What are top support agents?
Definition: Top support agents are highly experienced support team members who provide outstanding customer service and have excellent performance metrics.
They are well-versed in all support processes and are responsible for handling complex customer requests and ensuring the best customer experience.
Top support agents are tasked with identifying new ways to improve support and are a significant source of knowledge for their whole team to learn from and improve.
Key qualities and skills exhibited by top support agents
Top support agents must possess personal qualities that help them excel and provide customers with quality experiences.
These qualities include:
- Strong communication skills
- Emotional intelligence
- Empathy and patience
- Problem-solving abilities
- Adaptability
- Positive attitude
- Teamwork and collaboration
These qualities let top support agents build strong customer relationships by understanding their needs, concerns, and emotions. In turn, they can solve customers’ problems in a pleasant manner.
Besides these qualities, top support agents need to have mastery over three key areas:
Product Knowledge and Technical Skills:
- In-depth product knowledge with the needed technical skills to back it up.
- Mastery of all support tools and technologies used in the organization.
- Understanding of all company policies and procedures.
- The ability to quickly learn about new product updates.
Time Management and Prioritization:
- The ability to manage multiple tasks and customer interactions.
- Understanding of which tickets need to be prioritized and why.
- Efficient navigation through the ticketing systems.
- Ability to delegate tasks to their team.
Customer Service Skills:
- Understanding of the business's user base and buyer personas.
- The ability to build trust and long-lasting relationships with customers.
- Knowing how to explain complex solutions at a variety of technical levels.
- The ability to de-escalate tension and manage customer expectations.
With these skills and qualities, they are suited for every situation that may arise and have enough knowledge to solve them.
Measuring the impact of top support agents
There are three ways to measure their impact:
- By measuring key performance indicators (KPIs), businesses can evaluate the performance of their top support agents and how effective their work is in different areas of the support process. The metrics measured are response time, resolution rate, first contact resolution rate, and average handle time.
- Understanding the relationship between top support agents and customer satisfaction is crucial for improving customer services, as top support agents have the best skills for impacting customer satisfaction and loyalty. Having empathy and communication skills helps support and build relationships with customers that correlate to them being loyal.
- Quantifying the value of exceptional customer service on business success by evaluating customer service's role on key business metrics like revenue growth, customer retention, revenue churn rate, and brand reputation. Top support agents' actions are crucial to business growth through upselling and keeping customers.
