Help desk software is an essential tool for customer service teams to do their job effectively and meet their ultimate goal – to increase customer satisfaction.
But more than that, help desk software helps reduce the pressure that customer support teams find themselves under. Often subject to intense workloads, customer service teams are at risk of burnout. In fact, one study by Cornell University found that 87% of customer support workers reported high or very high stress levels at their call centre, with 50% feeling burned out from their work every single day.
This makes it vital for customer support teams to have all the tools they need to effectively manage their workload, whilst continuing to help and delight customers.
Whether teams are investigating technical issues, handling support requests, providing ad-hoc training sessions, or resolving complaints, a help desk system will bring all those tasks together in one easy-to-access hub.
Better still, an intranet with built-in service desk software – such as Claromentis – provides teams with a single access point to ticket management tools, project management software, and knowledge management and sharing features that empower them to deliver great customer service. Indeed, using an all-in-one system, rather than multiple apps, will help teams be more productive, because they won’t be distracted by constant app switching. In addition, all help desk tools, customer data, and technical documentation is in one place, giving teams a reliable, single source of truth.
We’ll be talking about the reasons why an intranet makes the best help desk software, as well as showing you how to create a help desk solution using your intranet, later on in this blog, so that you can help your own customer support teams work productively and sustainably. But first, let’s take a quick primer on what an IT help desk system actually is.
A help desk system is a piece of software that helps support teams manage incoming tickets (a.k.a support or service requests) from customers. Within the help desk software, teams can respond to customer queries, escalate tickets to senior staff members, securely share and receive files to and from customers, and keep track of ticket progress. Staff can also report on resolution times, commonly asked questions, and SLA targets as part of their efforts to improve customer satisfaction.
Most importantly, help desk software automates the manual and repetitive parts of customer support, such as assigning a ticket to an available support rep, notifying the relevant team member that a ticket is approaching its SLA deadline, and closing a ticket when a predefined time frame has passed. Without a help desk solution, these processes would need to be actioned manually which, for overstretched customer support teams, is yet another task for the to-do list.
Traditionally, help desk software is completely separate from the rest of your business applications. This provides a siloed, disconnected experience for both your staff and customers, who need to navigate multiple systems to find the information and support they need. As a result, service requests take longer to resolve, SLAs get missed, and everyone feels frustrated by a poor user experience.
According to data curated by Finances Online, 84% of customers are willing to spend more to get better customer service, and 93% of customer support teams say that customer expectations of today are higher than ever. So providing customers and support teams with the best experience possible is an absolute must-have.
An intranet with workflow automation and digital form capabilities (like Claromentis) allows you to build a help desk platform within the intranet system itself and bring everything together in a single location. Let’s take a look at what benefits this brings to your teams and customers:
A knowledge management tool is a staple of intranet software. This app enables staff to build a library of content-rich how-to articles, user guides, video tutorials, explainers, and more, providing a highly valuable resource for customers to resolve their own queries without having to spend time submitting a support ticket.
And yet, just 28% of customer experience teams provide a knowledge base, according to stats curated by TrustRadius. This is despite the fact that 67% of customers prefer to use self service portals rather than contacting a customer support rep.
By using your intranet as the home of your help desk solution, your customers get instant access to your intranet’s knowledge base as well, without having to sign-up and sign-in to another application. This will save time, reduce ticket submissions, and give customers the self service tools they’re asking for.
Almost everyone will have experienced this tale of woe: you submit a support request or phone the service desk, and you have to speak to a different customer service rep every time, repeating the same information again and again. In fact, 33% of customers report that this is the most frustrating aspect of getting support, according to data by HubSpot.
Using an intranet as your help desk software greatly reduces the chance that your own customers will experience this. Why? Because the intranet’s built-in workflow automation tool assigns each support ticket to a dedicated member of staff, who then takes ownership of that issue until it’s resolved.
Assign support tickets to the relevant staff using workflow automations to improve accountability
Of course, there will always be occasions where another customer support rep will need to jump in and handle the support request, for example, when that team member is on leave or the ticket needs to be escalated to senior staff. Thankfully, intranet help desk systems provide complete visibility of a ticket’s history and notes, so that any relevant team member can pick it up and get up to speed without the customer having to repeat themselves.
Speedy resolution times and meeting SLAs are perhaps the most important KPIs your customer support teams measure.
An intranet with built-in workflow management software, which comes pre-installed with SLA timers and notifications, can improve these processes and drive better results. For example, if a ticket is nearing its resolution time, the assigned support agent is instantly notified within the intranet that they need to take action.
Automatic notifications will ensure your teams never miss an SLA
Similarly, you can add dashboards to your intranet homepage that display pending tickets, breached SLAs, and completed requests, giving teams instant visibility on what’s what.
Here at Claromentis, we know that an intranet makes the best help desk system, because we’ve been using our own software in this way for over 15 years.
Our Discover support portal has been our trusty help desk tool since 2007, and is home to tens of thousands of knowledge base guides, support tickets, upgrade requests, customer ideas, video tutorials, news articles, and more.
We use our own intranet software to run our IT service desk, Discover
A few of our customers also use our intranet as a comprehensive service management system for their own clients. Used in combination with our intranet design tools, our customers have built intranet themes for each of their international client offices, so they can deliver personalised customer support in the relevant language.
So if you were ever in doubt that an intranet help desk solution can work, take it from us and our customers – it does.
So now you know the reasons why your intranet makes the best service desk software, it’s time to find out how to build one yourself. Watch our explainer video below to see Barclay, Account Manager at Claromentis, share some tips on how to create a help desk software solution in your intranet.