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by Robert of Fairfax

Look for a User-Friendly Internet Based Help Desk Software Solution

In today’s business climage, the online services of just about every successful business is becoming crucial to its present and future viability. Because of the way online business operates it is important to have customer support systems that operate with a minimum of intervention by the IT team.

At the core of a useful customer care system is help desk software that could be counted on day in and day out. What you wouldn’t like is your IT department having to be spending a significant amount of time hand-holding clients as they try to use your help desk system.

Indeed it is ideal if they spend virtually no time detailing the system to clients, testing it when clients wonder if it is working properly, or reconfiguring or reinstalling it when something fails with the system.

This is specially the case with small business help desk software. This is in point of fact the sort of relatively simple package made specifically for small establishments that don’t have a dedicated IT person. These users require an easily installed, easily set up and easily maintained system. Anything else would be very tough to keep up and would soon fall out of favor with the people trying to use it.

Several functions set a suitable help desk solution from one that is completely unacceptable. First, as we have already said it should be easy to set up. Secondly it ought to be easy to configure. Third it should be effortless to maintain. These are the most significant criteria from the IT management point of view.

Equally important if not moreso, the users of your help desk system must get the features they need most.

First of all, it should be easy to use. Ease of use is one of the most important features of any small business softwere.

Secondly it ought to provide your customers what they want – a relatively easy way to get answers to their queries. If it consistently does not give them the answers they are looking for they will simply stop using it.

Thirdly it should make it possible for your support staff to give answers rapidly. Assuming they know the answers, you certainly don’t want your software standing in the way of efficiently responding to customer queries.

Fourth, it is very important that it keep track of inquiries correctly. This is useful to provide a history of queries from different people.

Fifth, it should be tightly integrated with a knowledge base system that anticipates common questions and answers so support staff don’t have to reply to the same questions over and over again.

And sixth, your service desk software ought to give you a history of specific queries which clients can access without involvement from support staff.

If you can find help desk software that provides all this information and meets these criteria then it will be very useful for the day to day operation of your business.

www.charlespisano.com

Using ASP Help Desk Software to Improve Your Organization

Executive Summary

The environment of Help Desk and Customer Support is changing rapidly today. Instead of merely responding to a disgruntled caller with a problem, then solving the problem, or worse, taking down the information to find a resolution to the problem, ASP Help Desk Software and Customer Support Centers have to become a resource for the solution instantly, and hopefully be able to offer multiple solutions to the end user so they can either solve the problem on their own, or in best case scenarios, the Help Desk can offer potential solutions before the issue arises.

These “proactive” resources to solving problems have to come with a measureable ROI (return on investment) so that management can actually measure the cost of the Help Desk and apply a line item figure to the weight applied to the overhead of the organization. As well, many times the organization may actually realize additional income/profits as a result of the ASP Help Desk Software offering money-saving ideas to the client which result in larger sales to the organization that it is servicing.

The Balancing Act of the CSO

The environment of Help Desk and Customer Support is in a state of change – change that is driven by the pressures of the market and a change that will make them smart and flexible. Customer Support and Help Desk managers find themselves walking a tightrope to accomplish the transformation from necessary cost center to valuable profit generator.

The Help Desk no longer consists of one person or a few people using the phone to respond to the problems of disgruntled callers. Customers are impatient with a representative who must take down their information and then seek a resolution to the problem and, hopefully, respond with ideas for a resolution. In many cases, the Customer Support department has not grown in numbers, but now those people, with very limited financial and time resources, are asked by management to contribute to company growth, customer loyalty, and company recognition.

This small number of Help Desk representatives must support a large number of customers in a wide variety of countries using an even greater number of languages. To further complicate the situation, companies are now diversified which means they are selling an array of products and/or services which must be supported. As companies continue to struggle to make profits, the budget constraints on every department including Customer Support become more stringent.

The Customer Support Organization (CSO) representatives are often the only emissaries of the company that have personal or frequent contact directly with the customer. Therefore, smart CSOs need to become a resource for instant solutions to a myriad of problems. In today’s environment, it is critical for each company to elevate their service level to their customers as a way to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Satisfied customers become repeat customers and refer their associates. Happy customers are reflected by the various indicators of customer satisfaction, for which the CSO is accountable.

In order to make the best use of customer contact, smart Help Desk representatives need to utilize a wide variety of tools and communications channels like the internet, e-mail, and an online knowledge base to anticipate and solve customers’ problems. Smart Help Desk reps must take advantage of various methods of gathering customer data for future use. Understanding individual customers and groups of customers aids the CSO in anticipating their needs and problems and that information is then passed to the product management team to improve products.

Having more data on the customer is expected to impact the bottom line of the company as management demands that every department be an agent in growth and profit-building. This database of information is used to offer money-saving ideas, anticipate needs, generate renewals and contracts, and up-sell and cross-sell. As proactive resources are increasingly implemented, companies see a greater return on their investment (ROI).

The Basic Stages of the CSO

The original Help Desk was a Reactive Help Desk . It was a place to phone to ask a question or get a solution to a problem or malfunction. The customer initiated the interaction which was limited to what the people who were working knew about the product. In rare cases, the customer got to talk with a technical person or engineer. If that person could not answer the question, then he wrote down the information and asked someone in another department. Seldom was there a written manual or any repository of questions and answers. With the advent of e-mail, customers e-mailed a question with the hope of getting an answer back within a day or two. The main objective of the reactive Help Desk was to satisfy the customer by resolving the problem in a reasonable amount of time. The efficiency of Help Desk personnel was judged on the number of first-call resolutions and average hold times. These centers were considered overhead with negligible added value.

Most Help Desk s have progressed to Responsive Help Desks. This improved situation takes advantage of past reports from customers to create a common knowledge base to be applied across channels, allowing for better case management. Usually the knowledge base is available for self-service on the company’s web site and allows for users to send and receive e-mail tickets to report problems and get help quickly. Responsive Help Desk s allow for follow-up and feedback which further add to both the customer and product information databases. The objectives are a customer who is happy with his rapid problem resolution and the reduction of per service incident costs. Coincidentally the marketing and product management teams get useful feedback. Responsive Help Desks add value to the company which gives them credibility and resource allocation.

Proactive Help Desks deliver a full complement of Customer Support. By taking advantage of a common knowledge base and a repository of information about individual customers and customer segments, common event histories, and cross-channel Customer Support histories, they are able to anticipate customers’ needs and pre-empt service inquiries. Using a variety of communications channels such as web self-service, e-mail, targeted broadcast e-mail, automated “notify-on-change” mechanisms, and customer satisfaction monitoring systems, the Customer Support organization can better manage customer relationships by anticipating customer needs, pre-empting service inquiries, predicting customer concerns and needs, and identifying and acting upon sales opportunities. The CSO adds revenue, thereby optimizing business growth and profitability, by cross-selling, up-selling, and solidifying renewals and contracts. Because the customer’s expectations are exceeded, he recommends the company to others. CSOs that are able to contribute revenue to the company impact the morale of the company as well as playing a significant role in the growth and profitability of the company. The higher morale within the CSO further enhances the customer’s experience.

Three Basic Stages of Customer Support

ReactiveResponsiveProactive

Ability to help customerAnswer customer complaints and questionsAnswer customer needs, questions, and complaintsAnticipate customer needs, pre-empt service inquiries, predict customer concerns and needs, identify and act upon sales opportunities

Ability to utilize past knowledgeLimited to what people working at the time know, maybe an internal manualCommon knowledge base, common event histories, case managementRich common knowledge base, repository of information about individual customers and customer segments, common event histories, cross-channel Customer Support histories
Ability to utilize channels of communicationPhone, manually reply to e-mailWeb self-service, second generation e-mail response management, common knowledge base, phonePhone, web self-service, e-mail, targeted broadcast e-mail, automated “notify-on-change” mechanisms, customer satisfaction monitoring systems

Main ObjectiveProblem resolutionProblem resolution, happy customer, reduced per service incident costs Exceptional customer satisfaction, lower service costs, revenue growth, deeper customer relationships, positive contribution to P&L
Performance MetricsHold times, first-call resolutionCustomer retention, various feedback mechanismsVarious feedback mechanisms, service level metrics and alerting, business growth through up-sells & cross-sells & renewals, deeper customer relationships

Business ImpactCost center, negligible added valueEfficient, good feedback for marketing and product management teams, usually a cost center with some added valueRevenue growth, a definite profit center working with sales, higher morale and motivation in the CSO, good feedback for marketing team and product management team, significant differentiation from other companies

The Keys to Smart Help Desks

With the right planning and investment, CSOs can become smart — really smart – and take advantage of the extraordinary opportunity to transform themselves from low-morale cost centers to powerful, fully integrated agents of business growth which boost morale as well as profit for the whole company. There are five keys for Help Desk s to become Smart Help Desks.

- Have a clear vision

Managers need to fully comprehend the potential role their CSOs can play in generating revenue and optimizing customer relationships. They must have a strong sense of how customer interaction histories can be leveraged to discover revenue opportunities. Management needs a clear understanding of how to build and equip a Proactive Help Desk .

- Get executive and management support

Creating a Proactive Help Desk demands a paradigm shift that must be embraced from the CEO all the way through the entire company. Executive level support is essential for funding the proactive CSO. With full management support, strong working relationships and seamless business processes can be facilitated between the CSO and other departments such as sales, marketing, and product management.

- Implement new business processes

Because paradigm shifts are necessary, new cross-department processes must be designed and implemented. New customer-opportunity profiles, business rules, and call scripts must be created.

- Install the right technologies

The technical infrastructure of the company needs to be up to date. All communication channels need to interface seamlessly. A customer-driven knowledge base must be available online. This sets the stage for deployment of enabling technologies such as intelligent outbound e-mail communication and real-time opportunity analytics.

- Team with an experienced partner

A reputable, well-established consultant or partner will enable you to avoid making the same mistakes many others have made. This is also the best way to reduce the cost of missteps and ensure optimized Help Desk performance with options such as ASP Help Desk Software.

Conclusion

Today’s market pressure tightrope presents a tremendous opportunity for CSOs and CSO managers. It positions CSOs to play a major role in business success. Rather than being a cost center whose job is to simply prevent customers’ problems from disrupting the business, CSOs can proactively help grow corporate revenues, profitability, and marketshare. Proactive resources for anticipating and solving problems come with a measureable ROI (return on investment). Management can actually measure the cost of the Help Desk and apply a line item figure to the weight applied to the overhead of the organization.

CSOs and Smart Help Desks which are able to implement significant cultural, operational and technological change will aid their companies in growing market share and realizing additional profits. These CSOs and Smart Help Desk s will raise the level of expectation among customers and set their companies apart from their competitors.

by biggraham

Equipped to a better customer response with help desk software’s

Questions particularly the same old ones can be truly dumb. This may even be worse if they are put up by customers or clients who are in need of help and connect to the online business team for solutions that are very predictable. Most customers or clients are confused about new products or services and are quizzed when it is time to bring them down to real time applications therefore they resort to the support centre with frustrating questions about the little ordeal. This way answering such commonly asked questions will only congest the phone line and make the other clients waiting for the representative to help them with their queries. It is therefore better to take up a helpdesk software is designed to either help customers help themselves or to assist customers in contacting technical support.

Help desk software‘s usually have a fixed questionnaire with listed answers that can easily solve the patent queries of the customers without human support. An FAQ is a relatively short list of some of the most common questions that are asked of customer support and their answers. This helpdesk or service desk software can be used by any organization irrespective of its scale. The benefits of these service desk software’s include advanced and better customer service, immediate response time and lower costs of information technology.

These help desk software’s also help the IT groups to handle the calls in a more structured manner that can be counted on each time. When a helpdesk call is received, it should be immediately entered into the help desk software database, even if it is easily responded. At this point there is now a record of the call, and this allows other IT staff to view the contents of the problem and makes it a simple task for other IT staff members to offer solutions. This also prevents the call from being lost in the shuffle if staff is busy when the call is received. Your general staff will have much more confidence that when they place that call to your help desk staff, their call will be handled in a structured method to ensure their satisfaction. Many help desk software solutions offer a self-help method, allowing the staff members in your company to submit a helpdesk request directly into the help desk system. This feature greatly streamlines the process, and can increase response time for all users. Help desk support staff will not be interrupted by the phone call and have to stop working on another issue to record the call information.

Find More Service Desk Software Articles

by labanex

Service Desk Software Usefulness

Service Desk Software Usefulness

Enhances Customer Service via Faster Response Time

Customer service helps in improved productivity by using customer Support software by reducing the response time. IT staff members will be mandated to attend to service desk calls via a structured system which works each time. After a help desk call comes in, it must be fed into the service desk management software database right away even if was quickly answered. This records the call which allows other IT staff to look into the matter of the problem to let them assist by offering solutions. This method vastly enhances the satisfaction level of clients about the company. Besides customer support software provides management help to solve and offer data for the topics involving events, problems, configurations, modifications, releases, service level, service funding, capacity, service continuity, availability and safety.

Gives Management the Necessary Information

The software gives the management useful information which will help in planning like the proper utilization of the support employees, drawbacks or issues with the services, customer service functioning and the costs. Companies’ productivity will improve when they use the software since it actively regulates events and queries. It also offers an interface for numerous tasks like alter requests from clients and software licensing.

Provides numerous useful Information Management Functions

The software can get all calls including e-mails regarding complaints or reports which are log. The events are later on segregated and sorted out. The software then logs event escalation, informs the clients and the IT team regarding the progress of the case.

Service Desk Software Reduces Costs

Companies’ productivity will improve with service desk software as it has the single point of contact feature (SPOC) for end-users needing help. In absence of this feature, a company will have to bear big losses by spending plenty of time looking for ways of resolving the complaints and seeking the requisite help. Also due to all contact with users utilize a single central system, costs go down, resources are used properly used and management becomes easy.

Besides these, companies costs will reduce and productivity improve with service desk software since it offers variable ways of reporting which are usually costly to buy. And if companies can offer superior service by replying to all queries and problems fewer products will be returned.

Help Desk Metrics to Manage the System

Help desk systems have gained a great deal of prominence in recent times owing to the eagerness of companies in providing their customers and workers the best services and additionally escalating client understanding. As businesses and organizations improve along with their customer base, they ought to have effective help desk systems in place to cope with as many inquiries as swiftly and to the customer’s complete fulfillment as probable.

Help Desk Metrics Requirements

Typical help desks only had individuals completing to the consumers  requests which, while provided respectable customer satisfaction levels, could not be effective in dealing with sizeable numbers of inquiries. A difficulty with these systems is that they couldn’t be monitored or accounted for smoothly to grow performance.

To prevail over these limits, software systems were introduced in help desk systems. With this progress, help desk systems have really taken off in magnitude and numbers and is a complete business in itself. With the boom of help desk systems, there has to be high performance levels which means that the managers have to come up with means that can keep track of and watch the operations and accomplishment of them.

To guard the help desk systems in perfect check, several systems and performance metrics have been planned to calculate them. Such accomplishment assessment techniques will help the help desk managers to judge the current performance at a range of levels and in assorted departments of the help desk systems and discover which problems warrant enhancement. The accomplishment of the help desk system will grow and they will also know what problems and concerns their customers broadly face so that they can expand the excellence of the product or service.

Kinds of Measurement Metrics

Such accomplishment tracking needs various inputs to appraise the help desk metrics. One of the things that is needed to be acknowledged is how many questions were received over a precise period of time; such as, day, week, month, etc. If the business is big with multiple departments, you might require to compare the types of received questions from one department to another You might also want to distinguish the importance levels of the received queries. All of the above is completed to look at the reception of each inquiry that is coming in.

Once you sum up the information regarding the reception of the requests, it is time to look at how each was done. These metrics are critical to appraise how well the system handled the queries. These help desk metrics will be associated to the standard time it took to deal with each inquiry. These statistics can then be further broken down by time of day, for each department or help desk employee or what physical location the inquiry came from, the demographics of the requesting parties, and the list goes on. These metrics will also give information on how many calls were answered, were effective such as the requester got his problem solved or received the vital information, how many calls were abandoned, etc. And again, these numbers will also be broken down into the above-mentioned sections.

It will also keep track of active, pending and closed queries. Other things still are recorded, such as the nature of the request itself; such as, for troubleshooting a product, or looking for specific info, etc. The system then documents what solutions it gave to the special or new inquiries so that for impending alike requests it will have the techniques to take care of it.

All of this info will be composed to create various metrics so that the performance levels of the help desk is assessed and work is completed on issues that need improving. All of this is done so that impending requests can be done in an optimal manner.

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by doublebug

Why Choose Real Wood Veneer Reception Desk

A reception desk is the main attraction of a modern office today. It is the first thing which appeals to the eyes of an outsider. A modern contemporary front desk should be unique and gives a classy look to an office.   It can create a positive effect on clients and also to the employees.  A beautiful office receptionist desk gives a sophisticated look to a work place and often help complete a company’s image.

The trend is to create  a contemporary and distinct front lobby desk that is both warm and inviting.  This ‘must have’ piece of furniture usually have the classic feel of real wood veneer.  A variety of veneer desks are available in the market.  They are designed with integrated glass, brass, stainless steel and chrome to compliment the interiors.  Real wood, though an old fashion material, gives exceptional warmth to the reception area.  Such modern and classy reception area invites collaboration.  It creates a friendly approach and relaxes the mind of the people working in that particular organization.  It should be highly sophisticated and conducive to high standards of business by creating the right atmosphere.

Real wood veneer has features that suits many design criteria.  It is modern yet classic and is an everlasting presence in today’s expansive design spectrum.  They are available in many species, grain pattern, color, finishes, and textures;  thus, providing a wide variety of options for the designers and buyers.  It can be well tailored to suit the need of every customer.  Contemporary designs often integrate modern veneers, like copper, stainless, aluminum, to the classic wood veneer.  Edges can be banded with hard wood, pvc, stainless, aluminum, and other strips.  Stone, glass, and tiles are often used on receptionist desk counters because of their exception durability and home like feel.  Because there are so many options available and most often, office managers all have different taste.  There is rarely a single design that works for most company’s needs.  This is precisely why most mid to high end reception front lobby desk are custom made.  You just simply can’t stock a thousand plus configurations and anticipate what the business wants.  However, there are plenty of company who will compromise a little to afford a highly presentable front desk and meet their budget.  Such compromise often give buyers a variety of affordable options and drastically decreases lead time for reception desk.  Happy hunting.