Everyone within the organization has a thing or two to say in regards to the help desk support. They have their own opinions for the betterment of these services. Their opinions should be respected, but whether or not they should be implemented depends on the management policies. The external or internal opinion givers do not understand the constraints of a call center manager. The person has to ensure operational efficiency, but not at the sake of increasing spend. Organizational budgets force the managers to juggle between both these vital business aspects. This is why it is important that a basic philosophy is kept in mind: every organization has its own strengths and weaknesses.
So, you should never look to start from the scratch while addressing the state of your help desk services outsourcing. Companies starting from the scratch end up spending exorbitant sums. You should look to make small changes that bear fruit in the long run. When there is too much of chopping and changing, everyone is deviated from the end goal that is superior customer service. So, how to bring about telling changes that make your help desk support processes more efficient? Some tips have been mentioned below:
- Review Existing Practices: Before you look to improve on the help desk services outsourcing spend some time reviewing the things that you are doing right. There will be a lot of teams within your organization, and each of these teams will have their own best practices. These best practices can be customized and used elsewhere. Suppose the IT department has a library for IT infrastructure, the help desk team could benefit from it too. When this library is used in help desk processes it can help in areas such as: problem, incident, change and release management.
- Service Level Management: There is always a need for service level management that would align the services of help desk with the provisions of IT support team. This will help find solutions for business problems quicker than the usual approach.
- Cut Costs: Look through the provision of service and calculate how much each of the help desk calls is costing you. There would be some common queries that can be solved quicker and cheaply using other approaches. Make a list of the common queries and prepare a FAQ on them. You may also include them as a part of self service options.
- Right Mix: Where the organizations commit a blunder is: they appoint technical aspects for help desk process. They fail to understand that it is difficult for a technical person to adopt the customer service skills. Think the other way round, employ a customer friendly person and train him/her on the technical skills.
- Enhance Expertize Levels: There are various areas within your business that use the same principles such as finance, facilities management and HR support. Utilize these skills to offer high quality, consistent and one stop solution to callers.
- Take Lessons from Mistakes: It is said that a person learns more from mistakes than anything else on earth. Use the principles of knowledge management to stop repetition of researching for the same problems. If there is a problem that the agents cannot solve, send it to the technical team. They would research the problem and send back a solution. This solution should be enlisted in the service management application. It should be readily available for all the agents to see. This will mean when the same problem comes up in the future the agents will be able to view the application and give the solution instantly.
- Ownership Matters: The agents should be advised never to give up their ownership. Even if a problem needs to be solved by a third party service, you should follow up regularly until the solution is provided. Once the customers have been provided the solution follow up and make them feel secured.
- Interoperability in Technology: When you invest in a technology have a vision for the future. Search for technology that is open standards based and will serve good in the future. Just as an example – if you purchase a client server based application today it will not fit the scheme of things in the long run. Rather purchase a platform based architecture that will support all your future needs.
- Self Service Options: Integration of self service options prove beneficial for the help desk services outsourcing. They can support the customers in the after office hours. The customer complaints are registered in the system and they can be dealt with first thing next morning. If the self service options are utilized well, the customers can find their way to the solutions themselves. This can save a lot of time and costs.
As you can see, to change the culture and efficiency of your help desk support services money is not always the most important thing. Minor changes in the existing infrastructure can make a world of difference.