Track Issues with a Trouble Ticket
Thursday, April 30th, 2009Trouble tickets issued by Help Desk Ticketing Software are the method preferred by the majority of Help Desk Managers for knowing what problems are occurring, how often they occur, how quickly they are resolved, and who does the best job resolving issues. Trouble tickets improve the efficiency of the help desk staff by up to 40%. CRM ticketing software allows the help desk staff to track and manage issues from open to close, and to close them in record times.
Comprehensive trouble ticket tracking is intuitive, customizable, and scalable to continue to meet the needs of the customers of growing businesses. Flexibility gives a company the ability to use fewer resources to offer better service, thus gaining satisfied customers who become loyal customers.
Good helpdesk ticketing software includes automatic issue escalation. It also communicates important messages directly to help desk staff. Thus, staff can quickly respond to issue changes.
Trouble tickets must be logged so that they can be referenced if needed. Important data from trouble tickets can be viewed. Reports can be created and filed.
What is the biggest complaint of customers? Usually the most irate customers are those whose issues were not effectively resolved because they were “passed off” to another staff person who never received the information or who was too busy to deal with the customer.
How would trouble ticketing software solve this? There are several ways in which trouble ticketing would solve it. The trouble ticket would go to a queue that was shortest or to the queue of the person most qualified to resolve the issue. The manager would receive notification. The ticket would be escalated with e-mails to several service people if the issue was not resolved in a timely manner. The issue would not fall through the cracks or be lost. The customer experience would be greatly improved!
Trouble ticket software can be used in the field on a laptop or desktop computer as an installed application, or in the enterprise environment as a web-based IT solution. Most trouble ticket software has many points at which it can be customized. It easily interfaces with various aspects of Windows® based software.
By being able to see all the tasks that need to be done to accomplish a resolution, Help Desk personnel can quickly assess what still needs to be done, thus increasing help desk productivity and decreasing the amount of time it takes to resolve the issue completely.
Being able to resolve these trouble tickets in a short amount of time can make the difference between making a profit and losing money in your business. Get organized with the right king of management system and keep your organization on track.
Today’s demanding help desk needs to use trouble ticket tracking. Does your IT support team include trouble ticketing in their tools?
Web Based CRM Solutions Hold the Key
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009A customer’s experience with customer service and helpdesk contact centers shapes his view of the entire organization. Immediate communication through a web based CRM solution is the key to improve service levels and impact the company’s bottom line.
Communication among customer service agents and their managers must be immediate, targeted and real-time. For example, contact center managers can reduce wait times and help their call center handle higher call volumes when they know wait times and can see overloaded queues. When scheduling appointments, the system needs to be able to alert agents of cancellations – especially same day and same week – so that customers can be scheduled at the earliest time possible.
A web-based CRM solution allows all users to be up-to-the-minute on parts of the enterprise computer system that are slow or down and when the expected resolution time is. It equips agents to handle customer questions by accessing an extensive online knowledge base.
Real-time awareness requires a simple and direct line of communication across disparate branches of the contact center. A web-based CRM solution delivers this type of communication.
Restructuring, combining with other companies or rapid growth present new challenges to companies. Multiple technology systems often do not communicate well. Employees do not know who or what department now handles particular questions or functions. However, a web-based CRM solution can easily serve the employees as well as the customers.
Often a single helpdesk or call center services both employees and customers, but through a jumble of technology. The web-based CRM solution solves this jumble and makes quick, direct connections at the time they are needed.
Service levels and customer satisfaction are greatly increased by using a web based CRM solution. The potential for growth is greatly expanded. Internal communication is drastically improved. Customer service reps are seen as competent and helpful. And the company is perceived as trustworthy.
- Is your call center ready to take a leap forward?
- Is your CRM solution working for you?
- Are you ready for a web based CRM solution? Why or why not?
Is Your Customer’s Call Important to Your Company?
Monday, April 27th, 2009How many times have you been put on hold with the recorded message: “Your call is very important to us”? Last week I read about a book called Your Call Is (not that) Important to Us by Emily Yellin, a journalist who has frequently written for The New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek and other publications. She knows all about the frustrations of those of us who feel like we’ve been taken advantage of. The review was on Brent’s CRM Blog and was entitled appropriately Is Your Customer’s Call Really All THAT Important to You.
Did you realize that Americans make an estimated 43 billion customer service calls each year? That means each American makes two to three calls to a customer service call center every week! And how many times do you make a call only to get put on music and told repeatedly “your call is important to us”? According to Yellin 67 percent of Americans sometimes have to “make a fuss to get a problem resolved.”
Ms. Yellin decided to write the book while waiting on hold one day in her freezing cold house, only to argue on the phone for hours with customer service at a home warranty company before convincing someone to come fix her broken furnace. While the book is written with humor, Emily shares great insights from her conversations with Fedex CEO Fred Smith and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. She talks about the Customer Rage study. And she explains what surprised her as she visited call centers in Egypt and Argentina.
Good customer service, according to Smith of FedEx is “baked in from the start” which Yellin says is much better than “just sprinkling customer service on top after the whole thing is already cooked.” Smith elaborates by explaining that his company spends an “inordinate amount of time asking their customers what constitutes an outstanding experience and what meets their expectations.” He feels that problems usually come down to one of three things:
- The customer service person does not have the information to deal with the problem.
- The customer service person has the information but does not have the authority to do what needs to be done.
- The customer service person expresses no empathy for the customer’s situation.
It is an eye-opening account of how companies treat their customers, how customers treat the people who serve them, and how technology, globalization, class, race, gender, and culture influence these interactions. For example, Pablo who is a supervisor of a call center in Buenos Aires does not understand Americans calling to complain about a delivery that is a half-hour late. Delivery times and dates have no meaning whatsoever in Argentina.
The Wall Street Journal describes Ms. Yellin’s book as ‘an illuminating guide whose conclusions are sound: “The intangibles at the heart of each positive encounter remain constant on all sides: trust, respect, empathy, caring, and even some fun” Who would complain about that?’
The New Role of IT in Business
Saturday, April 25th, 2009In the past several years, IT-led teams have found numerous new ways to streamline business processes in order to improve operating efficiency and reduce costs. Now corporate leaders are expounding a new role for IT: enabling revenue generation for the business.
Through the use of the right performance metrics, IT capabilities can be structured to support both revenue generation and cost reduction. A flexible structure called Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) will be the basis.
What does this mean and how can it happen? There are five primary areas in which IT will become indispensable.
- Customer Relationships
- Technology will enhance the customer experience
- Technology will boost the number of dollars spent by customers
- Customer Knowledge
- Technology will enable the company to understand who their customers are
- Technology will track the needs and desires of the potential customers
- Product Development
- Technology will improve product development by decreasing time spent
- Technology will aid in the origination of new product or service ideas
- Product and Service Sales
- Technology will facilitate the launch of new products and services
- Technology will become part of the means of advertising and selling through new channels
- Partner Development
- Technology will help identify possible partnerships to enhance products or services or the delivery of products or services
- Technology will be the means of enabling those partnerships
Many companies are still structured with an IT team as totally separate from other teams such as the product development team or sales team. In the future, successful and growing companies will integrate IT staff within each business unit. And company executives will need to work closely with the IT team if revenue generation and cost cutting are to occur.
One of the biggest changes in the IT team in the future will be in the personnel. Many company executives feel it is important to have senior IT managers who have both business and IT experience. Further, they want the majority of their IT employees to have previous experience in business functions as well as IT. In turn, this could elevate the CIO to a Board position.
IT success will be measured most frequently by looking at its contribution to revenue growth. However, in today’s changing markets, another major test of IT’s success will have to do with its ability to help the company become agile in adapting to changing needs. And, as always, in order to realize profits, or greater profits, the company must measure its IT’s success through cost reduction.
What is a Help Desk?
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009Helpdesk is a broadly applied term referring to a staffed resource that can answer questions for customers about their products or about how to use resources or software applications. A help desk can be as simple as a person with a phone number who is prepared to answer questions and handle problems or can be as complex as two or three levels of groups of people to handle problems and track the status of problem solutions.
A helpdesk may serve one or more various functions. Companies often provide help desk services to their employees as well as their customers. In some cases, both customers and employees use the same help desk to obtain assistance, while in others separate helpdesk services are used. In addition to those set up by corporations, there are many other types of help desks. Smaller companies, private organizations, and educational facilities often provide various help desk services to their customers, employees, students, or members. Some help desks are even available to anyone in need of help.
A helpdesk typically manages its requests via helpdesk software, such as a trouble ticket, that allows the company to track user requests with a unique ticket number. Helpdesk software can is an extremely beneficial tool when used to find, analyze, and eliminate problems.
By 1996 research by Middleton recognized that the real value of helpdesk(s) derives not solely from their reactive response to users’ issues, but from the helpdesk’s unique position of communicating with numerous customers and/or employees. This gives the helpdesk the ability to monitor the user environment for issues from technical problems to user preferences and satisfaction. Such information gathered at the helpdesk can be valuable in planning and preparation to other units in the company.
Large helpdesks have different levels to handle different types of questions. The first-level helpdesk is prepared to answer the most commonly asked questions, or provide resolutions that often belong in a Frequently Asked Questions area or knowledge base. Typically, an ticket or incident tracking system is implemented that allows a logging process to take place at the onset of a call. If the issue isn’t resolved at the first-level, the incident ticket is escalated to a higher level that is equipped to handle more difficult calls. Some organizations even have a third level of support.
Large-scale helpdesks have a person or team responsible for managing the tickets which are commonly called queue managers or queue supervisors. Larger helpdesks have several teams that are experienced in working on different issues. The queue manager will assign a ticket to one of the specialized teams based on the type of issue. Some helpdesks may have phone systems with that ensure that calls about specific topics go to people with experience or knowledge on that topic.
Many companies have custom helpdesk software. Not all of the helpdesk staff and supporting IT staff need to be in the same location. With remote access applications, technicians are able to solve many helpdesk issues from a home office or another location. Remote software can be used to troubleshoot computer-related problems. This enables support personnel to access the user’s computer to analyze the problem and apply the correction. Using remote software, a help desk technician can assist an end user located in virtually any part of the world.
Though some helpdesks do involve a support person working at a physical desk, often services are provided via a call center or over the Internet.
Some common names for a help desk include: Computer Support Center, IT Response Center, Customer Support Center, IT Solutions Center, Resource Center, Information Center, and Technical Support Center.
Customer Relationships Across Multiple Channels of desk help software
Monday, April 20th, 2009It struck me recently how much more difficult it is to handle customer relations than it used to be. This is mainly because there are so many more ways that customers want to use to contact a business. Let me give you some examples. If I purchase a new gizmo and it quits working, then I go to the company’s web site and look for a “fix” or attempt to order the replacement for the defective part. If that does not work, then I look for the “contact us” page which I hope will give a way to e-mail a technician for help or talk to a technician on a live chat. However, I have a friend who immediately picks up the phone and calls the company’s 800 number, expecting to get instant help she understands. Another friend prefers to just pack up his gizmo and take it back to the store where he expects to have the store replace it with a brand-new one. These are just some of the different customer relations scenarios or customer service channels.
No matter what business you are in, you are expected to provide several channels by which your customers can contact you and find solutions to their problems and answers to their questions. That’s great until you start adding up the cost of maintaining all those channels. Then there is the training of people who work those various channels. And the management of the channels themselves. And that’s if you only have one product to support.
However, your ability to provide multiple channels of desk help software and deliver a consistent, positive customer experience across all the channels will set your company apart and give you the competitive edge. What you have to understand in the process is what the customers want and what each customer is capable of understanding and doing himself. Each customer interaction – face-to-face, online, online chat, phone, or e-mail – is an opportunity to add customer value, improve customer service, or, ultimately to sell more goods or services. Using a CRM customer call desk to this will give you great rewards in the future.
- Customers want convenience, consistency, and reliability.
- Customers want to interact with the company once and have the problem solved.
- Customers want the service technician to know the same information they already found on the web site or typed into the service request form.
- Customers expect to receive answers that make sense and work.
The key to better customer service becomes integration of the channels. All employees or contracted people who work to help your customer must have access to the same information and must have the same or similar training. They must all know the online sources of information and help. They must be able to access any previous communication the customer has had with the company. They must all have a step-by-step plan for solving problems that follows the same set of steps, so that a technician does not say to the customer, “oh, that guy didn’t know what he was talking about.” Both training and the company’s knowledge-base of frequently asked questions (FAQ) and their answers must be constantly evolving to be up-to-date and at each person’s fingertips.
When customers encounter freindly, knowledgeable people who have the ability to access the same information the customer can access, customers are more likely to trust their advice. Customers who use online or e-mail services have high expectations of those services that either end with the problem being solved or with actual contact with a person who can solve the problem quickly. When these are provided, customers recommend a company or service to their friends and are more likely to become repeat customers.
Choosing IT Help Desk Software – Least Expensive vs. Most Effective
Saturday, April 18th, 2009Choosing the correct IT Help Desk Software for your company is more than choosing the least expensive IT Help Desk Software. It is even more than balancing the value of the software with its cost. In fact, obtaining the right IT Help Desk Software is a function of aligning the business objectives with the IT investment and implementation. The idea is to implement software that assists the organization in obtaining optimum performance as measured by business outcomes.
Help Desk excellence for a company focused on customer relationships means that the IT Help Desk Software must be able to partner with each unit of the company in order to deliver value and help to customers. While the customer feels it is only the help desk personnel with whom they interact, there must be a means for Help Desk agents to interact with people in all areas of the company to truly solve the issues presented by the customers.
There are lots of good Help Desk software packages available. However, finding one that fits your company’s model and goals is more important than finding one that is inexpensive. The software must fit with the staffing. It must enable the staff to field and answer the customers’ issues in the most efficient yet complete method.
Because Help Desks serve a variety of functions from one company to another and even within large corporations, the Help Desk software must have capabilities that support the functions for which it will be used. In most cases the software will support a live help desk staffed by agents who give answers and advice in real time. A well-indexed knowledge base is a key to quick and efficient support of a live help desk. In many instances there will be an expectation that the customer or other personnel within the company will access the software to attempt to answer questions or solve problems on their own, so there must be an easily understood interface.
If the main function of the IT software for your Help Desk is to generate a help ticket for a technician, the categories and questions on the help ticket must be coordinated among technicians, IT support personnel, and customers. Simply asking standard questions of name, address, and problem encountered often does not give the technician enough information. In many instances, the wrong type of technician could be sent to the customer’s location or the technician would take the wrong parts or tools. Choosing the correct questions and the best software entails in-depth discussions with technicians and former customers to better understand what kinds of questions should be asked and what type of information is critical to a good outcome for the customer.
If the IT Help Desk Software cannot be customized for your company’s needs, it probably will only serve their needs for a short time and you will be looking for new software within five years as your products and your customers evolve. Inexpensive, out-of-the-box software will serve your needs initially, but cannot be changed in the little ways you will need every few months or the bigger ways you will need in a couple of years. Therefore, effective IT Help Desk Software is far more valuable that inexpensive IT Help Desk Software.
A Hosted Help Desk Means Live Help
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009From Marianne Cotter on http://www.business.com/directory/advertising_and_marketing/customer_service/live_chat/
Customer service is at its best when it happens in real time and is captured to your database. Hosted help desk customer service is a great customer retention tool that keeps service center costs low. It can be in the form of chat, instant messaging, or voice. A hosted help desk resolves customers’ issues with speed and satisfaction.
Live help solutions improve customer service for businesses of all sizes, whether you run a simple website or a large call center. An abundance of live help customer service software options are available — from simple add-ons to full-featured CRM and call center solutions — so small and large businesses can find an appropriate solution.
A full-featured call center solution integrates phones, email, chat, skill-based routing, monitoring and reporting, a knowledge base, and more. Enterprise-level online customer service software is designed to integrate with CRM and ERP solutions to become part of an enterprise’s complete technology profile.
Call center agents rely on reference material to respond to customer inquiries. Aggregating your product support information in a knowledge base that is integrated with live help customer service solutions allows your agents to respond quickly and knowledgably in live help situations, helping them open and close trouble tickets in a single encounter.
When choosing a hosted call center solution:
• Consider a hosted call center solution in which the live help customer service software resides on the vendor’s server.
• Choose live help solutions that support multiple channels of communication, including chat, voice and email.
• Choose online customer service solutions with reports and analytics to monitor and improve the effectiveness of your call center.
• All forms of online customer service should be supported with a knowledge base for effective response to customer inquiries.
• Live chat support software allows call center agents to handle multiple customers simultaneously.
Remember that live help solutions resolve your customers’ issues with real-time efficiency.
CRM is Not a Software Package
Monday, April 13th, 2009Since companies must have customers to survive, it is not a surprise that customers influence the way companies conduct business. Every company faces the challenge of how to effectively manage interactions to best serve customers and prospects while staying aligned with evolving business goals, including growth and profits. The customer-centric companies achieving the greatest success today use flexible customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to manage the customer-facing processes of their business and implement their customer-centric vision.
CRM is not a software purchase; CRM is a strategy. Business strategy and technology must work hand in hand to bring a customer-centric plan to fruition. Companies must develop CRM strategies that make customers (more than products, processes or profits) the focal point of their business. They need to build value through stronger customer relationships. CRM must take its direction from the company’s business goals and align those goals with the company’s customer-facing channels and processes. Developing a CRM strategy demands an understanding of the market, industry and customer.
CRM must fit the way you work today – and tomorrow. New software should fit the way you work and the way you want to work tomorrow. It should not force you to change the way you work to fit with the software. A rigid software causes resentment and frustration among employees, causing delays in implementation and full adoption. Changing the way you work in unplanned ways will change your effectiveness with your customers. The software should not take aware the uniqueness you have worked so hard to create. The right CRM software should enable your well-honed processes more adaptable rather than more rigid.
CRM must have pre-defined objectives and measurable methods by which to assess its ability to meet those objectives. To determine the impact of CRM on your organization, baselines for key business measures need to be established. Comparing actual results to established metrics will enable you to determine how effective your CRM strategy is.
CRM is not just about the software package, but is much more about the company that makes it. That company should become a partner with your company. They should offer various support services for the full length of time you use their products. They should be committed to helping you when it is necessary to upgrade, modify, or add to the initial CRM package. And they should be responsive to your company’s special needs and concerns. It will be advantageous to you to work with a company with experience in your industry.
CRM does not need to be risky if the appropriate background work is done. A flexible, adaptable CRM deployed with a well-thought-out strategy should be the foundation for CRM success today and in the future.
Choosing the Best Help Desk Software
Sunday, April 12th, 2009In many of the trade shows and international conferences that I have attended, I am often asked, “What in your opinion is the best IT Help Desk Software?”
My response is always, “The best for whom, or what?” I am also often asked, “What features do I look for in the perfect IT Help Desk Software?”
Again, my response is the same.
First you have to evaluate what you are trying to accomplish. An IT Help Desk for a Fortune 500 company with 10,000 employees and a large IT department is obviously entirely different than one for an IT Help Desk that serves 150 end user customers, and a help desk of 10 agents. Those same agents most likely are also looking after the needs of 25-50 employees within the same company.
Instead of looking for IT Help Desk Software that does “everything” you could ever imagine, evaluate your needs and utilize something that fits you more appropriately. Of course, you have to consider that you’ll want something that you can grow with, but like most CRM Software packages that have evolved over the years, you will probably only use 50-60% of whatever you acquire.
Great customer service is rarely rewarded, but bad customer service pays a huge price. A great IT Help Desk should be a part of the marketing department of any great company. After all, great customer service leads to future customers (and retains the current ones).
Consider the following:
You want a package that allows you to easily:
1. Customize to your company (and customer’s) needs
2. Look up customer’s information and see current and past tickets.
3. Communicate with fellow employees as well as clients.
Also ask the following type questions during the evaluation process:
1. Was the staff attentive and easy to reach during the evaluation process?
2. Has the company in question been producing software for several years?
3. How much automation is available to assist your Help Desk Agents?
4. Is there a knowledge base or history available to allow new users to shorten their learning curve?
A great IT Help Desk is like a CAT Scan. It is supposed to find and correct problems before they get worse.
It can also create good will within any organization to feed information to other team members so that they can head off problems before they arise, or allow the members to repair problems that have taken place.
Also make sure the system has a rules engine that can automatically initiate a Customer Satisfaction Analysis Survey.
Great IT Help Desk Software contains a way to carry out Customer Satisfaction Surveys. That result can then assess the client’s perception of how well your services meet their needs. It can measure the processes and methods to give management feedback on how well you are doing as a trusted IT vendor.
Last but not least, after you have created a feature and performance matrix of your needs, test the application in a real environment for at least 30 days to insure it meets your needs.