Every growing company wants to offer phone support, but most are worried about the resource commitment. We felt the same way at Quo, formerly OpenPhone. As a business phone platform, we knew phone support had to be a part of our strategy, but we had to put a few things in place first to do it in a sustainable way.
Here’s how we rolled out phone support — and what we learned that may help your company do the same.
Why now for phone support
As our platform has grown from a business phone system into a full front-office platform, our customers’ needs have grown, too. It’s critical that Quo customers are using the platform to its fullest. They need to solve issues for their customers as quickly as possible and grow their businesses.
Over the past two years, we’ve added live chat, an AI chatbot, and AI-powered ticketing to our support ecosystem. But we kept hearing the same thing: sometimes the fastest path to a solution isn’t an email thread or a chat exchange: it’s a phone call.
Phone support, available on our Scale plan, is part of our continued effort to offer a holistic ecosystem for our customers to reach out in the way that’s best for them.
Before launch: What had to happen first
Phone support is difficult to scale, especially when your support team is already handling a high volume of tickets. We didn’t want to add phone support at the expense of response times or quality elsewhere.
Here’s how we prepared for launch:
1. Freed up capacity with an AI chatbot for self-service
Implementing a self-service AI agent through Parahelp helped free up the resources we needed for phone support. The agent now handles about 20% of our incoming support tickets. These are generally less complex questions that can be resolved without human involvement. Customers get answers faster, and our support team has more time to focus on nuanced or technical issues.
2. Started phone support training
We decided to have our Tier 2 technical support team handle calls. This team includes our most experienced reps with deep product knowledge. They had already been on calls for escalated issues, so the training only took a couple of weeks. It was based around a few key elements for each conversation:
- Let customers know they’re being recorded
- Validate who the caller is
- Ask probing questions to understand the issue they’re calling about
- Ask for approval if the caller wants us to complete actions for them
- Close calls by asking if they need additional help, and welcoming them to contact us whenever they need to
In the future, we hope to build deeper relationships with our customers by asking questions that further educate them on our product. Our goal is to help them understand all that we have to offer in Quo.
3. Tested with a pilot program
With the Parahelp AI assistant and initial training in place, we rolled out a pilot program. After we saw positive results — under 10 minutes average handle time and 100% customer satisfaction score, or CSAT — we felt confident moving forward. Customers also consistently told us how valuable it was to talk through their questions.
During implementation: How it works
Phone support is great for hands-on guidance, but you need the right infrastructure to make sure it runs smoothly. Here’s how ours breaks down:
Tools we use
- Zendesk as a single source of truth: Customer contact information is automatically synced from Quo into Zendesk ahead of time, so when a customer calls, support agents can immediately identify and validate them. Incoming phone calls automatically generate Zendesk tickets that are linked to the customer’s Quo account.
- Quo for calling and texting: We use our own platform to answer calls and send texts. We follow up every single phone call with a text message template or snippet, letting the customer know we’re available if they need anything else and asking them how the call went. We use this text to send CSAT surveys as well.
- Call flows for routing: Incoming support calls route directly to the correct team using Quo’s call flows. This way, customers quickly reach someone who can help.
- Sona AI agent for overflow: Sona serves as a contact point when calls are missed because the team is answering other calls or calls come in after hours. It captures customer messages, which are stored in the customer conversation inbox for fast follow-up.
Support team logistics
For our phone support schedule, we chose the hours when we receive the most inbound customer tickets: 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Pacific time. Our biggest customer base is in the US, and those are the primary hours they run their business and need to call us.
We have about 12 reps for phone support, which we determined by the phone, email, and chat volumes we expected. Our phone support team rotates between phone and email to improve efficiency.
Metrics and KPIs we track
Here are the metrics we’re tracking to see the success of phone support:
- First contact resolution: If a customer calls about an issue, that should be the only time they have to contact us to solve it. We use Zendesk to track repeat issues.
- Answering speed: We aim for a 10- to 20-second pick-up time.
- CSAT: We measure how satisfied customers are with their phone experience.
- Phone adoption: We keep track of how much customers are using phone support versus other channels, like email or chat.
Qualitatively, we also review calls manually using call recordings in Quo to ensure we’re serving our customers.
How to start small with phone support
If you’re thinking about offering phone support but are concerned about resources, you can start by handling escalated or urgent issues by phone. You’ll learn the critical steps you need to take to improve your product.
Resource-strapped teams can also use the call flow builder to route calls to Sona to answer calls for you. You can create a built-in escalation path to a human for more complex issues.
What’s next for Quo customer support
Looking ahead, we’re continuing to expand our omnichannel approach. We see the need for more text message support, especially for quick questions. We’re also investing more in written and video resources for customers who prefer self-service options. And we’ll continue to rely on Sona in new ways as its capabilities expand.
Different customer matters need different types of support, whether it’s a phone call, email, text, or chat. Our goal is to make sure all those options work together so customers can continue to rely on Quo for top-notch support.
