Category Archives: Use Cases

Mapping Out Lean Process Flows with Interactive Decision Trees

May 14, 2018 | Categories: Business, Use Cases | by Tiffany

Lean Process Flows

Adopting lean process flows for a business is all about simplification. No matter the area of focus, moving from step to step throughout a process in a frictionless and efficient way is essential for business operations and customer satisfaction – whether in customer support, manufacturing, inbound sales, etc.

A lean process is a smooth process, after all; one that requires getting rid of waste and only leaving the most mission-critical information in order to streamline each step. As big proponents for making things easy and streamlined, lean processes are a big part of how we run Zingtree efficiently and provide more value to our customers. We use our own interactive decision trees for improving lean process flows because they provide a robust, yet straightforward way to build and run through any type of process flow. For us, this means setting up streamlined systems for:

Implementing these lean process flows in various areas of our business have been helpful both internally and to our customers.

When you can identify and eliminate flow bottlenecks, you make the whole process easier. Imagine, for example, a construction crew working on a busy section of freeway, closing some key lanes. In this case, the process’ capacity (the number of people who can continue to drive on through) for successful interactions are blocked by equipment, workers, and a horde of other cars, keeping anxious drivers moving slowly through. By making a process flow lean and mean, you’re effectively opening those closed lanes back up, removing the equipment, cars and other complications, making way for a smooth ride.

Lean Goals to Live By

Pointing out flow issues when you’re dealing with traffic is simple, but it can be more difficult to identify those process flows in your business or place of work that can be improved on. While you’re thinking about all of the various processes that occur in your organization, here are some general goals and questions to ask yourself when choosing a process flow to make leaner:

1. Will it reduce cost?

2. Will it simplify the process?

3. Will it improve the quality of the process?

4. Will it make it easy to follow standard operating procedures?

These always help us to quickly go through a list and identify which processes can be improved on – if it’s not cheaper, simpler, higher-quality, and more intuitive, it’s not being made lean.

Mapping Process Flows with Decision Trees

Typical diagrams and hand-drawn or digital flowcharts simply can’t do as much as decision trees can when it comes to simplifying processes. While a traditional way to help wrap your head around where the bottlenecks COULD be, these systems are designed to only identify the issue, not solve it.

Decision trees for lean process flows are a live, functioning tool that’s designed to help you identify the issue AND be a platform to present that information; in other words, you can simultaneously build your process flow chart and customize it for immediate internal/external use. You can even gather data on if it’s all working up to standards and make optimizations along the way.

How a decision tree looks when you’re building with the Visual Designer.

Check out this article on how to create a lean process flow with a decision tree.

Decision Tree-Created Lean Process Flows in the Wild

Here are just a couple of examples of Zingtree customers that have created more lean process flows using decision trees:

Spokane ENT

A specialty medical practice in Washington, Spokane ENT says that decision trees for scheduling have enabled them to optimize scheduling, help schedulers intelligently pre-diagnose patients, and collect key medical information in a secure environment. This ultimately eliminates any unnecessary appointments from being scheduled, and speeds up the steps between picking up the phone and confirming the appointment.

Take a look at the Spokane ENT case study here.

Philip Morris

One of the largest organizations around the world, Philip Morris International utilizes decision trees to improve their system of procurement, a cost-saving lean process flow. With these interactive process flows in place, PMI allows its employees to be guided through complicated purchasing journeys without issue; a standardized approach that ensures every step is followed perfectly to reduce time, cost, and stress.

Take a look at the PMI process flow case study here.

 

Want to learn more about building lean process flows using interactive decision trees? Reach out to our team on our Feedback page, or get in touch by clicking on the chat box on our main site. 

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How Decision Trees for Insurance Can Simplify Policies & Procedures

April 25, 2018 | Categories: Business, Case Studies, Use Cases | by Bill Zing

decision trees for insurance

Having exceptional customer service isn’t reserved for typical B2C companies. In such a tumultuous and often scary industry (for consumers, at least), insurance companies and agents must also take a close look at how their customers are perceiving the assistance they are getting. Understanding is also a huge part of this customer experience. Why? Because insurance is complicated.

Improving Insurance Call with Decision Tree Scripts

For many insurance companies, automation is an angle that’s gaining traction for providing more streamlined and consistent customer service. Our partnership with EasyInsuranceScripts.com is a great example of how decision trees are being used to simplify.

Simply put, Ted Baker, the Founder of EasyInsuranceScripts.com, envisioned a more streamlined way to improve how independent insurance agents were being trained, guided through complicated conversations and policy selections, and processing claims. In an industry with so many small, yet important, details to be understood, these conversations and processes can become intimidating very quickly.

With our own knowledge and experience in simplifying the complex, we knew decision trees would be an ideal fit. Joining forces between Zingtree and EasyInsuranceScripts.com has allowed Ted’s services to offer the most comprehensive set of resources for independent insurance agents as a result.

“It’s amazing that I’m able to automate all of this for independent insurers,” says Ted. “For me, the ROI of decision trees is immediate. Introducing standardized decision tree scripts for insurance has allowed the insurers in my network to really thrive. With scripts for guiding conversations, interactive trees to train new agents, and the reporting that comes along with it, agents are able to provide a better customer experience that’s consistent and informative.“

Hard Numbers: Where the Data Fits In

While each insurance agent or organization may have varying experiences, industry knowledge is key in understanding how much this kind of customer service and care matters for insurance. McKinsey recently published an article on how focusing on improving customer experience has a direct effect on growth and profit in the insurance industry:

McKinsey’s global research across industries shows that improving the customer experience can do far more to drive profitable growth than raising advertising spending or lowering prices. Some executives may still see insurance as a low-engagement, disintermediated category, but analytics prove that in an industry where profits are highly concentrated, leading carriers are delivering customer experiences that inspire loyalty and attract new customers frustrated by their experiences with their current carriers.

Here’s a handy chart that helps to summarize how insurers must improve the customer journey:

 

A typical insurance carrier today delivers customer experiences via separate functions (marketing, distribution, underwriting, claims), using a website, sales call center, service department, and so on, most managed by different executives with different goals and metrics. This structure may have its purposes, but it overlooks the fact that from the customer perspective, the experience is often a single journey.

Real-World Example: Decision Tree for Insurance

Here’s a sample tree, derived from one of the Easy Insurance Scripts trees:

 

 

Have any questions? You can learn more about how to simplify insurance products and processes on our site or feel free to reach out directly.

This article was originally published on October 13, 2017.

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How to Reduce Agent Turnover in Call Centers

April 5, 2018 | Categories: Call Centers, Training, Use Cases | by Tiffany

Keeping your customers happy is only half of the battle in call centers today – making sure that your call center agents and supporting employees are happy, productive, and well-informed is another huge piece of the customer service battle. Agent turnover (also known as agent attrition) has a dramatic effect on how call centers can ultimately perform and have been a problem for decades.

Let’s say that one of your best up-and-coming agents – we’ll call her Sally – has decided to quit her role as a call center agent after about a year. The next steps of the process include some familiar actions: processing paperwork through HR, closing out payroll, and beginning the process of finding a new hire to replace her. What comes next is a series of interviews, more paperwork, and then an in-depth training period in which to get the new agent up to speed. When all is said and done, your call center has lost thousands in time, human resources, and repetitive training efforts; and, if the new hire doesn’t end up working out, you’re back at the beginning.

Tips for Lowering Agent Attrition

A recent article from Contact Center Pipeline goes into more detail on how call centers can effectively lower attrition rates: using proper recruiting techniques, investing in training programs, evaluating key metrics, and more. Here’s what the article had to say about one of the biggest factors in agent turnover – training programs:

This is one area that no company should ever try to scrimp on. Inadequate training can leave agents lacking confidence and feeling frustrated on the floor because they are ill-prepared. All employees should have substantial communications and product training before they are even allowed to talk to one of the customers of the company.

And it does not end there; managers should recognize that some agents need more intensive training compared to others. Managers should coordinate with the training department about continued customized training and coaching for each individual agent.

By personalizing the training and development of agents, you are addressing their specific needs based on their current level of competence. This way, those who need the most attention get it without holding others back.

Your agents are not the only ones who need training; your supervisors and managers should be trained as well. In fact, a lot of agent attrition can be attributed to mismanagement.

Provide your supervisors and managers with skills on how to identify the level of help needed by their agents, how to provide constructive feedback, and proper coaching skills that can elevate not only the agent’s skills but confidence as well.

Competent managers and supervisors will reduce frustration from your workforce and should inevitably reduce resignations.

Setting Up Simple to Use Process Flows and Knowledge Bases

Making it easy for your agents to follow procedures and find information goes a long way towards reducing on-the-job frustration; this is one area where Zingtree shines. By guiding agents step-by-step through processes, and eliminating unnecessary content by showing just the information needed at every step, agents will be able to follow standard operating procedures successfully, every time. Zingtree decision trees make creating these sort of process flows a snap.

Developing Training Programs That Work

Industry-wide experience shows having a consistent training program that follows industry and internal best practices is one of the most powerful ways to lower agent turnover rates. 7 out of 10 people say that training and development opportunities influence in their decision to stay with a company – why wouldn’t you want to address that with proper, consistent training?

One of the simplest ways to introduce a better training program into a call center environment is the use of interactivity for greater engagement and retention. Rather than relying on pages long PDFs that detail company processes and in-depth guidebooks for handling everyday occurrences, interactive decision trees for training cut down on the bulk of need-to-know information and presents materials in a digestible format.

Guided decision trees are quickly becoming a go-to resource for implementing easy-to-follow procedures and simulations that make training more streamlined, effective, and enjoyable. Some of the best training features found in Zingtree decision trees include:

  • Allowing employees to provide Agent Feedback on every training decision tree to involve employees in the overall process more.
  • Being able to emulate different potential scenarios to lead trainees through new or complicated learning environments.
  • Asking questions in an interview-style way, which helps to keep things moving quickly and keep employees more engaged.

 

You can read more of the Contact Center Pipeline article here, and take a closer look at how to create an interactive training program using Zingtree here. Any questions? Reach out to us anytime you need.

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How to Create a Master Decision Tree

April 3, 2018 | Categories: How To, Use Cases | by Bill Zing

Many of our customers with large decision tree systems in place ask for guidance on how to make a “master tree” which links to individual trees for troubleshooting or other processes. This is especially helpful for organizations that use Zingtree to build and publish completely interactive FAQs. In this article, we’ll discuss how it’s done.

Building a Master Tree

Creating a Master Tree is a simple, yet powerful process that consists of two over-arching steps:

  1. Build the individual decision trees.
  2. Build a Master Tree with one node, using a “blank starter tree.”

After building your individual trees and troubleshooters, there are a couple of distinct ways to build a Master Tree. We’ve created an example Master Tree for a few of our Gallery product finders.

Method #1 – Using Tree Tag Lists

1. Use the Settings tool to add tags to the trees you want to include in the Master Tree. For this example, we added the tag “master_finder” to our product finder decision trees.

2. Create a new decision tree to act as your Master Tree.

3. In the Master Tree root node’s content area, include a tree tag list. For our example, we tagged our trees with “master_finder,” so the tree tag list looks like this:

#‌#treetaglist-any: master_finder##

Method #2 – Using Tree Nodes

1. In the Master Tree, add tree nodes for each tree to link to.

2. In the root node of the Master Tree, create a button for each tree node. This will allow an end-user or customer to quickly jump to any other relevant decision tree from the Master Tree.

Example Master Tree

Here’s a look at our Master Tree in action:

 

Want more tips? Our blog is chock-full of them. Any questions? We’re always here to help. 

 

This article was originally published on Nov 7, 2017, but is just as accurate as ever!

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4 Reasons Why Marketing & Sales Need to Adopt Decision Trees

March 27, 2018 | Categories: Sales & Marketing, Use Cases | by Bill Zing

Decision Trees for Marketing

You’ll often hear us talk about how decision trees can save contact centers and support managers valuable time and expended energy, but did you know that this interactive toolkit can also benefit those in the marketing and sales world?

With a simple question-and-answer flow, it becomes much easier for marketers and sales staff to boost their own productivity and efficiency, collect business-driving information and much more. Here are just a few of the ways that building decision trees can boost your game.

1. Streamline Lead Qualification

Every B2B marketer and sales staff is well-versed in the importance of lead generation and qualification for the continued health of a business – without new interest being cultivated, a company simply cannot grow.

Placing these leads into a robust decision tree based on key classifiers for your ideal customer ensures that the most qualified leads are quickly delivered to the right person, for faster and more accurate follow-up. Including the types of content, communications and promotions to best serve to these potential new consumers, along with the correct flow of distribution for proper sales resources, is a great way to enhance the lead qualification process overall.

2. Build & Optimize Sales Funnels

It’s incredibly important, in any business or industry vertical, to focus on the customer’s complete path to purchase; the sales funnel is, in essence, a decision tree looked at in a slightly altered way.

By designing your initial sales funnel (or any other process) in Zingtree prior to consumer use, you’ll quickly be able to spot and measure any inconsistencies or trouble areas through simple user testing. If your business or organization is struggling with their current sales funnel flow, creating and testing decision trees can vastly excel the improvement process.

3. Improve Procedural Standards

Following and improving corporate procedures, including procurement processes (acquiring or purchasing products/services from an external source), are another factor that should not be overlooked.

By using decision trees to build internal codifying systems, getting employees to follow corporate procedures, and continually optimizing these processes, any company can effectively boost these procedural standards.

4. Narrow Down Designs

Marketers are always serious when design is involved; after all, how something looks is directly related to how a consumer perceives a product or service offering!

Companies that use decision trees as part of a decision-making process can easily generate a Zingtree based on potential design (or copy) options to gather direct feedback on team preferences. Rather than communicating in longer form, a decision tree is ideal for collecting quantitative data to drive faster decisions.

 

Ready to get started? Sign up for a free trial or contact us to see how Zingtree can help improve your sales and marketing efforts.

This article was originally published on May 11, 2016.

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How AI & Automation are Powering Retail Customer Experience

January 29, 2018 | Categories: eCommerce & Retail, Use Cases | by Tiffany

2017 was a year that defined a whole new wave of evolution for user experience in the retail and eCommerce industry. AI and automation are true drivers of change in this new era of forward-thinking customer experience, and retailers and online businesses are having to change their approaches to keep up with this standard.

Gartner predicts that by 2020 85% of customer interactions will be managed by AI, which doesn’t leave a lot of time for brands to embrace AI and automation, and iron out any challenges associated with the technology. Additionally, Forrester expects that AI will drive faster business decisions in marketing, eCommerce, product management, and other areas of the business by helping close the gap from insights to action.

Automated systems and AI, while different inherently, serve similar and complementary functions for eCommerce businesses. With the retail trends for 2018 and beyond leaning more and more toward streamlined user experiences, simple product selection, and easy-to-access customer service, AI and automation can be put in place to better optimize, satisfy, and convert customers.

The Effects of AI & Automation Within eCommerce

Internet Retailing recently found that seven in ten consumers want artificial intelligence to transform their experiences. Additionally, 67% of businesses believe that using AI technology is a priority. Here are a few specific examples of how AI is being used in eCommerce today:

  • Improving the Accessibility of Data

There are two forms of data that retailers have easy access to – behavioral and personal. Shoppers are fueling this accessibility when they use email addresses or social media accounts to log in, communicate across other platforms about the related products or engage with an article that might have some influence on product knowledge. This is the degree of interest to cope with as a business in real-time or at an individual level.

  • Mimicking AI for Brick-and-Mortar

While the use of artificial intelligence itself is increasing in popularity, so too is the use of retail business functions and automations that can mimic AI in person. By mimicking the use of AI in eCommerce pure-plays, brick-and-mortars can implement similar levels of personalization. AI can be used to provide personalized websites, tailored product recommendations, more relevant product search results, as well as immediate and useful customer service.

  • Generating Reviews with Bots

A famous benefit of marketing new products is known in the form of generating fictional feedback to boost their ratings. This contributes to a growing number of reviews on websites which result in a higher overall number of interactions, along with more sales. The term “crowdturfing” has been created due to the high level of reviews that can be made on product profiles.

Currently, AI is powering leads, sales assistance, personalization, all the way up to payment services and returns. For example, the platform Conversica is a sales assistant software that allows automation to enhance the sales process by conversing with other internet leads which have already been identified. They already claim an average engagement rate of 35%, due to a customizable software which can also be used to re-engage or cross-sell.

 

Automation is equally being used in eCommerce, as a method of personalization, fast-response, self-help, and product selection, which contributes to the overall experience of any shopper. Here are a few specific examples of how automation is being used in eCommerce today:

  • Simplifying Product Finders

The journey to success is being able to guide a customer to the point of purchase. While strategies will vary, automation has features that will assist this guidance. Introducing guided decision trees that are embedded directly in an eCommerce website is a proven automation for improving the journey from discovery to purchase. Allowing customers to quickly navigate and find what they want or need is critical to a positive customer experience. 

Phoenix Bats is one such company that has integrated these custom product finders, helping them to streamline the product-selection process and cut back on the product or inventory-related support questions.

  • Providing Interactive Knowledge Bases

Interactive knowledge bases are the very foundation of support that allows customers to troubleshoot quickly, solve any type of issue, and find the answer to any question. Armed with guided instructions that are compacted into smaller, more digestible pieces, interactive knowledge bases save eCommerce and retail businesses a ton of time, money, and expended energy on support-related tasks. With the trends leaning more and more toward customers wanting self-service support, it’s an ideal solution. 

  • Personalizing and Streamlining Experiences

As standards are continuing to increase across customer experiences, it’s critical to have a personalized and streamlined error-free experience open to your customers; it’s the best possible way to improve both sales and conversion rates. Nowadays there is a greater demand for businesses to operate at higher standards while also personalizing the experience in a user-friendly way. Decision trees are an essential tool for streamlining the kinds of experiences that customers have previously gotten hung up with – everything from product selection to questions about sizing or pricing.

The focus of AI and automation has become a necessity for the retail industry, and eCommerce companies are looking more deeply into expanding their uses of powerful technology in order to have a more competitive edge. These automated and AI-driven processes are making more positive customer experiences, helping to collect more valuable purchasing behavior data, and improving sales and conversion rates.

Zingtree‘s decision tree toolkit was designed with both the business and the customer in mind. A platform for creating, customizing, publishing, and managing interactive decision trees, Zingtree is able to deliver answers at the click of a button. Want to see how it works? Explore our Gallery to showcase plenty of examples and inspiration for your business.

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Health Insurance Decision Trees: How Blue Shield of California Uses Zingtree

January 10, 2018 | Categories: Use Cases | by Bill Zing


Operating within a large call center for healthcare insurance is a complex process. Healthcare specialties aside, any type of insurance is complicated both in discussion and when put into practice – agents working in insurance call centers need to be well-trained for every conversation. For Blue Shield of California, these difficult healthcare insurance processes are a constant occurrence.

“We are a call center in the health insurance field that takes member and provider calls in regards to eligibility, benefits, and claims processing. We have so many written documents to guide our representatives through processes which can be quite long when written out in a step action method.”

Improving Call Center Processes with Interactive Decision Trees

For insurance call centers, documentation and standardization of processes can be a source of stress for employees. However, with the right techniques and tools in place, keeping up with written materials and standardizing support workflows and call scripts can lead to a profound improvement in customer experience, support, and overall productivity.

Agent scripts and decision trees for insurance are one solution that has simplified and streamlined the types of insurance processes that Blue Shield of CA (and many other healthcare and insurance organizations) handle every day. Traditional call scripts and knowledge bases of information are quickly being upgraded to interactive decision trees that are far more effective, easy to build, and simple to navigate.

Interactive decision trees and agent scripts for insurance make it easy to follow processes, select products or other options, and collect critical customer data. In Blue Shield’s case, they have “begun implementing Zingtree to bring the written process to a more interactive state” in order to truly optimize and improve the process of customers receiving the answers they need.

“Zingtree has allowed us to make these step action tables more interactive and simplifying the process. A representative now, because of Zingtree, can get to their answer in 3 steps instead of 10 steps because we are able to frame the questions to get to the exact situation first.”

Cutting back on the time spent during each interaction leaves customers more satisfied, provides them with answers more quickly, and ultimately saves organizations valuable time and money on communications. Leading businesses and call centers worldwide use interactive decision trees to streamline and simplify every detail – meaning more people helped, more money saved, and more consistently-positive experiences.

Want to learn more about interactive decision trees and agent scripts for insurance? Discover our in-depth catalog of blogs and articles, or contact our demo team to see how decision trees can help.

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Managing Process Flows for Government CRM Systems

November 30, 2017 | Categories: Use Cases | by Tiffany

Government rules, regulations, and processes can be complicated. And while CRM systems can help manage interpersonal interactions, there’s no really good way to ensure that process flows are followed to ensure the public is getting the right information. Zingtree, combined with your CRM, can really help.

While adoption of government CRM has snowballed, the results and experiences are not as seamless as one might hope. With a lot of bureaucratic hold-ups, confidential information being passed along, and many complicated departments and processes, CRM systems can really only accomplish so much. According to a recent PC Quest article, these are the most common challenges currently facing government sectors using CRM:

  1. Stakeholder management
  2. Budget and profitability
  3. Complexity
  4. Data Management

Through these obstacles to overcome, government entities must also make sure that their CRM systems are up to par with what’s needed concerning efficiency, security, cost-effectiveness, and convenience. Unfortunately, most standalone CRM platforms can’t accomplish everything that bureaucratic systems genuinely need to manage relationships and help the people they serve.

Using Decision Trees with Government CRM

One of the most straightforward and simple ways to vastly improve existing CRMs is to integrate its features with that of a complementary tool. Decision trees connect seamlessly with any CRM system to simplify complicated processes, help citizens find solutions and navigate forms, manage data securely, and much more.

Zingtree decision trees for government are already assisting a variety of state, local and federal institutions as well as government contractors to streamline costly and confusing internal processes. Additionally, these advanced decision trees can be:

  • Embedded on any website, webpage, email, support knowledge base, and more.
  • Self-hosted on any government server to ensure that you comply with requirements for safeguarding confidential information.
  • Seamlessly integrated with tools already in use, like Zendesk, Freshdesk, Desk.com and more!

Watch our short video on how Zingtree decision trees help streamline technical support and other processes below:

Streamline Tech Support with Zingtree Interactive Troubleshooters from Zingtree on Vimeo.

You can learn more about getting started with dynamic decision trees on our blog, and see all of our CRMs and other integrations on our website.

Have any questions or want to see a personalized demo on getting set up with Zingtree decision trees? Get in touch with us at any time. 

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Powerful Appointment Scheduling for Medical Practices

October 31, 2017 | Categories: Use Cases | by Bill Zing

scheduling tool

Scheduling medical appointments can be a stressful and complicated process for both patients and healthcare practices. With the evolution of software and other technologies, setting the right appointment with the right doctor has improved, but hasn’t yet truly progressed into a digital, streamlined way — interactive decision trees as an appointment scheduling tool are the wave of the future.

The Future of Medical Appointment Scheduling

The Spokane Ear, Nose & Throat Clinic is a large group practice with multiple office locations and a firm understanding of the quality patient care; this includes quickly getting their patients set up with the right doctor. Spokane ENT’s decision tree appointment schedulers allow the clinic to evaluate patients and ensure they are paired with the correct specialty every time. Efficiency and productivity are through the roof!

Decision trees are a super-streamlined approach to gathering pertinent, sensitive medical information and routing patients to the correct specialists or department in just a few clicks. With every question and answer the patient is guided through, more critical and standard information is revealed and stored in a HIPAA format.

Here’s an example from our Medical Appointment Scheduling Tool demo:

When the appointment has been scheduled, this collected information can also be distributed and delivered to the right office securely.

Dr. William Schmitt of Spokane ENT (along with the rest of the staff) have optimized and standardized every medical scheduling tool across office sites, saving the medical practice and its customers an overwhelming amount of time. With their medical scheduling decision trees in place, the clinic has streamlined more than 18,000 patient calls and counting.

“Decision trees have allowed us to collect patient symptoms and quickly schedule them with the correct physician and accompanying testing.” 

Quickly Route Patients to the Right Care & More

With customized solutions and real-time 24/7 access, every patient will benefit from what interactive online appointment scheduling has to offer. Rather than calling during practice hours and navigating a phone tree, or waiting on hold with a busy administrative staff member or receptionist, busy patients can self-solve and lead themselves directly where they need to go.

Screen Shot 2017-07-26 at 00.05.45.png

With a simple question-and-answer style flow, patients can feel more comfortable sharing private medical details and locate the correct specialist that they need in just a few minutes. This process also streamlines things once the appointment takes place, as all of the patient’s history, symptoms, and other information can already be collected in a secure digital format.

Some other great uses for health care or medical decision trees include:

  • Risk assessment
  • Pre-diagnosis and triage
  • Patient enrollment
  • Medical exams
  • Health questionnaires
  • Nurse advice lines
  • And so much more

You can more use cases and decision tree demos for medical and healthcare practices on the Zingtree Gallery.

Put it to the test and see how easy it is! Otherwise, contact our support for some extra assistance.

This article was originally published on July 31, 2017.

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Building Troubleshooters for Complex Products & Tools

October 23, 2017 | Categories: Business, Customer Support, Use Cases | by Bill Zing

interactive troubleshooter

Interactive troubleshooters are becoming a more frequent way to solve problems involving complex, technical products.  Since most complex equipment for industries like manufacturing, videography, and hardware/software have fewer “expert technicians,” the need for more intelligent support systems has risen. Where issues and complicated instructions run rampant, the fastest way to find the solution to a problem is with interactive troubleshooters.

Caterpillar, the US manufacturer of construction and farm equipment, is using Zingtree troubleshooters in their manufacturing plant. Likewise, IT Works, the most relied-on resource for collecting information on living environments. We even got our own start by building troubleshooters for another software company, Applian Technologies.

Self-Solving with Troubleshooters

With complicated products and tools, troubleshooters aim to help find the area of the problem by narrowing down other contextual factors. By offering an interactive format to simplify the issue, you have solved part of the problem already.

For highly-specialized or complex products, it can take a while to get fixed or for the right person in the right location to come and fix it, in many cases. Troubleshooting solutions make it easier for expert technicians to judge the issue and solve accordingly, and for less-than-expert level folks to figure things out.

Success Stories: Troubleshooters in Practice

For the U.S.-based manufacturing company, Caterpillar, this rings especially true. With an array of complex (and often large) manufacturing tools in use, equipment operators across the country needed an easier way to help work through issues and find answers anywhere. When an error code comes up, operators and technicians are able to assess the problem and find a way to fix it.

The decisions behind Applian’s customer support are also powered by our troubleshooters. The results? The company saved over $30,000 on resources per year and 15 hours of support time per week.

Here’s one of the Applian troubleshooters you can take a look at:

 

 

Building an Interactive Experience

Instructions are easier to follow from an interactive decision tree if the user is being guided by easy-to-follow, bite-sized directions. With complex products and tools, there is generally a lot of important information to cover – with no real understanding of your user’s experience level, it’s better to be as user-friendly as you can. You can even include videos, images and other types of media within your troubleshooter to make things even more easy to digest.

We have heaps of information on how to get started building troubleshooters right away – there’s a method that fits just about everyone! For more ideas, tips, and inspiration, we recommend having a look at our troubleshooters on display in the Gallery, as well as checking the blog for a catalog of best tips for building. There’s something in there for every industry!

After creating your in-depth, intuitive decision tree, end users will be delighted with the ease of providing a faster solution. Ready to start your revolutionary, problem-solving troubleshooter? Take a shot, or reach out to us if you need some expert advice.

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