Best practices for change management during your Copilot trial

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As organizations embrace AI technologies, successful adoption hinges on how effectively teams adapt to and embrace these new tools.

This guide outlines practical strategies for leaders to foster a positive culture around AI, overcome common resistance points, and empower teams to leverage AI as a collaborative partner in their daily work. It includes the following sections:

Starting a Copilot trial

Help agents view AI as a problem-solving partner

Implement deliberately to build trust

Onboard your new agents faster

Consider team performance and service quality

Harness insights for continuous improvement

Conclusion

Starting a Copilot trial

Zendesk Copilotis a set of features that expand on the AI offerings already built into the Zendesk Suite. You can try it out the Copilot add-on before purchasing. This test-drive enables you to work with Copilot features before making a final decision to purchase. You must be the account owner or a billing admin to start the trial.

If your plan is eligible, you'll see an banner on the Subscription page in Admin Center. Otherwise, you can contact Zendesk Sales and ask about starting a Copilot trial. For more information about how Zendesk trials work, see Trying out a plan or feature upgrade.

You can start your trial before or after you review the material in this article.

Help agents view AI as a problem-solving partner

Instill the belief that AI exists to serve agents and simplify their work.

When you’re introducing AI, clearly communicate the benefits that agents can expect and how AI will help agents in their roles.

Give agents a voice in the AI implementation process.

Conduct surveys and focus groups to understand agents' concerns and expectations.

Create your AI guidelines and processes alongside agents to make sure they’re bought into the implementation experience.

Allow agents to experiment and familiarize themselves with AI.

Allow agents to experiment with AI before it becomes a standard part of their work, like a sandbox.

Ask for agents' early feedback to be based on direct experience. Fear and uncertainty can cause them to reject new technology, while giving space for agents to familiarize themselves with AI can shift their preconceived notions and make change less concerning.

Implement deliberately to build trust

Document exactly how to use AI with demos and training.

Document how you’re adding AI to agents’ workflows and share training resources on best practices.

Showcase how AI works with side-by-side, before-and-after demos contrasting agent experiences with and without AI. This demonstrates how AI handles tedious parts of agents’ jobs, allowing them to focus on more meaningful work.

Set baseline performance metrics to quantify success.

Set baseline KPIs before deploying AI so you can monitor shifts in metrics as new capabilities get enabled.

We suggest tracking metrics like first response time (FRT), customer satisfaction (CSAT), and ticket reopens.

Roll out a targeted pilot to prove value.

Consider choosing a specific support channel to implement a targeted AI pilot.

Use this trial to gather stats on the value of AI and share those widely.

To show AI’s value, consider turning on AI, then turning it off to compare the performance before and after.

Onboard your new agents faster

Lean on AI agents (previously known as bots) to gather all the right customer context before handing tickets over to an agent.

Improve productivity with tailored insights and next steps from AI.

AI can offer guidance by surfacing previous, similar tickets and suggesting the right responses based on those interactions.

This is especially helpful for newly hired or developing agents and lower performers.

Automatically route tickets with AI to develop your agents’ skill set.

Consider gradually increasing the complexity of the requests agents handle as they learn.

Use AI to route tickets to the right person based on their skill level and capacity.

As agents ramp up, you can automatically route them to more complicated issues.

Consider team performance and service quality

This is especially important when considering the challenges teams are facing. Challenges like surging ticket volumes, distributed teams, and new customer preferences. AI-powered workforce management (WFM) and quality assurance (QA) allow you to stay agile and manage these challenges. Contact Zendesk Sales for more information.

Implement workforce management to streamline forecasting, scheduling, and productivity, which enables your team to meet customer demand as it changes in real time.

Implement quality assurance to track your service quality. QA can score interactions, analyze trends, and identify opportunities for your team to improve.

Taken together, these tools make sure everything is running smoothly, across both your human teams and the AI systems you’re using.

Harness insights for continuous improvement

Establish automated feedback loops where agents flag flaws in support.

Create feedback loops where agents can quickly flag inaccurate AI responses. This promotes engagement and provides systematic feedback on how to improve. For example, create an internal Community site for this purpose.

Closely monitor analytics for trends and insights to improve.

Evaluate AI-powered reporting on trends across your customer base using resources like the Intelligent triage dashboard. Keep an eye out for problem areas like tickets with a high number of agent replies or long resolution times for particular issues.

Offer a dedicated forum to keep agents informed.

Set up a dedicated forum, such as a Slack channel or recurring meeting, to keep agents updated and encourage feedback sharing. This helps foster an environment where agents feel valued and empowered to contribute to improving things.

Conclusion

Successful AI adoption is an iterative process that requires ongoing attention, agent feedback, and continuous refinement. By maintaining open communication channels and demonstrating AI's tangible benefits, you can foster a workplace where agents view AI as an invaluable partner in delivering exceptional customer service to your customers.