Technology is a catalyst for progress. Over the years, several scientific breakthroughs and high-tech innovations have contributed to economic growth and human development. Similarly, the world of business hasn’t been unaffected by the charm of technology.
It’s no wonder communication technologies — including the internet, multimedia, email, video connectivity, social media, etc. — have revolutionized business interactions as we know them. Today, industry discussions are dominated by topics like big data, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, live conferencing, and intelligent chatbots. The digital world is rapidly evolving, requiring us to keep up!
In this blog, we’ll look at the benefits and methods of using technology, specifically to enhance customer service. A helpdesk ticketing system offers one of the simplest ways of embracing digital applications for such operations. It’s one of the most essential tools for empowering your support teams, improving business productivity, and keeping your customers satisfied. You can even outsource help desk services to a third-party provider if it suits your needs.
Why implement a service helpdesk system?
Helpdesk software constitutes a range of technology features that help you deliver exceptional customer service. It organizes your support tasks and takes on several components of the customer journey.
No matter where your business is located, customer interfacing will be central to your success. And the quality of your client conversations will directly impact your sales outcomes. With a helpdesk system, you can:
- Understand market needs and trends
- Promote products and services among your target audience
- Simplify customer onboarding processes
- Reform lines of internal communication
- Resolve issues quickly and efficiently
- Minimize user frustration and friction
- Reduce the workload of your support teams
- Build and sustain your customer relationships
As you can see, all these benefits are linked to the primary goal of enabling better relationships with customers and end-users. Forbes reports that 84% of companies that amplify their customer experience show an increase in revenue.
Moreover, meaningful customer relationships are vital to building a competitive advantage in the 21st century. The ultimate goal for companies today is to earn repeat purchases and brand loyalty. You don’t want to spend time and money on acquiring new clients in every sales cycle.
Even for customers, it’s convenient and comfortable to interact with a trustworthy entity at every touchpoint. They usually choose to stay with a brand that satisfies their needs and puts effort into retaining them. Therefore, we are seeing customer service and marketing get more aligned than ever before. We recommend that you explore how technology can help you establish this connection.
By augmenting your support functions with a helpdesk system, you can reap end-to-end rewards in customer experience management. Research backs up this claim. A Harvard Business Review case stated that redesigning service delivery chains and adjusting them to the changing digital arena can result in:
- Enhanced customer satisfaction
- Reduced churn rates
- Growth in revenue
- Greater employee satisfaction
This brings us to the next question. Which capabilities allow a helpdesk system to facilitate such superior business interactions?
Helpdesk system: The must-have technology package
Here are some specific tech-savvy offerings that can help you empower your support staff and user base.
- Video communication for a personal touch
Video communication technologies play a huge role in supplementing your customer-facing tasks. Imagine a service helpdesk that lets you schedule face-to-face meetings and service interactions with your customers. You’ll be able to capture missing details and form a personal connection. You can also use a combination of voice and video to make a powerful impression and record calls to improve agent performance. Best practices in call management suggest that combining real-time voice and video communication can positively impact customer encounters.
- Omni-channel experiences for improved close rates
A good service desk should allow you to switch between different channels to support your customers. You and your customers should be able to get in touch with each other via multiple pathways, including phone calls, video conferencing, virtual call center software, email, and social media. So, look for a help desk system that facilitates such omnichannel experiences.
Check out these perks of multichannel engagements in accelerating customer success.
A recent study by Adobe found that businesses with omnichannel service strategies reported a 10% jump in order value and a 25% increase in close rates.
- Integration support for convenient setup
When evaluating your helpdesk options, go for a solution that permits automatic integration with adjacent tools and some standard programs. Direct integration with platforms like GSuite (email), Zoom (video), Shopify (e-commerce), and Slack (for workflow management) can prove immensely useful for internal teams. “Check out these Zoom meeting tips and tricks to make your processes more efficient. Suppose a customer relationship manager wants to get an idea about the tasks of your service representatives. If the entire experience flow is unified into a single system, it will be easier to manage workflows. The manager can add tags, write tickets, edit documentation, etc. Fortunately, most modern helpdesk systems come with this functionality.
- Automation for quick responses
It’s best to opt for a CRM that derives the benefits of automation technologies for both the recruitment and customer side of things. It should endow your support team with things like saved replies, instant notifications, automatic ticket assignments, etc. These advanced features can come in handy during unforeseen events like a team member falling ill or human errors. Your customer reps may forget to respond to a customer request or ticket, but automation software will not!
Pro tip: Implement a helpdesk system to take care of routine tasks and let your support agents prioritize more complex customer problems.
- Effortless collaboration for remote work
Look for a helpdesk service that’s conducive to remote working arrangements. As organizations worldwide shift towards work-from-home and virtual offices, it’s all the more relevant to find solutions that allow cross-team collaboration. You can also use a remote time-tracking tool to increase productivity.
Modern helpdesks have structured interfaces that keep agents informed about ticket owners, previous interactions, and customer priorities. So, not only is your entire team on the same page, but your customers also receive more contextual responses.
If your company is new to this approach, start with a free trial version—test how it feels. And study its impact on your business productivity and customer success.
- Rich knowledge base for customer self-service
Another helpdesk best practice is to reward your customers with a self-service portal where they can resolve their problems on their own. Almost like a virtual desktop, this platform will have knowledge-based articles and other resources to handle common questions and requests. If the end-users fail to get the answers they were looking for, they can be directed to other digital service channels or human agents.
A reliable helpdesk system should help you create a content library and documentation that’s tailored to your target demographic’s needs. A comprehensive knowledge base can deflect your incoming tickets to a great extent.
- Analytics for data-driven decisions
Finally, make use of your helpdesk’s sophisticated data-gathering tools to know what’s happening in your everyday customer operations.
You can harness metrics like response time, call ratings, etc., to visualize trends and measure agent performance. Maximize your gains from deploying technology to your service desk!
With this, we’ve understood the advantages of using helpdesk software and also examined what it brings to the table.
We’ll conclude by saying that a helpdesk system offers an ideal way of keeping pace with business communication technologies. And it proves to be a win-win for both vendors and consumers!
