Customer Support Software Featured Articles

When it comes to customer service, there are plenty of different approaches and formats for making sure that customers get their questions answered and their issues taken care of. In the IT world, the help desk is a tried and true organizational entity, generally intended to be, well, helpful, for those with technical difficulties.

But help desks also tend to get a bad rap. That’s because customer queries come in almost exclusively via inbound phone call; and users are typically frustrated because they’re staring at a blue screen of death, or can’t connect their routers to the Internet, or can’t figure out a function in the new convoluted software their company just bought, or are dealing with any manner of computer issue that, no doubt, popped up at just the most inopportune moment imaginable. There’s a reason their issues are referred to as “trouble tickets.”

So, companies often see help desks as being a separate manner of bird from the more touchy-feely “contact center.” As such, help desks are often outsourced, or run on outdated and antiquated software approaches that involve dispatchers and queues and little visibility into customer histories or context.

But, this bird doesn’t have to be as drab as all that. In fact, help desk software can be every bit as vibrant as its omni-channel cousins in other industries.

Rehabbing the plumage starts with understanding what, exactly, help desk software can be—a topic helpfully framed by Capterra in this short video posted by TeamSupport.

The main takeaway is this: Help desk software isn’t just a necessary evil. Software can have a big impact on ticket resolution time, agent productivity and agent job satisfaction—and customer retention, of course.

“To get the most value out of your valuable agents, you've got to avoid frustrating or wasting their time. This is where help desk software comes in,” Capterra noted. Happy agents, happy customers.

Consider that 67 percent of the buyers in a recent Capterra survey said that they’re unsatisfied with their current software cited a lack of features as the primary reason, above price and support. The right help desk software can offer crucial perks—like the ability to automatically assign trouble tickets to agents, or seamless transfer between them.

Companies should also make sure to use their software to the fullest. For instance, a full 68 percent of buyers have customer service software with live chat functionality. But only 40 percent use it.

Bottom line? “Customer service isn't a cost, it's a valuable source of revenue for smart companies,” Capterra noted. “According to Harvard Business School, a 5 percent higher retention rate translates to 25 percent-95 percent in additional profits. And, acquiring a new customer can cost seven times more than keeping an existing one.”