How can you improve response time

Use the experience of your agents to build a library of responses. Experienced agents know what type of questions their customers ask time after time. Use this information to better prepare your customer service team. This means that every customer will get the same answer to their question, with little or no deviation — helping to reinforce the brand and keep all your customers happy.

Of course, not every customer service query can be handled with a template. Another way to help make writing emails easier is to use text shortcuts.

For example, by assigning shortcuts to commonly used words or phrases, you can dramatically reduce the number of keystrokes needed to write an email response. You could also use shortcuts for other parts of the email, including:. Text shortcuts or email templates can dramatically reduce the amount of time needed to answer an email, which in turn will allow you to respond to more emails and reduce your average response time.

As you know, not all customer inquiries are the same. Some are simply more important than others and should be treated as such. As this is maybe the second or third time contact has been made regarding the same problem, the response must be more urgent.

This may also be the case with particularly important customers or with those inquiries that require more time to resolve.

It is very tempting for agents to leave more complex issues for later and tackle the easy ones first. But if these are tagged as high-priority, they are more likely to be resolved in a time the customer finds acceptable.

You can reassure the sender that their email has been read and that, due to the complex nature of an inquiry, a resolution may be slightly delayed.

While a range of tagging systems can be utilized to prioritize email communications, try using a system everyone understands. One of the quickest and easiest is the traffic light system:. You can prioritize your inbound communications through a triage system, just like an emergency room. You can assess an email based on its subject or theme and assign it a tag accordingly. They are geographically spread out to provide content to users as fast as possible.

A global audience requires a provider who has distributed its assets to various nodes around the globe. This ensures all web page visitors enjoy fast response times. To avoid such an issue, you need to know your target audience before deciding on a hosting provider.

This will help you choose a data center that is nearest to that audience. By minimizing the distance between your hosting servers and your visitors, you can improve latency issues. As a result, this reduces the overall response times. The response speed is dependent on database optimization.

As you first set up a website, the database responds quickly to queries. As time passes, the database accumulates information. The compiling results in massive amounts of data stored.

There are ways of optimizing the database to speed up your website. If you are using WordPress , the first step is to identify slow queries with a query checker. Once you find the lagging ones, work on optimization. Change the group to objects, use indexes, or other solutions appropriate for the issues at hand.

WordPress allows you to create beautiful websites easily. It has appealing themes and numerous plugins for customizing. However, be careful not to overload your theme as it can slow down response time. If you are using a WP template, try to stick to simple, lightweight ones and avoid adding too many plugins. Use a webpage monitoring tool and examine which plugins are slowing your webpage down. Delete any unused plugins and deactivate ones that use up CPU resources.

The more processes a server has to undertake to serve a page to a visitor, the slower it will be. If you are running a PHP script, ensure it is not using up vital resources fulfilling unnecessary tasks. Make sure PHP is updated. Many hosting companies do not do PHP updates automatically.

If necessary, upgrade to a newer version through cPanel or by contacting your hosting provider. Caching ensures fast delivery to visitors. Without caching, a browser requests assets from the server each time a page loads instead of accessing them from a local or intermediary cache. The files are then reused during future visits. This practice is called caching. A great way to kill the efficacy of your support is to lack an organized system.

The time it takes to close out a service ticket is highly dependent upon the right people being able to see it as a priority and act accordingly. If you and your team suffer from overflowing-inbox syndrome, you may need a new system to organize support cases. For example, a friend of mine has called her newspaper seven weeks in a row because they failed to deliver the Wednesday special.

A manager was notified to contact her, but never followed through. If their internal communication and follow-through were better maintained, she would have gotten her solution by now.

If they fill out an online form or send an email, send them a confirmation email that their information has been received successfully. By giving them access to this information, you help set expectations for your response: that you will respond, that your response will be well communicated, and that their concerns will be addressed in a reasonable amount of time. Sometimes, your efforts on social media are best redirected to another channel.

For example, you can tweet them your number and ask them to call you for an expedited solution. Using a channel ill-suited to the problem can eat up your time and reduce your overall responsiveness. Most customers will be more than happy to oblige if it solves their problems in less time! Do you know which customer requests take the least amount of time? The ones that never happen, of course! A well written FAQ page and supporting help documentation can reduce the flood of questions aimed at your team.

In addition, make sure that your support team has access to common issues and solutions that they can implement to help customers.