Hello, and Happy Tuesday!

Tagging is one of the most critical responsibilities of a service agent.

If you’re unfamiliar with tagging, this is the standard practice of labeling the ticket, usually within the ticket’s form field, one of many pre-determined reasons for contact.

Yes, providing the customer with an absolutely amazing support experience is important too! But tagging the inquiry is like the customer casting their official vote for what at your organization could be better.

When done the right way, customer service tagging can lead to product redesigns, process improvements, website changes, new marketing messaging, modifications to packaging, shifts in vendors and manufacturers, policy changes, and so much more!

Unfortunately, many organizations have tagging structures that don’t allow for actionable insight. Here’s how you can change that:

Make Tagging Required: If agents can skip the tagging process, your data is incomplete and data cannot be accurately measured.
Share the Importance of Tagging: Your agents want to solve problems as much as you do. They need to get how this step in ticket resolution leads to change.
Tag Issue, Not Solution: Knowing 52 tickets handled today resulted in a return is vaguely helpful. Knowing 30 were due to damaged product, 10 were due to sizing, and 12 were due to the incorrect product being sent, gives you something to work with.
Make Tags Specific: Get as detailed as you can without creating unnecessary work for your team or putting unnecessary burden on your customer. Consider making parent and child tag types. This will help you get closer to the root cause of the issue.
Use Clear Wording: Avoid creating tags that are too similar or ambiguous as they’re likely to be misused. Consider getting agent feedback on what they would interpret your tags to mean.
Train on Tagging Accuracy: Create a tag library as a resource for agents, and include tagging as part of your agents’ QA process.
Tag for Reason AND Product: This allows you to connect certain issues with certain products. If able, get down to the SKU level.
Review Data Regularly: Create a dashboard or run reports that allow you to identify high contract drivers and monitor trends.

Next week I’ll share how you can leverage tagging data to drive change within your organization!