What is Help Desk Software?

A company’s products could be top-notch. Its software could be cutting edge, intuitive, and powerful. It could even provide industry-leading service offerings.

Many businesspeople know that strong customer support is a must to stay competitive. In fact, 80% of executives with service oversight (for example, CEOs, service VPs, and so on) say customer service is the primary vehicle for improving the customer experience.

Consumers have the power to rate products, request answers, review companies, and rave about experiences across almost any channel — instantly. Because we live in a consumer-centric age, companies have to be ready to handle customer support cases and complaints quickly while keeping service teams working smoothly.

Help desk software can become the cornerstone of your customer support strategy.

Consumers can @mention a company on Twitter to ask questions. They can pick up the phone to voice complaints. They can even send emails or strike up a live chat with a customer service representative (or in many cases, an AI-enabled chatbot).

That means customer service teams need to have a way to manage requests across all communications channels and keep them organized. A help desk can provide multichannel support, so agents can work more efficiently, resolve issues faster, and offer amazing service.

Many people have had the frustrating experience of filling out a form on a company’s website to ask a question only to have multiple customer support representatives follow up at different times. Sometimes, no one follows up at all.

Regardless of the channel the request came through, a good customer service platform ensures that every inquiry routes to the right agent and gets organized (or categorized) accordingly. One person or team might handle Facebook and Twitter cases, for instance, while another team responds to phone calls. This enables every customer service team member to focus on priority cases, without leaving requests unanswered.

Smooth case management also keeps internal teams efficient. Reporting data can improve the customer experience, reduce ticket volume, and preempt small issues before they become big ones.

As organizations grow, so do their customer service caseloads. It’s important for companies to keep a pulse on the time and resources customer support requires. Implementing automation is one way that companies can save time, money, and some headaches.

With automated workflows, customer service agents can speed through repetitive tasks — such as using preset responses that provide answers to the most common questions — so they can focus on more complex ones.

Consumers want consistent experiences with brands no matter where they interact with them. In fact, 65% of consumers and 73% of business buyers are extremely or very likely to switch companies if they receive inconsistent experiences. With such a high percentage of people demanding cohesion across touchpoints, companies can’t afford to create disjointed journeys.

Imagine being able to have a real-time conversation with a customer via a website’s chat feature and then being able to build on that same conversation with a telephone call. Now that’s solid service.

Sometimes, people just want to solve their own issues, like finding a quick, accurate answer to a product-related question. One crucial — and often overlooked — aspect of great customer service is enabling customers to help themselves. To do this, companies need to have the right resources in place and make them easy to access.

One way to make sure customers can help themselves is by creating an easy-to-navigate support portal. A support portal can house key information like FAQs. You could even create a public Q&A forum to help consumers connect with each other and share information.

As customers continue to demand seamless experiences throughout their journeys with brands, customer service teams need to be ready to handle their inquiries. Help desk software allows companies to adapt and keep customers happy no matter how the consumer-brand relationship evolves.