How to help your customer-facing agents deliver better service, faster.

In all of the conversations that POPX has had with managed service providers (MSPs), there is one repeating message: cost per ticket must be reduced, while providing the best possible service. 

Our previous blogs have explored how POPX can help with this challenge, including taking advantage of the latest developments in generative AI. But even taking into account this exciting technology, people are still the best resource that MSPs have.

• How can technology benefit the agents who are handling tickets all day, every day? 
• How can we help agents be more efficient, to make dealing with the ticket queue a pleasure - or, at least, better than expected?

ServiceNow has been investing heavily in the customer service agent experience. The days of the “forms and lists” user interface have been left far behind, with a purpose built workspace designed to meet the needs of experienced and new agents alike. It provides easy access to the tools, information and actions necessary to resolve cases faster than ever.  

In this blog post, we’ll look at the case workspace used by POPX customers, and explore some of its features and functions that help to get tickets solved faster than ever before.

Introducing the CSM Configurable Workspace

For too long, customer service agents working the service desk, second line, or beyond, have been forced to use tools that haven’t been optimised for their day-to-day work. With the Customer Service Management (CSM) Configurable Workspace, ServiceNow has designed a user interface that presents easily accessible and useful information right alongside ways to progress the ticket. Since it provides so much benefit, POPX uses the CSM Configurable Workspace as the default agent experience - sprinkled with a little POPX magic, of course.

Having the right starting point

When a customer service agent logs in, they need to quickly understand the current situation with their case workload. Having a flexible, customised layout providing the relevant details is ideal, and while each of our customers does it differently, POPX provides a starting point, with different graphs and visualisations to inspire the best layout for each organisation. 

Some POPX customers have embraced Advanced Work Assignment, meaning that when the agent sets themselves to available, tickets are automatically assigned, while others ask that their agents review a dashboard and choose the right ones.

Either way, once the agent has picked up some cases, what’s nice about the workspace is that it supports tabs meaning it is easy to switch between cases. Furthermore, since the tabs are grouped, all the tabs related to a single case appear together.  

Our customers enjoy this streamlined approach as it reduces clutter and ultimately helps increase operational efficiency.

Presenting useful information on one screen

Rather than a list of fields, the workspace presents important information front and centre. Who is the case for? What is its priority? What is the status of the SLA? How do I get in contact? 

Features and benefits include:

• The timeline graphically shows where time has been spent (with customers or internally), helping someone new to the ticket to get up to speed quickly.
• The workspace hooks into the AI features by presenting a prediction of SLA performance, as well as sentiment analysis. 
• It even tells you which fields have been updated by the machine learning models in Task Intelligence to avoid confusion.

Giving a wider view with Customer Central

In order to provide better service, agents may want more context about the customer. Are there any other cases open? Have they recently read any knowledge base articles? Any recent changes? 

Customer Central provides graphs and reports on customer activity so that it is straightforward to see what else is happening, meaning the agent is able to see beyond the case and understand the journey better. And, if needed, additional components can be included to show a customer health score, churn risk and more.

Multi channel communication, consolidated

In a modern MSP, an agent must deal with many different communication tools, from email or instant messaging such as Teams, to phone calls and more channels. Most of the time, these tools are not connected, so those attempts to collaborate are scattered across multiple systems. But imagine if you could bring together these tools in a single place, giving a single pane of glass… 

In the POPX workspace, clicking the contact’s email address sends a message to the contact, directly from the ServiceNow UI without needing Outlook or another email platform. Clicking the phone number automatically launches your contact centre system, dialling the number. Chat is built-in, and somewhere to add comments or notes is clear and obvious.

This integration means no other tools are needed, fewer tabs, just simple one click communication, enabling true omni-channel interaction. No matter how the customer chooses to communicate - through chat, phone calls, emails or self-service updates - the activity log keeps track of it.

Resolving cases, faster

The sidebar gives agents easy access to supporting information and useful tools like Agent Assist are built in. This gives very easy access to a wide range of helpful data points: similar cases, related knowledge articles, open problems and more. If an agent finds a case or knowledge article that would help, then the resolution information can be automatically copied over, reducing the need to copy and paste, thereby saving even more time.

Enhancing the Agent Experience

Enhancing the user interface that agents rely on a daily basis can lead to significant improvements in productivity and employee satisfaction. While each individual feature might only save a few seconds, the cumulative effect of these enhancements streamlines the entire workflow, greatly improving the day-to-day experience for agents. 

A clearer and more organised design allows agents to quickly pick up tickets, easily access the most relevant information, and efficiently locate the data needed to resolve cases. This not only speeds up ticket resolution, benefiting customers through faster service, but also reduces the cost per case, creating a win-win situation for both the customer and the business.

We’d love to give you a demo of the workspace, and show you how it can benefit your MSP.

Get in touch to organise a demo tailored to your business.