Whether or not businesses like it, customers will always call them with complaints or questions about delivery tracking, lost passwords, returns or service outages. A majority of companies also encounter their own IT employees asking for help with problems regarding computer hardware, software and other tools.
The sheer number of daily external and internal inquiries can be massive for some companies, and it can be a monumental and very tedious task to systematically track all of them to ensure that they are addressed as soon as possible. Small business help desk software is perfect for companies that have few employees but need help keeping up with requests from a large customer base.
What Is Help Desk Software?
Techopedia explains that help desk software allows the operators at a help desk to keep up with customer requests via a unique identifier. The system lets them easily find solutions for and prioritize customer problems. Although it cannot replace employees, the software automates some tasks, including
- alerts and notifications based on specific factors;
- canned responses that allow employees to insert personalized content; and
- ticket categorization, prioritization, status management and routing.
With this automation, your company can have an accurate, fast and reliable customer service or tech team.
Benefits of Help Desk Software
Below are the advantages that you get from using help desk software.
1. Improves Customer Experience
The simplest way to lose customers is for them to have a bad experience when they call or email your service desk to complain or get assistance. Customers expect to have their questions answered and their problems resolved as soon as possible, especially if their issue in question is vital to the operation of their businesses.
Help desk software is designed to simplify problem management, allowing your customer or tech support team to respond to requests efficiently and in a timely manner. Due to this, the reputation of your business remains solid, you keep your existing customers and you get free marketing through word of mouth. Having happy customers is a major contributor to acquiring new customers.
2. Tracks How Long It Takes to Resolve Issues
It is virtually impossible to determine whether your customer or tech support team members are effective when you do not track their progress. Most help desk software is created with reporting functionalities that make it simple for managers to determine how much time their support representatives take and need to resolve a problem. The feature also allows them to see the varying levels of competency in their teams so that certain issues can be routed to certain employees. Over time, problem resolution is faster because certain problems are passed to the workers who are most qualified to handle them.
3. Improves Task Prioritization
Although it is important for all customer issues to be treated with urgency, not all of them should be prioritized equally. For example, business-critical problems are more important than simple inquiries about a product or service. Help desk software allows your specialists to prioritize calls and emails so that the most important issues are not forgotten or lost.
4. Establishes Realistic Due Dates
The management feature in small business help desk software lets managers assign and set realistic due dates for resolving customer issues. It also allows them to allocate due dates automatically, and customer problems can be classified according to due dates.
5. Manages Time
With improved problem prioritization and assigned due dates, your support representatives can manage their time properly. This allows them to manage issues and work more efficiently and effectively.
6. Empowers the Support Team
If you do not have the tools to get things finished efficiently, it does not matter how much talent you have on your customer or tech support team. Along with not using their talent to the fullest, a chaotic workplace is not a good way to grow and nurture the best representatives in your industry.
With cloud-based software, your employees can create, manage and track customer issues. They can also collaborate with other employees to avoid unnecessarily duplicating work and to make information readily available so that others can make better decisions. Giving your workers these tools stimulates creativity, loyalty and employee satisfaction.
7. Tracks Team Productivity Targets
Ensuring excellent customer satisfaction is essential for the longevity and relevance of businesses, and productivity is a big factor in achieving that. Help desk software gives companies an accurate look into the productivity of individual support representatives and whether they are meeting their targets. A company can gather best practices for its entire team based on what its most productive employees are doing. If there are productivity issues, the company can identify and rectify areas of improvement.
8. Manages a Database or FAQ for Customers
Customers can find the answers to their questions or solve their issues if they have a step-by-step guide. Help desk software provides a self-help portal for customers, which reduces the number of customers who call or email your team. This also means that your team has fewer tickets to deal with, so they can provide better support for the tickets that they receive on a daily basis.
How Much Does Help Desk Software Cost?
Price is a considerable factor when most small businesses are thinking about purchasing software. The good thing about small business help desk software is that several companies offer free subscriptions for companies that are on a budget or that just want to test out a certain system to see how the products could be of benefit. ClickDesk, Freshdesk, UserVoice and Zoho Support are some examples of these providers. Some other software companies offer packages that start from $1 per team member per month, such as Zendesk.
