This tip comes from a great discussion at one of our Customer Service Breakfasts. (Come join us for the next one!)
One of the bigger challenges for support teams – especially managers – is prioritizing and triaging support tickets in your queue. Does this old ticket beat out a newer but more urgent one? Is this issue actually urgent? Where do you even start?
Psychologists believe that our brains process things in the background while we focus on other subjects. It’s the exact reason why sometimes focusing on a problem doesn’t actually provide you with an answer…the answer comes to you later when you’re showering or air guitar-soloing to Queens of the Stone Age.
How can you harness this? Try this: take a look at your support queue before you actually dive into it. Before you take your morning shower, have your breakfast or start your commute just take a glance. Get a sense of what’s in there. Then leave it.
Let your brain subconsciously prioritize, and then later return to your queue when you finish your morning rituals. With any luck your brain will have already started to figure out how to handle the tickets, and you won’t have to think quite so hard.
We love this concept, and have been playing with it ourselves. Give it a try, and let us know if it works for you!
