Time for an SaaS Update?

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED TO TMCNET’S CUSTOMER SUPPORT SOFTWARE

It’s no secret – and definitely nothing new – a good help desk is necessary in allowing the corporate world to flourish, one business professional at a time.

At smaller companies, Help Desk Support and IT may, in fact, be the same department. But, at larger firms, they are as much the same as night and day. Help Desks are responsible for serving their own internal clientele in the best way possible. They also may serve as the company’s Tech Support department for external customers with incoming concerns with a company’s product lines, services or website functionality. They are often the first point of contact with tech concerns – and many times the only point of contact.

Susan J. Campbell recently discussed how your days are numbered if your differentiation isn’t based on quality service. No matter which audience you’re serving, if you are the first point of contact or the last – your focus better be on quality and maximized performance.

But, how can you do this when your desk isn’t organized and files are thrown all over the place? How can you do this when your own team isn’t on the same page, or when it takes 20 steps to complete just one task? How can better communication take place with your customers if support tickets are continually getting lost?

This most recent shift in cloud technologies and integrations has been teaching us that there are so many new and amazing tech options, helping us do our jobs better and with greater efficiency. Productivity is key. If your time behind that desk is not maximized, you are wasting your own potential.

In a Help Desk setting, we are also able to benefit from the potential that clouds bring to our communications and collaboration activity. Not to mention, cloud technologies are cutting costs to department budgets and are improving speed within the organizations over all infrastructure. Using software environments from 1999 is not going to cut it. In order to evolve your business model, you must evolve the way you are handling business.

If your team hasn’t yet discussed the need for a new direction in Help Desk SaaS (News – Alert), perhaps it’s the right time to start that conversation. Continued improvements to processes are what make a business run more effortlessly and with greater productivity. As the first line of defense, it is your responsibility to provide the company with better support to the outside world.

Everyone’s input is important and everyone on the team makes a difference. Include your team in the discussion for department needs in improving the Help Desk environment. Together, you will want to discuss whether the company needs new customer support software, integration or a whole new environment altogether. Discussing department needs will bring awareness to issues that have been avoided for a long time. Notes should be taken. Processes will be improved. Perhaps solutions such as TeamSupport would actually be an option in helping teams to continue this necessary dialog and eliminate miscommunication. Find out. Start the conversation. 

All stakeholders should feel a sense of ownership. Give everyone the chance to list their needs and which features they would most benefit from in their day-to-day work routine.

Prioritize the items on the list. Eliminate what is not important. Vote on which are the most important and why. These are all tips shared by Information-Age.

Help Desks can consist of both expert and intermediate abilities. What may have been mastered by you 10 years ago may be something new to someone else. Communicate these differences. You may find compromise to be an important factor in this part of process. You may find communication to be an even larger part of that process.

Come to the meeting armed with options. This will allow the team to weigh out benefits and costs of these technologies. Encourage everyone to research solutions beforehand.

In some cases, a business SaaS with a great reputation of updates and integrations is a better solution than a do-it-all platform. Then again, the opposite can be true. What are your needs? Do not pay for what you aren’t going to use.  Focus on the services you need to provide better service to your own customers.

Discuss a minimum feature set and select a solution that will provide you with a better feature-to-budget ratio. Factor in whether or not there is compliance or licensure necessary in using each option. Are there security requirements? What security is included?

Preparing your case to decision-makers will often allow your department to go outside of their budget if the external decision makers find it a good investment.

Always know what you want to do and why you want to do it. Continuous monitoring of system performance will help to validate adoption down the road. It will allow you to enrich the support off your clientele, both internal and external. Process improvements will strengthen this ability and allow your team to better succeed in support. Customers will continue to be satisfied; and your support team will, too.