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According to Vonage research report Companies in the United States lose more than $62 billion per year due to poor customer service. The fast-paced world we are currently living in has made the customer more demanding and less patient. And the only way to grow your business is to provide your customers with outstanding End 2 End support. These customers’ requirements demand going the extra mile by optimising the whole retailing process starting from response time, passing by the ease of purchase and fast interaction. In the past, this task was manually handled by human agents; however, thanks to the tech revolution, it’s not the case anymore. Acquiring a help desk has been the optimum tool to provide a consistent experience in your channels. And if you still wonder how this works, here it is, explained.
What is enterprise help desk software?
An enterprise help desk is simply a software that includes features to facilitate your customer support works and detangle their interlaced tasks. These features can help in work automation, transactions, making tickets, analysis and self-service; that all empower customers to solve their own problems and find their needed answers. But the question is how to decide that you need an enterprise help desk in specific and not any other type of helpdesk? Here comes the reply.
What’s the difference between enterprise help desk software & any other help desk software?
Helpdesks, in general, can be classified based on the size of the target customer, deployment method and much more, but what makes an Enterprise help desk a unique sort of it?
- Can support more than one type of deployment, either cloud based or on-premises.
- Can be integrated with one or more types of CRM.
- A feature-rich helpdesk that supports multiple complex operations.
Support scalability, it grows as your business grows. - Provide cognitive analysis, as this is a pillar demand for enterprise scale.
- Adopt outbound engagement not only inbound operations.
An enterprise help desk main highlighted key point is “Flexibility” it can be framed according to your business type, scale, time, language and market. Though, it’s your decision to evaluate your business and decide what kind of tools you need and most importantly, what is your customer service team needs? What are their daily obstacles? And how will you manage to provide software to solve them?
Why is it essential for your customer service team to have an enterprise-grade helpdesk software powered by Artificial Intelligence?
Helpdesk software is much more than a reactive crisis core; the fact is, helpdesk software is now a diagnostic and predictive tool. Currently, the service desk systems industry is rapidly developing with the growing demands and expectations of both enterprises and customers. The negative experience is rapidly spreading out on the contrary of the positive ones. According to the GlobeNewswire report, 95% of customers who had negative customer experience have told others about it, while only 45% shared positive experience. With the Ai powered helpdesk software, you can have numerous benefits and qualities besides from the positive experience, here is the top list of them.
Set your goals for your helpdesk software
Centralization
All customers tickets, requests, and transactions across channels are stored and processed from one single terminal helpdesk.
Prioritization
Customer issues are being prioritised to arrange fixing them according to the most impact on customer experience.
Automation
this is the most impactful feature among them all. It allows you to have an automated and smooth flow of customers, communications and transactions across channels.
Reporting
The helpdesk informative and descriptive reports can reveal particular patterns or customer behaviours which work as a double-edged weapon. On one hand you can use these reports to provide specific training or offers, and on the other hand, you can use them to predict upcoming failures and suggest problem areas where they need to be operated first.
Responsibility
Along with using a helpdesk ticketing system, the customer’s support team will have a clear view of their tasks, assignments and responsibilities.
Deployment
While setting your goals, it’s crucial to decide on the deployment type. If your industry demands a super-secure customer’s data as in banking, for example, you should go for the on-premise deployment type. While if this is not the case in your business type, the cloud option would be a better and cheaper choice.
Collaboration
A complicated problem usually requires cooperation between more than one team member. An enterprise-scale helpdesk should facilitate collaboration between team members and also support tech-whispering between an agent and its manager to call for support.
Time Tracking
Whether you have a work from home or office customer support team, its always a better choice to have a time tracking tool that shows the time spent in working. However, having this tool, coupled with your helpdesk, will improve productivity and ensure better working patterns. You will have access to see who handled this ticket management and how long it took to get issues resolved.
Analytics
A suitable helpdesk software can perform analytics from the daily ticketing activity to provide market insights and future suggestions.
Asset Saving
On using helpdesk software, you save a fortune that can be spent on hiring a customer support army. All you need now is only one-third of them. Besides, while using the cloud version of the software, you’ll also save a lot of assets that could have been spent on hardware and internal servers.
Policy Based Routing (PBR) & IT support
Evaluate your industry to check if I require policy-based routing, where ticket routing decisions are made based on specific policies and set by network administrator or IT support.
So, if you’re done with your decision, and your helpdesk software is now running, what should be the next steps? First of all, you need to track the impact on the customer support team and evaluate their performance before and after using it. Afterwards, you should put an eye on how the customer experience and satisfaction indicators are going. These two paths are your way to evaluate how much you’re saving money, time, workforce, and effort after your software deployment.
How to track your helpdesk software impact on the customer support team?
- Monitor the average agent support time.
- Make a note of the assignation time to ensure its decreasing.
- Track the number of overdue tickets before and after implementing the helpdesk software.
In addition to the previous impact index you need to understand the customers needs, what is his preferred connecting channels, what is he expecting from customer service and what stands between you and your enterprise help desk implementation.
How to track the impact on customer experience and service level?
- Pay attention to customer feedback.
- Measure the resolution time and make sure that the resolution rate is accelerating.
- Keep track of the number of unresolved problems and open tickets.
- Measure customer satisfaction with an after-service survey.
And finally, gather all the indicators you’ve measured and tracked into quarterly based reports that show progress and defects as well. In two consecutive quarters, you’ll be able to set your metrics and enhance your business plans with modified strategies. Sproutsocial 2017 Q3 index showed that customers’ reactions to poor brand response on social media showed that their first reaction is to boycott the brand and surely this is not what we want to happen. Keeping a loyal customer now costs and matters so pick your choice immediately.
Best Enterprise Helpdesk & Ticketing Software in The Market
If you’ve already made a solid view on how to choose a helpdesk software for your enterprise, then it’s time to survey the market, analyze options and limit your choices. But you have to know that there are limitless possibilities of products and services in the helpdesk sector. It all depends on your industry and business needs. Nevertheless, here are our best choices to recommend.
Oracle CX Service Enterprise HelpDesk
HelpDesk is part of Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise family of service portal applications. It tackles the overall speed and quality of internal support operations. In addition, it’s a real-time enterprise ticketing system that aims to provide faster and more accurate internal support.
Key features:
- End-to-end business flow support.
- Scalable solutions to fit varying business needs.
- Knowledge base with specific business flows to reduce resolution time.
- Fixed-cost service that enables budgeting for ongoing support requirements.
Tactful UCX – Enterprise HelpDesk
Tactful UCX is a cognitive customer experience platform that provides different qualities such as better customer retention, conversion rate, support team productivity and faster time to market. Tactful is the best in class solution in the MENA region. The central management dashboard in Tactful UCX offers an omnichannel AI-powered customer experience to stay Consistently Connected with Your Customers Across Channels.
Key features:
End-2-End Automation: Augment customer experience and support agents’ duties using state of the art AI technology.
Chatbot Engine: The integrated chatbot engine will turn your existing business operations into a self-service experience to help you stay connected 24/7.
Omnichannel Live Chat: Engage with customers in live conversations using modern and intuitive live chat technology.
Ticketing and Requests: Capture, assign, and manage customers’ requests in the integrated ticketing system.
Customers Journey: Deliver a better experience by understanding your customer’s journey and needs.
CRM Ticketing System: Maintain your customer information and relationship digitally in the integrated CRM system.
Cognitive Analytics: Drive customer retention and sales using actionable insights from real customer interaction.
Video Enabled Care: Enrich customer experience using video customer care sessions that can be pre-booked or created instantly.
Outbound Engagement: Stay connected by sending regular updates and information using the integrated campaigns manager.
Salesforce Help Desk Software
Salesforce help desk ticketing software encourages satisfied customers and increases the number of brand advocates. It aims to deliver smarter and more personal customer experience with affordable plans for the small and medium-size business.
Key features:
- Multi-channel support
- Case Management
- Mobile-Friendly
- Customer Portal
- Knowledge Base
- Satisfaction Scores
- Customer Health Monitoring
- 360-degree customer integration
Microsoft Help Desk Plus
Helpdesk plus is a customizable, flexible and hosted software that ensures the organization can handle every arising issue properly. It can be integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 or any other CRM platforms.
Key features:
- Customizable requests according to different fields
- Can be integrated with many CRM systems via Microsoft Flow
- Access management (three levels of users: Employees, Administrators and Technicians)
- Allows Technicians to perform technical functions on selected requests
- Ability to define admin-only fields
- Customizable email notifications
- Ability to add multiple attachments and comments to requests
- Reporting function with export to CSV and MS Excel
- User satisfaction survey
IBM Control Desk
IBM service desk manages multi-vendor and multi-cloud environments. It reduces running costs and increases satisfaction through a self-service, automated and integrated platform. It also offers IT Service Management ITSM that is needed to support users and infrastructures.
Key features:
- Easy configuration to match the business requirements
- Automated user-friendly service
- Manage IT, operational assets
- Analyze change impacts
- Manage software assets, changes and issues
- Flexible pricing and deployment.
IBM service desk manages multi-vendor and multi-cloud environments. It reduces running costs and increases satisfaction through a self-service, automated and integrated platform. It also offers IT Service Management ITSM that is needed to support users and infrastructures.
Key features:
- Easy configuration to match the business requirements
- Automated user-friendly service
- Manage IT, operational assets
- Analyze change impacts
- Manage software assets, changes and issues
- Flexible pricing and deployment.
Choosing one of these options as your enterprise help desk is still a dilemma. It depends on your industry type, scale, needs and customer type. Yet we know that it is not an easy process to do?
Summing it up, all you need is to download this helpdesk software evaluation kit, tick on your needs, and at the end, you’ll have a comprehensive checklist of the features that are most matching and must-haves to nurture your business.
Download The Enterprise Helpdesk Software Evaluation Kit
2021 Emerging Trends and predictions for Enterprise Help Desk
Agents Remote Work
With the latest world break down with corona, enterprises had to let all employees and agents work remotely. Their main dependant at this crisis is the helpdesk software they use. An efficient help desk had helped and encouraged agents to fulfil their job task efficiently, even when they are office-away. Future Forum research on 4,700 employees found the majority never want to go back to the old way of working. Only 12% want to return to full-time office work, and 72% want a hybrid remote-office model moving forward.
Customer Support Over Social Media
Social media has gained a significant value in the business world in the last ten years. Customers currently find it easier to open social media preferred channels and interact with their favourite brand than sending an email or making a call. A recent study by ValueWalk reported that 63% of customers expect businesses to offer support via social media, and this value is on an increasing flow. Making one of the notable features in the helpdesk that it can support via social media channels as well.
Freelance Customer Service Startups Are Growing
With 2020 fading and 2021 rising, operating customer service companies as b2b have been growing. Large enterprises prefer to remove the hustle of the support problems away from their shoulders and hand it to a specialized quality customer service company. This turning point stimulated customer support companies to invest more in omnichannel AI software to support their growing business.
Final Thoughts
Help desk software is an essential tool in the business world nowadays to provide an adequate Service Level Agreements(SLA) customer service, no matter the size or scope of your industry. Aside from the financial profits, it also enhances productivity and team performance. Sorrowfully, when COVID-19 hit this year, some enterprises were well prepared to deal with the online model, and some were not. And this clearly showed who nourished and who could’ve only survived. Don’t be left behind and decide to choose a developed-tech path to manage your business.
