We’re excited to launch a game-changing new feature that no other helpdesk software on the market has. Introducing: Training Wheels for Teamwork Desk!  Training Wheels helps you train and onboard agents as well as carry out continuous QA so you can consistently deliver high-quality, impactful responses.

Training Wheels allows you to put agents in training in Teamwork Desk and set a percentage of their responses to be reviewed by an experienced team member who then provides feedback on the proposed response. It helps you to create a seamless process for setting new agents up for success and maintaining high-quality support standards.  The reviewer has three options for dealing with the agent’s suggested response:

  • Request changes – If improvements are needed, the reviewer can send the ticket back to the agent through a feedback loop with pointers on how they can improve. Once the agent implements the feedback, the reviewer can approve the ticket and it will instantly send to the customer. 

  • Edit & send – If you’re in a time crunch and there’s only a simple issue like a typo to correct, you can quickly edit the response and instantly send it to the customer. The ticket will still show as being sent by the agent, even though you’ve edited it as the reviewer.

  • Accept & send – If the reviewer doesn’t have any feedback and the response looks good, then they can simply approve the response and move onto reviewing the next ticket in the queue. 

We think it’s going to make a big impact on how your team works — here’s why.

Customer-facing teams are your front line: they’re the voice of your company, and usually, the first port of call if a customer has an issue or inquiry. So investing time and consideration into employee onboarding and training new agents is massively important — without proper guidance and education, they can’t perform at the level your customer’s deserve. Now you can proactively empower your agents to take the reins using Training Wheels in Teamwork Desk.

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Think of it this way: a new agent starts on your team. They’ve gone through product training, read your communication guidelines, and are up to speed with your general processes. They’re ready to start answering customer queries… but they’re a little nervous, and frankly, so are you.  Here’s where Training Wheels comes in to help your agent get up to speed quickly through hands-on training — and all without compromising on the quality of responses. 

When a new agent joins the team, you can enroll them in Training Wheels and set the percentage of tickets to be reviewed at 100%. This means that every ticket the agent responds to will need to be approved by a dedicated team member before it’s sent to the customer.   Now say the agent starts responding to tickets, and as the reviewer, you notice a few errors. For example, you spot that they haven’t capitalized a company’s name correctly and have given an inaccurate timeline on the next product shipment date in one of their responses.  In this scenario, Request changes would be the best option to choose. From here, you can send a note to the agent providing feedback on how they can improve, asking them to capitalize the company name and providing them with the correct product shipment date.  This lets you achieve three things. Firstly, you can address the errors and ensure that the customer doesn’t get the wrong information. Secondly, you can reinforce the importance of attention to detail so the agent is reminded to double-check their spelling and grammar. Finally, it does all of this in a positive and constructive way that lets the agent learn from their mistakes, making them less likely to repeat them in the future. Using Training Wheels, the agent gets real-life experience, learns by doing (which is more engaging and effective), and is empowered to use their best judgment — all safe in the knowledge that any potential oversights will be pointed out in the review process.  

Even when your agents are fully on-boarded and working independently, agent growth and development doesn’t (and shouldn’t!) stop there. 

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As your support team scales and more products are added to your offering, it becomes more difficult to maintain a high standard across all products, people, and office locations. It’s not uncommon for the quality of agent responses to dip, for the company tone of voice to take a back seat, or for rushed answers to go out simply to keep the time-to-close metric.  But those things aren’t any less important. So when they start to dip, you’ll probably notice a corresponding dip in your happiness ratings. Ultimately, you’re left with some unhappy customers who are at risk of churning.  As a customer-centric company, that’s not a place you want to find yourself in. But there’s a really simple way to avoid it. 

By implementing an effective quality assurance (QA) process using Training Wheels, you can maintain a high support standard across the whole team, from newbies to your most seasoned agents. This ensures customers continuously receive consistent and proactive support by helping your agents to craft empathetic responses and learn how to negotiate difficult demands. For instance, say you have a team of 5 agents and as the team lead, you want to run QA to ensure all responses are consistent, helpful, and well-written for a specific time period. Simply enable Training Wheels for your entire team and set the percentage of ticket responses to 5%.  This means that 5% of each agents’ responses will be selected at random and automatically sent to you for review. Over time, you can analyze your team’s performance and address key areas for improvement in an organized, pain-free and time-efficient way.

To help you get the most out of Training Wheels for onboarding new agents or quality assurance, you can watch our on-demand webinar here at any time.

Training Wheels is a brand new feature available to Premium and Enterprise customers using Teamwork Desk 2.0. It’s designed to make training and onboarding your agents a seamless process so you can continue to deliver the best customer support in your industry. We’d love to hear your feedback or suggestions on how we could improve, as well as how you use it in your own team.  To get started, check out our list of help docs here and if you need a helping hand, as always, you can reach out to our super-responsive support team at support@teamwork.com.