Customer support employees skilled at strategic questioning can quickly the collect information needed to understand and resolve customer issues. When information is gathered efficiently, engineers are better able to isolate the root cause of an issue, thereby reducing resolution time.
Why Use Strategic Questioning?
There are many reasons to encourage the use of strategic questioning, but the two reasons that directly impact time to resolution are:
1. To Determine the Reason For the Call
While some customers clearly state their reasons for calling, others do not volunteer enough information to allow support staff to complete the customer's request. To efficiently resolve issues, engineers need to ask the right questions to find out the information needed to proceed.
Engineers who confidently use open and closed questions are able to quickly:
- Uncover the customer's reason for calling.
- Gather information that will enable them to expedite issue resolution.
2. To Control the Call
Timely issue resolution is largely dependent on who controls the call. If the customer controls the call, issue resolution can be delayed, since the engineer is unable to systematically gather details of the issue. By using open questions to first hear the issue stated in the customer's own words and then using closed questions strategically to guide the customer to areas the engineer needs to learn more about, the call flows quickly and logically.
Benefits of Strategic Questioning
Strategic questioning quickly highlights the reason for the customer's call and allows the engineer to efficiently gather the information needed to diagnose the issue and recommend a timely solution. Improving your engineers' ability to question effectively will reduce call resolution time and improve the overall performance of your support center.