November 27, 2023

Doing handoffs right

Have we been here before?

Just because you are on top of all of the issues coming into your support issue tracking system doesn’t mean that you’re the right one to address all of those issues. A large part of being an effective support engineering team is having clear boundaries on the issues you handle, as opposed to the ones you reassign to other teams in your organization. Transitioning, or handing off, a customer issue from one team to another can be an intricate dance. On one hand, you’re passing along the issue because you’re not best equipped to handle it. On the other hand, even if the other team has more relevant expertise, they may be missing vital context on this issue in particular. And if they’re going to effectively take on the issues you’re sending to them, you need to find an efficient way to bring them up to speed.

Though I have discussed handoffs before, it’s worth having a larger discussion on this topic. Complete and effective handoffs are a key part of the interaction points between Support and other teams in the company. If you get one wrong, issue resolution may be delayed or, worse, dropped on the floor until the customer reminds you that they’re still having problems. Get the handoff right, though, and it’s an opportunity to impress the customer and build your relationship with them. You’ll also make the other team look good, which they’ll remember the next time you need a favor from them. So how do we do a handoff properly?

Overview of an effective handoff

In the next section I’ll go into more detail about each of these steps, but to set the stage, here are the elements of an effective issue handoff.

• Determine the recipient

• Prepare the recipient

• Hand off customer

• Follow up with recipient

The process, in detail

Determine the recipient

Before passing the issue in front of you off to someone else, you obviously need to figure out who that someone else actually is. Figuring out the team that you’re handing off to is usually going to be straightforward. Customer Success (CS), for instance, is a common destination for issues that are less technical than business-related. Those (hopefully exceedingly rare) knotty bugs that require active engineering intervention with the customer would, clearly, be routed to the Engineering organization. Once you’ve determined the right job function, though, it may not yet be clear which individual will be the lucky recipient in this case. In the case of CS, you’ll probably have one assigned to the customer, and the same with Sales-related issues. But when it’s more vague, don’t just lob the issue in the general direction of the appropriate team. A handoff only works when there’s an accountable human at both ends—find that human. And if it’s not immediately clear, talk to the manager or director of that team to assign the issue accordingly. For the rest of this post, I’ll be referring to the lucky victim winner as the recipient.

Prepare the recipient

If you ignore all the other steps here, make sure you get this one right, as it is the core of the handoff process. The recipient is the person who will be continuing to address the issue, so it is absolutely imperative that you prepare them fully for it. Ideally this preparation will come in the form of a live conversation between you and the person you’re handing off to, though in a pinch you can provide all of the relevant details in an email or Slack message. A live conversation, however, is preferable. That way the recipient can ask follow up questions, clear up foggy details, and generally satisfy themself that they know all of the salient details of the case. If they’re fully prepared, they’ll be much more effective at taking the next steps that are needed to resolve the customer’s issue.

• Share technical details: Tailoring the level of detail to your audience, concisely explain what (if any) technical issue the customer is experiencing. If you’re handing the issue to an engineer, you’ll be providing a lot more technical detail than if you’re passing it to an account executive (AE), all things being equal. This sets the stage for the next detail: what exactly does the customer want or need that Support can’t provide?

• Share use case/business details: Similarly to the above, provide a concise explanation of what the customer actually wants. Also as above, tailor your level of detail to the audience. Are they trying to achieve a specific task and this bug is blocking them? Are they entertaining a large new business initiative that will require them purchasing dozens of new licenses? Understanding this context for the request will help illuminate the reasons for the handoff. Speaking of which…

• Share requested next steps: just as the preparation step is the core of the handoff process, this question is the core of the preparation step. What precisely are you asking the recipient to do? Why are you handing this issue off, instead of handling it yourself? If you can’t explain this to the recipient, you can’t expect them to do a good job addressing the issue going forward.

Hand off customer

You’ve prepared the recipient and they’re ready to pick up the baton. Now it’s time to let the customer know. There are three broad types of handoff communication: none, cool, and warm. Each has its benefits and its drawbacks, so let’s go through them one by one.

No communication: This is also sometimes referred to as a cold handoff, for reasons that will become clear. For low-stakes issues, it’s fastest and easiest to just … not mention it. If a customer writes in with a question that’s best answered by Sales, why waste everyone’s time with a message essentially saying ‘thanks for writing in, someone else will answer your question’? Instead, just let the fully informed recipient handle the communications. Question comes in, answer goes out from the customer’s AE. Simple and clean. On the other hand, this kind of unannounced handoff is a lot more jarring if you’ve already been working with the customer, then suddenly they start hearing from someone else entirely. In that case, you need to at least let them know that you’re performing a handoff.

Cool handoff: Midway between a cold and a warm handoff, this is a good way to hand off issues that you’ve been handling for a while but find that another team is better equipped to handle going forward. In this scenario, you add the new recipient to the ticket, and write a message to the customer introducing them. Hi Aloysiuis, I’d like to introduce Philomena Philandel, your account executive. She’ll be able to assist you with your expansion plans. This gives the customer some context as to why some new random person is talking at them, and smooths the transition to Philomena. While this is a good option in many scenarios, it doesn’t really make sense to do an active handoff like this on a brand new ticket. On the other hand, if the customer is particularly large, or frustrated, or otherwise requires gentler handling, a message like this may come across as perfunctory. In that case, read on.

Warm handoff: The most hands-on and time-consuming type of handoff is also the strongest for relationship building and preservation. For large, difficult, or otherwise special customers, a warm handoff involves a live conversation between you, the customer, and the recipient. The purpose of this conversation is to reassure the customer that their issue is a priority for you, and to introduce the specialist who will be best able to help them. The downsides to this approach are clear: it takes a while to schedule a call like this, it takes time out of your day (and the recipient’s day), and some customers simply aren’t willing or able to join a call just to have an introduction. In these cases a cool introduction will suffice, but it’s always worth offering a live call to do the handoff when you’re in a situation where it would be appropriate.

Follow up with recipient

After the customer communication is complete, your job isn’t quite over yet. Follow up with the recipient to make sure they’ve picked up the ball and to answer any remaining questions they might have. This closes the loop and confirms to both of you that the recipient is now in charge of the issue going forward. That said, just because the issue in your ticketing system is no longer assigned to you doesn’t mean that you can ignore it going forward. Keep tabs on it, make sure that the recipient is taking the agreed-upon next steps, and be ready to step in if the conversation veers back into your own territory.

Conclusion

Though you may have polished your internal processes until they shine, don’t neglect all of the inter-team processes that your team also relies on for resolving customer issues. They are just as necessary to swift, effective issue resolution. Handoffs are one of the most common inter-team processes that you will need to address, and can have a large impact on the overall customer experience. Invest some time building these guidelines, consult with the leaders of the other teams you’ll be handing issues to, and you’ll find your effort will pay off in smoother inter-team operations and an improved customer experience when they come to you with problems.

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