How Can Helpdesk Software Improve Your Bottom Line?

by Lena Radosavljevic

Wondering how to improve your bottom line? Experts estimate that U.S. companies alone record a $62 billion loss annually due to poor customer service. That is quite a large amount of money!

However, a significant number of market leaders reported that using customer service helpdesk software helped them halve their costs! SaaS and AI technologies offer a unique opportunity to greatly improve your efficiency while reducing expenses.

Considering the fact that one single helpdesk software can replace a large part of a customer service department, how much do you think you can save each month by utilizing it? Start calculating to see that those savings numbers add up. If you make the decision to add this customer service tool to your business, progress is inevitable!

Let’s dig deeper and learn how a good customer service helpdesk can improve your bottom line!

1. Ticketing Overview

A helpdesk ticketing system helps you track down customer requests at any phase and from any channel, including AI chatbot, live chat, phone, and email! A ticket is a customer inquiry that you attach to a customer’s profile, creating the history of their journey.

When scanning the whole customer base, you have an option to prioritize certain tickets, making resolutions of the problems more personalized and giving priority to your long-term customers.

A helpdesk ticketing system enables a streamlined request workflow. Managers can click a couple of buttons to check if the customer experience is at a satisfactory level.

On the other hand, the helpdesk ticketing software is a dream for customer support agents too. There is no longer a need to spend an enormous amount of time looking for specific customer information. Now they know exactly where all agent-customer interactions are stored. This allows you to reallocate time and money investment toward more profitable customer support solutions.

2. Automatic Responses

Helpdesk software allows you to set up request workflow automation that is triggered by specific ticket actions. For instance, if a customer has bought your product recently, you can create an automated thank-you message to express gratitude and acknowledge their purchase.

Once you  automate this process, your helpdesk software will repeat this action each time you have a new buyer. Helpdesk automation ensures that no customer is left out, enabling you to provide a top customer experience.

Thus, the helpdesk’s role is to simplify manual work and eliminate repetitive tasks, leaving your agents a large amount of time and energy to focus on delivering excellent customer support solutions. Exceptional solutions lead to stronger customer relationships that can last for years.

Keeping long-term customers results in a higher retention rate, leading to increased revenue.

3. Omnichannel Support

Today customers have many available customer support channels. They will send you a request via chatbot widget, phone, social media, or email and your job is to collect messages and customer data from all those places.

That makes it a lot more difficult for you to meet them everywhere they expect. Luckily, you can install a helpdesk system that will do that for you. Now your customer support agents can have one inbox for queries regardless of origin. An Omnichannel helpdesk is designed in a way that allows all interactions to flow into the same place.

With Helpy helpdesk, you can enjoy the benefit of multi-device experience for your customers as well as for your agents. Urgent issues can be resolved faster than ever, allowing you to keep your responsiveness rate high.

4. Extensive Knowledge Base

A knowledge base is probably one of the greatest innovations in the customer service industry. Simply said, it implies a website page dedicated to answers to potential customer requests. It is important to make a distinction between the knowledge base and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). FAQ represents a clarification page where customers can find general information about your business.

On the other hand, a knowledge base is a form of self-service data or article base where the customers can surf around looking for a specific explanation about your product’s features. This is the least expensive type of customer support as you hire professionals to create it only once! By deploying a comprehensive knowledge base, you can significantly reduce your customer support costs.

5. Fantastic AI Chatbot

An AI chatbot eliminates time and space restrictions as well as the chance of human error. By using artificial intelligence you have one agent for all basic customer questions that is available 24/7. A quality chatbot can answer 50% to 90% of customer questions using your knowledge base and prepared responses. And not just that! An efficient AI chatbot, such as Carin, utilizes machine learning to create a set of solutions crafted for unique customers’ needs.

Once properly set up and trained, you can rest assured that the chatbot will provide the information your customer was looking for at any time. The ability to get an instant response leads to a better customer experience and reduces the likelihood of customer churn. Additionally, hiring the AI chatbot is quite inexpensive compared to hiring a whole customer support department that will deal with trivial questions.

6. Live Chat

Live Chat gives a personal touch like no other customer support tool. Here all the magic happens! By having direct communication with your customers you can build a strong foundation or strengthen existing relationships during a short time-frame. Also, this is a place where your customer support agents need to use their advanced communication skills to showcase your business in the best light.

Live Chat is a crucial determinant of successful customer service. It is an effective digital replica of a phone call that enables you to be constantly available for customers. Take into consideration that many global players have established this helpdesk feature, creating a customer support standard that your customers are familiar with.

7. Triggers and SLAs

Triggers and Service Level Agreements (SLAs)  aim to improve team productivity. Triggers are a combination of rules that automate the completion of common requests and tasks.

Helpy triggers can automate an action when a new ticket is created or any other action in the ticket-lifecycle that you find relevant. This can be used to auto-assign agents to tickets, create approval workflows, or simply send email notifications to the customer that you have received their inquiry.

An SLA is a contractual agreement between you and your customers that you will help them within a certain timeframe. SLA tracking in the helpdesk software keeps track of the duration of time that a ticket has been waiting for a response.

By increasing overall productivity with helpdesk triggers and SLAs, you can improve your bottom line significantly. Your customer support engine now works faster!

8. Customer Support CRM

Customer relationship management (CRM) is one of the greatest achievements of modern business technology. By having the whole customer support process streamlined you eliminate the risk of not knowing what went wrong in a certain customer case. CRM is a directory where all your customer interactions and transactions are stored.

It helps you stay connected with your customers while providing top-notch experiences. Having an overview of customer histories and preferences enables you to focus your efforts on providing exact services your customers expect/ assist your marketing and sales team better.

In other words, you get to know your customers better so you can serve them better. The goal here is to improve business relationships, build a strong customer base, and pave the way to business prosperity.

9. Data Privacy and Security

Having an overview of your customers’ wishes is a great helpdesk advantage. However, you may have had a chance to read or listen about data policies, such as GDPR and CCPA, that recently came into force.

It became a business imperative to incorporate robust data privacy and protection policies that will respect consumer rights and protect everyone’s data.

Luckily, there are terrific helpdesk solutions that can help you with complying with all data policies out there.  

Your helpdesk should have features such as:

  • Single Sign-on (SSO): With SSO, you create a central body that controls the overall access authorization protocol. You can define who can access sensitive customer data and eliminate the need for multiple ticketing passwords that are hard to remember. Now your IT team can provide one system password and have better control over data processing. With Helpy you can enjoy the benefit of the central password provider and an easy integration with SAML, LDAP, and OAuth.
  • Agent Permissions: By determining who has access to specific tickets and features, you reduce the possibility for data misuse and system compromise. Don’t leave anything to chance, lead your team in the best way possible.
  • Disable Email Contents: Probably the most dangerous data sharing for your data privacy compliance, is the situation where your customers share their data and you didn’t even ask for it. However, it is in your system and you need to protect it. Thus, keep your customers far from chatting out of your helpdesk system. With an advanced helpdesk software you can disable email content and direct your customers toward writing in forms that you have created and can control. In that way, the sensitive content is automatically protected.
  • IP Restrictions: The most protective measure is to restrict which IP addresses can log in to your system. That is how you can limit the number of users and allow the access to your database only to authorized ones.  

Unfortunately, fines came with these policies, too. GDPR tough restrictions imposed a fine as high as 10 million euros or 4% of a company’s revenue, while CCPA with its class-action  lawsuits can cost you a serious fortune! To avoid them and simply get that stress of your plate you can subscribe for a trustworthy helpdesk that already complies with data policies. Therefore, with a high-quality helpdesk software you get both customer support and legal assistant. That is how you kill two birds with one stone!

10. Final Thoughts

There is no doubt that a good customer support helpdesk can improve your bottom line. The question is only by how  much? The answer would be that the more advanced helpdesk features you have, the more money you will save! Consider that customers would pay 16% more for a fast, convenient, and friendly customer support, a helpdesk solution is becoming a must-have!

Thus, when making a decision regarding your new helpdesk, consider:

  • Data privacy and protection compliance
  • Private cloud
  • Ticketing system
  • Automations’
  • Omnichannel approach
  • Live or AI chat experience
  • Team management tools

Now, get a new helpdesk to improve your bottom line today! Get a trial instance of Helpy today and experience what a great helpdesk solution can do for you and your company!