Dagwood’s Help Desk Experience
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010Did you see the Blondie cartoon yesterday? If not, here is a brief synopsis:
Dagwood is shown at his desk with his computer blowing smoke and sporting a huge “ALERT” on the screen. Dagwood is on the phone saying, “Tech Support, I’m gonna stay calm, cool, and collected. This computer is driving me nuts!!
In the second frame, Dagwood is being told by a help desk agent, “Sorry, this is the help line for irate customers who are screaming their lungs out! Our cool, calm, and collected line is 1-888- . . . .”
In the last frame Dagwood is standing up and screaming, “ARE YOU KIDDING?!! The help desk agent is answering, “Attaboy! Much better! Now . . . what seems to be the problem?”
How many of us have felt that way? How many companies have customers who feel like that is how they get treated?
What is the solution to frustrated customers? How can we help our customers?
Try this 3-step process:
1. Purchase help desk software
2. Train help desk agents
3. Be proactive
Help Desk Software: Your Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow?
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010Looking for a Pot of Gold Help Desk Software?
Help Desk Software can be a pot of gold
Does your Help Desk Software answer your needs or are you hoping St. Patrick’s Day will help you find a pot of gold? Help Desk Software can deliver like a pot of gold.
Follow the Rainbow to Your Pot of Gold Help Desk Software
The colors of the rainbow are “ROYGBIV” — Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. Let’s use ROYGBIV to understand how the correct Help Desk Software used with your company’s strategy can increase your business and deliver you a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
R – Relate to each individual customer or prospect through your Help Desk Software
O – Orchestrate a long-term relationship through a strategy of e-mails, phone calls, and up-to-date information
Y – You need to think of your customer as a person and visualize that person and his reactions and needs
G – Give your customers (and prospects) timely information they can use
B – Build a customer-centric strategy that answers your customers’ needs
I – Invest in the best software to accomplish your strategy
V – View your company through your customers’ eyes to see where to improve
Help Desk CRM Software
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010Help desk CRM software provides internal service and support solutions that automate the help desk and service desk function. Typical help desk CRM software functionality includes call management, call tracking, knowledge management, problem resolution, remote control, and self-help capabilities.
CRM and call center software specialize in solutions that help automate the call center and customer management process including customer identification, communications, segmentation, analysis, sales and marketing. Some vendors in this category offer complementary solutions in the form of sales force automation (SFA), help desk software, and related front/back office solutions.
Knowledge management enables companies to more effectively manage structured data, unstructured information, collaboration, and document management. While a majority of these vendors focus specifically on knowledge sharing, search and categorization tools, some offer complementary products in the form of help desk automation, customer relationship management (CRM), call center management, and related front/back office solutions.
Help Desk Ticketing System – How it Improved the Relationships with My Clients
Thursday, December 24th, 2009Help Desk Ticketing System – How it Improved the Relationships with My Clients
Customers log directly into the help desk ticketing system, answer a few quick questions, and give any other pertinent information. This generates a trouble ticket and initiates the assignment. The job is assigned to an service agent and shows up on his personalized DashBoard® (on his computer) or BlackBerry® email system within minutes of the customer’s asking for help. As soon as he completes the work for the customer, he can print off a ticket and request the client to sign off or he can collect the service fee on the spot.
From there, he reports the job complete and proceeds to the next job assignment as seen on his computer screen or Blackberry. Meanwhile, the dispatcher can keep track of where each engineer has been and is presently and when each job is completed.
A system that is modular can easily be used alone or in tandem with other modules. Service agents can easily check the status of a current customer in Cynergy Ticket before they go to the customer site for upgrade calls. Not only have Cynergy Help Desk and Cynergy Sales Manager saved companies money, they have changed the way those companies do business, improved their customer relations, streamlined their sales processes, and improved communications throughout the companies. Take a tour today!
What Does Your Help Desk Need?
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009What Does Your Help Desk Need?
It is obvious that a Help Desk needs to help customers. But what are some of the ways in which a Help Desk should be helping customers? And are there ways in which a Help Desk can actually help your company?
Let’s look at five ways a Help Desk should help customers:
1. A Help Desk should speed and coordinate responses to customer concerns.
2. A Help Desk should build the satisfaction and loyalty of all customers.
3. A Help Desk should be able to save the customers who are at risk of discontinuing to use your products or services.
4. A Help Desk should disseminate information across departments and collect responses from various departments to speed effective answers to customers and inform the correct departments of potential problems.
5. A Help Desk should use software that can aid in the above functions without adding a great deal of cost to the company.
Since the Help Desk will be saving customers and answering their concerns, that Help Desk will be adding the future value of those customers’ loyalty and continued use of the company’s products or services. This increases the overall customer lifetime value.
The Help Desk will also be gathering information for future use on customer likes and dislikes and on what does or does not work well about the products or services. This translates to significantly increased profitability through new or improved products or services or different marketing of those products or services.
Through that process and the record-keeping that accompanies it, the company can make improvements to its products and services and cash in on the value of long-term satisfied customers. The Help Desk, therefore, adds long-term profitability to the company.
3 Help Desk Solutions
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009There are any number of ways to Organize and run a help desk. This blog post is for the existing helpdesk organization and is meant to give them 3 ideas to improve the environment of the service desk organization.
3 Ways to Improve Your Help Desk
1. Are you surveying your customers at the end of each month? Or just when business hits a low?
How happy are your customers really? The only way to really find out is the call them. If you have a thousand customers, sending out written or electronic surveys may possibly send up a few flares, but most customers don’t have time to sit and fill out a survey, and if they do, they don’t really give you enough details to allow you to improve your organization. The only way that you are going to do that is to work at it each month. Set aside 4 hours every other week to sit down and call your largest clients. Just check in with them to see how things are going. Look at the sales trends within your organization, if you have a customer that shows promise in the upward curve, make it a point to check in with them to see how you can improve their business. Pay little attention to the bottom 50% of your customer sales report unless you can pick out one that is climbing the chart. In most cases, the top 20-30% make up 80% of the sales anyway. And I’m not saying to ignore the bottom 50% with mediocre customer service, I am simply saying that the top of the pyramid will give you better answers to improve your business. Make the information and notes that you take away from these calls public for your staff. I suggest that top management perform this tasks, and before you know it, it will have a trickle down effect to the rank and file. And people will notice.
2. Are you surveying your Company? Or just listening to the squeaky wheels?
Your staff is a good barameter on your customer’s as well. Have short but informative meetings with them as a group to discuss the last month’s customer service tickets and how the issue was resolved. Also pay attention to how quickly the issue was resolved. You don’t have to reward your people for giving good service. Recognition is generally the best reward.
3. Are you surveying your employees?
Surveying your employees is necessary if you are going to continue to deliver first class customer service. Are your people happy in their jobs? Do they have the tools necessary to be able to do their jobs correctly. Are there particular customers that are making their jobs more difficult, and could these clients be shifted to other reps for efficiency? Nothing can tarnish your customer support faster than a bad apple. We strongly suggest that our clients record every phone call that takes place on the system. By monitoring these calls on a frequent basis, you can determine the level of service that your customers are getting. Just by having the recordings take place let’s your staff know that you are going to be checking in with them on a regular basis.
Health Care We Can All Use
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009Are you as tired as I am of hearing about Obama-Care and Pelosi-Care and all the issues with the Health Care Bill? Of course, you are! But you are also worried about what will pass and what it will mean to you (and your parents and your children) in terms of taxes and items the government will cover.
But there is another area of health care you need to be concerned about – the care of the health of your customers and prospects! What are their needs and how are you responding? Whether you sell a product or a service, you must be concerned about your customers’ concerns.
Assume that same-old, same-old is not working effectively and look for more effective and efficient sales strategies. Try white papers and case studies to give away, use Twitter and Facebook, or try Pay-Per-Click on the internet.
Put yourself in the shoes of your customer or prospect. You need to ask some of them what keeps them awake at night. Find out their needs. Learn what is affecting their health and the health of their businesses. Think about how their problems can be solved by your company.
Speak to the needs of your customers and prospects. Don’t worry about flashing lists of features and benefits. Instead, tell them the value of your product or service. Explain how it solves the problem that is keeping them awake at night!
If your customers are not staying up at night worrying, their health will be better. If they are able to improve their businesses, the health of the businesses will be better. Therefore, you have the power to improve health care!
Help Desk Ticketing System Eliminates Wasted Time
Friday, October 23rd, 2009
As recently as 2002 Eastman Technologies was using a white board and a daily meeting to give assignments to their engineers and track their schedules and completed jobs.
By the time the engineers fought the morning rush hour traffic of Los Angeles, arrived at the office, obtained their customary doughnuts and coffee, greeted one another, and then got down to business, it would be 8:30 or 9:00 am. Then they had to attend a meeting for discussion and assignments of who was going where and when. Another hour was gone before they even got back on the road, headed for the customers’ sites.
“Watching all those overhead dollars go out the window was driving me crazy,” recalls Carol Spowart, President.
Eastman Technologies transformed the way the onsite engineers operate. Eastman Technologies customers log directly into the help desk ticketing system, answer a few quick questions, and give any other pertinent information. This generates a trouble ticket and initiates the assignment.
The job is assigned to an engineer and shows up on his personalized DashBoard® (on his computer) or BlackBerry® email system within minutes of the customer’s asking for help. The next morning (or even later that day) he drives straight to the customer’s jobsite. As soon as he completes the work for the customer, he can print off a ticket and request the client to sign off or he can collect the service fee on the spot.
From there, he reports the job complete and proceeds to the next job assignment. Meanwhile, the dispatcher can keep track of where each engineer has been and is presently and when each job is completed. All scheduling is done in advance. Carol reports that “having Cynergy Help Desk has saved the cost of an extra engineer. The cost of that labor, vehicle, maintenance, and overhead represents at least $100,000 per year.”
Read more about Cynergy Help Desk
Single Help Desk Agent or Multiple Help Desk Agents?
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009I have a question for help desk supervisors: Is it better for a single person to handle an issue from beginning to full resolution or is it better to hand the client around to service agents that are best qualified to deal with the issue?
Here’s a little background as to why I am asking. I was recently in a meeting where one of the attendees was raving about how wonderful a particular company was. When asked why he thought the company was so great, his reply was, “No matter what I call to ask or I need help with, the person who picks up my phone call (in two rings or less – Always) is able to solve my issue and stays with me until it is solved.” This person works a one-man answer station for a small company, so he added, “That takes a tremendous amount of cross-training.”
Another person in the meeting piped up with, “I worked for a company that sold that kind of help desk agent as a ‘premium service’ and charge almost double what we charged for the normal help desk agent. For our company, each help desk agent had an area of expertise and when someone called with an issue, they were transferred to the agent that specialized in that situation — unless the company upgraded to the premium service which entailed much more training for each agent.”
So, what do you think? What does your company do? What would you like to do in an ideal setting?
Help Desk Transformation Part 3: Proactive Aftersales Service
Friday, September 18th, 2009For anyone selling industrial machinery, expensive or high-end consumer electronics, transportation equipment, or utilites, the most important question to answer is that uptime will be maximized and field service is quick and efficient. For that reason, companies in these industries often have extensive and expensive field service operations which ensure a high level of customer satisfaction.
Your help desk may be part of the hub, or integrated service network, that the embedded software reports to. By reporting to the hub, it can trigger a trouble ticket as needed and start the process of getting a service rep to the piece of equipment in record time.
What is Proactive Aftersales Service?
In proactive aftersales service the products of the aforementioned industries contain software, much of it being embedded in the product. The embedded software communicates with the integrated service network, or hub, of the manufacturer. This communication is often switched “on” all of the time the piece of equipment is running or it is “on” when the piece of equipment is “off.” Diagnostics can be run, updates can be downloaded and installed, and the amount of time the equipment is in use can be tracked. The hub can learn diagnostic results, anticipate and prevent incidents, log incidents and upload a repair or send a technician, and track data for billing.
What is the driving force behind Proactive Aftersales Service?
One of the biggest forces driving proactive aftersales service is the reduction of downtime. Secondly, the reduction of repair and updating costs – both in downtime and in cost of a service team. Improved compliance becomes another factor. And the great improvement in customer satisfaction is a major reason for using proactive aftersales service.
What are the advantages of Proactive Aftersales Service?
The advantages of proactive aftersales service are improved customer satisfaction, decreased machinery downtime, improved product functionality, reduced costs of repairs and updates, and great feedback to manufacturing companies to improve product reliability and development.