Category Archives: Use Cases

5 Ways to Get More Out of Zingtree in the New Year

January 28, 2019 | Categories: Business, Customer Support, Customization, For Beginners, How To, Sales & Marketing, Use Cases | by Tiffany

A new year is always a new chance to look at things with fresh eyes and do things better. We’re uncovering some of the great ways to improve your experience with Zingtree decision trees, making the process of building decision trees easier, more dynamic, and more time-saving.

Here are 5 of the most unique and valuable ways to get more out of Zingtree this year…

1. Explore new methods of customizing.

We made it part of our mission to make creating decision trees fast, easy, and accessible; another big part of that is making them flexible enough to fit any business’ possible needs, branding, and more. How do we do it? Through our ever-growing roster of decision tree customizations. Along with the basic choices like selecting panels vs. buttons for users to click through, we’ve built out support for other custom adjustments like:

You can see other decision tree customizations right here.

2. Set your decision trees to support multiple languages.

How many of your current or potential customers can’t properly access your decision trees? It’s not just about being able to view and click through, it’s about being able to really understand what’s going on in their native language. When you set your decision trees to support multiple languages, you’re opening yourself up for better satisfaction, faster resolution, and increased customer loyalty for putting in the effort to really speak to them.

You can include a Google Translate option in your decision trees which allows them to automatically support foreign languages – just use &google_translate=* to support ALL language translations that Google offers! You can find the complete list of languages here, and take a look at another way to translate decision trees here.

3. Utilize Advanced Logic Nodes to automatically branch with more complex rules.

Logic rules and decision trees are a true match made in heaven. With all of the power of your decision trees already in place, you can use simple logic to automatically branch to a node in your tree based upon data entered or choices made earlier in the session..

With more advanced logic set up, you can create a set of more complex rules and operations to accomplish even more. For instance, by building expressions out as shown below, you can create a decision tree system that sends users to get specific advice based on their age and state.

4. Connect Zingtree with Zapier (and other amazing applications).

Decision trees are powerful on their own, but their value increases tenfold when you can share data with other applications. Using Zingtree with Zapier allows your business to send data collected during each decision tree session to over 1000+ applications currently supported by Zapier. This means more simple data exchange to do things like:

  • Save new customer information in a Google Sheets or Excel row for more streamlined tracking.
  • Send info collected in a tree session to Salesforce, Zoho, or any other CRM for faster customer management.
  • Add an email address entered into a tree into Mailchimp automatically for improved list growth.

There are so many possibilities depending on the tools you currently use. Get in touch with us to chat about how our integrations can make your life easier.

5. Look for areas of improvement.

With your decision trees already in circulation within your company or helping out your customers online, one of the biggest things you can do is check back in to see how they can be improved. Because our decision tree platform allows you to collect key information and data instantaneously, it’s easy to see where adjustments can be made for the better.

With Zingtree reports and analytics, you can see exactly how your trees are performing in a number of ways and use that information to make improvements to those decision trees that make them even better. With better trees come better results! A few areas of improvement to consider could be:

  • If users are leaving the tree too early, try condensing or reducing the overall number of nodes.
  • If you’re getting feedback that your decision tree messaging isn’t clear enough, try integrating more visuals and graphics.
  • If call center agents aren’t receiving the best ratings for their service, try adjusting the script until you see positive changes.

We’re always working on improving our decision tree platform and making it exactly what our customers want. Have an idea for a new feature or a suggestion for how we can do better? Get in touch with us.

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Top 7 Decision Tree Examples for Streamlining Your Business

December 19, 2018 | Categories: Business, For Beginners, Use Cases | by Tiffany

Decision Tree Examples

Decision trees are incredibly versatile and powerful tools for call centers, support teams, eCommerce sites, and so much more. With a vast range of use cases and dynamic features, a well-built decision tree can streamline everyday processes, improve communications, and reduce support tickets, just to name a few!

Because these tools can be used in so many different ways, it can often be difficult to think of a specific use case that makes sense for your needs – that’s where our decision tree examples come into play. With a complete menu of decision trees that have been adapted, customized, and put to the test in real-world scenarios, it’s the best place to take a look at how they can function for any type of business.

Let’s take a look at just a few of our many decision tree examples that you can clone, adjust, and put live for yourself. Want to jump to our full gallery of decision tree examples for just about every industry? Head down to the bottom of this post…

1. How to help customers help themselves with interactive troubleshooters.

Decision Tree Examples

In this decision tree example, you will get the most basic sense of how a decision tree can be used to facilitate better customer support. With a guided format that breaks questions down into easy pieces, customers will be much more comfortable searching for answers.

 

2. How to integrate decision tree tech and data into your favorite CRM tool.

Decision Tree Examples

In this decision tree example, you’ll see how a decision tree can be set up to help showcase certain features or functionalities. With our functional Zendesk Chat demo, you can view exactly how the integration between decision trees and CRMs works.

 

3. How to gather all the right information with a guided customer conversation. 

Decision Tree Examples

In this decision tree example, you will be able to take a close look at how decision trees are used to build fully customized call scripts for sales, customer support, and a variety of other needs, in order to help improve the customer experience.

 

4. How to easily schedule appointments with all of the correct specifications.

Decision Tree Examples

In this decision tree example, you can view exactly how decision trees are used to help make the process of scheduling appointments less of a hassle. You’re able to gather important info and route that customer where they need to go, all through an interactive platform embedded right on your site.

 

5. How to collect and verify important, personal customer data during a call. 

Decision Tree Examples

In this decision tree example, you’ll see how a basic call script works within a guided decision tree format. With Zingtree, you can easily collect and verify customer data like phone number, email, and USPS address to cut down on resources.

 

6. How to generate a full PDF document and send it as an email in just a couple of clicks.

Decision Tree Examples

In this decision tree example, you can get a functional look at how decision tree technology allows you to generate a custom PDF document based on the information gathered, then sending it off via email in one fell swoop.

 

7. How to help your customers find the perfect pair of sunglasses (or any other product for sale).

Decision Tree Examples

In this decision tree example, you can see how a product finder decision tree enables online retail, eCommerce, and other businesses operating online to help customers find exactly what they need in an interactive environment.

 

Want more examples? 

See decision tree examples for customer support.

See decision tree examples for call centers.

See decision tree examples for business processes.

See decision tree examples for retail and eCommerce.

See decision tree examples for sales.

See decision tree examples for medical.

See decision tree examples for insurance.

See decision tree examples for training.

See decision tree examples with logic.

See decision tree examples for generating documents.

See decision tree examples for Zendesk.

See decision tree examples for live chat.

To see all of our decision tree examples in action, visit our complete gallery of trees right here.

Any questions? Please reach out!

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The Ultimate Online Decision Tree Maker for Any Need

December 11, 2018 | Categories: For Beginners, Use Cases | by Bill Zing

A decision tree maker is the best tool for simplifying complicated processes, including those frequently faced in customer support, technical troubleshooting, sales optimization, training, program enrollment, and communications, to name a few. Presented in a customized, standardized, and completely interactive environment, decision trees have the potential to make a huge impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of any business or organization.

Zingtree is an online decision tree maker that allows you to quickly build, customize and publish interactive decision trees online, and comes fully-loaded with real-time analytics and reports.

How to Use Zingtree’s Decision Tree Maker

Our powerful decision tree maker toolkit allows you to create trees in a few unique ways:

1. Start from Spreadsheets

Easily draft and import any Google Sheets or Excel document into Zingtree and turn it into a decision tree. Once imported, you can enhance using powerful editing tools that offer more decision tree-related functionality than spreadsheets alone.

2. Draw It out With Designer

Designer lets you easily “draw” a decision tree. On a single display, you’ll be able to view and create the nodes and pathways for your decision tree and see exactly how it’ll flow.

Watch the Designer tutorial video here.

3. Quickly Create Using Wizard

Wizard builds a tree through prompts, using a form-based approach. The tool walks you through how to make a decision tree, while you input the questions and answers.

Watch the Wizard tutorial video here.

4. Build From Scratch With Overview

Overview is a form-based option for creating trees node-by-node. The editor has tools for refining to perfection and is ideal for content-rich decision trees.

Watch the Overview tutorial video here.

No matter the method, here’s an example of how your decision tree will look:



 

Tips for Great Decision Trees

Basic decision trees can always get the job done, but with a little bit of added effort, you can gather amazing data, as well as really blend into your company brand or personality.

Need more help getting started? Have a question? Want more tips? We’re always here for you. 

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Clever Ways to Make Customer Support Less Annoying

November 28, 2018 | Categories: Customer Support, Use Cases | by Bill Zing

As business owners, brand managers, and people with an investment in the companies that we work for, it’s sometimes hard to think about our customer service as being ineffective or annoying to customers. It seems that long gone are the days of formality and robotic phone tree interactions – customers today have different expectations for what customer service should be that involve more personalization and better access.

If you’ve noticed that your customer support strategy is lacking or slowly falling behind expectations, you’re certainly not alone. In fact, one of the reasons we even started Zingtree was to find a solution to our customer service annoyances. As we navigate the changing environment of customer service, it’s important to address the most widely recognized sources of ineffective support, playing on the habits and preferences of the largest groups of customers today.

We’re taking a look at some of the most common problems that many businesses face when addressing customer service expectations, offering solutions that won’t put a big dent in your budget.

Problem: Customers hate talking on the phone.

Solution: Offer online support options that are actually helpful.

While customers in many generational groups still like to hop on the phone and give you a call to sort things out, the number of people who don’t want to talk on the phone with customer service is rapidly growing. Millennials dominate this group at the time, with a fairly resounding trait of hating to talk on the phone. Additionally, McKinsey reports that 86% of B2B executives prefer using self-service tools for reordering, over talking to a sales representative.

With the vast majority of customers today going online to find answers and more, it’s imperative that you have information ready to go at any notice. Decision trees are one such platform that makes it spectacularly simple to offer self-service support options online, including FAQs, interactive tutorials, and more.

Problem: Customers use their mobile devices more than computers.

Solution: Make sure your most important information is mobile-friendly.

It should be no surprise that customers in many demographic groups today expect a mobile experience to be available, anytime and anyplace. For B2B and B2C businesses operating online, a mobile-friendly website with full support is no longer a “nice-to-have.” Seamless customer service across all platforms with a mobile-responsive design is simply what customers expect!

According to WOW Local Marketing, 52% of customers are less likely to engage with the company because of a bad mobile experience. We’ve made it a special priority to build our decision tree tool to be entirely mobile-friendly, so every interactive troubleshooter, user guide, or FAQ is fun to use on any smartphone or tablet.

Problem: Customers expect experiences to be engaging and easy to access.

Solution: Implement a support strategy that operates interactively.

If your website and support pages are still displayed on a clunky design from the 2000s, you’re not doing enough for your customers. The moment that someone lands on your site to get some support and something about the platform, design, or process doesn’t appeal to them, they’re far more likely to just close the browser tab. In 2018 and beyond, customers have a clear expectation for online support experiences that are easy to find, navigate, and that ultimately answer their questions.

In fact, about 50% of customers think it’s important to solve product or service issues themselves and an enormous 70% expect a company’s website to include a self-service application – this is the new standard for support. At Zingtree, we aimed to create a support tool that’s as easy to access as it is engaging to use, with fully guided support experiences that help customers find the solutions they are looking for in an interactive format.

Problem: Customers have specific expectations for support agents.

Solution: Identify what those expectations are and optimize to meet them.

Have you ever been on a call with a support rep and felt unheard, annoyed, or like you didn’t quite get the answers you were looking for? Along with evolving needs and expectations for how to get support in more friendly and accessible ways, those customers who interact with customers support agents hold serious expectations for how they should be providing service. Among these expectations are that support agents should: already have the customer’s key information on-hand, have access to previous communications, and have some level of personalization.

Separate from customer-facing decision trees, Zingtree’s interactive and online platform is also perfectly suited for agents to use in their interactions with customers. With interactive call scripts that integrate directly with CRM tools, it’s easy to track performance, make adjustments to calls, and optimize along the way to build the most perfect experience possible.

With our powerful, flexible, and fully-interactive decision tree platform for customer support, your customers in every demographic will have their customer support expectations met – even exceeded! Below, take a look at a few of our decision tree examples for customer support that can help you get on your customers’ good side.

 

 

View more decision tree examples for customer support here. 

Ready to optimize your entire customer support strategy with decision trees? Sign up for a free trial today, or get in touch with our leadership team to talk shop. 

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How Decision Trees for Insurance Can Simplify Policies & Procedures

October 29, 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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4 Reasons Why Marketing & Sales Need to Adopt Decision Trees

October 15, 2018 | Categories: Sales & Marketing, Use Cases | by Bill Zing

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, and has been updated for relevancy.

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How Zingtree Uses Automations To Be More Productive

June 27, 2018 | Categories: Business, Use Cases | by Debbie McCormick

automations

Long gone are the days of doing it all by hand and double-checking your work along the way. For businesses in all industries, it’s becoming easier to get ahead, stay ahead, and improve internal processes using automation. From the more advanced automations to more simple and straightforward ones, there are easy ways to use technology to your benefit.

Automations can require different levels of technical expertise, and most expose an API for programmers. In many cases, tools like Zapier and Calendly don’t require any programming knowledge. But for more advanced uses, being able to tap into an API gives you an extra level of power. APIs are some of our closest friends at Zingtree, allowing our decision tree toolkit and call scripting software to work together, enabling the automation of certain process possible, and making our customers’ lives even easier.

This article on Inc.com summarizes it well, saying:

“Automation is the future. The development of the cloud allows you to stitch together all of your cloud applications–from email to CRMs–something that was unfathomable merely 10 years ago. As a result, you can make more sense of your data–and unify your business processes into simpler dashboards that don’t require a computer science degree to use.”

There are hundreds of applications built with efficiency and value in mind – all here to help your organization achieve its objectives and deliver value to its customers. But, with so many solutions out there, it can be difficult to know what’s right for your workflow.

At Zingtree, we make every effort to automate our processes – this gives us more time to better serve our customers and focus on improving our service. Here’s a breakdown of some of the incredible, powerful automations that we have put in place to make Zingtree a more efficient and effective company.

Marketing + Communications

We like to stay in touch with our customers on a regular basis. Whether it be to communicate some new product fixes, new features & updates, integrations, newsletters, blog posts, or other quick tips, setting up personal automated emails, drip campaigns, and messages is big for us.

We use Intercom to build, customize, and launch most of these automated product and marketing messages. With just a few simple steps, we’re able to keep our customers in the loop on the latest in the world of Zingtree. We have Intercom chat integrated within our website, and by using the Intercom API, we are able to open a customer record in our back-end from any Intercom conversation with a single click.

Check out our Intercom integration here. 

Business Operations

Business processes come in all shapes and sizes, but all of them have one thing in common: they take valuable resources to optimize and maintain. We use our own interactive decision trees for improving and automating business processes because they provide a robust, yet simple way to run through any type of process. For us, this means enabling automations for:

Along with ourselves, one of the largest organizations around the world – Philip Morris International – uses decision trees to automate and improve their procurement process. With these interactive, automated processes in place, PMI enables its employees to be guided through purchasing journeys in a consistent way. PMI’s decision trees have automated process flows with a standardized approach, making sure that the correct set of procedures are being followed every time.

Scheduling + Demos

One of the process issues we’ve faced as a company is the amount of time it takes to schedule online demos for new customers. If only there was a way to intelligently gather background information from each prospective customer, and then route the requests to the proper team… oh, wait! Zingtree can do that. If you request a demo, you’ll launch a decision tree that determines what sort of customer you are, gathers relevant background information, and then opens a scheduler built with Calendly. With this tool, you can set up individuals or teams and the software accesses their Outlook/Google calendar to show available times for each person or group.

Calendly also lets you pre-fill custom forms; besides name and email, we create a backgrounder using Zingtree data entry fields and button click variables for each meeting request. Not only do we make it convenient for the customer to provide this information to us, but also this helps us prepare properly for each meeting. You can see how this scheduling decision tree is built here.

Check out our Calendly integration here.

Customer Support

Our most fully-integrated use of automation comes with our own decision tree platform – providing automated customer support! Offering up decision trees as complete knowledge bases, FAQs, and tutorials, Zingtree enables us to automate the support process through self-service. There’s no technical know-how required to start using decision trees for support, and they can be embedded directly into any website using just a small piece of code. We also use Zingtree internally to manage our knowledge base of information, as well as set up demo requests and even provide automated, end-to-end technical support!

Other helpful automated systems that Zingtree provides include:

Customer service, business process, and communications-based automations – while highly advanced – can only grow and evolve into more useful ways for businesses over time. At Zingtree, we’re looking forward to continuing to provide a versatile platform that allows companies to automate customer service, support, and the overall experience even further, without sacrificing personalization or ease-of-use.

Have any questions about how we use automations, or how to get set up with the Zingtree API? Contact us anytime!

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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 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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