Posts Tagged ‘Help Desk’
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
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.
Selecting CRM Help Desk Software
Thursday, March 4th, 2010CRM Help Desk Software: What You Need to Consider
CRM Help Desk Software is not a priority for someone starting a business. Their customer relationships are built one at a time through personal contact. However, once the company grows to the point of adding employees, the customer-company dynamic begins to change. The challenges faced by small businesses become more similar to those of larger organizations – to get a unified view of customers throughout the company and to keep in contact with those customers.
All companies want to provide a consistent customer relationship management service, which also yields profits for the organization. As businesses grow, informal customer communication cannot be sustained, so some other method must be instituted. That is when CRM Help Desk software becomes a possible solution.
When considering what CRM Help Desk software to purchase, it often does not matter how large the company is. The concerns are basically similar. Three C’s must be considered: Customization, Communication Strategy, and Cost.
Customization
Most CRM Help Desk solutions for small business often do not fulfill the expectations the firm has of the software. If the CRM system cannot closely integrate with the other existing systems or does not store information within the customer database in a centralized manner, it can deprive the small business of leveraging the complete potential of the CRM software. If the CRM database cannot be customized or configured as per the organization’s requirements, it can result in the CRM system being completely inflexible.
Communication Strategy
Small businesses should consider only those CRM help desk systems which can be incorporated easily into the existing IT infrastructure. Ideally, CRM solutions should be considered as a strategy as opposed to just technology. These need to be implemented directly to curtail costs as well as errors pertaining to sales, thereby raising revenues. Since most customer information is already available within current systems in the organization, creating a new application, which contains entirely new information, is a redundant process and in the case of small businesses with limited resources, this can be a painstaking process.
Cost
Before any purchase of CRM software solutions are made, the small business should ask if the software will truly communicate with customers and be easy to use by the employees. You also need to know the overall costs for integration of the CRM Help Desk system.
Since most small businesses have limited resources, they cannot spare their employees on a full-time basis to carry out CRM Help Desk Software implementation. Ideally such companies should consider a web-based application. This eliminates installation and licensing costs and nearly eliminates all labor costs for installation and maintenance. Yet, it gives them regular updates and upgrades and access to expert advice and help as needed. This ensures the success of the relationship management system implementation.
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.
Black Friday: Put Your Business in the Black Now
Friday, November 27th, 2009Why is today called Black Friday? That’s simple. Retailers sell so much stuff the day after Thanksgiving that their businesses start running in the black instead of the red!
What about your business? Is it running in the black or in the red? What are you doing to put it into the black? Will it be operating in the black by the end of the year?
What will help your business operate in the black?
- Improved lead generation
- Better lead follow-up
- Improved customer care
- Efficient help desk
- Cost effective customer service
Customers are the heart of every business. It is imperative that you find, follow up and care for your customers.
Encourage your present customers to recommend your company. Ask for referrals you can follow up! Then follow up with helpful information and ask if you can call or e-mail again.
Ask present and prospective customers about their needs. Even if your company cannot fulfill their needs, find a company that can . . . and ask them to remember your company to their colleagues (and ask for a referral you can follow up).
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.