Helpdesk technology is often at the core of an effective customer service strategy. The right tools can align your team members around crucial information, streamline problem resolution, and enhance customer service. Currently, demand for helpdesk solutions is growing so rapidly, the landscape is expected to reach a value of $21.8 billion by 2027.
The question for many businesses taking a service-focused approach to growth in 2022, isn’t whether they need a helpdesk tool, but how they can choose the right one. There are a multitude of great solutions on the market, and many come with unique features to explore, from AI analytics to automation.
Today, we’re going to be looking at some of the important things you might need to consider when comparing helpdesk technology for your team.
Step 1: List your Key Core Features
The first step in choosing any CX technology, is knowing which core features you can’t live without. The majority of helpdesk tools will come with a variety of SaaS capabilities built-in. These will include ticket management tools, with deadline tracking and assignment options. You’ll also need to think about knowledgebase technology, FAQs, and self-service portals.
Some of the most critical points to compare with any helpdesk provider include:
- Shared inboxes: A shared inbox should align your team members and provide insights into the customer journey cross a range of channels. Some of the best inboxes come with tags, custom filters, and views to help your team members prioritise which tasks to address first.
- Knowledge base: A comprehensive knowledgebase will ensure your team members have the insights they need to resolve problems quickly. The right solutions can also help with self-service requirements, by guiding customers through how to solve common problems.
- Dashboards: Dashboards provide useful insights into real-time data, analytics, and tasks to complete for your employees and supervisors. The best helpdesk solutions should make it easy to track, manage, and organize the customer service strategy.
Don’t forget about security and compliance features too. With all the private information stored on a helpdesk, it’s often a good idea to use tools with role-based permissions and controls to reduce the risk of data leaks.
Step 2: Consider your Current CX Investments
While helpdesk solutions are an important part of a good CX strategy, they’re also only one piece of the puzzle. The best solutions in today’s complex CX environment should make it easier for your team members to perform at their best, by aligning all the information and tools they need into one environment. As such, it’s worth thinking about your current CX investments.
For instance, your shared inbox should be able to align conversations and customer insights across all the channels you use for omnichannel service, including email, social media, live chat, and even voice transcriptions. The best tools may also need to integrate with some of the existing software your employees use every day.
A helpdesk solution which can also connect with your CCaaS system, CRM, and even workflow management tools can create a single pane of glass environment for your employees to stay productive. Many of the top helpdesks are highly flexible and extensible.
Step 3: Prioritize User Experience
Users can only get the most value out of CX technology when they feel comfortable using the software. If you’re going to deliver excellent support, you need your helpdesk to be as intuitive and easy to use as possible, for all the people who might access it.
Start by ensuring your employees know how to use their helpdesk logins effectively to track down important information, and create daily to-do lists. Your solution should be easy to navigate on a day-to-day basis, with customisation options to help your team members organise information. It also needs to be able to handle the escalation and prioritisation of tickets easily.
If you’re going to be embedding a customer portal into the helpdesk for self-service requirements, think about the experience your end-users are going to get too. How streamlined and efficient will the experience be for users who want to send in support requests and track the progress of tickets?
Step 4: Consider Collaboration Features
As team members in the CX environment grow increasingly distributed, collaboration features built into helpdesk technology is becoming more common. Solving a customer problem can often require the input of multiple team members, and stretch across various conversations, making alignment between your staff critical.
Consider looking for helpdesk tools which come with @mentions to help them connect with the specialists and colleagues they need, and collision detection, to ensure team members can see when other people are already dealing with support tickets. You might even prioritise a helpdesk which integrates with existing tools used for collaboration, like Microsoft Teams.
At the very least, your helpdesk should make it easy for team members to share files and information, as well as @tagging the people who need to take care of certain tasks.
Step 5: Remember Reporting and Metrics
One of the biggest benefits of helpdesk tools is their ability to provide a behind-the-scenes insight into team performance and customer journeys. Your helpdesk software must make it easier to understand the quality of the support you’re providing, and drive better results.
Most helpdesk solutions will come with various useful KPIs to track. You’ll be able to get an insight into your team’s busiest hours, resolution times, and first response times. You can also track information like how many customers access knowledgebase articles. Advanced tools with AI insights can also provide views into sentiment analysis and customer satisfaction ratings.
The best tools should also allow you to transform the data you collect into meaningful reports for shareholders, or send useful real-time guidance to employees.
Step 6: Consider Advanced Features
As helpdesk technology continues to grow in popularity, it’s worth considering the advanced features available from vendors. Even if you’re not going to be using things like AI chatbot integrations and voice of the customer analysis now, you may need these factors in the future.
Look into automation solutions which allow you to reduce the number of repetitive tasks your team members complete each day. Many helpdesks come with automated tools for notifying employees when a ticket status changes, or storing valuable information in the cloud. Some even include helpful automatic backups for disaster recovery.
You might want to consider self-service portals for customers, complete with virtual agents which can understand and process natural language. This can take some of the strain off your employees when it comes to handling common service requests.
