Early-stage businesses may think that investing in help desk software is a luxury, not a necessity. However, purchasing a customer support solution early in the company’s lifecycle is a way to unlock value for the company. This value is possible because customers are looking for the best possible experience with products and services, and that includes engaging with support teams. If there are delays or they must repeat themselves, the risks of customer churn increase.
According to recent research, more than 65% of people have higher customer service expectations than they did five years ago. They want support to be easy and frictionless. Your customers don’t want to have a back-and-forth conversation diagnosing a problem–especially if you need to know what system or browser they are on. They expect for you to have that data readily available without having to ask for it.
Help desk software helps solve this problem. Some solutions even go further–they’ll let your customers log in directly to your support portal or directly create a ticket capturing their device information. This means you can jump right to supporting your customers, reducing waiting time and improving efficiency. This means that both your employees and your customers get the best possible experience.
But help desk software does more than just streamline the information sharing process between your team and your customer. It also captures data that can help you predict when you may need more employees or document repetitive issues that need to be escalated for prioritization. The best solutions can do this automatically with tagging features, meaning that you program in what you want the system to watch out for, and it tags automatically.
With these tags, you’re able to easily see trends. You could look for topical trends, or even set tags based on devices to identify if your team is seeing more complications from mobile devices than desktop computers, for example. These insights help position customer support as a leading indicator for business operations and strategy, an invaluable tool to ensure the longevity of your business.
Help desk software also helps businesses do operational planning, particularly in managing support employee headcount efficiently. While software will never fully replace your team, it can help them spend their time on engagements that matter. It can also help you identify when your resolution time gets too long–a sure way to know that it’s time to hire another member of your team.
Between ensuring a best-in-class support experience for your customers and empowering the best work from your support staff, help desk software is a golden ticket to continued business success. It will help reduce customer churn and improve customer sentiment–two strategies to improve business performance.