6 Essential Features Your Customer Help Desk Needs

Customer help desks address key expectations from support

3
Customer Help Desk
Contact CentreInsights

Published: June 21, 2021

Anwesha Roy - UC Today

Anwesha Roy

Customer help desks address some of the key expectations from support – they are available 24/7, the customer is empowered to self-serve, and a properly constructed help desk can help resolve queries at a fraction of the duration of an average telephonic interaction. However, research suggests that there are several roadblocks holding back organisations from delivering high-quality help desk services. 44% are struggling to modernise their service systems while 41% lack the skills needed to manage the end-to-end customer experience, besides the duration of a call. Analysing customer data is also problematic for 1 in 3 organisations.

That’s why it is so important to ramp up your customer help desk capabilities, ensuring the following features are present to help YOU extract maximum value and help the CUSTOMER receive the best possible experience.

  1. An expansive knowledge base

This is the first, most essential element you need in a help desk. The customer should be able to look up frequently asked questions, product documentation, warranty information and support manuals, changelogs, and other details relevant to product usage. The knowledge base should be properly indexed with adaptive search, making it easy to quickly zero in on specific problems and their answers.

  1. An integrated ticketing system

If customers aren’t able to self-serve and address their queries using the knowledge base, there should be a mechanism raising tickets right from within the help desk portal. There are several ways to do this – a web callback capability allows customers to request a callback by simply pressing a button. Visual IVR and email-based ticketing are other options. The help desk should classify, categorise and prioritise these tickets at the backend for your agents’ benefit.

  1. Embedded live chat

Live chat has emerged as an extremely popular service channel, partly owing to convenience (customers don’t have to take time out of work, meetings, or any other activities to make a call), and also the rise of chat as a communication mode in general. You can embed a chat feature in your online help desk, equipped with an AI assistant to answer basic queries and redirecting to a live agent if needed.

  1. A user community

Large enterprises – particularly consumer software companies – can leverage user communities as part of their help desk portal. This taps into the collective intelligence of their customer audience, many of whom are pro-users and vocal product advocates. Beta users, too, can help customers out with vital information and reduce the pressure on your live contact centre. Consider integrating a dedicated community platform like UserVoice to achieve this.

  1. Feedback and survey systems

The customer help desk is an excellent place to collect feedback, as help desk visitors are typically at a high intent & interest state. Sharing a feedback form or a survey questionnaire at this time can capture timely and accurate information on the help desk UX, quality of service, responsiveness, product experience, and other aspects of CX as a whole.

  1. Global search

Finally, make sure there is a global search bar to find specific keywords across the other elements of your help desk content repository.

 

 

Artificial IntelligenceHelpdeskKnowledge Management
Featured

Share This Post