Turn Your Help Desk into Great Support

Yes, there is software you can use to make customer support easier to manage. It organises Customer Support so you can source enquiries easily and manage problems without searching for conversations in live chat, social media, WhatsApp and emails. By organising your conversations, you can speed up your support offering, have everything in a single place, and give your customers the assistance they need. If you’re a small business and everybody chips in to handle everything, from support to sales and marketing, this can be a great help.

The Tools You Need

When you look for software, use this checklist to see whether it includes most of the tools on the following list:

•  Conversations in a single place: You don’t want to search for places where customers have requested assistance. You need all your queries in a single place, so it’s easy to find, regardless of where the customer enquired – social media, What’sApp, live chat or email. To simplify things, everything is also organised so that you have everything you need: the customer’s history, context for the query, and client preferences.
•  Tickets are easy to manage: The system makes it easy to close a support ticket once the query has been handled. It’s also simpler to hand over to someone if the query needs further assistance.
•  AI and Automation to help: Using AI and simple automation, you can respond to questions that are asked repeatedly without having to reply to the same subject time and again. The AI can also hand over to a human agent if things get complicated or are sensitive.
•  Info and FAQs on hand: You have already answered common queries in the FAQs section and may also have a selection of blogs that provide answers, too. Customers can access these to find solutions to simple issues.
•  Team collaboration: With everything clearly visible and AI to assist, it’s easy for people to collaborate and ensure the problem is solved quickly.

5 Essential Help Desk Features

Use Help Desk software with the following features as building blocks to help your team handle customer messages, respond to queries faster and keep conversations in a single place. Here are the five handiest features to look for:

1.  A Shared Inbox

All your messages from live chat, email, and social media are collected in a single shared inbox; this means you don’t have to search for a conversation or a customer’s history. It’s all there waiting for you. This simplifies customer support and keeps it organised, even in busy periods or if there’s a sale or a special campaign. This way, you can respond quickly, and the inbox indicates when a new query comes in, and when it’s been settled.

If there’s more than one person handling customer support, it’s also easy to collaborate. You are unlikely to respond to the same query at the same time, as the software won’t allow this. If you do need to hand over to someone more qualified to respond to the query, they will receive the full context of the conversation so far.

For these features, look for software which includes collaboration elements.

2.  Ticket Management

Turning queries into trackable tickets is important. Your Help Desk must be able to create a ticket, assign it to someone if necessary, and close it. You must also be able to reopen the ticket if the problem continues. This way, your customer support system is organised, you’re able to find a ticket fast, and handle more tickets in your workday. For this, you need software that allows you to manage tickets from your inbox by giving each ticket a status, so that daily workflows are simple for everyone.

3.  Automation & AI

These tools can help you handle repetitive queries without having to respond to them over and over. Automation also helps you prioritise which tickets are urgent, and route some of these to someone more specialised to handle them if necessary. With AI, you’re also able to respond faster to queries, even on a busy day. This gives you more time to handle more difficult queries manually.

Automation also enables you to put a customer query into context; your shared inbox gives you sight of important details about the customer, their past chats and previous orders. Having a history means you don’t have to repeat any questions; everything is there for you to read and understand. You can also accurately respond to their current query with knowledge of their past issues and how they were solved. This type of context is available in various software features, including full profiles of each customer.

4.  AI Chatbot for Common Queries

Software offering an AI chatbot simplifies responding to repetitive queries about how to order, delivery, shipping, sales, accounts, payment, returns and any other important questions people ask time and again. An AI chatbot can answer these questions quickly and easily. It can request a customer’s order number, details about the order or any problems, giving you the time you need to handle more serious, or sensitive queries. Best of all, look for a system where, if the chatbot can’t answer the query, it hands the issue to a human via a live chat widget. Of course, the conversation transcripts are also recorded, so that there’s a history.

5.  Blogs & Help Articles

It’s important to have a knowledge base, a series of blogs and help articles that customers can read to solve problems without requesting assistance. Having common answers to simple questions should help reduce the number of queries you receive and need to answer. It also ensures the answers are consistent and clear. Look for software with a good search bar and simple editing tools so you can easily update the content if and when it changes.

Avoid These Common Errors

When you look for software to simplify your customer service Help Desk, try to find features that will fulfil your requirements. Don’t go overboard with too many features, as you won’t use all of them. Also, take advantage of a trial period with the software to see whether it will answer your problems and provide you with the customer service you require.

The best way to find what you’re looking for is to write out a list of your requirements,and then find software that will fulfil them.