Why Is IT Support Software So Beneficial for an Organization?

Customer support has changed a lot from the days when people had to visit a store or pick up the phone to get answers to questions or troubleshoot issues. 

With the advent of the internet and social media, the means of delivering customer service has transformed. The need to provide strong customer support, however, remains. If you are selling a product or service, you must address customer concerns and questions if things go awry. Not only is this a reasonable customer expectations, but failure to do so may lead to negative online reviews and comments. 

Put simply, technology support is not an option for companies. Your IT team needs to have the right equipment and tools at their disposal to ensure customer tickets can be directed to the most suitable support representatives.

That’s where IT support software comes in. 

Thanks to this software, customer questions and issues can be matched with the agent best qualified to tackle the resolution. Ticket status can be tracked, and meaningful metrics can be gathered to boost service desk efficiency. 

These are all opportunities that an email-based customer service system cannot readily offer. In this blog post, we’ll outline four major advantages offered by IT support software when it comes to providing effective, efficient customer service. 

Why Email-Based Support Is Problematic 

Before modern-day help desks made their way into businesses, the process of responding to support issues was fragmented and ineffective. Often, support agents used a shared email inbox to collect support issues and then craft responses. 

Such an email-based system can function when volume is low, but struggles as support needs increase. What happens when there is an influx of messages? Some emails may get ignored, and others may be addressed by multiple agents at once, resulting in duplicate work. Plus, in an email-based system, triaging complaints can be challenging—the main way to sort all those email messages is by arrival time. Some customer support needs, however, are more urgent than others, and should be prioritized. 

The solution to these and other issues that arise with email-based support is to turn to a more sophisticated system: IT support software. 

4 Advantages of Using IT Support Software 

1. Track the Performance of the Support Team 

How are your service agents doing? It’s not always easy to pinpoint if your team is effectively—and quickly—responding to customer questions and issues. IT support software provides meaningful metrics that provide a window into your agents’ and team’s performance. 

By using IT support software, you can track performance statistics on an individual level, as well as examining team performance overall. You can review time-tested metrics such as response time, ticket volume, channel attribution, and the customer experience rating.  

IT support software brings order to what could otherwise be a chaotic influx of requests and questions. The software allows team leaders to assign tasks to different agents, organize closed tickets, and ensure everyone is working efficiently.

2. Use Sophisticated Metrics to Deepen Your Understanding of the Business 

Tracking customer experiences with IT support software provides valuable insight into what is working…and what isn’t. You can learn from negative feedback, and seek to duplicate the process that led to positive feedback. And, being able to track ticket volume and channel attribution reveals the products with the most issues—this can provide an opportunity to improve the product or update documentation. 

Metrics also reveal how to best allocate your support team. For example, you might find out with your IT support software that customer questions through phone are more technical-based, while inquiries through your chat feature are simpler. With this knowledge, you can shift your agents accordingly. 

3. Provide Personalized Service That Leaves Customers Satisfied 

Speed is an important aspect of customer service—customers are eager to get their issues resolved quickly. IT support software helps you organize and categorize support tickets, which lets agents quickly begin the support process, and connect right away with a given customer.  

But speed isn’t the sole ingredient of strong customer support: the quality of the service matters as well. That’s where personality comes in. 

Your IT support software can help your company maintain a personalized edge while still providing prompt service. 

One simple fix is to provide a personalized automated responses, written in the voice of your company (rather than generic, vaguely robotic replies like “Thank you. Your request has been received.”).  

Here’s an even more meaningful way your IT support software can help you provide personalized interactions: with a customizable portal, you can track each customers’ support history, including what was discussed during prior interactions. With this background information, agents won’t have to repeat questions that customers have already answered (an experience that customers find deeply irritating) and can instead provide targeted, personalized service. 

4. Allow Customers to Resolve Issues Through a Self-Service Portal   

Many customers are prepared—or even eager—to resolve issues without interacting with support staff. A self-service portal allows customers to seek out information on common issues (password resets, for instance, or known, fixed issues with products) and apply that information to resolve the issue. 

Cherwell’s IT service desk software enables companies to deliver personalized experiences by configuring web portals through codeless, drag and drop tools, that can be completely customized to serve different functions or meet customer needs. 

Why Choose Cherwell to Manage Your Support Ticket Needs 

Cherwell’s robust and advanced service desk software platform gives support technicians the information they need to better serve customers. 

Right out of the box, support teams can take advantage of role-based dashboards and a variety of performance metrics to gain details on ticket resolution time, backlog, overall satisfaction ratings, work distribution, and the individual performance of support agents.

Cherwell’s IT support software allows support teams to automate tasks and streamline workflow—doing so reduces labor intensity, maximizes support staff expenditures, and ensures every ticket agent has access to the information they need to provide a positive experience to support-seeking customers. Plus, integrating Cherwell’s IT Service Desk Software with other third-party software your company already uses is easily done. 

Schedule a demo with Cherwell to learn more. 

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