How Intelligent Swarming Unlocks the Powerful Realm to Proactive Support

Constantly evolving customer expectations demonstrate the need for advanced support methodologies within the organizations. Despite that, most still depend on a traditional tiered support model that lets customers slog in the trenches until the agents are done with ping-ponging the ticket to the next-tiered agent. Frustrating, isn’t it?

This brings up a crucial question — Is there a better modus operandi to combat a fair share of challenges of modern service desk? Enter Intelligent Swarming℠ (IS).

Let’s take a closer look at how Agent Swarming can help make your customer service future-ready.

A Crisp Introduction To Intelligent Swarming

Customer expectations have burgeoned in the last few years. Today, leaving modern customers in the waiting room limbo can cripple your business in ways you’ve never imagined. This is where Intelligent Swarming comes in.

Intelligent Swarming, also known as collaboration on steroids or Agile Collaboration, is a collaborative framework that helps address issues by routing them to the best-fitting support agent and working collaboratively with other teams when additional expertise is required.

Picture this: Brandon is assigned with a ticket that requires additional expertise on the product side. Rather than handing off the baton — in this case, the tickets — he reaches out to a product expert named Jason. Jason takes a quick look at the concern and provides the right contextual response to the customer instantly. After the issue is sorted, Brandon can take over and finish the conversation. This is a collaborative effort that led to a quicker case resolution with no escalations.

Your customers are happy, you’re happy, and your employees!

Does Agent Swarming Even Work? Why All the Fuss?

Everyone needs a friend to doubt-proof their concerns. We get it!

There is mounting evidence that can prove how Intelligent Swarming is way better than Tiered Support Model.

As you can see in the graph, the numbers for the collaborative support model propels in each case. There is a surge of 11% in customer loyalty, 13% increase in gross profit margin, and close to a perfect score, 4.48 out of 5 for customer satisfaction for the swarming culture. In addition, there is reduce of 6% in attrition rates. Commendable, isn’t it?

To quote KCS Academy, “The tiered support model of the past 35 years is giving way to a new structure and process: Intelligent Swarming (IS), a better way to align people with work.”

However, forward‑thinking enterprises have started adopting cognitive platforms as it offers a holistic solution to circumventing the challenges and scaling for business growth. How you may ask? To help you with this, we will be shining some light on how cognitive technology fuels agent swarming.

How Cognitive Technology Catapults Intelligent Swarming for Proactive Support and Success

Instating and fostering a swarming culture is easier said than done, but it is possible. It requires getting out of the comfort zone and abolishing the existing structures of hierarchy. Cutting-edge technologies like cognitive tech can smoothen your transition journey in multiple ways.

1. Facilitates Effective Triaging: Take the first step to correct before you face the customer. Unlike the tiered model, the tickets in a swarming culture are assigned to the best-fitting agent as per their expertise and experience. However, how do you evaluate that effectively? This is where applications available on AppExchange, like SearchUnify’s Escalation Predictor, come in.

AI-powered Escalation Predictor analyzes historical data and routes the case to the best agent with expertise on a particular ticket. In other words, it factors in real-time to fuel intelligent case assignment. This saves time and minimizes mean time to resolve (MTTR).

2. Provides Real-Time Insights From SMEs: There are times when agents seek additional expertise from other departments. Instead of requesting hand-offs, a collaboration tool can be in the place where they can reach out to the subject matter experts (SMEs) for case resolution.

Support applications such as Agent Helper can help with that. It displays the top SMEs for the said ticket and allows you to connect with them at a lightning speed. This shrinks the overall TTR and saves a lot of head-scratching.

3. Predicts User Intent and Sentiment: When customers raise a ticket, the chances of them being disappointed is quite high as the product or self‑service channels must’ve disappointed them. They seek instant gratification and instant resolution. Is that much to ask? Certainly not.

Still, they are left in the long waiting lines, tempting them to cancel your subscription. However, AI‑powered apps like Escalation Predictor can prevent that by showing your agents the customer journey map with all the touchpoints and sentiments. This allows the support rep to get the complete picture, prioritize the case, and act accordingly. The customer is delighted that, in turn, improves FCR and CSAT.

4. Push Swarm Resolutions to Your Knowledge Base: After jumping through hoops, a complex ticket is resolved. It would be absurd to let this valuable information slide, right? But where and how you may ask?

AppExchange applications like KCS Enabler eliminate the recurring challenge of knowledge creation by automatically populating new articles as a by-product of agents’ resolutions for undocumented issues. In addition to that, KCS sets in motion a continuous loop process that accelerates knowledge creation, populates new knowledge base articles with recommended templates, and monitors and quantifies KCS performance. This saves agents’ time and allows them to focus on the case resolutions.

Experience Agent Swarming Live in Action With Real AI

The transition to a swarming model isn’t always easy. It requires tearing down the existing structures of hierarchy and instating a new approach to achieve a fresh set of objectives. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? But, paradigm shifts always do.

This is where cognitive platforms, available on AppExchange, lend a helping hand by smoothening the long road ahead.

Check out SearchUnify and other AI-powered solutions on AppExchange that will act as your end-to-end knowledge management solution and catapult intelligent swarming and personalized support.

“Intelligent Swarming℠ is a service mark of the Consortium for Service Innovation™.”