How much time, effort and money do you spend on helping your customers and clients? What if I told you that you could slash all those variables by automating as much as possible? Automation might conjure up ideas of robotic assembly lines like the one in the picture, but that’s old school. These days automation is as at home in your office as it was in the factory. Help desk automation is not just within your reach, it’s also ripe for the picking.
I don’t think you need me to tell you why automating your help desk processes is a good idea, but just in case you do, here goes. Automated help desks can:
- Save time
- Save money
- Make your agents more productive
- Prevent error
- Ensure consistency
If saving “just” money and time wasn’t enough, then the other pros should be more than enough to convince you!
But what can automation REALLY do for me?
Lots! To get started, take a look at these ideas for some automation solutions. - Filters and automatic ticketing Have the system filter queries, escalate the ones that need to become tickets (as opposed to directing to the knowledge base, setting up an appointment, etc), and then automatically assign those tickets to available and qualified agents. - Monitoring and follow up The system will scan itself for tickets that aren’t yet resolved, or that have remained at the same status for a predefined time. The tool can then send reminders to the assignee or the customer, encouraging them to resolve or at least further the issue. - Pushing resolved issues to the knowledge base When a common and straightforward issue has been solved, why not have the app push it to the knowledge base so that the next time it receives a similar query, your support agents can be bypassed completely?
Getting started
The great news here is that almost any help desk system can be automated, from the most basic DIY set-ups to fully fledged help desk support tools. If you go it alone for your support needs, however, you’re going to have to sacrifice something for the fact that you haven’t had to pay a penny – automating your system will need some programming knowledge. To get you started, if you use Google Apps, there’s a nice tutorial here, and if you use Spiceworks, there are some good suggestions here. If you use help desk software, the job is even easier. You won’t need any programming knowledge, because automation is built in to these apps. It’s the backbone of their whole operation, in fact, as they’re designed to take as much of the workload as possible off your agents by using automatic processes to deal with it instead. Being able to take advantage is just a matter of making sure you’ve got the right options enabled. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the most popular help desk apps and see what they offer by way of automation.
Zoho Support
Zoho has automation down. It outlines the possibilities and benefits clearly, and has a long list of the kinds of tasks you can automate. It includes workflow processes, time-based rules, auto-assign and, best of all, customizable automation rules, which means you can tweak the precise workflows that work best for your business.
HappyFox
HappyFox is another no-bones app that lays things out straight for you. Among the great features here are smart rules that assign tickets based on existing workload, as well as identifying active and inactive staff members before dealing out a task. If you’ve got a bigger support team, this is genius.
Freshdesk
Freshdesk is a tool that really prides itself on its automation options. It divides its tools into The Dispatch’r, The Supervisor and The Observer, all designed to automated different parts of the system. The Dispatch’r looks after automatic ticket assigning, The Supervisor runs once an hour to tidy up loose ends, while The Observer alerts you to important events.
Zendesk
This app also lets you automate, although it puts a little less personality into the process than some of its rivals. If you don’t mind dealing with a drier, more technical approach to automation, then Zendesk will definitely allow you to get the job done!
The bottom line
Automation is a no-brainer. There is no organization, no matter how big or how small, that won’t be helped hugely by having your system take care of what it can without input from you, your employees or even your clients. The trick is to fully understand what your system can offer you, and then see how these facilities can be best incorporated. Don’t rush in and start automating options willy-nilly – you’ll need a very good understanding of what the feature does, how it fits into the rest of the workflow, and what else is affected by its operation. Remember that corporate workflows are generally complex animals, and making one small change can have a lasting and wide-ranging effect. Once you have a good theoretical understanding of how it all goes down, start automating, monitor the results, make necessary tweaks, and continue. If you do it right, your help desk will soon become a smooth, intelligent system that makes other help desks weak with envy!
Check out the best help desks for automation: Zendesk vs. Freshdesk or Happyfox vs. Zoho Support.
Automate Your Help Desk to Save Time and Effort
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