What if the same app your team uses for internal communication could also be used to enable customer support collaboration?
Just imagine it.
Instead of having to send emails up and down the chain of command, you could reduce ticket resolution time and build a solid knowledge base for your team by keeping all support correspondence in dedicated channels in your team communication app.
Using a communication platform like Pumble by CAKE.com can help your support team embrace the future of support — swarming, cross-functional collaboration.
But, before we tell you how to use Pumble to achieve that, let’s take a moment to highlight the differences between tiered support and swarming.
Solve complex issues faster: Tiered support vs swarming
The clash of tiered support vs swarming comes down to how quickly you want your team to resolve tickets.
Traditionally, many support teams have relied on tiered collaboration, a system that was originally developed to make the support triage process more efficient and ensure that experts would only be called in if necessary.
When dealing with issues that can’t be resolved through self-service options or basic support, agents were trained to escalate the tickets to people who can provide more advanced solutions, such as developers or on-site technicians.
In practice, though, tiered support often results in endless email correspondence as agents attempt to find solutions amongst themselves before involving technical staff — all while customers wait for answers.
Conversely, the swarming model of customer support was created to:
- Reduce ticket resolution time and
- Ensure customer satisfaction.
In teams that embrace the swarming method of customer support collaboration, agents are still trained to prioritize first contact resolution (FCR) when dealing with the most common issues.
However, if they receive a ticket they are stumped by, rather than opening their email inbox, they would simply post about the issue they’re dealing with in a dedicated channel, where it can be seen by product managers, developers, or other qualified staff.
This model effectively bridges the gap between support teams and technical staff, eliminating slow handoffs and prioritizing cross-functional collaboration.
Best of all, you can practice support team swarming without having to bring in a new communication platform. You’ll just need to make small adjustments to your existing internal communication software setup.
But, before we share the specific tips for setting up your support triage process, let’s see what the swarming method might look like in practice.
How to use your Pumble workspace for support team swarming
Having explained the differences between support team swarming and tiered support, let’s talk about how you can incorporate Pumble into your support triage process.
Going forward, we’ll show you how to:
- Organize your workspace with dedicated channels,
- Manage critical incidents and outages by keeping all updates in one place,
- Use video messages for visual bug reporting,
- Enhance your Pumble experience through tech stack integration, and
- Connect with VIP clients by giving them guest access to your workspace.
So, let’s start by discussing some of the channels you could introduce to your Pumble workspace.
Step #1: Organize your support workspace by setting up dedicated channels in Pumble
Unless you’re moving to Pumble from Slack (or a similar app), chances are you won’t have many channels in your workspace to begin with.
In fact, when you just start using Pumble, your workspace will automatically have only two public channels in it: the #general channel and the #random channel, which can be used for official announcements and casual exchanges, respectively.
As you settle into your digital workspace, different teams will add more channels into the mix to discuss various topics.
With that in mind, we wanted to suggest some channels you might find useful for promoting customer support collaboration. For example, you could make:
- A simple #support channel for department announcements,
- A #support_swarming channel for practicing cross-functional team collaboration,
- An #incident_room channel for discussing ongoing incidents or service outages,
- A #triage_support channel for general incident management,
- A #customer_feedback channel for sharing positive (or negative) client feedback with the rest of the support team, and even
- A #kudos_and_wins channel for providing employee recognition on a larger scale.
Aside from these, you could also have regional or product-specific channels, depending on how your support team decides to organize their communication.
Centralize support team communication
Step #2: Manage critical incidents and outages with temporary channels and threads for updates
On particularly hectic days, working on a support team can feel like you’re trying to keep a dozen plates spinning at the same time. You have to:
- Manage an ever-increasing number of tickets, while
- Trying to stay in touch with technical staff, and
- Keeping customers informed on the status of their requests.
Before you know it, you find yourself hopping between:
- Rushed voice calls with agitated clients,
- Chaotic virtual meetings with the rest of the team, and
- Endless direct messages, as you try to navigate the chaos.
If only there was a way to reduce the volume of communication you have to deal with while making sure all relevant parties still have the information they need to get their job done.
Well, as it happens, creating temporary channels or even having a permanent channel for discussing such incidents can be a good way to keep everyone in the loop.
Either way, since Pumble lets you make an unlimited number of private or public channels — even as a free user — it’s the perfect tool for implementing that idea.
After creating the channel in question, you can use it to:
- Monitor announcements regarding ongoing issues or even request status updates yourself,
- Answer in threads to provide or request more information, and
- Share files or documents that might shed light on the situation.
Step #3: Use video messages for visual bug reporting in Pumble
More often than not, the issues customers report are something you have to see to believe.
That’s why support agents often rely on images or, better still, videos, to fully understand the problems customers are experiencing.
After all, if a picture is worth a thousand words, just imagine how many you could replace with a single video.
In the image below, you can see how sending video messages might enhance customer support collaboration.
Crucially, Pumble users are also able to share their screen while recording video messages, which can be a useful way to provide clients with specific feedback and instructions they can use to troubleshoot on their end.
🎓 CONSEJO PRO DE PUMBLE
Want to know more about how Pumble’s video and voice messages are changing the game? Check out this article:
Enhance customer support with video
Step #4: Upgrade your customer support collaboration with tech stack integration
As fantastic as Pumble is, the support triage process often requires features that are simply not present in most team communication tools.
Still, the communication platform your support team relies on should be able to provide some degree of tech stack integration, allowing your team to easily access different tools from within their messaging app.
Luckily, Pumble has all the integrations your support team might need and then some — though others, such as Zendesk, are currently still in development.
Still, in addition to having integrations with third-party apps like Zapier, Pumble also has two native integrations with:
Both are made by the same CAKE.com team that’s behind Pumble.
The latter should be especially useful for support teams, as Plaky can also be used as a ticketing platform.
With that in mind, integrating Plaky with Pumble can allow support agents to see updates on the tickets they’re working on within Pumble, as shown below.
Step #5: Connect directly with VIP clients via Pumble’s guest access feature
Even though email is a pretty inconvenient tool for internal communication, it remains a necessary evil for customer support agents who are often called upon to exchange long-winded messages with customers or clients.
But, at the end of the day, we can’t say that either of those parties is particularly pleased with having to rely on email to communicate.
If that becomes an issue for some of your more important customers, you’ll be glad to learn that Pumble offers BUSINESS and ENTERPRISE plan users a way to bypass email entirely.
Namely, if you want to give your VIP clients a direct line to your support team, you can invite them into your workspace as single-channel guests, letting them:
- View or post messages in the channel they’ve been invited to,
- View and DM members of the same channel, as well as
- Start or join calls within the channel.
Best of all, you’ll be able to invite up to 5 free single-channel guests per regular workspace member.
However, if you want your clients to have the additional privileges and permissions granted to multi-channel guests, you should know that these seats will be billed like regular users.
Still, for the purposes of customer support collaboration, single-channel guest access should suffice.
🎓 CONSEJO PRO DE PUMBLE
Want to know more about Pumble’s guest access feature? Here’s the full breakdown:
Communicate efficiently with clients
Give your team the support it needs: Enable customer support collaboration with Pumble
Day in and day out, support agents do their best to field questions and collaborate with different departments to produce results, all while taking the brunt of customer dissatisfaction.
If you really think about it, it’s as thankless a job as anyone could have.
So, is there a way to make the support triage process more painless for everyone involved?
Well, throwing Pumble into the mix should do the trick.
Pumble enhances customer service team communication by allowing agents to:
- Reduce ticket resolution time through support team swarming,
- Effortlessly collaborate with technical staff, leading to a more connected workplace overall, and
- Create a knowledge base they can reference as new issues arise, thanks to Pumble’s unlimited message history — which free users can also enjoy.
So, set your support team up for success.
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