Help desks are an integral part of your business that enable your customers to enjoy all your products and services with flawless assistance. However, you need to implement your help desk the right way to ensure it delivers maximum value. Further, if you outsource the help desk to an experienced IT help desk company, you take half the headache off your plate.
Once you execute the help desk perfectly, there will be huge benefits such as a balanced workload, customer satisfaction, and improved UX. You can allocate requests among the in-house team & your outsourced partner members easily while assigning the right job to the right agent based on the skill set. Besides, you can track your team's performance and review customer satisfaction.
Proper implementation of the help desk is of utmost importance to avail the due benefits from it. Setting up a help desk includes several important tasks. We have compiled a checklist of points that can guarantee success from your help desk.
How to Implement a Help Desk?
The advantages of a help desk for your business depend on how you implement it. Here are the things to consider for a successful implementation of a help desk.
1. Design a Workflow for Your Help Desk
Your help desk structure may change depending on your business requirements and objectives. The primary things you need to point out before planning your help desk workflow are your customer service goals. For this, you also should identify the challenges you will have to address.
You can tailor and establish perfect workflows for your organization based on your business type and team size. The below points are crucial to explore in this step.
- Single or multiple email addresses to receive customer queries.
- Whether you want to link single or multiple mailboxes to your help desk account.
- Is there any need for an internal support team or you will completely rely on outsourced IT help desk services?
- The modes of customer communication to include in the ticketing system.
- The help desk performance metrics and customer satisfaction perimeters.
- The components of the self-help portal.
2. Add Customer Communication Channels
Once you complete planning and designing your help desk, it is time to establish the help desk by implementing all components. You can start with adding the customer communication channels by following the below steps.
- After creating the support email ID, link it to the help desk. You will receive an automatic verification code in your email ID. After verifying the account, set rules to send the customer emails from the mailbox to the help desk.
- If you link your help desk to social media, add your WhatsApp, Facebook, or Twitter accounts to the support desk.
3. Engage the Support Team
The support team is the backbone of your help desk. So, you should onboard the team carefully following the below points.
- Create the agent profiles to add them as team members. Add their contact details, email addresses, and job profile, such as full-time or part-time employees. You should also specify the respective departments for each executive. This step also decides your IT help desk pricing as you can choose between full-time and part-time staff.
- Defining the agent role is crucial as it relates to the authorities required for a particular job role. Customizing the access permission takes you a step further toward data security. You may approve the view-only permission to one agent; the agents can edit the ticket-related data.
- You can select a certain function for the team associates, such as an admin, a supervisor, or a usual agent. Further, you can specify the activities of a member within the help desk. For instance, a manager can prepare reports, but an agent performs the assigned job within a ticket.
4. Develop Automated Ticket Routing
The biggest benefit behind help desk outsourcing is automated ticket routing. It ensures efficient customer service while reducing manual efforts. An automated ticketing system also supports your regular tasks like updating the requests, sending notifications, and assigning tickets.
5. Incorporate Your Existing Apps with the Help Desk
If your infrastructure includes different apps like Microsoft Office, Slack, Quickbooks, etc., you can integrate them with your help desk. It will enable you to access all pertinent customer data from a single point. Besides, your team can fix problems fast and efficiently with all supporting data available at their fingertips.
6. Assess the Security Settings of Your Help Desk
Stimulating the security prospects for your help desk is one of the most vital tasks. For example, you can allow single sign-in for your team members for flawless authentication. Further, you can select the hosting area for your data server and perform domain verification of email.
7. Set up a Customized Self-help Portal
Finding answers to a query is often more convenient for your customer rather than depending on an agent. So, it is crucial to set up a customized self-help portal to provide the best customer service experience. You can create a self-help platform for your customers that may contain FAQs, directions, tutorials, etc.
You can curate your self-service portal based on the frequently asked customer questions and the relevant troubleshooting. Besides, you can upload video tutorials and form a community forum.
8. Implement Regular Monitoring
A help desk effectively assists you to manage your customer support processes. If your support procedures are not in the right order, your customer requests can go out of your control. It indicates you are not getting the full benefit from your help desk. For instance, your help desk is not in order if:
- You are unable to restrain adverse remarks on social media.
- There is a high number of escalations of service requests.
- It is not clear where to use automation.
- There are backlogs, and you find it hard to fulfill the service level agreements (SLA).
- You are unable to create proactive service.
A help desk provides your IT staff with maximum self-sufficiency in solving customer requests and project management. However, it is also crucial to monitor the help desk performance regularly to ensure the service operation is on the right track. With the right monitoring, you can continuously improve your help desk.
Conclusion
With the digitalization of businesses, the help desk has become an integral part of your customer engagement. However, you need to ensure proper implementation to benefit from IT help desk services. This article describes some crucial steps to consider while implementing your help desk.
