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Published August 31st, 2016 by

Reasons Why You Should Get a Help Desk Software for Your Business

Help desk software is an application developed to help automate the service and support function of companies. This doesn’t mean totally removing customer service representatives from their job but to automate and make the process easier. The support desk usually includes the job function of helping customers with their problems. Some of the common problems are retrieving lost passwords, troubleshooting product problems, technical problems with hardware and software applications and a host of other technology problems. Depending on the product a company offers, the problems a customer care representative handles varies greatly. There are many companies who use customer relationship management software while it might seem the same to a help desk, there are still differences. And depending on what your company needs, you could get either one or both. But for help desk tools, here are some of the reasons you should get it for your business.

Reasons Why You Should Get a Help Desk Software for Your Business

Save Time

Most small businesses rely on spreadsheets and papers to keep track of all that is going on in their company. They do this with the thought that it could save money for the business. What they do not know is that, while it may save them money, it costs them time which can be used more productively. The same is with complaints of customers, there are businesses that will take down notes on what the problem is and then keep track of its resolution through tables and grids. The problem with this is that there might be customers who are forgotten or not given the attention they deserve, not to mention it takes a lot of time to do all things manually.

This is one reason why your business needs a customer support software. Tracking all the calls your customer care representatives receive takes a lot of time. When asked by a supervisor about all the metrics, will you be able to give all the details in a flash? No, because you have to go back and peruse all the documents to compute the data. With this software, everything is at the tip of your fingers. Just a few clicks and all relevant data will appear. The time saved with the use of the software can be used to help all other customers waiting in line. According to an Opinion Research Corporation survey about what frustrates customers with regards to calling support; waiting time is the second most annoying thing about contacting customer support. You want to keep customers happy by reducing the waiting time.

Efficiency Is Increased

As mentioned above, tracking customer calls manually can mean that not every customer who has contacted you will be contacted back. If you do things on your own, you are prone to human errors. There are customers that you might have forgotten to call or email back and they will still have problems with their products. Being unsatisfied with your company is not good for publicity. Did you know that it takes 12 positive feedbacks to make up for one negative experience? This is according to the book Understanding Customers by Ruby Newell-Legner. If you are a relatively new company, it will be hard to get one positive feedback, let alone 12. So really, you cannot afford to piss off a customer. You should do everything you can to make them happy. You can do this with the use of the best customer support software, this will ensure that none of your customers will be forgotten and every complaint is resolved. If you are getting more emails than your agents can handle, it is time to look into automating the customer service process.

Keep Track of All Incoming Emails

Other than spreadsheets, you are also probably using email applications to handle customer support. If it is working for you then that’s good but the problem with emails is that they are too messy. There is no way to track all incoming emails especially if you use a lot of email addresses to receive customer complaints. Another thing is that some might go to the spam folder and unless you check that folder regularly, you might miss an email. Moreover, using email applications will not guarantee that the email will go to the agent that is most knowledgeable on a certain topic. Everything is received using the email address and whoever mans that address will be in charge of answering to that. Or it could be forwarded to whoever might handle it best and then it gets messier with the CCs and BCCs.

Using a help desk solution will help your agents keep track of all incoming emails because everything will be centralized. There is only one place all the emails will go through and some software even has an auto assign feature. This is to automatically send an email to the person most equipped to answer it. If you want to know softwares with the auto assign function, read reviews of help desk software.

Offers Multi Channel Customer Support

According to the Global State of Multichannel Customer Service Report done by Microsoft, in the United States, most consumers use the telephone to contact customer support at 81%. This is followed closely by email at 78%, then live chat at 64%, online support at 62% and search engine at 51%. As you can see, the customer service channels don’t veer too far from each other. Most of the channels get almost the same number of contacts from customers. This is why it is important that you offer a multichannel customer support, because it won’t reflect nicely on you if you can’t be contacted through a more preferable support channel. People are more social today and customer support should be too. According to Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Americans spend at least 40 minutes on Facebook every day. Some of those minutes might be used to contact your company and it would be a disappointment to clients if your company cannot be reached through social media. Using a help desk system will ensure that you are available in many channels of customer support and that includes social media platform.

Collaboration Between Departments

If the company is getting complaints over and over about a specific area of your company’s product, then there might be a problem with the product itself. The customer service representatives might handle the complaints effectively and efficiently but you can’t deny that there is a problem. This might be because the complaints are not forwarded to the proper department; one that can handle the problem so it doesn’t occur again. Using a customer support software can help with the disconnect between departments of a company. Using a help desk can help with the collaboration between departments. The other departments will also be able to check on what might be the problems that the customers are facing and do something about it.

Prioritize Tasks

When your company gets hundreds to thousands of emails and phone calls every day, it can be hard to prioritize which is to be handled first. This is especially difficult when you do not have an online help desk software. You would need to track all the complaints down and prioritize them according to the issue, how many are affected, what are the services affected, when do they require a response, why is the problem occurring and other host of things to consider. The problem with this kind of prioritizing is that it takes time to prioritize and answer all queries. The customers would probably have been waiting days for a response which is not good for the company. Using the best customer support software will help with prioritizing tasks by organizing the tickets that the software receive. It can tag the tickets as low priority, high, medium and critical. Based on these tags, the agents will be able to know which ones to address first. The software will also indicate how long ago the ticket was received and when it should be resolved. Time frames are indicated as to the severity of the complaints.

Customization Options

Companies use more than one software, it is actually safe to say that companies use tons of applications. There are tools for different functions and it could be hard to integrate everything to work seamlessly. This can be a problem when using many software tools. One way to prevent problems is to get a software that can be customized to work well with the other systems already in place. Ask your software service provider how well the customization options of the software works and if it can be integrated to other systems. Also, you can read reviews of customer support software to know more about this topic.

If you have been in business for a long time, you know how important it is to take care of your customers. You can do everything from providing great products to discounts and promos and all it will take for them to go to the competition is bad customer support. That is why you should do everything you can to provide great customer service and with the help of help desk software, that is very possible.

Searching for the best help desk software to replace your ancient, manual system? Check out reviews and rankings at CrowdReviews.com.

John Tovar

John specializes in the creation and planning of business-centric mobile applications and mobile website design and development.

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