Supporting your customers is a crucial tenet of business success. And while it may seem like only large businesses can afford help desk software to help streamline customer success operations, there are options available to small businesses, too.
Why small businesses need help desk software
As soon as you start processing customer transactions, you should think about help desk software. According to Bain and Company, reducing customer churn by 5% can increase profits by 25% and 95%. That’s not a small chunk of revenue, and help desk software for small business helps make it happen.
Why?
Think about a recent interaction customer support interaction you’ve had. If it went well, you might have considered making another purchase, or if a subscription-based product, you’ve likely kept your membership active. By contrast, if your interaction was negative, you may seriously consider taking your business elsewhere if you haven’t already.
Two components make up excellent support: a great team and software to support them to work their best. Help desk software for small businesses improves the efficacy of support teams and increases the impact that customer-facing teams have on an organization. But when it’s time to purchase software, it can be challenging to find the right solution. Here are four things to look for when selecting a solution:
- 1. Customizable features
Your business is unique, and your help desk software should reflect your brand. Look for customizable applications that make your business front and center. Look for software that gives flexibility. At a minimum, you should be able to customize your brand colors and logo. Beyond that, customization of your help desk software should also be accessible. You shouldn’t have to spend hours making HTML edits or leveraging your limited development resources to write code in your software.
- 2. Ease of use
You shouldn’t just look for help desk software that is easy to customize. Choose a support software that is easy for your customers and employees to use. For customers, your help desk software should help navigate them to assistance as efficiently as possible. It shouldn’t add more steps or frustrations when they seek help.
Similarly, your software should be easy for your staff to use. This is especially critical if you have a small but mighty support team where every minute matters and you don’t have a lot of time to train or onramp new software.
Look for software that has a clean dashboard that’s easy to navigate and understand. The dashboard should provide a clear picture of what’s going on, depict the work assigned to each employee, and calculate the number of tickets across the entire organization.
- 3. Operational streamlining
A great help desk software will also improve your agents’ efficiency by helping them prioritize what to respond to first. This could be set by first-come, first-serve in order of request submission time, or based on the value of an account. Once you set it up, the solution you have selected should help you streamline support operations and prioritize appropriately.
Further, your software should minimize duplicate work by preventing duplicate tickets or customer requests. Sorting through duplicate tickets wastes time and can be costly as your company grows.
Your help desk software for small business should also allow your agents to interact with each other, utilizing your most valuable asset: your team. Features like chat or commenting threads allow employees to troubleshoot with each other in real-time, meaning your customers get fantastic service, and your team can stay in one tool.
- 4. AI assistance
Your help desk software should also help your team work smarter with artificial intelligence (AI) assistance. Done well, AI will help streamline operations by identifying where to focus your efforts or predictively offer solutions to customers, and identify customer sentiment.
When evaluating providers, look for a tool that grows with you. Your AI tool should even learn as you use it, improving over time. But, if you skimp on ineffective AI, you could accidentally reduce the ease of use for your customers.
With these four features guiding your search for help desk software for your small business, you’ll be ahead of the game. Your customers will be delighted by every interaction with your support team, and your staff will feel empowered to do their best work. Combined, these two factors will help your business scale and reach profitability faster than without the support of help desk software.
If you’re looking for software with all four features, sign up for a free trial of Wavity’s help desk software.