How a help desk ticketing system benefits customer service

If your business provides customer support to clients, you are probably aware of what a help desk ticketing system is, at least in theory. But, just in case you don’t, here’s a quick rundown: Helpdesk tickets are your individual customer support cases. Each time a customer submits a new case, a ticket is created and used to track all the progress made toward resolving the customer’s issue, until it is finally closed.

A help desk ticketing system helps you automate the time consuming, repetitive administrative tasks associated with managing customer support cases. It typically links back to an overarching customer relationship management (CRM) database that stores all of your contacts’ information.

There are many help desk ticketing systems out there, but not all are created equal. One that we particularly like is Agile CRM, which provides a full suite of customer support features, along and a CRM and marketing automation features, all in one platform. And it’s free, which makes it a great option for small businesses—check out Agile CRM’s free help desk suite. But, in order to pick the right solution to fit your needs, you need to understand fully how such a system can help you.

Here, we drill down to shed some light on the benefits that a help desk ticketing system provides to your customer support presence.

1. Faster Ticket Resolution

A powerful help desk ticketing system automates so much of the routine administration of processing incoming help desk cases, that it gives your customer support team more time to focus on addressing and closing tickets. When an incoming ticket arrives, it is automatically entered into the system, routed to the appropriate support rep, and populated with details about the case, such as the customer’s name, the product they use, the urgency of the ticket, and so on.

That’s a load of work that your team doesn’t have to do, letting them focus more time and energy on addressing customer issues, and less time on entering data and moving tickets through the process.

Related Blog: 6 Best Practices For Support Ticket Prioritization

2. Reduced Ticket Backlog

When your customer support team is able to move through and resolve more tickets in less time, you will start to reduce your ticket backlog. This is important for two reasons. First, the longer your customers have to wait for a response from your support team, the lower their trust in your ability to support them will be. When a customer has a problem, they need it solved as quickly as possible. After all, it may be preventing them from doing their job, which is problematic for a number of reasons. The faster you can reply to them and resolve their issues, the more successful they will be using your product, which is important for recurring revenue.

Second, a large ticket backlog creates an environment of stress for your customer support team. When your reps are under pressure and stressed out, they will not be able to concentrate as well and that will impact their ability to effectively resolve customer issues. Plus, when they are under pressure, they are more likely to be curt or short with your customers, which is something that will have a detrimental impact on your brand’s reputation in the market.

3. Personalized Support

With a strong helpdesk ticketing system in place, your team is able to give much more one-on-one attention to clients with support issues. This is made possible because, on the one hand, automation frees up time for them, which can then be spent talking to clients and providing a more personalized approach to supporting them. When your customers see that your support reps are genuinely invested in their success, and can display that by spending more time on the phone understanding the issue at hand, it helps customers feel valued. This breeds strong brand loyalty and helps ensure revenue growth over the long term.

On the other hand, if your help desk ticketing system links to a CRM—or better yet, come with one, such as with Agile CRM—your company is able to store lots of information about each individual contact. This includes basic contact information such as name and address, as well as buying history, web browsing activity, their like and interests, and more. Armed with this level of insight into each customer, your support team better understands who each customer is, and can, therefore, interact with them in a much more personal way.

4. Higher Quality Support

Some help desk ticketing systems provide help desk groups. Helpdesk groups are a way to segment your customers into groups who share common attributes, such as using the same product or speaking the same language. Then, you can assign specific support reps to those groups. For example, if Group 1 uses Product A, you can assign reps to that group who only focus on Product A—essentially, experts in Product A. Then, if Group 2 uses Product B, you assign reps who are experts in that product to exclusively support that group. This lets you give your customers a specialized support rep who is well versed in solving the kinds of issues they normally face.

This creates two secondary benefits. First, tickets get closed faster because the support rep never has to escalate the ticket to a more knowable teammate. And second, customers stay happier because you are providing them with a superior level of support. There’s nothing more annoying than calling customer support and having your case addressed by someone who doesn’t understand the problem or how to fix it. So, look for a help desk ticketing system that provides help desk groups.

5. Continuous Performance Improvement

A worthy help desk ticketing system provides you with metrics and analytics around the performance of your team. These metrics can often be viewed on a central dashboard, which lets you gain valuable insight at a glance. In this way, you can monitor metrics such as tickets closed, the average time to resolve issues, etc. This lets you know when someone on the team is falling behind in their duties so that you can address the issue before it escalates further.

Helpdesk analytics help bring transparency to your support team’s efforts so that you can identify bottlenecks or other kinks in your process and course correct accordingly. They also lend an element of accountability to your team, because when something goes wrong, you can easily understand the reason why it happened, from your system reporting. So, be sure to check out how robust a potential system’s reporting is before committing to buy.

6. Setting Clear Expectations

Some help desk ticketing systems come with the ability to leverage service level agreements. Service level agreements set clear expectations for your support team and your customers, providing clarity around what customers can expect and giving your support team goals to work toward. Essentially, they state that you will get back to the customer in X amount of time, or that they can expect to have their issue fully resolved in a specified amount of time. This helps customers feel more confident in your ability to support them, while also helping to alleviate their concerns when they encounter a problem. It also helps reps understand the expectations placed on them by management. It’s another reason why a good help desk ticketing system makes your business more transparent, which is important for sustained growth.

7. Maximum Customer Satisfaction

This is the underlying benefit that most of the benefits above point back to. When tickets are resolved faster, customers are able to work more successfully with your product or service, meaning they believe in your product and will be loyal to it over the long term. When ticket backlogs are eliminated and reps can provide a more personalized support experience, customers feel valued and customer satisfaction increases. And when they get the superior support that’s possible with the use of help desk groups, they view your business as very well-equipped to support them into the future, which curbs customer attrition.

Related Blog: 31 tips to generate world-class customer satisfaction

8. Revenue Growth

Because happy customers stick around longer, your recurring revenue will remain steady and reliable. When you deliver best-in-class customer support, word will get out and your business will begin to develop a reparation as a reliable provider, which will, in turn, help you generate more leads and close more deals with new customers. Ultimately, you can have a great product, but if there’s no avenue for customers to find help when they have a problem using it, they will eventually stop using it and your product might become obsolete. A strong customer support presence is essential for revenue growth, and a strong helpdesk ticketing system will help you achieve both.