Improve Your Business in 2010 through Web-based Helpdesk Software

Improve Your Business in 2010 through Web-based Helpdesk Software

Helpdesk Software will improve your business in 2010. The recession is over – or so they tell us. However, most of our companies are not yet in recovery mode. Therefore, the question is: How do we improve business in 2010? How can Helpdesk Software improve business in 2010?

To better understand how helpdesk software will help your company improve its performance in 2010, take stock of the various customer touchpoints. Does your company use each of these? How does each relate to the others? Which type of customers most often use which touchpoint? What do they do if that does not solve their problem or answer their question? Touchpoints include:

- Web Self-service
- Interactive voice response
- Contact center agents
- Face-to-face

Your helpdesk software must allow your clients to help themselves using the internet. Some companies call this web-based help desk software or Software as a Service (SaaS) . The software must do two things at this touchpoint: it must have a database of questions and answers that the client can access and it must generate a help ticket that alerts a contact center agent.

Often the database of questions and answers will be sufficient to answer the client’s questions and solve the problem. When it does not provide the solution, the customer must have a method for generating a help or trouble ticket that provides a live person enough information to provide help to the customer through e-mail or a telephone call. This ticket should also be trackable throughout the system. For example, if the customer calls the agent back two weeks later, both of them should be able to see that ticket and what the agent did to resolve the problem. The agent’s boss or other colleagues should be able to access the ticket to continue the process of resolving the problem. And managers should also be allowed to see the time taken, number of people involved, and other history to the ticket. Each of the agents and managers should also be able to see the same database of questions and answers that the client sees so that they understand what he is talking about and can correct any misunderstandings.

Interactive voice response, chat, contact center agents, and face-to-face techs all employ real people to solve clients’ problems. Many clients prefer to “talk” to a real person. However, this is a more expensive option for the company. There are many ways in which to slash the amount of time these people are involved in each case. One of the simplest, yet most effective, is to incorporate the ticketing process into the company’s e-mail program to keep everyone in the loop. Tickets can be initiated from the customer or from a company employee. This increases customer satisfaction and professionalism, decreases time for each task, and increases the accountability of each company employee as well as increasing overall company profitability.

Tags: Helpdesk Software, improve business, web-based helpdesk software