Emails applications have been around a long time. Sometimes the best applications are being offered for free, so it makes sense that many companies will use email applications to deal with their customers. Email is simpler, easy to use and most of your employees already know how to use it. But when you receive hundreds and hundreds of emails from disgruntled customers, it might be hard to keep track of all the incoming emails. It can be inefficient and some customers may be forgotten or left out. That is why a software that is made solely to handle customers is important and the development of the help desk software has helped customer service representatives achieve better customer service. There are many reasons why some companies still use email for their help desk. It is cheaper, sometimes even free; it is easier to maintain, there would be no need for specialized IT groups to maintain it; and it has been used for a long time, changes can be rough so no one really wants to undergo it. But here are some reasons why help desk tools is more effective than email applications.
Messages Are Centralized
A help desk is the middle or the point where all involved parties meet. It is the point of contact between the parties seeking solution and the party offering to solve the problem. When you use a help desk solution, all the messages are congregated in one area making it easier for all the agents to handle them. Here are some more features why a help desk helps centralize all messages received:
- There is a single point of contact. When different departments of the same company work on one problem, using a help desk software will provide that single point of contact for all parties involved. When using emails, you would have to CC and BCC all that are involved which can get confusing. Using the software will be neater and get the job done quicker.
- There is uniformity in how all problems are resolved. When you use a help desk, the process of solving a problem will be the same for all support representatives. Unlike emails where problem resolution is a little harder to remember thus different processes are formed.
- Productivity is improved. When the structure of the system is centralized, it gives the staff and employees more insight about what is going on. All issues and problems are in one place so they know where to look. This way, problems are resolved quicker because they are in direct communication with the issue rather than routing to a few different places before they can get to the problem.
- Communication is better. As already said there is a single point of contact. This makes communication better because everything is in one place. When you use emails, you have to ensure that the proper recipient receives the email and there are times that you might forget to include their names in the recipient box. Using a help desk system will ensure that all the members of the group are configured to receive important updates and tasks.
Information Can Be Tracked
Unlike email applications, help desk tools can easily track metrics and statistics. These metrics are used to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of your customer support. In email applications, you cannot measure the response time, the ticket volume and other metrics at a glance. Email applications also offer only one way for you to be contacted by customers while help desk offers a multichannel approach. Here are some of the most important metrics that you should be able to measure to know the health of your customer service:
- Response time. Response time varies depending on how the customer contacted you. According to a UK consumer study done by Upton, 53% of customers who contact you by phone expect to have talked to an agent already after 3 minutes of waiting. While a Customer Experience Impact Report done by Oracle, claimed that one to two days of waiting for an email response is already unacceptable. With the use of the top help desk tools, you can have all tickets answered in 12 hours or less.
- Ticket volume. This is the number of tickets that you receive at a given time. When you use an email application, it is hard to keep track of how many tickets you are receiving. This is because not all of the emails you are receiving in the email address would be a ticket from a customer; there are times that your inbox may be receiving spam mails. Using help desk will keep track of all messages that are received.
- Channel attribution. This is the number of tickets that are received from a specific channel. Using email applications will only let you receive emails. But how about calls, live chat and social media channels. Social media is climbing in the popularity poll when it comes to customer support and you should offer it as a means for your customer to contact you too. According to a study done by TrueShip, sales that came from social media will increase by 93% per year.
- Customer rating. This is the most important metric that your email application cannot measure. There is no way to know how you did if you only use emails. Using help desk can give you the option to ask your client to rate their experience with you. With this you can evaluate your performance.
Workflow Can Be Prioritized
Prioritization of tickets is very difficult when using emails. If you want to arrange them by urgency, you have to get all the emails you have received, look them all over and arrange them all manually. This is time consuming and inefficient. If you do not want to prioritize, then you can just handle the emails as they come. But this method won’t allow you to see if there are tasks that need handling immediately. When you use an online help desk, the software will be in charge of tagging tickets depending on their urgency. This will allow you to handle tickets that need to be handled first. Here are some priority levels and their definitions:
- These are tickets that might compromise your client’s confidentiality and identity. Tickets such as change of password due to a hacking incident, disabling of account because it has been accessed by somebody else, are just some incidents that fall in this category.
- These are tickets that are important but not as urgent. But these are tickets that should be handled within a specific time frame. An example would be security updates.
- Normal or minor. These are tickets that complain of moderate loss of function or there is a small problem with the performance of the product. An example is when some script of add on are not working.
- These are tickets that are usually comprised of questions about the products. It does not necessarily mean that there is a problem but clients just want to ask questions or inquire more about the product that they have gotten.
Transparency
Because messages are all centralized with an online help desk it boosts transparency. It will be seen which department of the company are getting the most support tickets. When you know this, you can allocate more manpower to that specific department to help with the tickets they receive. Similarly, you can remove employees from departments that are not getting as much support requests as the other departments. The transparency the software provides also shows which of your employees are performing the best with the use of the ratings they are getting from the clients they help. If you are looking to transfer from emails to help desk, you can check out reviews of help desk software to know which will suit your business needs perfectly.
Collaboration
When using emails, it is hard to collaborate with team members because that would mean that you have to share your email inboxes with each other. The alternative is to constantly send emails back and forth. This is another time consuming task and not very effective. According to research done by Fonality, employees spend half of their days on their email applications doing unproductive tasks. This time spent on emails could be decreased with the use of the top help desk tools because this software allows everyone to see and edit the tickets in one place. A team of multiple members can work on one ticket at the same time without having to go back and forth with information using emails.
Continuity
The use of a help desk software ensures that there is continuity. When an employee resigns or was reassigned, the tickets he leaves will be in the system and will be viewable by the next employee easily. This safeguards all tickets received by the previous employee and this means that no customer will be forgotten just because the employee assigned to them left. To help improve continuity in your company, use a help desk system. You can search for help desk tools reviews in the internet to know which offers the best features at the most affordable price.
Email is not dead according to some companies but it can be seen that more and more sophisticated applications are appearing. Emails will always be a form communication for people, but for customer support it is time to scrap emails and switch to help desk software.
Looking for the best help desk software to replace your email applications? Look at users’ reviews in CrowdReviews.com to know which will fit you perfectly.
Trevor Price
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