Customer experience has become the battleground of business. Your ability to satisfy your customers quickly is crucial to long-term success and customer retention. Small businesses can manage their customer service directly through the support channels that customers prefer. This approach does not support growth. You will lose valuable time each week juggling between Facebook, Instagram, or email (or whichever platform your customers use to contact you) and transferring information from one platform to another.
You won’t be able to access time-saving advanced features like automation and self-service, which are highly demanded. This article will explain how a help desk can improve your customer service and help you to retain customers. Continue reading to learn why you should join the 58% who actively use help desks.
What is a Help Desk?
Help-desks are a common issue used to answer questions from customers. Businesses use help desks to assist their customers in commerce with questions and issues relating to products and orders. Help desk tools enable teams to work together to manage, organize, respond to, and report on customer requests (or tickets). It is essential to keep track of several metrics relating to customer tickets, including first response time (FRT), average resolution time, unresolved tickets, and customer satisfaction, among others. This data can give you a better understanding of how well your team performs and can provide you with factual information rather than relying on only customer feedback.
Not all help desks have the same features. The help desk category is broad, ranging from ticketing to customer service platforms with self-service, automated workflows, and reporting. Our help desk was explicitly built for online merchants.
Help Desk Types
Help desk systems simplify service management. Managing increasing support requests as your business expands can be a nightmare without a central help desk system. A customer service team will need a different help desk than an IT department.
The main types of Help Desks are:
Cloud-Based or Digital Help Desks
You pay a monthly or annual fee to the digital help-desk provider that hosts your help desk. It is an excellent option for smaller and mid-sized companies without IT departments to create software. Hosting and maintaining help desk software is no longer necessary. This help desk type is ideal for businesses that want to improve customer service.
Help Desks On-Site
Here is the DIY solution for help desks. You could buy the license to a software help desk tool and host it on your own servers. This type of help desk gives you complete control of data and security. Cloud-based help desks, however, are safer than most other types of help desks thanks to their advanced security features.
On-site help desks will soon be a thing of the past as the world increasingly moves to the cloud. Most organizations with on-site support are law offices and government agencies that do not trust external servers to handle sensitive information but have their IT infrastructure in place.
Help Desks for Large or Enterprise Organizations
They can be either digital or on-site, but they’re built specifically for large companies. They are usually more tailored than a standard solution and come with more support. This help desk type may only be for you if you are sure you require enterprise software.
Help desks Open-Source
Open-source software allows developers to access source code freely without paying for proprietary software. This kind of help desk can be free but will require an IT team to customize and build the software. This help desk type can also be more vulnerable to data breaches or outages. Open-source help desks receive more dedicated support than you would get if you purchased an upgrade.
Help Desks for Internal IT
Some businesses, typically larger companies like universities and hospitals, have an IT help desk that helps employees resolve technical problems. An IT team could create a self-service portal that includes a troubleshooting guide and enables users to submit requests for extra support easily.
A help desk, just like your team of customer service representatives, organizes and streamlines the support process. It also saves valuable time by reducing unnecessary requests with self-service and collecting all incoming support requests.
What is the Difference Between a Helpdesk and a CRM system?
A help desk and a CRM are nodifferentCustomer relationship management systems used to manage client relationships. This central location helps you organize your information about leads and clients. This system allows you to get an overview of each customer support team and the current status of their relationship.
A CRM does not typically have ticket management features because it primarily focuses on sales data and account information. The ticketing system is an integral part of the helpdesk, which is why they differ. Salesforce is often mistaken for a helpdesk tool. However, its primary focus is CRM rather than helpdesk administration. Some CRM features are also available on solid helpdesk platforms, such as aggregating customer interactions in one place, loyalty data, and marketing campaign results.
What is the Difference Between a Helpdesk and a Live Chat?
Some helpdesks include live chat as well. Websites often host live chat software allowing visitors to interact with brands in real-time. Helpdesk software collects requests for help from numerous sources, including email, social media, and phone. A more powerful helpdesk cannot function without a live chat feature.
That is an example of a helpdesk with live chat. Users can easily install the widget on their site in a few clicks. Live chat is a feature that can be added to the helpdesk. That allows you to respond directly from the helpdesk without needing a separate platform.
What is the Difference Between a Service Desk and a Helpdesk?
Many organizations can differentiate between a self-service options bureau and a support desk. Both are often interchangeable terms for a service desk or help desk used to improve end-user support and centralize knowledge base management. Very few companies possess both.
Technically, a help desk is more comprehensive than a support desk. A service desk can include additional account management and feature requests. With today’s modern help-desks, you can achieve these same goals. We recommend using the term helpdesk if you want organization and a streamlined approach to customer service. You can also call it a customer base service platform to better reflect modern tools’ features.
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Help-desk Software Benefits
Help-desk software is the best way to improve customer satisfaction, leading to more loyal customer conversations. We’ll examine five of the most significant benefits of integrating help desks into your business hours.
Customer Service Can Improve Your Business’s
The ROI of customer experience solutions has increased by 633% over three years. The report should have specifically mentioned help desks. Still, improving customer satisfaction also means that they yield a positive return as part of customer service. To give you a point of reference, the average merchant who uses the helpdesk will see a 5% increase in revenue compared to before using the tool. Check out our customer service ROI guide to find out more. See how a ‘helpdesk’ resulted exclusively in $9 million of revenue from BruMate’s support team.
Rapid Response Time
Customers expect to receive an instant response from businesses when they contact them. Helpdesk software organizes customer inquiries in such a way as to make it easy to prioritize them. It also uses automation to avoid repetitive tickets and tickets with low impact. Templates are used to help customer service agents get a jump start. Their tickets have been centralized, the customer service process has been streamlined, automated, and agents are more productive. What’s the best part? The customer waits for far less for a response.
Tickets Not Lost or Missed
When a company does not use a help desk, the chain for handling support tickets could be more transparent. Customer loyalty is frustrated because they must repeat their questions to every new agent. Helpdesk tools organize all customer interactions from different channels in one dashboard. They also provide clear notifications of the number of open tickets so you don’t miss any. You can see how many tickets agents closed during their shift and even which ones they have in the queue.
For example, was able to integrate its entire tech stack to consolidate its customer support tickets onto a single platform. That resulted in a reduction of 33% in response times and an increase in the number of tickets.
Information About the Customer in a Single Ticket
Although not all help desks have these basic features, it is an essential tool for businesses that want to provide fast and personalized service.
Shows all past order data and any conversation or transaction a client has ever had with you, including those on social media. You can use this context to better understand past customer interactions (positive or negative) with your brand, leading to more efficient and productive conversations. Avoid asking your customers to tell you information they have already shared with your brand. In the sidebar of the ticket, you can also import customer expectations data from other apps.
Integrating your Favorite Apps Gives you a Powerful Combination
Together, your apps will be more robust. You can use the help desk to install integrations, preventing agents from switching between apps or copying/pasting customer data. The help desk provides all the information agents need about customers. Visit the App Store to find out more about our integrations. These include top e-commerce apps that you may already be using.
Agent Productivity and Teamwork are Enhanced
Recent research shows that 86% of teams who use a helpdesk are more productive. It’s not surprising that helpdesk software is a productivity booster:
- Agents can comment privately on tickets, which improves communication between the team.
- Triage allows your team to prioritize requests to address urgent or time-sensitive queries first.
- Allow your team to develop an escalation strategy so urgent questions are sent to the appropriate teams.
For example, we used the ‘help-desk tool’ to recover lost support time. Saving 10-15 minutes allowed them to focus on their ambitious target of achieving a growth rate of 200%.
Consistency in Customer Service
You can turn the best messages into templates your entire team can use. It speeds up the helpdesk, which leads to more consistent CX and a faster first response. Macros are templates that include variables to personalize messages for each customer. The variables are blanks that automatically retrieve customer data from your online platform. Personalized information that does not require any copy/pasting.
Business Operations Can be Improved
Help-desk software can help you improve your business processes. The software consolidates all your metrics for customer service into one place, allowing you to report on them more effectively. It also provides a dashboard to help track issues and to make better business decisions. Dashboards with clear and concise reporting will also help you better meet service-level agreements. See how the Revenue Statistics Board helps companies quickly communicate and understand their impact on revenue.
Agent Time can be Reclaimed
Use templates to answer faster and prevent your agents from getting burned out. That will allow them to spend more time working on tickets that move your business. Princess Polly achieved this. Princess Polly has increased its customer service by 40%. They have also reduced their resolution times by 80%, improved the first response by 95%, and improved single-touch tickets. Want to improve your customer service level? Our guide on essential customer service practices for e-commerce is a great place to start.
Helpdesk Essential How can you make a Help Desk Good?
Six key features are required for an excellent app to provide technical support to your clients and helpdesk staff. We’ll look at the importance of these features:
1. Multichannel Communication
Google conducted research in collaboration with Forrester Research on the communication needs of businesses. Customers prefer to use asynchronous methods of communication, such as social media, text messages, messaging through third parties, or chats via a mobile app when contacting a brand. Businesses that offer multichannel communication, whether asynchronously or in real-time, are more likely to succeed. According to the study, this group of businesses is so successful that it’s 3.4 times as likely for them to see revenue growth.
Social media interaction is also included in a good help desk application. There is no need to waste time trying to keep track of communication on all channels. Your customers can communicate with you via the channel they prefer rather than having them submit support tickets.
Noteworthy Features:
- You can support all channels your clients might use, such as email, live chat (phone, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp), SMS, messaging apps, and social media.
- All channels can be aggregated into one view for each customer.
- Agents can like, reply and share comments made on social media.
2. Tickets Management
You must be able to organize and track customer tickets effectively at all times.
Noteworthy Features:
- Create, close, reopen, submit, and resolve tickets.
- Helpdesk Tickets: Assigning or reassigning them.
- Automatic ticket routing and categories.
- Tickets with public and private action.
- Automated messages and canned responses.
- Views that provide a comprehensive view of tickets and customer interaction.
3. Features of Self-Service
You might be surprised at how much customers desire self-service. According to 88% of the respondents in a Microsoft survey, they want businesses to offer online support portals similar to help desks. It’s a bit of a shame that, with all this in mind, only 42% of teams use self-service help desks for customer support.
A FAQ page, or even better, a knowledge base that is fully developed, can provide customers with detailed answers without them having to contact customer service and wait. That is an example of how a Help Center can be built using. By integrating your self-service widget with self-service ordering management, you can give your customers immediate answers while reducing the workload on your agent.
Noteworthy Features:
- Knowledge Base Articles
- Forums communautaires
- The live chat widget offers self-service features.
- Customization Options
5. Automation Capabilities
Helpdesks let you automate a lot of ticket-related communication. If, for example, many customers need immediate assistance with issues already addressed by your knowledge base and a response is automated, it can guide them to the appropriate resource, reducing the time spent on tickets. It can even give them a customized answer and act on their request - like changing the shipping address.
Automating your processes will help you to resolve customer problems faster and allow agents to focus on more critical tickets. That is an example. The loop earplugs were used with the automation add-ons and integrations to reduce response times and resolve issues. They also reduced “Where’s your order?” questions from 17 to 5 percent. Data shows that a combination of self-service and automation can divert up to one-third of the tickets you receive, allowing your agents to focus on tickets of importance to your company.
Noteworthy Features:
- Tickets can be automatically tagged and assigned based on their contents or channels
- Macros to automatically respond to some tickets
- Automated actions include canceling an order or changing credit card information.
- Automate your chat widget with automated responses
6. Reporting Functionality
Reporting tools should be available to help you measure, track, and analyze your help-desk agent’s performance and the customer experience. Your metrics should be consolidated into an interactive dashboard to use for real-time decision-making and to improve your bottom line. Dashboards are available for the performance of each agent, revenue impact, customer satisfaction, and other metrics such as first response time and resolution times.
Noteworthy Features:
- Metrics related to tickets include the number of created, responded, closed, and sent tickets and resolution times, response times, etc.
- The customer satisfaction index includes the number of surveys completed, average ratings, rating distribution, and percentage.
- Understanding the types of tickets that make up your bulk ticket volume requires reporting on tags and intentions.
- You can improve your product by viewing the most common customer questions brought to customer service.
7. Integration of Third-Party Services
How easy is integrating your help desk solution with pre-built tools and other software? What are the available integrations? What is your actual requirement for integrations? Are you required to pay for these integrations? It would help to ask yourself these questions when looking for an online help desk tool.
For example, if you need an e-commerce support desk, choose software compatible with your e-commerce platform and applications. These are all top candidates. If you are in an extensive IT department, look at help desks like Service Desk, which offers many third-party IT integrations.
Noteworthy Features:
- All customer information is combined in one place with seamless integration between different apps and your help desk.
- Multi-app workflows can be integrated with these apps’ functionality (e.g., Klaviyo can be used to create segments based on attributes (like a campaign for win back)
Statistics on Help Desks
Let’s look at some statistics if you are still unsure about the benefits of helpdesk service. These statistics will show how vital help desks can be in providing the best customer service possible.
1. By 2023, the Help-desk Market is Expected to Grow from $1 Billion to $12 Billion
Transparency Market Research published this statistic. The online helpdesk was worth $8.9m in 2020 and is expected to reach nearly $20m by 2028. Help desks are expected to continue growing in popularity. However, online help desks have a greater chance of gaining market share as the year progresses.
2. Resolution is the Most Critical Issue for 90% of Customers
This statistic shows that a help desk will be only helpful if the customers can resolve their problems. Help desks cannot be used to mask other issues with customer service within your business. Prioritize a quick resolution of issues and, if this isn’t occurring, look deeper for underlying problems.
3. 84% of Consumers are Willing to Pay more for Better Service
Gladly conducted research that led to this statistic. As we have already mentioned, good customer service can improve your bottom line. If you provide the best support, people will be more willing to spend money and return as customers.
4. Businesses Lose up to $4,7 Trillion a Year Due to Experiences That do not Meet Expectations
Qualtrics found that customers were dissatisfied with the services they received from brands. This dissatisfaction cost a lot of money. You can make your customers happy by providing an omnichannel service where they can express their concerns through their preferred online platforms (social networks, live chats on your site, etc.). It’s essential to be responsive and resolve issues as soon as possible to ensure a great customer experience.
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What is the Best Software to Use For Help Desks?
Please sign up for some demos or trials when shopping for helpdesks. While reviewing your options, here are some things to consider:
- Price: Is the price plan affordable, and are there various pricing options?
- Ticket Organization: Is there a visual, intuitive way to share which tickets require attention and which agents?
- Automated Features: Can your team or customers benefit from automated functions that save time?
- Support for All Channels: Can the platform be used with any channel, including social media and texting?
- Integrate: The Platform with Tools You Already Use (or Plan to Use).
Last Thoughts
Research shows that 24/7 help desks can boost your business, improve customer service, provide self-service, automate routine tasks, and give your agents more time to deal with complex cases. You can retain your existing customers and attract new ones by focusing on your customer's journey and creating an excellent customer experience.
