Help Desk Software Customer Support Software

Archive for Help Desk – Page 2

Help Desks: Customer Expectations of Your Help Desk

Is it possible to have an efficient help desk and still meet customer expectations? Have you ever made a help desk call and gotten: “please press 1 for customer service. Please
press 3 to enter your language. Please wait. We appreciate your call. All our lines are busy. We’ll be with you shortly.”

Help Desk Focus: Customers

If a company is solely focused on cutting costs, it will more than likely outsource or offshore its help desk functions. What does that do for the customer? It alienates the customer because the customer cannot understand the help desk agent and does not get the help he/she needs. A once-loyal customer becomes an ex-customer.

Do you know what customers expect? What do you expect when you need a help desk?

  • Convenience
  • Reliability
  • Speedy response time
  • Full resolution of the issue
  • Courtesy

Help Desk Features: Convenience and Reliability

Put yourself in the place of your customers. Think about how convenient it is for them to get the help they need. The buzz word today is ‘channels’ but the truth of the matter is that the more ways (channels) a customer can find help, the more likely he is to get his problem resolved or his questions answered in a reasonable amount of time. Today people don’t always expect to talk with someone, especially if they have a question or problem after business hours. However, they do expect your company to have a presence on the internet and to have customer service available through a database or list of most frequently asked questions (FAQ), a forum, or a live chat service – or a combination. And being able to submit a ‘trouble ticket’ that details their problem and requests assistance is Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).

Reliability relates to how well those channels work to solve the customer’s problem. If he or a friend had found the information they needed on your FAQ at a previous time, they will feel that your FAQ is reliable and use that channel again. They will also feel that if they don’t find their particular problem in the FAQ that it is not a frequent problem, but that they can expect help in one of the other methods.

Help Desk Agents: Courteous as they Speedily Resolve the Issue Completely

Reliability also refers to the help desk agents who deal with the issue through chat, a forum, a telephone call, or a trouble ticket. Your customers should be able to rely on the help desk agents to be courteous to them. That means that their attitudes should not be condescending (no 20-somethings calling everyone “honey”), they should speak and understand English well, and they should be polite even if the caller is upset. Your customers should also be able to rely on your help desk agents to be able to resolve an issue completely and to do it as speedily as possible. Granted, not every help desk agent will know the answer to every question, but they should be able to find the answers to at least 80% of the questions quickly from a database and they should be able to refer the question to the person who can answer it. Customers should not get a ‘run-around’ or after to play ‘phone tag’ for days or weeks to resolve an issue.

Help Desk Database: An Aid to Customers and to Help Desk Agents

You may have noticed that the customer should be able to access a database of issues and their resolutions. If you do not have such a database in place, perhaps you need to upgrade your software to include such a database. Help Desk Agents should also be able to access a knowledge base in order to help customers. Evaluate your knowledge base to make sure it is quick to access and contains as many possible scenarios as possible. Update it often. Question your agents to make sure it is helpful and to see what needs to be added or changed to make it more responsive or more complete.

Using Help Desk Software to Help Your Help Desk

Five Improvements to Help Your Help Desk

Help desk software implementation will not necessarily improve help desk performance for those who need it. To improve your help desk, make sure you have the right help desk software, train your reps on the software and on good interpersonal skills, track all the calls to understand what the big picture is, set up clearly defined procedures for solving issues, and build the morale and confidence of your reps with team building activities.

1. Get the right help desk software

Evaluate the nature of your help desk. Assess the various help desk software options. Narrow your choices to 3-4. Request free help desk trials. Assign a different software to each of your best help desk reps to test and evaluate. Compare after a 2-4 week trial. Your help desk software should be easy for reps to use and include features they’ve always wished they had. It should also contain the features the supervisor and company stakeholders need for following issues and making reports, so they should also take advantage of the free trials.

2. Train help desk reps

Spend the time and effort to fully train each help desk rep and supervisor on the help desk

software. Do it in steps so that the features they will use the most are learned first. Then add to that training as well as asking them for feedback and questions several times in the first year. This will enable them to feel comfortable with a wide array of features and to feel supported. Your help desk software company should be able to provide you with training which may include live support, videos, walk-throughs, instruction manuals, and ongoing e-mails to reps.

3. Track every issue clearly

Track every issue from first report to full resolution. Put into place a method for assessing the “real issue” such as user problems, design of the product problems, unclear information in the

instructions, etc. If, for example, trouble understanding the instructions seems to keep popping up, consider having the instructions to your product rewritten. This is more cost effective than the time and effort being spent to re-explain the instructions several times a day. The best place to track issues is usually in the database that comes with your help desk software.

4. Define procedures

Allowing your customers to log their own calls (through web-based customer support software) and to see the progress of their issue(s) can reduce the number of phone calls placed to your support team by as much as 75%. Decide what your procedures will be for various scenarios. Keep them simple. Write them out. Train the reps in those procedures. Stick to the procedures. One way to ensure that your customers are not left waiting for days to get an answer is to have an issue escalator included in your help desk software. If an issue isn’t resolved in a timely manner, a designated supervisor or manager will receive a notice in his or her email. You can then make sure that actions are taken to fix the problem.

5. Support the team

The help desk industry has one of the highest turnovers of staff. That is partially because the reps hear so much complaining and negativity throughout their shifts that they perceive their jobs as being unpleasant. Change that perception by giving them pleasant surroundings, soothing music, a fun group activity to anticipate every couple of weeks, and a place or person where they can safely vent without fear of repercussions. Take their complaints and suggestions seriously. The other issue with help desk rep turnover has to do with their feeling of being unsupported and ill-trained. When they feel the company values them, supports them, trains them, and listens to them, their job satisfaction increases, making them loyal employees.

To fully leverage the value of your help desk, it is important to utilize the right tools and the right training and support. Help Desk Software often includes training and support. Web based help desk software is most likely one of your best options and nearly always includes ongoing customer support software services. By taking advantage of the best web based help desk software, your company will allow your customers to help themselves, have a process for quickly solving issues, and have some of the best-trained, most-satisfied, and most competent reps in the industry.

Here’s Help to Keep Your Sanity

Help Desk assistance for mouse problem

Help Desk assistance for mouse problem

A phone call to a Help Desk

Caller: “Can you tell me how to control my mouse?”

Agent: “Place your hand over the mouse and put your thumb on one side with your index finger on the left button, your middle finger on the right button. Then move the mouse around.”
Caller: “It keeps slipping and the pointer on my screen just flies around.

Computer looking for printer call to help desk

Computer looking for printer call to help desk

Agent: Do you have it on a slick surface?”

Caller: “No, but I have its dust cover on. Should I take that off?”

Agent: “Yes, I believe the ‘dust cover’ is the plastic bag it was shipped in.”


Finding the printer

Another help desk rep at a computer manufacturer received a call. His computer had said it “couldn’t find the printer.”

The user had tried turning the computer screen to face the printer but his computer still “couldn’t see the printer.”


Cup Holder call to Help Desk

Cup Holder call to Help Desk

A phone call to a Help Desk

Caller: “Hello, is this Tech Support?”

Tech: “Yes, it is. How may I help you?”

Caller: “The cup holder on my PC is broken and I am within my warranty period. How do I go about getting that fixed?”

Tech: “I’m sorry, but did you say cup holder?”

Caller: “Yes, the one attached to the front of my computer.”

Tech: “Please excuse me if I seem a bit stumped, it’s because I am. Did you receive this as part of a promotional or at a trade show?”

Caller: “It came with my computer. I don’t know anything about a promotional. It is automated. It comes out when you push the button.”

The Tech suddenly understood and had to put the caller on mute because he was laughing so hard. The caller had been using the CD-ROM drive as a cup holder and it had snapped off!


A phone call to a Help Desk

Caller: “Hi. I’m having trouble installing my software.”

Help Desk Call about Getting CDs into Computer

Help Desk Call about Getting CDs into Computer

Tech: “What seems to be the problem?”

Caller: “I put in the first CD and that was okay. Then it said to put in the second CD. I had some problems.  But when it said to put in the third CD, I could not get it in and get the drawer closed.”

Fortunately, when the tech explained, the caller was able to remove the first two CDs to put the third one in!

It’s Not Just Help Desk Software

helpdeskagent More and more companies are realizing that helping a customer when they have a problem is not enough. Help Desks and Help Desk Software most maximize every customer interaction by using creative and innovative ways of getting, keeping, and growing the company’s customers.

Research has shown that customers value a good experience even more than a good price! What can your company do to give your customers the feeling of a good experience and a good ongoing relationship?

Geoffrey Moore, a marketing expert and author, wrote that “failure to innovate equals failure to differentiate equals failure to garner profits and revenues.” Most company executives would agree . . . and then start looking for product innovations. But innovation must also apply to how, when, and where your company interacts with present and potential customers.

For example, if you can predict a certain customer is a high-growth customer, you can route that person to interact with a highly knowledgeable service rep. Or, if you know a certain customer is a high-value customer who also likes a certain degree of “do it yourself service” (also known as browsing in some industries), you will know not to interfere with that while letting the person know of the availability of a service rep when needed.

What is the payoff for your company? The ROI can be well over 100% in terms of reduction in marketing, lower acquisition and retention costs, and lower costs of equipment and staffing.

Where do you start to get this advantage? Start with data. You already have much data, but you probably don’t use it to help you in predictive ways. Today’s helpdesk software can gather data by the truckload but if you don’t connect the layers of data by applying analytics (add-ons usually available from the help desk software company) to that data, it is valueless. Instead of collecting only the usual name, address, household income, product information, add the layers of behavioral or attitudinal data such as when, where, and with whom an interaction took place ans what was communicated. In many cases these pieces of data are not recorded because they don’t fit the categories or spaces of a spreadsheet, but today’s help desk software and CRM software can accommodate this information.

By understanding the underlying behavior and attitude, you can predict which questions from potential customers will lead to a purchase decision. You can also predict which questions you ask in return will be most helpful in moving them along in their decision process. This helps them feel that you understand them and truly want to help them.

Identifying which factors contribute to the defection of high-value customers will allow your company to act long before a win-back offer is needed. This is critical for keeping customers and growing customers. Taking it a step further, you can grow many customers by using your predictive analytics to anticipate their needs and ask relevant questions or make timely offers.

Instead of using your help desk and help desk software to be reactive in solving problems, start thinking of ways to use it to be proactive and predictive to help you get and grow customers.

Up Thoughts on Incident Tickets in Down Times

In this ‘down’ economic time, we need some ‘up’ thoughts. Funny that a movie called ‘Up’ would make its debut now! Anyway, incident or trouble tickets are not going to go “Up, Up and Away.” Therefore, we need to realize they are our friends and not our enemies.

When a customer files an incident ticket, it is a great thing for our company because it allows us to glean all types of information about that customer – name, address, e-mail, what they purchased, how they feel, what their income is, etc. How else would we get those pieces of information? We probably would not. So this is very positive.

An incident is not necessarily “trouble” – although it often is a problem, question, or complaint. Sometimes it is just a request for more information such as a user manual or how to do something that was not in the user manual (or they couldn’t read in the small print of the manual).

Once we get information from customers via an incident ticket, we can use that information to help them (and others like them) and better understand our markets. This will prepare us to emerge strong and focused as the economy turns around.

It is important to take advantage of all the information we have gathered now. Pull it back up, analyze it, figure out what people want and need, and then gear up to supply it.

This should make American companies much more customer-centric and better able to actually help people and supply products and services that are wanted and needed in the years to come. Now that’s an ‘up’ thought in a ‘down’ time.

Help Desk Software Makes Me Happy

happy-faceIt’s true. Help Desk Software makes me happy . . . and the “me” can be the CEO of a company using Help Desk Software, the helpdesk agents using the Help Desk Software, or the customers of the company using Help Desk Software.

There are both quantitative benefits and qualitative benefits to using help desk software, sometimes known as call tracking software. On the quantitative side of making “me” happy, we can track the number of calls, how quickly the calls get answered, how long it takes to resolve an issue, how each minute of the agent’s time is used, and how much less time is used on repetitious activity. On the qualitative side of making “me” happy are things like customer loyalty, customer recommendations, agents working on items that need skill (rather than tedious or repetitious tasks), higher job satisfaction, less turnover of agents, and increased profitability.

All costs are rising, so what can you do to control your costs? Invest in the right call tracking software for your business. This will lead to happy customers because you will be able to provide efficient customer support in a timely manner. Effective resolutions provided quickly will exceed their expectations. Their joy will translate into their coming back to your company for more products or services and their recommending your company to their colleagues. That will make you happy as it positively impacts your bottom line.

One of the biggest problems in staffing a help desk is the high turnover rate of the agents. Many help desks see agents leaving in less than year and few have agents who have stayed more than two years. That means lots of lost money in training and benefits and lost time finding new agents and training them. What would make you happy? Happy agents who stay more than two years. How do you make them that happy? By using appropriate help desk software you will give them the ability to look up answers to callers’ questions quickly and efficiently, to generate the necessary and often tedious paperwork with a few clicks, to see the caller’s history with the issue or product, to assign field personnel to the issue quickly and easily, and to generate necessary reports effortlessly. This allows the agents to spend the majority of their time and effort on more interesting issues. That raises their feeling of worth, thus their job satisfaction. Happy agents stay longer and do a better job which positively impacts your bottom line . . . again!

Whether your company is large or small, the benefits of using appropriate help desk software translate directly to an increased bottom line. Your profitability is greater when customers are happy. Happy customers come back and bring their friends and colleagues with them. Your losses are decreased when your agents are happy. Happy agents are more effective in dealing with customers and their issues and they tend to stay on the job longer. That keeps you from having your attention diverted to constantly finding and training new agents, thus decreasing losses and increasing profits. Customers, agents, and the company benefit from help desk software.

How is Your Help Desk Software?

Do you have Help Desk Software? Many companies do have Help Desk Software. However, that Help Desk Software is frequently not the best software for the needs of the company. Or, it was the best fit at the time it was purchased, but it has not changed or been updated to keep up with the needs of the company and its customers.

Do you need to get, change or upgrade your Help Desk Software? That’s a great question. How do you know? How do you justify new or improved or different Help Desk Software? Just because you want new bells and whistles is not a reason.

There are four reasons you might want to consider upgrading your Help Desk Software. To determine if you want to upgrade for one of those reasons, you need to answer some basic questions. In the process of answering the questions you may discover that you need to wait for a future release of a particular software.

1. Improved Functionality: Changes in Help Desk Software that improve productivity and address current or upcoming issues can be a powerful upgrade justification.
• Are there issues that users are experiencing that could have been resolved in the system upgrade?
• Is there new functionality that will help users be more effective, simplify complex tasks, or reduce training costs?

2. Planned Upgrade: If you recently implemented your first version or phase of help desk software, consider allowing users to get used to the new system first. However, if your current help desk software has been in use for more than two years, it is time to evaluate it to make sure it still meets your needs.
• Did you recently deploy the solution, or has it been up and running for several years?
• Is your current version still supported, and have you had any support problems?
• What are your current needs? What do you foresee as the needs you will have in the next 2-4 years?
• Is there a help desk software, or an upgrade to your current software, that will better meet those needs?

3. Software Version Maturity: Different products have varying degrees of stability upon release. Implementing a .0 release might not be in your company’s best interests since it will not have the testing of real customers, so you may prefer to wait for a service pack or a .2 or .3 release. Perhaps you have a .0 or .2 release and the newer release has patches and support for issues with which you have been struggling.
• How long has the new version been available?
• Will you be one of the first to upgrade your system? Are there advantages to being one of the first?
• Have others upgraded, and can you talk with someone who has to find out what their experience has been?
• Are patches and professional support resources readily available for the new version?
• Is this a newer version of the same software with which you’ve been working?

4. Implementation Timing: When considering a help desk software upgrade, consider when the best time will be for implementing it. Some companies have defined windows — the end of a quarter or fiscal year, for example — when no new functionality can be deployed. Identify also the implications and impact the new or upgraded help desk software will have on other systems.
• When should the upgrade be deployed, how long will the implementation take and what impact could this have on the business?
• Are there other systems integrated with the help desk software that will be affected by the upgrade, and can those systems be updated efficiently and at the same time?
• What will be the impacts on reporting, data warehouses or analytical applications?

You need to determine whether a Help Desk Software upgrade is in the best interest of the organization at the time. This may be a no-brainer if the updated software offers much-needed functionality or ensures continued support. However, if the answers to the questions reveal a heavy impact on the business, users or other internal applications, you may need to wait for a better time in your business cycle or you may need an extended timeline for considering the upgrade.

Is Your Customer’s Call Important to Your Company?

How 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?’

What is a Help Desk?

Helpdesk 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

It 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.

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