How to Address Common Issues with Remote Support

Did you recently transition your business to remote capacity as a result of the coronavirus pandemic? Then you’re certainly not alone—and it’s no surprise if you might be experiencing more service interruptions than usual as a result of network overload in your area. The transition to remote support can be trying enough without adding in additional issues around being able to provide service for your customers. Fortunately, our awesome team of customer support engineers is armed with helpful knowledge around how to approach some of the most common issues we’re hearing from our customers right now as they transition to remote work, including some suggestions for greater work-life balance and efficiency.

Answers to Common Troubleshooting Questions on the CTM App

Having issues with audio on your calls or want to make sure your home network can support the call volume you’re anticipating? Read on to see some of our top tips.

#1: Update Your Browser

First things first: make sure you’re set up to use CallTrackingMetrics on the right browser. We are optimized for Google Chrome. If you are encountering odd behavior in a different browser, log in with a Google Chrome browser to see if that resolves the issue. You might need to update the Google Chrome browser as well to the latest version.

#2: Review Your Internet Connection

With so many people now working from home, review your internet connection as well as your internal network activity to make sure it can support your needs, especially if you’re not the only one at your home who will be online while you’re working.

• Ask your ISP (internet service provider) to confirm, or enable, QoS on your account. This will prioritize voice traffic in your network, which helps ensure audio quality during your calls.
• Ask your ISP about any data limits on your plan, and if your connection could get throttled if you exceed a certain amount of data in any time period.
• Review the activity on your network. Are your kids/roommates hogging bandwidth playing online games while you’re trying to get work done? Check your router for any options to manage the activity (e.g. throttle certain devices entirely or at least during your work hours).

#3: Configure Audio Settings

If you’re making calls from the softphone, make sure you’ve applied the correct permissions for our app to use your microphone on your computer (click “Allow” when you see this pop-up) so customers can hear you speaking.

If you have a different microphone you’d like to use, such as one from your headset, you can also review what microphone options are available and choose your default in your browser settings.

Likewise, configure your input and output audio settings within the CTM app to ensure that others can hear you and you can hear them—and to set where you’ll hear calls ringing from, whether directly in your headset, using the laptop speakers, etc.

#4: Run a Twilio Network Test

If experiencing issues with your network, try running a network test on Twilio. This will test your network connection, confirm your audio input and output is functional (e.g. mic and headset), and estimate how many simultaneous calls your network can handle. For the purposes of CTM, you can ignore the Video tests on this page. This is also a helpful diagnostic tool to have handy should you need to follow up with our support team.

Need more assistance? Feel free to touch base with our support team via phone, email, or live chat, or review our dedicated remote work resources.

Tips to Support Newly-Remote Agents

Our Senior Customer Support Engineer Matt Horstmann has been rocking the work-from-home life for a while now, and he recently shared a couple of tips for managing work calls while at home.

#1: Update Agent Availability

One of the challenges of moving to work from home is establishing that work-life boundary since you no longer have a physical space dictating when it’s time to work versus relaxing and enjoying downtime with your family or taking a lunch break midday. To help with this, apply custom statuses or update your availability in the softphone and external lines as seen below to let your team know when you’re ready to accept calls and when you’re not.

You can also create custom statuses for your usage to let your manager/team know whether you’re in a meeting, on a break, doing a training, etc. so they can understand how your time is being used.

#2: Utilize Internal Chat

Need to interact 1:1 with another team member? You can do this within the CTM app if you’ve purchased live chat licenses by navigating to the “Internal” portion of the softphone panel. Quickly send info about a customer’s issue to another agent if you need to transfer the call, or message your manager to update them on a ticket you’re now ready to resolve. It’s easy to continue communications without leaving your call log.

Want more suggestions on how to manage remote agents?

Review our tips here for scaling your call center with confidence, or how to keep remote employees engaged during this time.