In the last two decades business have moved from being 9 to 5 entities and have become 24/7 operations. The fact that many of them have gone global has also played a significant role in this.
In a highly competitive market environment offering desired levels of products and services to the customers has become the differentiator.
Thus businesses cutting across verticals are committed to serving their customers fast and efficiently.
Customer queries and feedback are being taken even more seriously. Thus we see support services play an important role.
Many tools and technologies are being implemented with Service Desk Ticketing Systems being one of the most sought after solutions.
Overview of Service Desk Ticketing System
Service Desk Ticketing Systems helps simplify interactions with clients, potential customers and any other person who contacts a business.
Most of these solutions are web-based and provide agents access to customer data from virtually anywhere.
Whenever a customer raises a request the same is forwarded to a designated executive with a unique ticket number.
Customers can raise their problems via the business website, email or even using social media platforms. They are also sent a confirmatory email that allows them to track the statues of their ticket and also reach out to the concerned executives within the company.
All this helps in making customer care fair, efficient and most importantly transparent for the benefit of the customers.
Four Important Functions
Categorize Requests
One of the primary functions of this ticketing system is to sort customer requests based on different categories such as products, sales, support etc.
You can customize the system and associate support emails to pre-defined categories. This system is very useful when you receive hundreds of requests concerning different departments.
The system would then ensure that all the request adhere to the preferences that you have set within the system.
Prioritize Them
A large number of requests would be generated each day and thus it is very important to prioritize these based on different parameters.
You could prioritize this based on customer loyalty, type of assistance sought, time frame and any other parameters that you may set.
This also allows your junior level executives to identify request that need to be attend immediately and others that could be kept in the queue.
Assign Tasks
One the system has categorized the tasks and prioritized them it would assign the task immediately to the concerned executives.
Categorizing allows the system to easily identify executives to whom the task needs to be assigned. In fact organizing these tickets by categories significantly reduces the response time and do with any chances of ambiguity.
Inform The Customers
Once the problem has been resolved the ticketing system allows you to inform the customer about. Detailed description of the problem and its solution can be sent to the customer.
These emails are sent under the same thread as the confirmation emails and thus maintaining a continuity of communication. It also allows customers to reach the team for support.
Advantages
24/7 Support
Business operate on a 24/7 basis and customers no longer wish for support from 9 to 5. Service desk ticketing systems work on a 24/7 basis for 365 days in a year thus offers support to customers at any given point of time. Even if your executives are off duty this will cater to the customers.
This is extremely useful for businesses that are spread across geographies and different time zones.
Improves Efficiency Levels
These systems record every service transaction and this allows you to serve customers more efficiently. Valuable time is saved in sorting, managing and assigning tasks.
Apart from this your customers won’t realize that they are dealing with an automated system as they would get custom replies for their queries.
Cost Saving
Like all other IT based desk solutions ticketing systems can help you cut down on operational expenditure considerably. You will be able to manage customer requirements with less human resource as many of their mundane tasks are automated.
Automate Repetitive Tasks
This system allows customer care executives compose automate replies for reparative queries. For instance if you are getting regular queries regarding the launch of a software or price of a product you can create an automated reply that would be sent to the customers.
Things to Lookout for In a Service Desk Ticketing System
Reliability
The ticketing system that you choose for your business needs to be reliable and serve you on a 24/4 basis. It should be strong in its design and architecture thus catering to your needs without failures and crashes.
Speed
This system should be fast and be able to process customer requests in real-time.
Once a query has been made the customers should immediately receive a confirmation mail and a request should be placed with the concerned executive.
User Friendly
One of the primary reasons you would be choosing a self-serving ticketing system is to ease the task for your customer support executives.
The system should be user-friendly and fast to adapt. It should be able to integrate with other customer support systems that you might be using.
Security Features
You would be dealing with customer data and hence it is very important for you to protect their privacy.
It should allow you to assign passwords and security permissions at different levels and thus prevent any unauthorized access to the sensitive data.
Web Based Solution
In the modern era of business solutions shouldn’t be tied to a certain desk.
The system that you adopt should be web based and this will help your executives to access it from anywhere and any point of time. They would thus be able to serve customers more efficiently.
Social Media Integration
Social media is shaping public opinion. With majority of the Internet users spending considerable time on the social media you should be able to offer them support on these platform.