It’s service desk only for IT?

It has been a while since the service desk assignments stopped being just answering open tickets. With the advancement of technology and the transformations in the way the customers and brands relate, the service team has even more important responsibilities.

Of course, the team has developed strategies and procedures for delivering an efficient and effective service.

Does this strategy only apply to IT (usually responsible for the service desk) or can the idea and format of work be encompassed by other sectors? That’s what we’re going to discuss today. Follow along.

We can consider that the service desk is a help desk advance, because in addition to being able to solve more complex demands, it brings other aspects of customer service improvement. Be an internal customer, be an external customer. In general, service desk bases can support other industries in delivering quality and excellence to the customer.

Even if you have not formalized the service desk “dialogue” with other departments, know that much more of this service desk is already part of the activities of the structured sectors and focused on serving your client in the best way.

Believe me, the teachings of the service desk are already part of your business.

Do you know the pillars of the service desk? We will list the key ones below and show you that they are certainly already part of your scope of work. And, if you don’t do it yet, you will soon understand how these pillars can be applied.

whole view of the problem and solution;
optimization and integration of management processes;
effective solutions to customer demands (internal and external);
mapping processes;
prevention of technical incidents and information security;
empathy with the client;
assistance in the execution and standardization of tasks and functions;
SLAs as compasses for carrying out the work.

Need to talk about SLA…

When thinking about SLA always keep in mind “alignment of expectations”. What does that mean? Come on: SLA stands for Service Level Agreement and it is a document, a kind of contract, in which all the details of the service provision are listed.

From: what is the task, what is the goal, deadlines, responsible, possible related difficulties, resources involved and any other factor that is part of the work or sector. According to ABNT (Brazilian Association of Technical Standards) SLA is required for IT hiring. In other areas of the company, it can serve as a guide to have a better flow of work relationships and job performance.

The information contained in the SLA also serves as a basis for analyzing metrics and indicators of success.

Discover the advantages of being inspired by the service desk.

A department that is organized and committed to fully meet its demands can easily identify traces of the service desk. As you saw in the previous topic, none of the aspects is unique to the IT area and much has to contribute to the company as a whole.

We have raised three of the key advantages of applying service desk features in other departments. Check it out and see how it can all be adapted to the reality and needs of your business and your teams.

Increased employee productivity.

The automation of tasks and creating a smart (and shared) database of data streamlines access to customer history, information exchanged between sectors, reduces the time to build the solution, and enables effective methodologies to be performed for all the activities of the company.

Productivity is linked to well-being in the work environment. And one of the elements of well-being is the availability of resources necessary for the employee to perform his duties. In this way, we can expand the benefits of service desk even to personal fulfillment, which results in quality and commitment.

It is worth mentioning that productivity is linked to the good use of useful time and not to exhaustive production and without consistency to actually serve customers well.

One of the factors that most influence the quality of a service is the average waiting time. The more agility, the more chances of ensuring customer satisfaction. Added to the standardization of the processes and the workflow, together with the automation of the sorting step and after sending answers, it is possible to reach the solution more easily.

Besides, the integration between areas allows information to flow more smoothly and thus, it also supports the speed of call resolution. And you can be sure that all of these benefits noticed in the process reflect directly on the relationship with the customer and their experience with your company.

Saving of financial resources.

Investing in a service desk brings great results to the company, both in terms of cost savings and profitability. In addition to increased productivity and better use of resources, the company gains quality in its deliveries, avoids damages caused by the fragility of the system, reduces the customer’s dissatisfaction rate and even the turn-over.

Who does not want all those benefits for your company, right?

By relying on the service desk in addition improve processes, you can see that the consumer experience is even more rewarding and the chances of customer loyalty increase significantly.

To continue accessing our materials and leveraging your expertise on service desk, help desk and the entire sphere of customer service, follow the Mildesk blog.

Why should you choose a Help Desk?

Despite the excellent options currently available in help desk software, there are still companies that use spreadsheets to control tickets and services.

Unbelievable right?! Oops!! Is your company one of those that use spreadsheets? So, you´re in the right place because we´re going to present a comparative to answer a very important question:why should you use a help desk?

You will see that using help desk is the best choice for any business that wants to differentiate itself by the quality of customer service. Let’s go?

Information storage.

The first big difference is on how tickets information should be entered.

With the spreadsheets, the customer should contact your company and then the clerk will have to pick up the information about the request and manually insert it into the spreadsheet.

Meanwhile, with the help desk software, the customer can create a ticket in the system with all the information of his request and if the customer prefers to send an email to his company, a good software can even automatically convert this e-mail on a ticket by entering the data into the system.

So, what do you prefer: your team spending precious time working to enter data in a worksheet, or free to do what really matters, which is to serve and help customers?

Oh, and don’t worry: if you ever need to switch help desk, the exporting data is as easy as inserting it!

Workflow.

A worksheet is merely a record of tickets. The workflow is old-fashioned: the clerk needs to pass on the customer´s request to the corresponding industry, control the deadline for charging a resolution, recording a response, forwarding back to the customer, and more.

Meanwhile, the help desk software allows you to create workflows to be given adequate progress
for each ticket automatically.

Once a customer enters a new ticket in the system, it has a sequence of steps with pre-defined deadlines. Each new step forward, the responsible person receives a notification, to know that must take an action.

Reports.

The analysis of data is indispensable for the management of care; therefore, the possibility of creating reports is a priority.

It is clear that it is possible to create reports with spreadsheets. However, it is much more difficult than with a help desk software, especially if you want to create reports from specific data or across different data.

If you are not an Excel genius, help desk software is sure to be the simplest option for getting complete and detailed reports.

Security of data.

When you choose to work with spreadsheets, you are taking a very high risk because the data in a spreadsheet can be easily lost.

Just a person who has access to it accidentally hit the “Delete” button on the keyboard … and there goes the ticket registration! And you cannot do a thinner access control: either a person can see the whole worksheet, or cannot see anything.

On the other hand, if you adopt help desk software, you can count on greater data protection.

It is not so simple to delete a ticket, which avoids accidents; in addition, there are resources for the access limit, allowing to control who can use the software and what are the permissions of each user.

Reliability.

The worksheet is like a piece of paper – it accepts everything. If the attendant wants to insert a ticket in the worksheet saying that it was created on the 10th, when the customer actually contacted and made the request on the 1st, how will you find out? Probably will not.

However, the information in the help desk software is much more reliable because the system itself generates internal histories that allow you to track everything that has happened during the life cycle of the ticket.

So you can figure out who did what and when. This type of audit enables the manager to identify problems and bad practices in the way the tickets are being conducted – something that would be very difficult to do with a spreadsheet, don’t you think?

Centralization.

If you think that it is possible to control all tickets of your company with a single spreadsheet, here´s a bad news: No, it is not. You will need several different spreadsheets, which is bad, since the lack of centralization makes it very difficult to work with data.

Let´s imagine, for example, that you have chosen to use a spreadsheet for each month. If you want to see a customer´s ticket history, you´ll need to search spreadsheet by spreadsheet for the tickets that he has already opened.

And just imagine how it will be tricky to track the open tickets in the previous months, since you´ll have to be alternate between several spreadsheets! Pure chaos, isn´t it?

That´s why the help desk software wins: all data is centralized in one place. Therefore, it is very easy to locate a specific ticket, track customer histories, and check open tickets, among other tasks.

Additional features.

If none of the above items were enough to convince you, and you still have no answer to our question why use help desk? here is one more good reason to choose the software instead of the worksheet: is that the worksheet is just a worksheet.

Meanwhile, the software brings numerous additional features. Depending on the software you choose, you can count on resources such as sending collective messages to all your customers, controlling staff hours and even implementing a chatbot for service.

You can reduce costs

These are just a few answers to the question why should you choose a help desk? There really is no comparison between a spreadsheet and help desk software, taking into account everything the system can do.

You can even try to defend spreadsheets because (some of them) cost nothing to the company. But in fact, they cost a lot for your team´s productivity, agility, and quality of service.

It´s … the cheap sometimes is expensive! And, in the end, the help desk can even help reduce your business costs.

Do you want to know more about helpdesk systems, their advantages and their implementation in practice? So, follow the Milldesk blog and do not miss our exclusive ideas.

6 tips to improve retail sales with customer service.

The era of technology has brought great strides and changes in all sectors of the economy, especially in retail. The online sales format is considered by some to be the big retail villain without noticing that consumer behavior itself has changed with technology and new ways of ensuring customer satisfaction have become important in the face of such a change.

With this, good customer service has become the great asset to ensure that full consumer satisfaction occurs, since changes are always constant and adaptation is necessary. The so-called “offline retail” is just as important as “online selling,” since proximity to the consumer can be considered important in order to achieve sales success.

Want to know more tips on how to improve retail sales through customer service? Check out our post!

Tips on how to improve retail sales through service

Even experiencing big changes in the environment of retail, some tips can be critical for business success in customer service.

Create a harmony of service between online and offline.

The harmony among the forms of customer service are essential to ensure engagement with the brand, product or service sold to the consumer. Knowing how to receive the customer and transform the service into a success case for the business is already a challenge in face-to-face, and on-line it gains new difficulties.

With a harmony between the service channels, presenting the same type of language and the same way of constructing the dialogues, one can then achieve the identity of the communication, which can be considered as a characteristic of the company.

Invest on online customer service.

As we all know, the era of technology has come to stay, not as a revolution but as an evolution of how we communicate and interact with our devices. With this, online service is a great way to gain customer trust and ensure success in service.

Customize the service.

This tip is one of the most important, both for online and offline retail: customize the service. Today customers have several shopping options and ways to contact companies. Serving this customer well is essential to ensuring success and showing that the company cares directly about him.

The customization is since the first contact, treating the customer not only as one but as the most important factor in the entire sales equation. It is showing that there is a brand commitment to the consumer, not just listening but understanding their needs.

Invest in connectivity through mobile devices.

Connectivity can bring much more dynamism and interaction between service channels, since online is close to offline retail. As a result, investing on mobile devices, in a way that helps the attendants during their sales day, is important to the company.

Using technology as an ally in customer service is an important step. It has a well-trained team that can easily adapt to the environment of constant changes that technology imposes.

Social Networks in Service.

Social networking is a great way to communicate with everyone who wants to stay in touch, even with businesses. This new form of communication can bring several challenges to the business, since the consumer happens to be an important and central piece in social media.

The relationship with consumers through this new service channel can make a difference to the success of sales, also with retail acting in this new field.

Integrate customer service + marketing + sales.

In this tip, shows the important concept of integration between the company’s sectors. All are important and have their place within a company and with their integration the work becomes much more complete, making the different teams work as if they were one, for the same purpose.

The multichannel integration is the term that gives to this new concept, with the areas being combined so that there are different channels of communication with the customer, always seeking to achieve their satisfaction. In addition, it is a good way to manage the channels of care, once combined facilitates the management and monitoring on the part of the company.

Learn more!

The retail sector has evolved as well as all channels of customer service, that being integrated and combined to achieve customer satisfaction and the engagement on the part of the company. With this evolution, we can perceive the use of technology as an ally in all sectors and the steps of the journey of sale must bring the consumer more closely and helps understand their needs.

Wants to know more about tips of how to improve the sales on Retail with a good service? Keep following our blog, enjoy our Facebook Page!