Posts Tagged ‘help desk software’
Cynergy’s Help Desk Software Helps You Do More With Less
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010Every company needs to deliver a superior customer experience and reduce operational costs. Cynergy’s integrated, multi-channel Help Desk Software is your best option to exceptional customer experiences at reduced operational costs. In fact, Cynergy’s customer experience products lower your costs, increase your agent’s productivity, and provide a better customer experience in a number of ways. Typically, these benefits begin through the deployment of an effective self-service and email management strategy.
Your company may see phone calls and inbound emails reduced by 30 to 40 percent. Just think of the impact on your call center. Also by reducing the volume of inquiries that is flooding your call center, you can focus your support agents on the customers that really need the help. Reduced costs and better service, it’s a win-win for you and your customers.
A large number of customers is able to immediately get the answers they need 24 hours a day. Because of these successful self-service experiences, customers keep returning to the website when they have questions. So, the percentage of customer issues resolved through immediate online self-service continues to grow over time. This growing volume of self-service resolutions saves your company more and more money every month. Every time a customer uses web self-service instead of calling or emailing the contact center, your company could save between five and fifteen dollars.
To provide a great customer experience, and do it with less cost, you have to get information to your customers in ways that are convenient for them, and cost effective for you. Cynergy Help Desk Software’s tools let your customers help themselves while empowering your front-line staff. Our customer relationship management system includes web self-service, email management, live chat, ivr, and other call center applications, so your agents and customers can more easily work together to solve problems. You’ll have greater insight into customer interactions, your customers will be better served, and you’ll save money.
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 Software Saves the Day!
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
About a month ago I got a call from a client overseas. They were having issues keeping track of a flood of calls that they were getting from remote users. They had been tracking the clients in the past using emails and an Excel spreadsheet. Thus every time they would receive a call or email, they would copy and paste the email from Outlook over to Excel, or write the info from the call into the Excel spreadsheet that they had been using for several years. Problem was, they had to update the spreadsheet on a regular basis, and invariably they would miss tickets by not pasting the correct cells, or some of the help desk ticket calls would disappear when they pasted from one place to the other. After a short overview of Cynergy’s ticketing system, the prospect was able to see how easy it was to log a ticket in Cynergy, and keep track of it on the user dashboard.
Help Desk Software to the Rescue!
And, the client was able to see where tickets could be ordered in any way they wanted as well as escalated from one service level to the other. In addition, the client was able to see their customer’s information on the same screen without changing to their spreadsheet or CRM system. Thus callbacks were much easier and more orderly.
Then yesterday, the same customer called us for some additional training on our project management system. They had been using another Excel spreadsheet for keeping track of projects and their Outlook for scheduling those projects. After a short training session, the client was ecstatic about some of the features they learned about, as well as a much deeper understanding of how the project manager could actually save them valuable time without having to call each other on collaborative issues.
Thus, another satisfied customer! But more importantly, we saved them time, and made their job easier. Now that’s what I call a Win/Win situation!
Help Desk Software
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
There are 5 distinct ways that Help Desk Software can improve your business in 2010
1. Help Desk Software will give you a way to keep track of tickets that you have posted for a client or customer. These tickets can be escalated automatically so nothing falls through the cracks. They can also be monitored so that anytime a change takes place, the ticket owner can be notified of the change.
2. Help Desk Software can also contain a calendar that allows the user to schedule installs, moves, adds, changes, just about any event that takes place can be scheduled and tracked. These scheduled events can also be alarm coded to notify people prior to the event so they don’t lose the date or schedule of the event. This also allows management to view all of the users and their status on any given day.
3. Trouble Ticket Software systems generally contain a KnowledgeBase module that can help the agent solve issues. The knowledge center or knowledge library can also give the agent a resource for getting to resolutions in a short amount of time. Some of these modules will even allow end users to submit tickets to their portal, or use email to submit trouble tickets in an efficient manner.
4. No Help Desk Software would be complete without a robust CRM (customer relationship management) or Contact Management system. Generally this system will give you multiple addresses for contacts, companies, jobsites or divisions, as well as places for additional phone numbers, notes, and user defined fields to further describe the contact or client company.
5. Imagine being able to see a listing of ALL of the customer service issues within your organization that are outstanding, along with the status, user assignment, and estimated time of resolution. These helpful dashboards are a great way to allow owners and managers to be able to keep track of their help desk tickets, and improve their business.
Help Desk Software does not have to be expensive. There are many affordable systems available today. Just make sure that you choose one that is easy for your agents to learn and use, and one that you can grow into. Because as you improve your customer service, you are going to improve your business.
Help Desk Software: 3 Humorous Things to Think About
Monday, December 21st, 2009Help Desk Software: 3 Humorous Things to Think About
If you are a Help Desk Agent, you have spent many hours waiting on the next phone call or e-mail and many more hours chasing down answers to customers’ concerns. What do you do during those idle hours? Have you got any really good or really funny thoughts or activities in which you engage?
Let’s take a look at three things help desk agents think about during their idle hours:
1. What does the customer look like? It is true the “customer” is probably a company in many cases, but the person who calls or e-mails is a real live person. What does that person look like? What is his role in the company? One great way to answer those questions is to start imagining Dilbert comic strip characters like dorky Dilbert, air-head Alice, awful Asok, elevated Ellen, or the diligent Dog. Check them out.
2. How am I supposed to get everything done that is expected of me? This one is a little like the recent For Better or For Worse comic strip. The kids and mom are Christmas shopping and see a Santa at the mall, one ringing a bell for the Salvation Army on the street corner, etc. One child looks at Mom and asks, “Mom, how come there are so many Santas?” Mom says, “maybe they’re all Santa Claus?” and the boy wonders, “Is that possible?” to which the Mom replies, “The job of being a Santa is pretty special . . . it’s just like the job of being a Mom. Everyone expects you to do everything and be everywhere at the same time!”
3. How could they break our product like that?! What did they do to it? Perhaps the thoughts turn to The Nutcracker and the broken nutcracker! Must have a been a jealousy thing. From there the imaginations run wild! Check out the story.
Give us some ideas about humorous things you or your help desk agents think about.
Fast, Effective Help Desk Responses Build Loyalty and Revenue
Friday, December 18th, 2009Fast, Effective Help Desk Responses Build Loyalty and Revenue
Responding quickly and effectively to customers’ concerns builds loyalty to your brand. It is well documented that customers who experience problems with a company’s products or services to which the company responds promptly and effectively are even more satisfied with and loyal to the company than are customers who never experience a problem.
- Fast, effective responses show that your organization views its customers’ concerns as high priorities.
- Fast, effective responses eliminate (or greatly reduce) the time your customers spend worrying about or wondering whether their concerns will be addressed.
- Fast, effective responses eliminate or reduce the need for your customers to investigate alternative solutions or workarounds to address their concerns.
One of the most productive and highest-payoff applications of corporate resources is responding to feedback from profitable customers and addressing their concerns quickly. The moment a customer expresses dissatisfaction is the very moment at which an organization, through its response, can most influence customer retention, recurring revenues, and customer lifetime value. A satisfied customer will become loyal and will tell others; a dissatisfied customer will broadcast far and wide his dissatisfaction, driving business away.
Your help desk or customer management software is your first line of defense when a customer expresses a concern or his dissatisfaction. That software must immediately open a ticket (sometimes called a case) and notify the correct team or person to deal with the issue. It must also make it easy for that person or team to include other team members from across the organization without re-explaining the issue or what has previously been done. Therefore, real-time alerts and real-time collaboration are key elements to fast, effective responses.
Having a KnowedgeBased Software can certainly take a load off your customer support agents and make their job easier. It will also give answers to your customers which can certainly increase their confidence in your willingness to deliver world class support customer service.
Your software must have escalation rules set up and must generate a deadline for resolution in order to keep the process moving quickly and smoothly to completion in a timely manner. It must provide quick and easy access to a well-structured knowledge base. By tracking who has done what (and when), your software will eliminate duplication of effort and streamline responses to the customer.
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
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.
Help Desk Transformation Part 2: Integrated Service Networks
Thursday, September 17th, 2009Integrated Service Networks will become one of the service platforms that will be essential to companies of the Twenty-First Century. By integrating your service network now, you will be able to generate new growth in the coming months and years.
An integrated service network does not eliminate a help desk; it works hand-in-hand with the help desk. It also reduces the amount of time that help desk agents must spend solving repetitive issues or assigning trouble tickets for routine maintenance.
What are Integrated Service Networks?
With Integrated Service Networks, service hubs send software updates to the product itself. This facilitates remote management and the use of automatic triggers to schedule service based on equipment breakdown forecasts. Obviously, this type of technology works best when specific software is embedded in the product before it is sold (preferably during its manufacture). This reduces the cost of field service through the reduction of field service reps and the reduction of down time. It also eliminates a great deal of boredom from help desk issue resolution.
What is the driving force behind creating Virtual Service Networks?
Cost reduction, the need for little to no downtime, and the enhancement of customer satisfaction are the driving forces behind virtual service networks. Industries in which products are highly complex or technical stand to benefit. Automotive, high tech, and medical equipment industries have been quick to start adapting to integrated service networks.
What are the advantages of Virtual Service Networks?
Customers are highly satisfied because they don’t have to have downtime with breakdowns and repairs and updates. Customers are even happier with not having to pay for service calls. The design and manufacturing companies are happy because they get feedback which helps them improve the product and develop new products.
Help Desk Transformation: The Integrated Virtual Call Center
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009During a down economy is an excellent time to look at transforming your help desk (or service desk, or call desk) to a more efficient model. Trade in your clunker call center for a sleek new model! In the next few blog entries, you will learn some ways to do just that. By transforming your help desk, you will transform customer service which will position you to greatly increase your business.
What is an Integrated Virtual Call Center?
An integrated virtual call center consists of call center reps, home-based agents, field service engineers, and many others who may or may not sit within a given geographic location. These people are connected to one another, as needed, via cell phones and the Internet. They may be contacted directly by customers. They may also receive notification of incidents via cell phones or the Internet.
What is the driving force behind creation of a Virtual Call Center?
Virtual Call Centers are being created because there is a shortage of qualified people in a geographic location. They are also created due to the need to consolidate and integrate management and processes and cut costs. Leveraging costs from one area to another is a factor. They are also being driven by the desire of customers to have companies develop Internet-based communities. And they are being driven by social media and customers talking about service or lack thereof in the social media.
What are the advantages of a Virtual Call Center?
Companies are able to overcome talent constraints and improve employee retention by allowing people to live and work where they want and by tapping into talent that is not all located in the same geographic locale. Companies can receive information through chat, traditional and mobile phones, social media, and e-mail. Companies are able to leverage the information they receive via a number of channels. Companies can respond in a personalized fashion to customers. Enhanced service can be delivered more cost-effectively.