Legacy Vs Modern Service Desks

Customers have changed, products have changed, the way they interact with the products have changed, then why should the service desk be the same? It is time Legacy service desks move and give way to Modern Service Desk solutions.

First Time Resolutions:

Earlier, customers being able to connect to companies on their preferred channel itself was a big challenge. Legacy service desk solutions tried to solve this important problem by giving a unified platform where the service desk people could see incoming requests from various channels. This means, the customer can continue to interact with the company in multiple channels and their experience would remain the same.

Modern-help desk solutions move beyond the ability to connect multiple times with the same experience, they instead strive for the first-time resolution. If a customer had to call you more than once to resolve their problem, the satisfaction rating is already downhill. So, don’t miss the first time they are speaking to you on any channel; make sure you do everything required to resolve their problem.

Customer Effort:

1. What should the customer do, to get his issue addressed? Legacy service desks assumed a lot of effort to come from the customer side. Be it explaining the issue or categorizing it in the right problem area, they had to make sure the problem is recorded perfectly, which maximizes the chances of getting their issue resolved quickly and completely. Modern service desks believe customer effort should be minimal if not zero. Can the system understand the issue from the short description of the customer? Can it read the image of the problematic product to determine what could’ve gone wrong? Can it tag the support case to a relevant category automatically? How can we make sure the customer does minimal work, yet sees that his issue is resolved?
2. Why ‘minimal work’? What about ‘Zero work’? That’s where modern solutions such as IoT (Internet of Things) are helping. Today it is possible for a connected product to know when it has a problem and it can report automatically, without any intervention from the customer. For example, a chip in your washing machine can watch it for problems and create a service case when there are any. This brings down the customer effort drastically and surprises them with amazing service.

Channels:

Traditionally, Emails and phone calls were considered the primary means of reporting a problem. Most of the legacy service desks are pre-integrated with popular Email Solutions and Computer Telephony Integration systems are used to connect voice calls to the respective service agent.

Today, the same two channels continue to serve many customers, but many other modern channels have emerged. For example, Chats, Video Support, Web Self Service, and Mobile.

Each one of these channels is having different advantages. For example, Video Support may be extremely useful in fixing certain types of issues. Web Self Service can educate the customer and avoid the need to create a service case. All of these help in improving customer satisfaction and reducing service costs.

However, a modern service desk should provide tight integration with these systems. This involves a strong journey mapping and technical capability to connect.

Contextual Knowledge:

If customers know enough, they can fix the problems themselves. That’s the aim of the knowledge base, presented via various channels such as the web, mobile, and voice.

However, a typical knowledge base has hundreds of articles, if not thousands. Customers may not be interested in going through all of them to find a fix to their problem.

This is where Contextual Knowledge makes a big difference. Use the information you already know about the customer (For example, the model they have purchased) to only show them relevant content. Also, use the problem description to push the right kind of knowledge articles.

Also, present your knowledge articles in the right media. Certain information can be conveyed using text, while certain other details can easily reach the customer with pictures, and videos. People prefer to consume this content instead of long paragraphs.

Feedback and Surveys:

While the customer is interacting with you, collect feedback (implicit and explicit) on a constant basis and use it to improve the support. This can be done by the feedback module of modern service desks.

Use multiple channels to collect feedback and remember customer effort. For example, single-click feedback is much better than a form with four fields in it.

Agent Effectiveness:

When you do so much to improve the experience of the customers, what about the agents? What can you do to help them do their job better, which in turn translates to an even better customer experience?

Modern Service Desk solutions come up with features such as Agent Scripts which help in resolving known problems quickly. A consistent approach to analyzing a problem results in a complete understanding and better fixes.

Similarly, look for other process automation possibilities in your service desk implementation. Anything that would remove the routine tasks from the agent and helps him/her to focus on the solution. For example, if a problem is already fixed with a solution article, it can be automatically shown to the agent while he/she is reviewing the problem description.

The agent’s performance can be continuously monitored by their manager for suggesting improvements. This also helps in case of escalation, as the manager would have a good understanding of the problem and address it better.

Business Intelligence:

In addition to regular monitoring of agent performance, modern service desks provide a complete business intelligence module that helps in analyzing various patterns to get actionable insights. Both historical and predictive reports are used to improve service efficiency.

You can even beam some of these reports back to your customer. For example, if 62% of your mobile app users see their issue resolved in the first call, why not say to the customers and encourage them to go mobile?

Social Support:

Today’s customers spend a lot of time on Social Media. Hence, it is becoming an important channel to speak to them or hear from them.

Modern Service Desks come with strong social integration which helps in listening to conversations, understanding issues in advance (even before they are reported), and getting back to the customer proactively. This has to be done in such a way that the privacy norms are respected, and no sensitive information is shared with the public.

From the legacy world of waiting for the customer to complain to the modern way of fixing the problem by going to the customer, service desks have come a long way. Modern lifestyle keeps raising expectations, and these service desks help organizations in meeting those expectations successfully.