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What is Helpdesk Software & Why Your Company Needs it?

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When a company starts a customer support desk with one or two employees, email can be used to assign cases. But as the desk grows, this method which was earlier simple becomes increasingly complex to use and manage. That’s where a helpdesk software makes things easier for the desk.

The rest of this post focuses on what a helpdesk software means and how it can be beneficial to your business.

What is Helpdesk Software?

According to Wikipedia, a helpdesk is a resource intended to provide the customer or end user with information and support related to a company’s products and services. The helpdesk’s purpose is usually to troubleshoot problems or provide guidance about products such as computers, electronic equipment, food, apparel, or software. The customer’s satisfaction with products and experience generally depends on the quality of support that the helpdesk agents provide.

Corporations deploy helpdesk support through multiple channels like live chat, phone, email and more.

Helpdesk software empowers agents with a wide range of tools to answer your customers’ queries and solve their issues. In a time when over 40% of customers expect a reply within an hour, such tools become essential for your agents to satisfy customers and ensure that they continue to remain with you.

Why You Need a Helpdesk Software?

Here are 3 reasons why you need a Helpdesk software:

  • Increases Customer Satisfaction

In today’s hyper-competitive times, customer experience has become an important metric to differentiate yourself from the competition. Your helpdesk is an integral part of this experience for your customer, which means this team should be fully equipped to go beyond just delighting your customer.

A helpdesk software enables your agents to delight customers with First Contact Resolutions (FCRs) keep them informed timely about updates about the status of their complaints, and more importantly, address their concerns regardless of the channel they come from.

A satisfied customer will positively affect your organization’s top line and bottom line. According to research, up to 86% of customers are ready to pay a premium if sellers can guarantee superior service.

  • Enhances Agent Performance

The more tasks your agents perform, the less productive they become on aspects which they should focus on. When their performance falls, your organization’s customer satisfaction falls with it.

A helpdesk software automates many tasks for your agents and gives them necessary information on their screens in advance, thus reducing repeat work and increasing their productivity. Your agents will have access to information like caller’s contact details, their prior issues and status of the same, a knowledge base and more. In other words, their complete toolkit will be placed on their desk right within their computer.

When your agents serve customers better, the overall customer experience improves. Thus, enhanced agent performance doesn’t just save time but also generates better return on investment.

  • Streamlining Operations

Customer support agents are not the only people who will find a helpdesk software immensely useful. The software will also streamline business operations and make your entire backend team more productive and efficient.

A helpdesk software will provide dashboards to the manager to review number of calls, Average Handling Time (AHT) and more. Based on this, they can optimize schedules and staffing to ensure that Service Level Agreements get met and calls get answered quickly.

But beyond that, it will also help them monitor the kind of issues getting reported and draw an analysis of the same, which can be shared with the business team to work on how they can conduct root-cause-analyses to prevent problems for occurring in the first place.

3 Key Components of a Helpdesk Software

  • Ticketing System

A helpdesk software generates and stores tickets related to customer queries in a single location and sorts them by various categories redefined by you. It can automate first replies and assign tickets to specific queues based on expertise and urgency. It enables agents to answer calls and log them seamlessly.

Such a ticketing system can also collect complaints that come in from various channels like social media, email, phone, chat and so on and assign tickets based on the department – sales, accounts, support and so on.

  • Dashboards and Analyses

This is an important component of such a software. It can present data to relevant stakeholders and enable them to analyze critical aspects based on the helpdesk’s performance. Some examples include number of tickets raised and resolved, time since which unresolved tickets have remained open, average FCR, AHT, call answer time, individual agents’ productivity and more.

Like we mentioned before, it also helps managers analyze issue types and provide feedback on the same to relevant departments within the organization, thus improving efficiency and effectiveness.

  • Collecting Feedback

Customer feedback is the most effective way to identify gaps in existing functioning. It highlights the strength and weaknesses of your contact center. Such a software automates collecting feedback from customers, which leaders can use to identify the gap between what the center should be doing, and what it does. It also gives you a concrete direction to work in towards improved quality and speed of service. And it makes your customers feel heard and respected.

Summing Up

Thanks to technological advancements, helpdesk software has substantially improved the performance of customer support desks in a tangible manner. It has enabled support teams to address and resolve customer queries real-time and be present 24/7. It has also businesses to build self-service portals where customers can get their answers through knowledge bases and IVRs without speaking to agents.

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  1. executive council of insurers December 2, 2020

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