CX Starts Before the Ticket: Meet Your Customer Where They Are

Most support leaders can tell you their average resolution time, but fewer can tell you how many of those tickets were avoidable in the first place. That’s the quiet cost of great support: when you have a strong team and solid metrics, it can mask the fact that customers are still experiencing friction. Your agents might be resolving issues beautifully, but the more important question is—why are they resolving so many to begin with?

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After more than a decade in CX and support—from frontline roles to building entire support infrastructures—I’ve come to believe that the best customer experience you can offer is by meeting people exactly where they are.

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Where Does This Belief Come From? 

I didn’t always think this way. My journey started in sales support back in 2012, and transitioned into tech support shortly after. I was the first non-founder hire at a startup and found myself building the support function from scratch. That meant choosing helpdesk tools, creating workflows, defining our support voice, and designing systems to keep things from falling through the cracks.

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That hands-on work shaped how I view customer friction. Each additional hop a customer takes to get an answer—from in-product, to help center, to filing a ticket—isn’t just an inconvenience; it’s a trust eroder. They go from curious, to confused, to frustrated.

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So when we started building QueryPal, a platform designed to embed AI directly into existing support workflows, we took that seriously.

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We knew AI could help agents work faster, but speed alone wasn’t enough. If the tools lived outside the helpdesk—or added steps to the process—they’d go unused. So we built directly into the platforms support teams already use: popular helpdesks like Zendesk, Salesforce, and others.

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That choice wasn't just about convenience; it was about adoption, productivity, and keeping humans in flow.

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But then we asked ourselves: what if we took that same approach and extended it to the customer?

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Because here’s the truth: when a customer runs into a problem inside your app, the ideal time to help them is right then, right there. But too often, they're forced to jump to a knowledge base, interpret a doc, and hope it applies to their unique use case.

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And if they can't resolve it there, they have to escalate to support. By then, they’ve already spent too much time trying—and failing—to find help.

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That’s why we believe this: support should start upstream. The best answers are contextual. The best experience is in-product. And the best CX leaders are finding ways to reduce friction before it becomes a ticket.

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This doesn’t mean reducing headcount or replacing humans. It means being strategic about where human support adds value—and where smart systems can handle the rest.

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That’s where AI shines—not just in writing faster replies, but in making it easier for customers to ask questions and get rich, contextual answers without needing to over-explain their situation.

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It anticipates the context, not the question, and gives support that feels intuitive rather than intrusive. Done right, it improves customer outcomes, reduces volume, and frees your team to focus on complex, high-touch issues where they make the biggest impact.

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What Does the Future of Customer Service Look Like?

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The future of CX is proactive. It's contextual. It's built into the product. At QueryPal, we’re committed to this vision and helping teams put it into practice.

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And in my view, it starts with one principle: meet the customer where they are.

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If you’re thinking about how to reduce support volume while improving customer satisfaction, I’d love to hear how you're approaching it.

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Because the best support experience isn’t about how fast you reply. It’s about how rarely your customer needs to ask.

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Ready to see this approach in action? Contact us to book a demo and learn how QueryPal can help your team reduce friction and deliver exceptional support experiences.