The IT Service Desk is your organization’s unsung hero. The majority of questions to your organization are funneled through the IT Service Desk, but yet, it’s often the butt of many jokes. And like it or not, your IT Service Desk is your company’s main communication platform between you and your end users often helping them through challenges that will inevitably increase their productivity.
Unlike the lowly help desk, your IT Service Desk is your single point of contact for end users. While the help desk focuses only on IT and user-specific problems (customer can’t connect to Wi-Fi/printer/monitor) your IT Service Desk goes way beyond that. Your IT Service Desk is your command center that solves business challenges and improves end user experience and productivity in the hybrid workplace for not just IT but:
- HR
- Facilities
- Dashboards
- Automation
Plus, your IT Service Desk coverage expands to not only troubleshooting, but improving your organization’s efficiencies, and meeting your SLAs and XLAs.
What is the Value of a Great Service Desk? Here are 6 Reasons!
A good IT Service Desk just makes for good end user and employee relations. It helps the employee be more productive through consistency in service that in turn creates repeat customers and a great reputation. Below are 6 ways your IT Service Desk goes beyond the lowly help desk to build up your customer experience:
1.Being More Efficient Improves Your Customer Relations
Everyone wants things done efficiently, so much so that the term (or its synonyms, “simplify”, “ease”) have been words of the year over the past few years whether you go by the OED, or that bastion of top-ten lists, Time Magazine.
That’s why one way to make your IT Service Desk more efficient is to isolate urgent and important “service incidents” from the help desk chaff (“service requests” that are often repetitive, standardized tasks can be taken care of by a chatbot). With an IT Service Desk, you can do just that, and unlike a help desk which is a stand-alone solution performing tasks related to resolving basic help desk tickets, your IT Service Desk is a more elaborate system with complete IT management capabilities that include:
- Managing IT budgets and costs
- Monitoring safety, security, and compliance
- Implementing new software, hardware, and data systems
- And last but not least, providing technical or help desk support
2. Seeking Feedback from Customers Demonstrates You’re Listening
Sending out surveys is one approach to collecting feedback, although in my personal experience going beyond surveys and adding a personal touch often means even higher response rates. After collecting the base information, delve into that feedback and gather pain points, figure out corrective plans, make changes, and repeat the process.
By being proactive, your IT service desks manages customer expectations and builds trust by keeping them informed about system updates and known issues to improve transparency.
3. Being Proactive Also Uncovers Unforeseen Service Gaps
When you’re proactive about addressing your customer needs, you’ll discover unforeseen service gaps that help you:
- Uncover major customer pain points when you schedule meetings with your most difficult customers
- Dive deeper than customer surveys and reach out to them to measure customer satisfaction
- Designate a team to focus on continuous improvements and share your successes with your team Plus, by being proactive you help customers feel heard and understood when they encounter issues.
Plus, by being proactive you help customers feel heard and understood when they encounter issues.
4.Personalization and Empathy can go a Long Way
Linked closely with being proactive is also adding some personalization and empathy towards your customers’ challenges. Customers who feel like they’re being heard will go a long way in building/repairing a broken customer experience and turning what could be a negative experience into a somewhat positive one. Simple tips towards personalization include:
- Addressing customer by their name
- Trying to understand their situation without being condescending
- Actively listening to their problems and not being dismissive
5.Eliminating Repetitive Tasks and Reoccurring Issues
Let your IT Service Desk do its job and find those oft-repeated tasks that would be best to automate. Is your most frequent request password-related? Or does the marketing departments Wi-Fi go down more than other departments? Leverage pre-populated templates to capture common information and implement workflows to reduce time spent on repetitive tasks.
6.Providing Timely and Effective support
An efficient IT service desk resolves issues quickly and improves CX by reducing downtime and minimizing disruption to work. Customers expect support that won’t waste their time while also solving their technical issues. A quick response time and a first-time resolution rate are crucial in building up customer satisfaction.
To stop being on the receiving end of bad jokes, contact us today to find out how Milestone can help you leverage your IT Service Desk to improve your CX.
