Should You Invest In a Help Desk Software?
As a business owner, you’re always on the lookout for ways to improve your customer satisfaction levels. It makes sense. The more satisfied your customers are, the more likely they are to purchase from you again. If you’re lucky, they may even share their positive experience with your business online, and become a brand ambassador of sorts. However, this isn’t always the case. Often times, customer queries go unanswered because customer support agents simply can’t keep up or get organized. When customers are ignored, they become frustrated, churn, and turn to the competition.
So how can you prevent this whole scenario from playing out? By eliminating the root of the problem. If any of the scenarios below sound familiar, you might need to invest in help desk software:
- You don’t know how your customer service team is performing
- Your support agents are overwhelmed
- Your support agents have to use multiple tools to monitor customer queries
- Many tickets are lost, forgotten, or go unanswered
So how can you benefit from implementing a help desk software into your workflow?
Gain a complete overview of your customer support
Once you implement a help desk software you’ll be able to analyze tons of data about your incoming tickets. With the right help desk system, you’ll be able to figure out who is interacting with your business, through which channels, and what level of service they’re receiving. Gaining insights from this data is invaluable, as it will help you identify areas of improvement.
For example, you may notice that most of your tickets are coming from social media, but many of them go unanswered. This could mean that you’re lacking a system that notifies you every time you receive a notification on social media, or that you open messages and then simply forgot to respond to them.
This is where a help desk system comes in handy. It automatically converts incoming messages into tickets and keeps reminding you about them until they’re resolved.
Improve workflow efficiency
Help desk systems have advanced features that improve workflow efficiency. The three main features that deserve a mention are:
- The universal inbox: The universal inbox is basically a smarter version of your email. Once you connect all your communication channels to your inbox, you’ll never have to worry about logging into different accounts to answer tickets. For example, if you connect Twitter with your help desk, you can respond to Tweets right from your universal inbox, without having to log into Twitter. This means fewer distractions, and more time to focus on answering tickets.
- The hybrid ticket stream: The hybrid ticket stream combines all tickets from the same customer about the same issue into one thread. For example, if a customer were to contact you through live chat about an invoice, and you followed up through email, and then they decided to call you about it, the entire conversation thread would be in one ticket. This will save your agents tons of time, as they won’t have to search the entirety of your help desk to see what was said in previous conversations.
- Automation: Automation is a lifesaver in customer service. A great example of useful automation features are canned responses and mass actions. As an example, agents can construct answers to frequently asked questions, and use them to reply to customers with a single click.
Save money
When it comes to choosing a help desk software for your business, it’s important to consider its features. Often times you’ll notice that a good help desk system can replace many of the tools that you’re already using, providing you with an excellent price to value ratio. Consider LiveAgent and its built-in call center functionality as an example. If you choose to use this help desk solution, you’ll be able to get rid of other solutions that you use to satisfy your call center needs.
Improve response times
A help desk system notifies you as soon as you receive a ticket. Because you won’t have to monitor multiple email addresses, social accounts, or hardware phones manually, you’ll be able to respond to customer queries much faster.
The bottom line
Let’s circle back to our original question, of whether you should invest in a help desk software. If you want to save money, improve the workflow efficiency of your agents, and improve customer satisfaction at the same time, our answer is a definite yes. Customers are demanding and have tons of options available at their fingertips. Having a great product is no longer enough. It’s crucial to provide impeccable, timely, personalized, and knowledgeable customer service for your customers. If you don’t, it’s highly unlikely that they’ll remain loyal to your band.
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