Help desk software is a great way to streamline customer service operations. It helps support agents to collect, track and resolve tickets from multiple channels in one single platform. Help desk contains all the tools required to increase productivity and improve customer satisfaction.
Companies who are interested in scaling their business and providing better customer service should invest in a customer helpdesk. It equips your service team with everything they need to match customer expectations. In this article, we’ll discuss how you can set up a help desk.
What is the purpose of a help desk?
Help desk software consists of tools that assist customer service reps in managing customer service requests and interactions. It allows you to access messages from different channels as well as check each customer’s support history.
With a help desk system, you can organize and allocate tickets to available support agents. You can easily monitor the status and progress of a ticket. Help desk also provides analytics so you can measure your service team’s performance.
Why your business needs a help desk.
Customer service expectations have changed over the past decade. There’s more emphasis on high-quality support, personalized service, and empathetic responses. A help desk allows your company to store and analyze customer interactions in order to improve your services. Here are some benefits of a helpdesk system:
- Manage multiple support channels
Customers expect a consistent omnichannel experience from brands. They would also like to switch between communication channels without having to repeat their questions. Help desk allows you to manage different support channels and monitor previous conversations.
- Faster customer service
Another customer service expectation includes faster response times and quick resolutions. It means that service agents would have to work twice as much. Helpdesk can assist by tagging, organizing, and routing tickets to agents. They’ll be able to respond and resolve tickets quicker.
- Boost service team productivity
There are so many automation tools that come with a help desk ticketing software. You can also implement self-serve functions such as a knowledge base so customers can find useful answers in help center articles. Every tool and integration in a helpdesk boosts productivity.
- Provide personalized services
Help desk system collects, tracks, and stores every customer interaction. This means all past customer requests and resolutions can easily be accessed. This helps any customer service rep to understand what each customer prefers and be able to customize services accordingly.
- Measure service team performance
It’s important for companies to measure how a customer service team resolves both internal and external queries. Helpdesk offers KPIs and metrics to measure support performance over a period of time. These metrics include ticket volume, resolution time, response time, etc.
8 Steps to setting up a customer support help desk
Once you’ve discovered a help desk ticketing system that suits your customer service needs, it’s time to configure it. Here are the necessary steps to follow when setting up a helpdesk:
- Define your goals and service level agreements.
A helpdesk is meant to improve your customer support processes. Before you implement one, it’s good to know the problems you’re trying to solve and the goals you want to achieve with it. You should also define new SLA targets to help regulate agents’ response or resolution times.
- Put together a customer support team
A help desk ticketing system is meant to assist the members of a customer support team. This means that you need to hire talented customer service agents for your business. You can work with on-site or remote customer support reps.
- Identify third-party applications you want your help desk to integrate with.
There are so many applications that allow you to manage customer data and collaborate with other service agents. They often include apps like CRM systems, e-commerce platform, team collaboration tools, accounting software, etc.
- Choose the right help desk software.
A good help desk software for your business should include essential features such as knowledge base management, ticket routing and tagging, omnichannel support, KPIs and analytics, and integrations with business tools.
- Develop your help desk workflow structure
Helpdesk allows you to automate certain tasks and simplify manual processes. When setting up your customer help desk, you should define the steps needed in resolving customer issues. This helps agents to master their routine faster.
- Add security protocols.
It’s important to implement security tools and best practices in order to protect the help desk system from unauthorized access. Security protocols ensure safety of customer data and also prevent cyber attacks on the company.
- Train help desk agents on your brand’s vision, values, and commitment to the customer.
Help desk agents should know how to respond to customer queries. They need to have crucial skills such as empathy, communication skills, product knowledge, etc. They should also get to understand your brand’s vision and values.
- Create a self-service portal (like a knowledge base).
More customers are interested in finding simple answers on their own. You should create help center articles so customers won’t have to wait for service reps before resolving most issues. It also helps to reduce the workload on agents.
- Test your help desk.
After setting up your support help desk, let your service agents test the functions. You should ensure channels have been properly integrated and the workflow structure works well too. This will help you catch and fix any errors early on.
- Review the effectiveness of your help and adjust and optimize processes where needed.
After a few weeks of launching your help desk system, it’s a great idea to review how effective it has been. This will help you determine which functions need tweaking and any automated processes that may be slow or inefficient.
