Every company has incoming calls, emails and instant messages from customers or clients. Managing all these points of contact is a challenge. The more interruptions to the business day, the harder it is for staff to get through their work. Being efficient gets harder the more contact customers have with the business and pretty soon, the company is suffering from being too popular.
What’s needed is help desk software to assist in managing all those points of contact, assign the query to the appropriate person, and track its progress to a satisfactory conclusion. Accordingly, here are five ways that help desk software can improve the efficiency of your business.
1. Managers Get an Overview of All Outstanding Queries
Managers can see what queries are coming into the business and how long they’re taking to resolve using software like SysAid. By providing tracking of all incoming queries from customers that arrive by email, phone call or live chat, the software creates a visual overview on the current position.
By being able to get an aerial view, they can determine how well the current systems within customer service and support are working. If there are any bottlenecks, they can isolate and work to resolve them too.
2. Create a Knowledge Base to Reduce Demand
A knowledge base is an information resource. Customers can use it to search for answers to their queries. They’re very useful because they provide a stop gap between the customer arriving on the company’s website and deciding to request a support ticket.
The information contained in the knowledge base must be built up over time. Much of the information will be specific to your business and won’t apply to other ones. Patience is required until there’s enough information to reduce the flow of repeat questions hitting the help desk every day.
Once it’s becoming clear what the repeatedly asked questions are, they can be highlighted on the knowledge base page before a search is run.
3. Repeated Product or Software Issues Can Get Addressed Sooner
When the same issues with a product or software are being raised by callers or customers on live chat, it provides the opportunity for the company to act quickly to resolve the issue.
Once the issue is fully resolved, the company is on better footing and customer satisfaction will rise. Also, the customer service or support staff won’t be as inundated either.
4. Access to Previous Requests Reduces New Requests
Greater efficiency with the help desk operations is often achieved when everything is not so rushed.
When a customer can see a record of their previous enquiries, they are less likely to raise a new ticket. This is because, quite often, their new question is similar to a previously answered one. When they can read over what has been advised previously, it often answers their new question for them too.
5. Scheduling Software Reminds Staff to Call Customers Back
When using help desk software, there’s usually a feature to add a reminder to a calendar. This way, customers aren’t left waiting for a forgotten callback and getting annoyed at being ignored.
The calendar feature can be linked to a task list for all outstanding tickets being managed by a worker in the call center to make referencing back and forth easier. Using this system reduces the inflow of callers. It’s undoubtedly true that using software to gain efficiency in work procedures and customer management is a significant advancement over the old ways of doing it. Once companies start down that path, there’s no stopping them.
