When customers interact with large enterprises, they expect an exceptional experience in terms of:
- response time;
- communication; and
- problem resolution.
You can’t afford to sideline any of these aspects and say, “Sorry! We have limited staff.” As a large enterprise, you must have a full-fledged customer support system in place. And, here’s where an enterprise help desk fits into the big picture. With the enterprise help desk market in Asia-Pacific expected to reach $2.6 billion by 2027, you have to understand the importance of an enterprise help desk for your business.
What Is an Enterprise Help Desk?
An enterprise help desk is a comprehensive platform that provides assistance and self-service for consumers and employees of an enterprise.
With an enterprise help desk, the following activities can be done easily:
- employ chatbots and knowledge base for customers and employees as self-service;
- convert support requests into tickets using a ticket management system;
- assign these tickets to support agents so they can accept, track, and manage them according to their availability;
- communicate with your customers via their preferred channels — emails, social media, phone, or SMS;
- automate mundane tasks like ticket forwarding and issue tracking;
- integrate your software with both internal and external tools; and
- measure CSAT by analyzing feedback from customers and employees.
The ability to automate specific tasks and serve as a holistic solution comes with many benefits for your enterprise. Take a look.
Top Five Big Business Benefits of an Enterprise Help Desk
Here’s what an enterprise help desk does for your business.
Benefit #1: Makes your service agents productive and efficient
53% of developing companies prioritize operational efficiencies, and 55% focus on customer experience in their IT investments. Hence, an enterprise help desk is your way to achieve productivity and efficiency in IT service management. Here’s how:
- Skill-based ticket routing – Your agents work only on those support requests that fall under their expertise.
- Resources at your fingertips – Your agents can access required resources based on the request while working on it.
- Automation – Tasks like ticket registration, routing, and escalation do not need human intervention.
Benefit #2: Improves self-service facilities in your system
60% of people in the U.S. prefer self-service to solve basic issues while using a product or service. Therefore, having a robust and up-to-date knowledge base in place is a must.
With an enterprise help desk, you can:
- add, delete, and update your online resources easily;
- automate your resource portal to send notifications when your knowledge base needs an update;
- create FAQs, text and video tutorials, guides, articles, etc. as resources for your employees and customers; and
- direct your support agents to resolve critical issues while your customers help themselves with basic issues.
Benefit #3: Reduces issue resolution time
90% of customers expect you to resolve their issues within 24 hours. With traditional help desk software, you might fail to even respond to those queries, let alone resolve them.
However, an enterprise help desk can help you set a benchmark when it comes to resolution time. It can do so in these ways:
- Automates ticket resolution workflows – Undoubtedly, if ticket routing, alerts, updates, and other repetitive tasks are automated, your agents can utilize that time to work on the issue.
- Improves internal collaboration – If an issue requires the involvement of other departments or senior staff, you can collaborate with them without having to disconnect/transfer the call.
- Establishes a single point of contact – When employees or customers approach the help desk, they don’t have to remember multiple contact numbers/email addresses. A single contact is enough for them to raise all their concerns.
Benefit #4: Decreases operational costs
Three major aspects of an enterprise help desk contribute towards reducing operational costs. They are:
- Knowledge base – This can reduce the number of calls for low-level tickets, and hence the total number of tickets per month.
- Chatbots – They can analyze support requests and customer sentiment and provide real-time assistance, which will nullify the requirement of support agents for common issues.
- Proactive issue resolution – The analytics run on the dashboard of your software will show problematic areas in your system and prompt the service agents to solve the issue before it reaches the help desk.
Benefit #5: Improves your brand image
62% of customers accept sharing bad customer experiences with people. If your customers start frowning at your help desk support, your company’s reputation will be at stake.
Fortunately, an enterprise help desk focuses on first contact resolution, wherein the issue is resolved during the first interaction itself. When customers disconnect their call with a positive experience, they are likely to return for more purchases and may even recommend your brand to their peers.
Besides, the feedback received during issue resolution also helps analyze and improve the quality of products and services. Your brand image automatically strengthens when you provide your customers with enhanced products/services.
The Takeaway
For a better ROI and reduced service silos, you need a fully-functional enterprise help desk software. It will:
- streamline IT service management;
- save you a lot of time, money, and resources; and
- enhance customer experience, and in turn, customer loyalty.
