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Help Desks Get Customer-Centric

TMCnews Featured Article


March 25, 2015

Help Desks Get Customer-Centric

By Tara Seals, TMCnet Contributor


Help desks: who among us, in this digital age, has never had to use one? These software-specific IT-world customer service entities have come a long way from the days of clicking to send an email into what often felt like a black hole of “help me!” desperation. Now, a more user-friendly trend has taken over, and companies would do well to get into the flow.


A few guiding principles can help companies take their help desk strategies to a new, differentiating level. A multichannel, personalized approach should be the goal, just as it is for help desks’ ubiquitous cousins, call-centric contact centers. That means implementing a wide variety of self-service options, delivering information quickly, and enabling staff to access the information they need to serve the customer in stellar fashion.

Self-service is a big piece of the puzzle, and an important one, considering that customers could have problems at any time of the day or night. Offering constant availability via FAQs, forums and easy-to-use ticket submission paths (email, text and even social media) are all vital to customers’ happiness.

“They have issues arise 24/7, late at night, during a night out, or while hanging out at the park with the kids,” explained TeamSupport Software, which specializes in help desk platforms. “The longer they have to wait to interact with you the longer the problem percolates.”

And speaking of waiting, help desks were once notorious for providing nothing but maybe an automated acknowledgment of receipt for hours, days, even weeks on end. To avoid infuriating customers with what comes off as a lackadaisical response, a mechanism in place that allows them to follow what’s happening with their request can be bedrock. The concept is a bit like the Domino’s Pizza app, which lets customers follow their order from submission to delivery, with several steps along the way. You are even told the name of the person preparing your pizza. Even for the very hungry, it makes the 30-minute wait more bearable.

“[If you can follow] the action as the ticket gets checked and answered, you feel like you’re at least being taken seriously,” said TeamSupport. “Time goes by way faster if you’re ‘in the know.’”

Meanwhile, the people that work the help desk are the first line in front of the customer and are crucial to ensuring user loyalty and satisfaction. But to do their jobs effectively, they need the right tools to collaborate with each other, and call up customer and product information easily, when they need it.

For collaboration, TeamSupport recommends a chat function or social networking system that allows techs to swap knowledge in the event that a rare or bizarre scenario crops up. Also, the ability to submit screenshots or screen recordings can be important to information-sharing.

Even when customer tickets are more pedestrian, techs that have access to good search tools deliver better outcomes. A powerful search engine can index customer records, the knowledge base and even support forums, wikis and chatrooms.

“Nothing is worse for a dedicated customer service agent than knowing they have vital information for a customer but they just are unable to locate it,” TeamSupport noted.

Similarly, access too on-the-fly product knowledge is a best practice. “Rather than having [agents] spend all day memorizing the entire catalog, why not just have instant access to all the products available through your help desk ticketing system?” it noted. “This way a team member can view the particulars of a product and walk the customer through what needs to be done to fix the issue.”

Help desk support users are rarely happy—after all, they’re dealing with a technical issue that they can’t fix themselves. With the right service functionalities in place, companies can make the process a little less painful, and boost customer loyalty while they’re at it.










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