Decision Trees for Support Agents: A Smarter Way to Support

Streamlining processes in customer support is critical for efficiency and resolving issues more effectively. When a customer calls or emails in with a query, it’s important to have documentation that can guide agents through the process of resolving that query.

You could produce many different types of documentation, including a decision tree for support agents. When agents are supported in resolving customer queries, they can spend less time searching the knowledge base or asking colleagues for help because they can find ready-made answers in the decision tree.

Especially considering the nature and complexity of many support queries, decision trees constitute a valuable resource for troubleshooting and resolving many common issues. They’re simple to use and can be hosted alongside your regular documentation.

What Is a Decision Tree?

Customers have higher expectations than ever of your customer support team. Customer support is a key differentiator in whether customers will choose your business over the competition, so anything that will make support easier (like a decision tree) is a sound investment for your business.

As your business grows, so does the complexity and volume of the support queries you will likely receive. It is one of the many growing pains of the business as it scales, and you need a type of automation, like decision trees, to guide your support reps through the process of responding to these queries.

Decision trees are an intelligent support solution because they offer a step-by-step process for resolving customer queries. They consider various factors and guide agents through a flowchart towards the right answer for that particular customer problem. They are especially useful when there are a number of different resolutions possible for the issue.

Decision trees are dynamic, and this is how they differ from traditional static FAQs or scripts. They employ a kind of if this/then logic to help agents ask the right questions, revealing more questions to arrive at the right answer eventually.

We’re going to look at the key role of decision trees for support agents, as well as use cases for decision trees in customer support.

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Role of Decision Trees for Support Agents

• Guide agents through step-by-step processes – decision trees are useful for step-by-step processes that can take agents through the process of correctly diagnosing an issue when there are a number of different outcomes, depending on the nature of the issue and answers to the questions that are being asked. It is through answering these questions that agents can take steps towards arriving at the correct answer for the issue, which will be the same every time, and streamline efficiencies for your team.
• Reduce errors and missed steps – although decision trees are not strictly necessary for support agents, they reduce errors and missed steps because they overtly document how the issue should be resolved. If the agent were just left to troubleshoot the issue on their own, this increases the likelihood that they have missed something obvious, and the customer’s issue would not be correctly identified.
• Ensure consistent service across agents—no matter who’s on the end of the call to your customer, decision trees ensure consistent service because they remind agents to ask the right questions. Decision trees replace the guesswork of customer service because the exact questions and expected outcome are documented in the decision tree, so customers are always helped the same way, every time.
• Support agents with concise, adaptive dialogues instead of lengthy scripts – it can be hard for agents to flip through the scripts that they have been provided in the call center, while using decision trees mean you can provide them with concise and adaptive dialogues that guide them through the process of talking to customers about their problems. Decision trees distil down the questions in a flowchart format, which enables agents to reach the right answer quickly.
• Simplify troubleshooting, especially for less tech-savvy users – troubleshooting can be difficult, but it doesn’t have to require technical expertise. Decision trees for support agents simplify troubleshooting by documenting the likely states of the product and leading to the next logical step based on the answer, so agents can quickly get to the root of the problem.

Key Use Cases & Scenarios

• Technical troubleshooting – One of the main use cases for decision trees is technical troubleshooting in customer support because there is a clear, logical process for diagnosing the issue with the customer. For example, you can ask: Is the product turned on? If yes, then proceed to the next step. Breaking down the problem into these manageable steps enables even the most inexperienced support agent to help the customer troubleshoot technical issues.
• Billing and account management – when customers have billing and account management issues, you can employ a decision tree to give agents the tools to guide agents through the correct steps. For example, if their account has been locked, you can ask: Are the credit card details up to date? If not, proceed to the next step. This way, customer accounts can be managed more effectively, and agents have a decision tree to work from instead of trying to understand every issue from scratch.
• Product or service onboarding – when customers are onboarding with your product, they have many questions for your business. Customers may be confused: Why is my product not working? How do I activate the X feature? The decision tree could ask: Has the customer purchased enough credits to be able to use this feature? If yes, proceed to the next step. Decision trees speed up the process of product or service onboarding and allow you to increase product adoption through training your agents properly.
• Escalation and compliance handling – sometimes there are issues that require more seniority to deal with, for example, if there has been a data breach with one of your products, a decision tree may ask: has customer data been compromised? If yes, then proceed to the next step, which would be escalating to the process lead for cybersecurity, giving agents the peace of mind in knowing how to deal with complex and business-critical issues.

Conclusion

Decision trees benefit your customer support agents by reducing errors and guiding them through a step–by–step process. They are a visual tool that is faster to use than normal scripts you would usually find in the call center, breaking even the most complex processes down into manageable steps for your agents to work through.

They are useful in many different scenarios, from technical troubleshooting to product onboarding, and allow agents to be more consistent when dealing with customers and diagnosing the ultimate root of the problem. Customers benefit from agents who are more confident and efficient in arriving at the correct answer, reducing the need to have customers transferred to more than one agent.

Decision trees can be hosted in a centralized knowledge base like Document360, where any agents can access them and quickly use them during a call or email exchange to help customers. You can easily update your decision trees and ensure that agents can find their needs.