Have 5 minutes of our time

Here at Lucid Towers, we’re always looking for ways to improve our customer experience. 

We know the biggest frustration for customers is not talking to a tech when they call in with a new support query.

There can be times when we’re simply short of staff (holidays, sickness etc), or that all of the team are genuinely mid-flow with an in-depth technical task. This will always happen sometimes.

The rest of the time though, we should be aiming to directly take as many of those calls as possible, the first time.

Having gathered lots of data since the start of 2022, we found that (we already knew some of this, but it’s nice to remind ourselves):

• By picking up more calls, we reduce overall call volume
• The customer expectations are way easier to manage by picking up the first time
• Many things can be resolved in less than five minutes

What we’ve now put in place is the ‘five-minute commitment’, where we’re trying to directly catch as many of those first time calls as possible (as in, with a technical member of the team) and give each caller five minutes of our time straight away.

Now, just to be clear, I’m not saying we’re going to get everything sorted in five minutes. There are many advanced technical tasks that take time, there is no getting away from that. What we are trying to do though is quickly diagnose, and then if we need to, give the customer an expectation of when we will be working on the task at hand, along with roughly how long we think it might take.

This won’t be perfect. There will be some bumps along the way. But, we’re focused on altering the way we work and constantly improving our processes internally and our customer experience externally.

The early indications are good. We’ve had some lovely feedback specifically around this new way of working, which (and I’m paraphrasing) was along the lines of “It was great to initially speak with X about this, and then Y spent the time with us to get it resolved”. This is exactly what we’re aiming for.

Hopefully, this new way of working will deliver what we think it will, an all-around better customer experience, and perhaps is something we offer which other businesses may not.

The proof will be in the pudding – and I’m always honest in how things are going, for both the good and the bad.

We’ll catch up in a month or two to see how things have been with this new process.

Gavin Moorhouse is the owner of Lucid Computer Solutions, a Worcestershire based IT Support and Cloud Solutions business. He is also the inventor (copyright 2022) of the Five Minute Commitment.