You’re at a party nibbling on cheese when someone who looks vaguely familiar strikes up a conversation. You’re doing a good enough job faking your way through it, until your partner joins and asks for an introduction ... and you don’t know the person’s name. Sales and support conversations aren’t so different from chats at parties.

If you’ve ever found a solution online to an obscure tech problem you’ve had, then it’s very likely that you’ve interacted with an online community forum. Community forums allow people to connect and discuss shared interests. Especially now, where many people’s days are spent online, community forums represent a space of connection for many.

Customer support staffing is like a never-ending game of Jenga. If you’ve got a team of customer support reps who are all aligned on how best to help your customers and have experience doing just that, you’ve got an excellent foundation for resolving customer queries. But if you take out just a few of those reps – if they leave, get promoted, or are out sick for an extended period – then your support provision suddenly looks much less stable.

When surveyed, more than half of customer service agents said they usually have to switch between different systems to solve a customer request. Here’s why: When a customer reaches out for support, an agent typically needs a bit of context to fully understand the customer’s situation or problem.

The traditional way to measure customer service metrics is to track averages, such as average reply time or average resolution time. But Geckoboard’s Customer Support Experience Report found that some companies measure first response time as a service level agreement (SLA) metric rather than an average. SLA metrics are internal metrics used by customer support teams to set targets for the proportion of customers who will receive a predefined minimum level of service.