Your best agent should never type a tracking number

For nine years I ran customer support at a sofa company. We were good at it, by most measures. We answered fast, our ratings were high, and customers wrote nice things about individual agents by name.

We were also tired, all the time, in a way that took me years to understand. The work that mattered (the claim that needed judgment, the customer whose sofa arrived the week of a funeral) was never the work that filled our day. The day was filled with tracking numbers.

Where the line goes

When brands set up Porchlight, the most important conversation is not about integrations. It is about the handoff line: which conversations Porchlight answers on its own, and which always go to a person.

We ask every brand to sort their last month of tickets into three piles.

• Answer from a record. The answer exists in a system somewhere: where the order is, what the warranty says, what a return will cost. Porchlight should answer these.
• Answer from a rule. The answer depends on a limit you can write down: ship a part under $40, waive a fee for an order that arrived late. Porchlight can answer these once the rule is written.
• Answer from judgment. Damage that might be the customer’s fault. A request for an exception. Anyone who is upset. These go to a person, always, with everything already gathered.

Most brands find the first pile is around 60% of their tickets, the second 15 to 20%, and the third the rest. That third pile is the job. Everything else is the commute.

Handoff is a feature, not a failure

Software in support is usually measured by how many conversations it “deflects.” We think that word gets it backwards. A handoff done well, with the order, the photos and a suggested fix already written up, is the best thing Porchlight does, and we measure it the same way we measure an answer: did the customer have to repeat themselves?

At the brands on Porchlight today, the answer is no for 96% of handoffs. The customer never sends the order number twice and never sends the photos again.

What your team does instead

The question I get most from support leads is some version of: what will my team do all day? The honest answer, from the brands that have been with us longest, is the work they were hired for. They call customers back. They write the warranty page nobody had time to fix. They notice that one fabric has twice the pilling claims of the others and tell the product team before the next production run.

Move the line slowly

Most brands start with the line drawn conservatively: Porchlight drafts everything for the first week, and a person approves each reply. Then delivery questions go live on their own, then returns, then parts. Damage claims stay with people. We recommend moving one topic at a time, a week apart, and reading every handoff summary for the first month. You will find a rule you forgot to write down. Everyone does.

One director told me her team’s favorite metric is now how many claims they close in a single reply. It used to be how many tickets they cleared before lunch. That change is what we are building for.