Businesses need customers for sustainable growth. However, customers are only half of the entire system. You must also consider offering excellent customer service to thrive in today's competitive business environment.
When customers are happy, employees also feel happy and satisfied, as suggested by a feature published in Forbes magazine. Moreover, when employees are happy, their productivity increases by 20%, leading to a 37% boost in sales.
A crucial element that fosters such an environment for both employees and customers is internal help desk software.
Internal help desk software has many benefits for businesses. However, you should know more about it before going into all that.
What is an Internal Help Desk Software?
Internal help desk software comes with the tools and resources to facilitate better customer engagement and experience, including self-help knowledge databases and sophisticated ticketing systems.
With internal help desk software, businesses can help customers with their problems more quickly and efficiently. However, that's only part of the software. It also helps resolve issues internally, assists employees with their concerns, and fosters a healthy work atmosphere.
Internal help desk software consists of ticketing systems that are not only for the customers but also for the employees.
The system serves vital areas, including IT, Administration and Security, HR, Housekeeping, Electrical or Civil, Utility, Catering, and Travel Desk.
Benefits of Internal Help Desk Software
Internal help desk software aids businesses in many ways, the most prominent being offering support services to customers and employees by resolving their issues via ticketing support systems. So, here's how internal helpdesk management can benefit companies.
1. Enhanced Employee Experience
Most businesses focus on their customers and overlook their employees without realizing they serve them by resolving their problems. So, companies should also listen to their employees and any concerns and ensure they sort them out. This helps improve employee satisfaction and, in turn, productivity.
For example, employees may have laptop issues and need to contact the IT helpdesk. However, instead of having a physical IT helpdesk, you could deploy an internal IT helpdesk software that helps better resolve the problem.
2. Effortless Calendar Management
Issues with calendar management are common in most companies, as well as in small and mid-sized enterprises. Managing calendars becomes even more challenging when it comes to holidays. However, internal help desk software can ease the burden. It reduces the number of incoming requests, taking away most of the load on the HR department.
Thus, with an internal help desk management tool, the HR team can monitor holidays and leave requests without any hassles. Moreover, it also allows them to plan workdays and implement leave policies that align with business norms.
3. Centralized Internal Knowledge Repository
Internal help desks come with a knowledge repository that collects and stores data. The information mainly pertains to the company. It could be how-to guides, escalation procedures, technical troubleshooting information, or company documentation.
So employees can access the information stored in these databases and resolve any concerns or queries they might have about anything. Moreover, they can also add information to the repository, which can serve as assets for the company. A centralized internal knowledge repository can also help boost productivity through proactive solution development.
4. Automated Workflows and Queries
Technologies like AI (Artificial Intelligence) have brought forth intuitive internal help desks that are smarter than your average ticketing systems. Integrating AI-powered chatbots into these systems has helped automate query resolution and ticketing processes, such as closed, open, escalation, flagging, technical, and department-level.
However, these are not the only benefits that AI-powered ticketing systems offer. They also help managers generate reports and, more importantly, convert and export them in formats that make it easier to conduct advanced analysis. Analyzing these reports can provide organizations with timely feedback and other valuable insights into anything that might be going wrong regarding the the company's culture, productivity, and resources. Managers can use these insights to design and implement necessary changes, and action plans to achieve the desired results.
Advanced ticketing platforms built with AI features and functionalities can help collect the required data through polls, surveys, feedback, and contests. The data can then be analyzed to positively change an organization's internal environment. Employees also feel more valued and motivated, boosting productivity.
5. Integration with Existing Systems
Advanced internal help desk systems don't necessarily require complex software integrations. That means you can eliminate the extra baggage by integrating them seamlessly with existing systems and resources, including Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) and Employee Self-Service Systems.
How Does an Internal Service Desk Work?
Internal help desks can be deployed across various industries, including human resources, security, housekeeping, utilities, catering, and travel. For instance, according to a recent State of the Connected Consumer report, 75% of shoppers said they would invest more to get better and more consistent customer support services.
Internal customer service desks can transform workplaces by making them more transparent through automation. Above all, automating processes also helps reduce workload and increase efficiency.
Automated customer service desks work like any other regular internal help desk, starting with ticket creation.
- Creating Tickets
Customers may have hundreds of queries and concerns about the products or services, and they can raise these queries and concerns by creating tickets via the internal customer service desks. As a customer, you can raise tickets through email, SMS, What's App, other mobile apps, or even internal self-service portals.
2. Tracking Assets
Helpdesk systems work by tracking assets, particularly their warranties. These assets usually support specific departments, such as IT or electrical.
3. Automatically Assigning Tickets
Once the customer service desk identifies which asset class the support instance belongs to, it automatically assigns a ticket to the concerned person or team. So, if your query is related to IT, the help desk automatically assigns the ticket to a member or team in the IT department. When assigning tickets, the system considers various parameters, including the ticket subject, before notifying the concerned person or team.
4. Resolving Tickets and Feedback
The representatives or technicians resolve the problem, and the internal help desk automatically sends a feedback request to the person who raised the ticket via a form.
5. Analyzing Time and Cost
Helpdesk systems not only raise tickets and ask for feedback. They also analyze the time it takes to resolve the tickets. HR helpdesks do this by factoring in the resolution time, first response time, and the time it takes for the executives to resolve the queries. These automated helpdesks also analyze the costs by considering the per-hour costs of the service teams.
6. SLA and Escalation
There may be instances where the concerned persons or teams may not be able to resolve the queries, in which case, the automated internal help desks escalate the tickets to the concerned person or team at the next level in the matrix as per the escalation system.
7. Customized Dashboards and Reporting
Automated help desk systems keep top-level management and executives well-informed of the tickets raised in each department and how they handle the queries through customized performance dashboards. These dashboards help executives track various metrics, such as the total number of active customers and queries, how many are resolved, and how many are pending. Customized performance dashboards can also help organizations in other ways.
They can help refine strategies, for example, and communicate them effectively to each member and group. Doing so helps increase motivation, coordination, and visibility. It also helps provide actionable data and insights on time. More importantly, however, it helps consolidate and standardize information, allowing organizations to cut down on costs and redundancy.
8. Mobile Apps
Both customers and service representatives can also get the automated customer help desks on their mobile devices. The CRMs can also integrate with other platforms, including email, What's App, web, and SMS, making raising tickets from anywhere possible.
9. Contracts and Renewals
Organizations sign contracts, enter into agreements, and opt for subscriptions and AMCs with different entities, which may need renewal, and automated helpdesk CRMs make it easier to manage them all from one place.
10. Extended Integration with API
Companies can also integrate their internal service desks with various enterprise-level applications and get a complete picture of the internal customer service desk lifecycle, not leaving behind any department.
Set up an Internal Help Desk Today
Creating memorable experiences for customers and employees helps steer businesses toward sustainable growth. So, your employees must be well-equipped with the internal information they need. That way, they can better resolve customer queries, increasing productivity and ultimately driving better results. Remember that investing in a good help desk can give your organization leverage. So, set up a good internal help desk for your organization and watch your business soar.
Category:Technology
