When it comes to the customer service industry, one of the most useful tools a Support Agent can have at their fingertips is a good customer support software. Now, the most obvious reason for this is how a helpdesk software improves an agent’s efficiency. This is because the software organizes the tickets an agent receives and expedites the response process. One of the most obvious advantages gained by using a helpdesk software is the ease with which you can track the status of a Ticket. There are quite a few more things which you can do with it though.

Avoid All the Problems Older Methods Hold

When it comes to the days before helpdesks were a thing, agents used a shared inbox to receive and respond to support issues. However, this had its fair share of failings. For instance, a support agent could cherry pick a particular support issue or customer query and avoid the others. Another common problem was when emails arrived in a large influx, it was easy to miss out on customer complaints. Moreover, the same complaint may sometimes have multiple agents working on it, leading to confusion and a wastage of time.

A helpdesk seamlessly slices through all these issues by assigning tickets to agents in an unbiased manner. This improves your support staff’s efficiency as well as your customer’s experience.

It can also prioritize your incoming tickets depending on urgency and predefined criteria. This level of customization which the agent can use to make their life easier is what makes a helpdesk software so useful for a company.

Help Your Agents Who Aren’t Working At Their Complete Potential

When a company has a large team of support agents, it can be easy to miss out on agents who are underperforming. A good helpdesk software can track your individual agents’ statistics and performance. Depending on the area in which they are lacking, individual training can be provided to help them out.

For example, say that an agent X does not possess sufficient knowledge about the product. This is reflected in both the slower resolution rate of tickets, as well as the conversations between the customer and agent. By training agent X in depth about the product, the agent’s productivity improves and the company and customer both benefit.

Motivate Your Agents To Perform Better With Gamification

When it comes to answering customer queries all day, monotony can set in for your agents. To prevent this, some helpdesk softwares like Freshdesk make the process of dealing with tickets more interesting for the agent. This is done by giving points to successfully resolving queries for instance. Now, there is a spirit of healthy competition which has been channeled through the workplace, as well as additional motivation in the form of rewards which can be offered to the best performers.

The Importance Of Ticket Deflection

A good helpdesk software can not only improve your efficiency in dealing with tickets, it can also prevent them from popping up in the first place. One can involve bots which can provide customers solutions to common problems. Thus, the number of tickets received can be reduced drastically.
Ticket deflection mechanisms can lead to an evolution of the support portal itself. An analysis of the type of tickets received at Freshdesk led to a list of FAQs. A customer could access these through a collection of autofill fields. This eventually was converted into a bot, ensuring that a customer can now solve most common issues by themselves. This saves time for both parties — the customer gets an instantaneous solution while the agent doesn’t have to deal with repetitive tickets.

After the chatbot was deployed on the portal, there was a 7% drop in the tickets received on the portal.

Integrate Your Existing Communication Channels Into One Software

With the variety of communication channels which a customer can use to contact a company, it can be difficult to keep track of queries. However, a helpdesk software can streamline all these various channels into one screen. This will make your agent’s life significantly less complicated. The software should also be easy to use for both the customer and the agent. This sort of omnichannel approach can improve your response times and help you keep track of your customers and their tickets as well.

You can see the different sources of tickets next to the names of the customers in the below image- whether it is the web portal, the phone, or via email.

Improve Feedback Collection From Your Customers

 Getting your customers to provide feedback on your service can be a hassle sometimes. However, a helpdesk software gives you and your customers an optional survey after the ticket has been resolved. This can be in the form of a link for a simple questionnaire where the client can rate the standard of the service they received. This sort of short yet elegant feedback method will get you answers and in the case of an exceptionally low score, you can reach out to the client and get additional feedback about what went wrong.

Look At The Numbers To Understand Your Business

Helpdesks such as Freshdesk come with a set of metrics and analysis tools which you can use to understand your company and its performance better. These provide reports and graphs for a variety of criteria you may need, be it individual agent performance, tickets received over time, first response rate, and resolution rates, to name a few. Features like team dashboards also cue you in onto the performance of your support as well as your product’s pros and cons. It’s like having your very own version of Google Analytics inside the helpdesk.

A good helpdesk also has a guide to help you comprehend these reports and thus, can ensure that your support division is always performing at its peak.

Make Your Service More Humanized

With every industry having its own competition, the factor that can often make a company shine is the standard of customer service they provide. With there being an increasing focus on speed of resolution, replies to customer queries often come out sounding robotic and non-personalized.

However, a good helpdesk can help you prevent this. They keep track of a customer’s history and prior interactions. Freshdesk for instance not only shows an agent any interactions the customer may have had with the company in the past, but also the self help articles they may have consulted before creating a ticket. This can help an agent provide a deeper level of understanding and support to a customer. It can also improve support efficiency as they can focus on solutions and fixes which the customer hasn’t tried, as well as improve interactions between customers and agents.

For example, if a customer was happy with the support provided by an agent, it would make sense to let the same agent handle the customer again, providing a more intimate level of service. Another case would be when a customer has an issue which an agent is well acquainted with handling- a good helpdesk software would take this into consideration while assigning a ticket.

Save Time By Collecting The Essential Details While Filing A Ticket

You can make both a customer as well as a support agent’s life easier by collecting the necessary details before filing a ticket by a personalized form set up on the helpdesk. This will ensure that your agent has all the details needed to solve a ticket. It also reduces the number of responses between the agent and the customer and helps narrow down the problem.

For instance, when your mobile phone has an issue, if there is a form that collects essential details like the IMEI number, model and make, and the age of the phone, a support agent would have a much easier time pinpointing the issue. He or she also would not have to send the customer emails asking for these details, cutting down on the number of responses.

A Good Helpdesk Can Be Used Across Multiple Verticals

While you might believe that the sole use for a helpdesk is in customer support, you’d be surprised at the sheer variety of companies which use the software, as well as what they use it for.

For example, Freshdesk is used by the largest airport in Canada which services more than 47 million passengers in a year to manage their Lost and Found counter. There are also online coupon companies which use it for managing their deals, as well as franchises that use it for internal store inventory and support. There is no limitation to the way a helpdesk software can be used.

Ensure Your Customers Are Taken Care Of, Always

There may be times when the continuity of your business is disrupted due to offservice, natural disasters and emergencies, or simple maintenance. In these situations, a self service portal can be useful along with the forums if a customer has an issue. A helpdesk can also show a message on the company’s website explaining the issue.

This can ensure they aren’t angry about a possible delay in getting a response to their ticket. It can also reduce a flood of tickets when the servers are down for maintenance or downtime.

For instance, during the Chennai Floods of 2015, more than 50% of the employees of Freshworks were unreachable and considerably less than those were present in the office. However, business continued as usual for customers because we had set up a strong self service portal. Customers were able to find solutions quickly without having to worry about delayed responses. (We also broadcasted the issue on our website so that customers were aware of the cause for delayed response from our support agents.)

To wrap up, a good customer support software is worth every cent thanks to the massive potential it holds to revolutionize your business. It can improve your agents’ knowledge, provide you with essential stats about your product and company, and make your customer’s service experience hassle-free.

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