missed or disregarded. Parature Ticket users are able to search, retrieve and run reports on operations and metrics related to tickets for more productive customer support operations and improved support center management. Intelligent Rules for Workflow & Ticket Routing: Rapidly configure your unique pre-defined rules based on your organization s workflow, agent skill set and SLA requirements so tickets are sorted and routed to the right representative or resolution queue, and tracked through the process, all in real time. Parature configuration tools allow users to change these parameters as crises occur or processes evolve and change. Updates and changes are deployed instantly, so organizations can scale and implement more productive support operations immediately.
In-Depth Analytics & Reporting: Managers can run reports and use Parature s in-depth business analytics to track ticket volumes in real time or review trends over time, daily, weekly, monthly or any time period you choose, to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of support interactions. Support organizations can improve continually to lower costs and improve customer satisfaction rates by taking advantage of the knowledge that comes from discovering if Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are met, and the amount of time spent on issue resolution and support.
Automated Email Responses: Configure automated email responses to customer inquiries based on your unique predefined process, like type of issue and SLA requirements. Parature customers can also configure automated email responses to be routed directly to CSRs and managers to make sure key personnel are alerted of pressing issues like after-hours critical service requests. Dynamic & Configurable Forms: Every organization s SLA requirements and workflow are different. That is why Parature Ticket enables companies to rapidly configure ticket forms for easy initial deployment. Parature users can also set up dynamic forms that automatically populate based on customer information, issue, experience, priority and other parameters defined by your organization. Any changes or updates made to the form are immediately deployed into customer-facing forms as well as through the behind-the-scenes support center workflow. Time-Sensitive Alerts: Parature Ticket automatically and continually checks ticket status and priority based on pre-defined rules, and will send time-sensitive alerts (TSAs) when needed. Parature Ticket can flag, escalate and reroute tickets based on these rules to make sure SLAs are met and customer support issues are resolved as quickly as possible. Agent Task List View: Parature s easily configurable system enables organizations to provide individual views for each agent, so CSRs can see every ticket currently assigned, status, priority and outstanding and upcoming tasks. CSRs can then take action andresolve customer inquiries and issues quickly and efficiently, saving the organization time and money. 360 Manager View: Like the Agent Task List View, managers are provided with a page view based on individual permissions that allows them to gain a complete view of what is happening within the support center in real time and over the long term. Complete with individual reports, managers can see how their organization is tracking toward internal metrics, which agents are most productive, which ones need additional help and if operations are running smoothly or overloaded. Managers can then adapt workflow and prioritization, all in real time, to improve support operations continually and to respond to unforeseen occurrences and events.
Ticket Feedback: Weave in customer experience and impressions to your support metrics and reporting by capturing feedback from customers at the end of a service interaction. By integrating feedback into your service workflow, you ll identify areas for operational and individual agent improvements, while capturing more accurate customer satisfaction loyalty rates. EasyAnswer: While customers are filling out service requests, the Parature EasyAnswer feature automatically searches your organization s knowledgebase to serve up articles and information in real time to try to solve the customer s support issue. This feature deflects 1-to-1 CSR interactions which require more time and more internal expense. Rather, by using the EasyAnswer feature, Parature users are able to increase the rate of self-service resolution, keeping support costs low and customers satisfied.
Standards, Web-Based Architecture: Parature Ticket s standards-based Web architecture is easily integrated with data warehouses, bug-tracking systems, and enterprise applications through Parature s REST-based API. Through popular Web-programming technologies like HTML, XML and JavaScript, organizations can quickly extend and embed Parature Ticket functionality to any Web application, including browser-based games and products. Multi-Language and Multi-Browser Support: As with all Parature modules, Parature Ticket is completely browser- based with no plug-ins required, making deployment fast, easy and global. Compatibility for Microsoft Internet Explorer, Apple s Safari, and open-source Firefox is supported. Also, both single- and double-byte languages are supported in multiple communication channels allowing global linguistic customization. Complete, End-to-End Solution: Parature Ticket is completely integrated with the whole of the Parature Customer Service software suite, which is delivered in a Web-based global model. Parature Ticket can be used in conjunction with all other Parature modules including Parature Knowledgebase, Parature Chat, Parature for Facebook and more. When used together, organizations enjoy a total view of all support interactions, improving productivity, lowering support costs and boosting customer retention and satisfaction rates. Conclusion Managing and resolving customer issues are essential to running a successful and profitable customer service and support organization. Parature Ticket helps companies make the transition from manual processes, complex spreadsheets and individual email response to a streamlined and integrated system that provides a complete view of all tickets submitted, in process and resolved. Parature Ticket is tightly integrated with the entirety of the Parature Customer Service software suite so every support activity, interaction and history is tracked, managed and analyzed for continual improvement. Parature customers are able to enjoy more efficient support operations that raise customer satisfaction rates and reduce costs overall.
ABOUT PARATURE Parature is the industry s leading provider of cloud-based customer engagement solutions and is used to support more that 40 million end users worldwide. Parature empowers customer service organizations to monitor, manage, resolve and respond to a high volume of service issues across multiple communication channels, including the growing number of service-related conversations that are happening every day within social media channels. With more than a decade of experience, Parature delivers support and social media engagement and management solutions to mid-size and enterprise organizations across a wide variety of industries. Parature is among Inc. Magazine s Top 100 Fastest Growing Private Software Companies and is the recipient of numerous product, technology, and leadership awards. Parature is used by some of the world s most innovative organizations, federal agencies and companies, including Evernote, the EPA, Tagged and Threadless. Parature is headquartered in Herndon, Virginia. For more information, visit www.parature.com. our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/parature or follow @parature on Twitter. HEADQUARTERS 13625 Suite B Dulles Technology Drive Herndon, VA 20171 Phone: 703.564.7758 Fax: 703.564.7757 www.parature.com Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet Etra Notros: Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet Et Alla Notros