Help Desk System Overview

Help Desk System Overview

• Help desks are systems that centralize customer support inquiries, enabling agents to address issues effectively and efficiently.
• Key elements of a help desk include intake, triage, troubleshooting, solving, and improvement.

Intake Methods

• Common channels for receiving support inquiries include calls, emails, live chats, and forms.
• Preferred channel selection depends on urgency, complexity, and context of the issue.
  • Phone calls are best for urgent or complex problems, providing real-time personalized support, but are more costly.
  • Emails are suitable for less urgent issues, allowing for detailed context (screenshots, etc.) and a record.
  • Live chat offers immediacy with relative simplicity, enabling simultaneous support for multiple customers, but can be less effective for complex messaging.
  • Forms are useful when phone or live chat support is unavailable, enabling customers to identify optimal contact methods; however, response times might be longer.
• Customers' current contact methods and preferences should guide intake strategy. Research on target personas and existing customer communication methods is crucial.

Triage Process

• Triage involves categorizing and prioritizing support requests, assigning them to the appropriate person or team.
• Two key triage steps: organizing and prioritizing.
  • Organizing: Filtering involves sorting inquiries by agent, channel, date, status (open/closed).
  • Prioritizing: Considering factors like severity, company size/revenue, and service level agreements (SLAs).
    • Severity is categorized internally (e.g., urgent, high, minor, low) based on business impact—critical issues being "urgent."
    • Company size/revenue factors into prioritization as larger clients might expect faster responses.
    • SLAs define response time commitments. These should be standardized across all clients.

Troubleshooting Steps

• Troubleshooting involves identifying the root cause of the customer issue, typically following these steps:
  • Understand the specific problem and if it can be reproduced.
  • Gather relevant customer context (CRM records, prior interactions with agents, similar issues).
  • Diagnose the issue by analyzing collected context and crafting solutions; a viable workaround may be helpful.

Solving Support Requests

• Presentation of solutions should address the customer's goal, ensure customer satisfaction, and ensure customers are prepared to manage the issue independently in future.
• Thorough documentation of resolved issues and solutions is crucial.

Improving Customer Support

• Support inquiries provide opportunities to improve the product/service by gathering feedback, noting customer pain points, and generating improvement reports.
• Performance monitoring (number of inquiries, inquiry resolution, inquiry categories, customer effort score, response times) is valuable for understanding support needs and identifying areas for enhancement, including staffing, self-service options, and upskilling support teams.

HubSpot Help Desk Features

• HubSpot's Help Desk offers tools such as an inbox and tickets to manage customer issues.
  • Inbox: Centralized access to multiple communication channels (live chat, email, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, chatbots). Offers contextual tools, email templates, snippets, knowledge base articles, allowing seamless conversation switching and continuity when customer communication method changes. Integration with conversations API allows access, even from external support teams.
  • Tickets: Organize and track more complex customer issues; can be created/routed automatically; customize status updates, properties, (including making properties mandatory to ensure critical data is not missed); and access tasks, reminders, and SLA notifications to maintain exceptional customer service. Use of tickets for all support emails is recommended.
• Integration with CRM provides access to prior customer interactions.
• Reports on conversation totals, response times, knowledge base article usage, and SLA breakdowns help improve support processes continuously.
• Customer support that integrates with the CRM across marketing, sales, and service improves customer experience.