Over the past two decades, the evolution of help desk ticketing systems has been rapid. Here we explore some of the key features to look out for.

Introduced initially to assist help desk professionals solve customer issues, they are now the backbone of multiple help desk teams across the globe. When evaluating help desk systems, be sure to look for the following.

10 Must-Have Features of a Great Help Desk Ticketing System

The best help desk ticketing systems have some or all of the features discussed in this article.

1. Ticket Automation

All help desk ticketing systems should have an automation component because it frees up your customer service staff and allows them to work on other tasks. Ticket automation should remind your employees that a ticket response is due, route tickets to specific users, and much more.

2. Ticket Tags

Ticket tags offer users the ability to organize their tickets and spot common issues amongst customers, which help find pain points. They can also provide direct value by automatically recommending articles or FAQs to customers depending on what tags are designed.

3. Service Level Agreement (SLA) Status Information

Without a help desk ticketing system, employees must gauge based on business policy and personal preference if a ticket is urgent. With an SLA, it’s easier for businesses to prioritize or deprioritize tickets while avoiding service level agreement violations simultaneously.

4. Ticket Templates

Templates are an effective way to simplify one of the most tedious parts of the help desk process. Not all tickets are the same, so the ability to add and create several templates can quicken your response time. You can combine templates for more complicated responses.

5. Ticket Status Options

Not all tickets fall into the “open” and “closed” category; others are in limbo or require further information from a customer or a follow-up. Help desk ticketing systems allow for customizable ticket status options, which can also trigger email responses after a change in status.

6. Individual Ticketing Queues

Many businesses are using the same ticketing queues for all of their responses. Unfortunately, this can bottleneck your response time and increase the time it takes to reply. With individual queues, your employees can organize tickets more effectively, quickening the process.

7. Inventory and Product Association

When a customer sends your help desk a question about an item, oftentimes, they forget to add the item number or an accurate description of the product. Help desk ticketing systems can match up the customer’s purchased product with their ticket, leading to less confusion.

8. Private and Public Response Actions

Not all ticket conversations amongst your staff or customers need to be seen by everyone. With a help desk ticketing system, employees can separate conversations between public and private. When they’re ready to inform the customer, your employee sets the action to “public.”

9. Related Tickets

All help desk employees have had to answer the same question multiple times across multiple mediums. Not only is this frustrating, but it also slows down your team. Help desk ticketing systems can combine similar tickets and reply to them all with one click to save time.

10. Customer Ticket Pages

The more your employees know about your customers, the easier it will be for them to solve their issues. Help desk ticketing systems give users the ability to separate each customer by a number, name, or keyword and show information about their open tickets and satisfaction rating.

Managing a successful customer support helpdesk isn’t an easy task. But when helpdesk managers set the right Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) for their agents, they can transform results for their customer support service.

Since customers and clients have high expectations for fast and effective service provision, it’s something every helpdesk manager should be considering.

Reports show that almost 80% of customers expect helpdesk agents to know their personal and buying histories. If those expectations aren’t met, managers become accountable for the potential risk of customer attrition. But with the right KPI’s in place, helpdesk managers can keep improving performance standards while ensuring customer retention remains high.

What Are Customer Support Helpdesk KPI’s?

KPI’s are specific measurements used in professional settings to set targets and goals to work towards. They enable Helpdesk managers to track the success of campaigns, sales, teams, or operations by measuring a specific set of data. It’s worth noting that KPI’s differ from metrics in that they’re designed to allow for setting goals for either individuals or groups to work towards. And, ultimately, to be accountable for.

There are many other ways that setting helpdesk KPI’s are effective for managers:

• Incentivise teams to reach goals
• Check individual and team performance
• Diagnose problems
• Make improvements to campaigns
• Gain insights to use for strategy, planning, and innovation
• Track trends and performance over time
• Hold team members to account
• Promote consistency

Help desk KPIs should include all areas of customer service and include specific communication channels such as phone, Live Chat, SMS, or email. So, by choosing a dynamic mix of KPIs, managers will find it easier to track, measure, and improve on current performance to help their teams deliver exceptional results.

Delivering exceptional results involves using a reliable help desk software program. Help desk software for small businesses and big companies or corporations has robust features which help attain relevant customer service KPIs.  

This tool can be customized or configured to speed up response times through clear assignment and automation rules. It also helps improve service level agreements by setting reminder notifications, prioritizing customer issues, and observing ticket activities in real-time with collision detection. 

Businesses can choose the best help desk software to keep track of customer support and business metrics and provide excellent customer services to boost brand loyalty, reduce churn rate, and improve sales. 

10 Helpdesk KPIs Needed to Maximise Customer Support

So, which KPI’s do managers need to know to get the best out of their customer support teams?

1. First Response Time

First response time (FRT) measures how long it takes agents or support staff to respond to queries. By tracking the speed, or the average time for a first response, managers can review all factors that may influence the quality of performance. This, in turn, will make it easier for them to make necessary alterations and improvements.

Plus, when they know what customers are expecting, managers can make better judgements on what to change. For example, nearly 40% of customers expect a response on social media on the same day. And this can be useful to know when setting KPIs.

 2. First Contact Resolution

FCR (First Contact Resolution) measures the percentage of tickets a support team resolves at the initial point of contact.

When over 95% of customers say they’ll be loyal to a brand that gets their customer service right, most managers will want to ensure they’re better than the rest. So having a helpdesk team that resolves customer queries the first time, or at least in the shortest space of time, is a must.

Customers are looking for an experience that’s as painless as possible. So, when agents working across all communications have higher FCR rates, it’s more likely a company will experience higher customer satisfaction rates.

3. Average Resolution Time

It’s obvious that the sooner you deal with a customer’s issue, the happier they’ll be. And happy customers are loyal customers. Research found that over 80% of consumers believe the timely resolution of their issues is the most important factor for receiving exceptional customer service experiences.

Plus, satisfaction rates can drop when end-users feel their issues haven’t been resolved. So, it’s important to get this right.

4. Ticket Volume

As a basic rule, help desk managers must oversee the volume of tickets their teams get through. Running ticket creation reports is easy to do in your help desk software, and should show the ticket volume your support team is handling at any one given time. With a strong grip on the volume of tickets each team member takes on every day, week or month, it’s easier for planning and forecasting.

• Ticket volume by support channel

A substrate of reviewing ticket volume is tracking tickets across communication channels. This helps to optimise the performance of a support team. It also enables managers to review the quality across each platform and consider where staff are best deployed.

• Ticket distribution

Helpdesk software enables managers to add category tags to tickets. And this enables better highlighting of problems within specific topic areas.

5. CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score)

While tracking the numbers is important, it’s the happiness of customers that counts. When almost 70% of customers say the rep or agent they speak to is the primary driver for a positive experience, managers should use CSAT scores to help assess the performance of help desk agents.

By deploying CSAT surveys to customers following a ticket resolution, managers gain insights into the performance of agents in each interaction. This makes it critical to continue asking customers for feedback.

6. Net Promoter Score

A Net Promoter Score is a powerful and very valuable KPI. When customers have positive experiences, businesses grow. Those who have good experiences with brands tend to also recommend them to their networks.

Research by Nielsen highlighted that over 90% of people trust recommendations from friends and family over sales or marketing tactics. This is a strong reason for including a Net Promoter Score.

A Net Promoter Score will also tell managers how many customers would recommend you, how many would not and then anyone sitting on the fence. This will help preserve brand reputation and better meet the expectations of customers.

Calculating the net promoter score (NPS) involves subtracting the promoter percentage from the detractor percentage. The first step is to determine the percentage of promoters and detractors using this formula: 

Number of Promoters / Total Number of Respondents x 100 = % Promoters  

Number of Detractors / Total Number of Respondents x 100 = % Detractors  

The NPS is calculated as follows: 

% Promoters – % Detractors = NPS 

An NPS score of 50+ is excellent for a customer service team. NPS can be computed using an online calculator, spreadsheet, or automated software.  A help desk software can help determine the number of promoters and detractors.

7. Customer Retention Rate

Of course, making customers happy is one thing. But it is keeping them coming back for more that’s a challenge. Because a high customer retention rate leads to a direct increase in revenue, it’s a critical way to gauge the health of a business.

Customer retention rates refer to the rates at which customers remain with a business at any one time. And the rates link back to customer satisfaction directly, meaning managers can actively influence the customer retention rate by working to improve CSAT and Net Promoter Scores.

8. Helpdesk Agent Utilisation

Measuring outputs is of course essential for any helpdesk manager. But in the end, it’s the work of the helpdesk agents that powers these metrics. So, helpdesk managers must check how they’re making use of agents.

Helpdesk managers who use KPIs to track the utilisation of agents will be better at keeping them engaged, motivated and driven to reach targets. Help desk software that tracks utilisation rates gives managers a clear overview of the percentage of time their teams are spending on customer support.

If your agent utilisation is too high, first response and customer satisfaction are likely to go down. But if it’s too low then costs can rise through overpayment. And this makes it a vital KPI to include.

9. Helpdesk Staff Engagement

Reviewing numbers is essential to maximising the performance of your customer support team. But the powerhouse behind stats is always people. Helpdesk agents need to be happy and motivated people to deliver against targets while avoiding burnout. Helpdesk managers should assess helpdesk staff engagement rates by conducting feedback reviews and questionnaires. Questions could include:

• How do you feel about the work you’re doing?
• Do you trust your colleagues and supervisors?
• Do you feel you have a voice at work?
• How would you rate the resources available to do your job properly?

Training and development are also key drivers of staff engagement. Plus, it’s proven to motivate helpdesk staff and leave them feeling more satisfied in their jobs.

10. Cost Per Contact

Cost per contact measures the cost of each interaction your support team has with customers. One way this is calculated is the Number of calls per hour/ Agents wage in hours. This helps to work out any additional costs managers may need to reach targets.

Also, managers may pay call centre technical support higher rates than agents who work on Live Chat or email. So a cost per contact KPI should help to ensure cost-effective deployment of staff.

Using a Single Dashboard to Monitor Agent KPIs

The right help desk software should offer support team managers the chance to review individual KPIs and to assess how they interact with each other. For example, First Contact Resolution directly drives CSAT scores. Those that have a direct interplay with each other include:

• Cost per contact
• CSAT
• Agent utilisation
• First Contact Resolution Rate
• Agent Satisfaction

KPI dashboards offer an effective way to review each KPI or bundle them together. Doing so makes it easier to assess how each one stacks up against the performance of agents.

Ultimately, finding the best ways to motivate agents will increase customer support performance. And setting the right KPIs is one very effective way to do this.

About the Author

Stuart Elleray is Content Research Analyst at Comparesoft.

If you work in customer service, from time to time your customers will have problems and complaints. Responding in an efficient and timely manner is key to customer satisfaction.

If your business has good customer service, you are much more likely to get new customers, you’re more likely to retain old customers, and they’re more likely to spend money.

That said, if you have a large business, keeping track of all of those questions and problems and your own responses can be a nightmare. After all, seeing as response time is so important, you need to organize communications between customers and service reps.

You need to create some kind of order, so nobody gets left behind or forgotten. One way to ensure satisfactory customer service, besides using a high-quality data collection and customer feedback tool such as Responsely, is to use a ticketing system. Let’s discuss what ticketing systems are, how they work, and their benefits.

What is a Ticketing System?

In essence, a ticketing system is a customer service and management tool. This software or app is used to organize and deal with customer requests, questions, complaints, and any communication between a business and its customers.

Ticketing systems organize customer complaints and questions to make it easier and more efficient for the customer service reps. It’s all about streamlining the customer service experience to create the best possible experience for customers while also making the process easier for businesses.

How do Ticketing Systems Work?

Ticketing systems are relatively simple, which is one of their main attractions for customer service. They work by allowing customers to create a ticket – a file containing the queries or problems they face. More often than not, customers can select from various predetermined questions or problem categories and usually write a little piece detailing the query.

Once this has been done, the customer submits the ticket to the ticketing system. The ticket is shared with both the customer service rep and the customer who submitted the ticket (generally via email). This way, both the service rep and the customer can view the ticket to ensure that no details have been missed or misconstrued.

More often than not, at least with the good ticketing systems, there will also be some form of triage. Triage is a system that dictates the importance of the query, with the most critical questions and issues being put at the front of the list. However, this is not always the case.

Either way, at some point, the customer service rep will begin to work on the issue, and sometimes customers will be informed when the service reps start working on their issue. The open ticket can be used for back-and-forth communication between the service rep and the customer.

The ticketing system will log all communications to alert both parties of such. Once the issue has been resolved, the customer or the service rep (usually the service rep) will close the ticket, thus bringing the process to completion.

The Benefits of Ticketing Systems

There are three main benefits of customer service ticketing systems, so let’s take a quick look.

Organization

The main benefit of ticketing systems in customer service is that of organization. This is a great way to keep track of all customer queries and complaints and organize them to make sense, particularly in terms of response time and when the ticket will be dealt with. Tickets can be prioritized in terms of urgency; the most pressing issues need to be dealt with in a timely fashion.

Accessibility

Another benefit that ticketing systems bring to customer service is accessibility. Ticketing systems keep everything in one place, which means that the customer service rep and the customer have easy access to the tickets and, therefore, all necessary information.

Communication

The other benefit is that ticketing systems make it easier to communicate. Here we mean that it is easier for reps and customers to communicate, but there is more to it than that.

If a ticket needs to go through multiple dispute levels and various people need to be called in to deal with it, a ticketing system allows all involved parties or people to communicate efficiently.

Conclusion

While ticketing systems are not new, they are beneficial, both for customers and businesses alike.

As a customer service manager, you know that bad customer support can ruin your company’s image, even if your product or service is spectacular. And when customers experience bad service, they tell others.

Your help desk team is, therefore, crucial to your business. Their job is not always an easy one and it’s important to recognize the challenges they face. Here are six common challenges help desk agents struggle with and what you can do to make their job easier.

1. Not being able to find information quickly

Today’s customer is impatient. They expect businesses to respond instantly and solve their problems quickly. If a help desk agent is struggling to access a customer’s information, track their ticket status, find product information, or is searching for answers to troubleshooting queries, customers become irritated.

Hesitant help desk agents create a bad impression of your company. In many cases, it’s not the agent’s fault. Slow or inadequate customer support systems are often to blame. Choosing the right CRM system makes a big difference. It should provide a 360-degree view of the customer’s profile and integrate with your other business systems for quick access to information.

2. Dealing with abusive customers

Every help desk agent encounters irate customers. There’s no escaping this part of the job. Some customers are downright abusive. Not everyone is naturally gifted in conflict resolution. That’s why it’s important to train your agents to handle difficult customers.

There are a few tried and tested methods for diffusing angry customers. One is the HEARD technique. It works well for Disney and should do the same for your company, especially if the fault or mistake is on your side. HEARD stands for:

Hear — Let the customer speak and vent their frustrations without interrupting.

Emphasize — Respond with sympathy and show that you relate to their frustration.

Apologize — Follow that up with a sincere apology.

Resolve — Fix the problem quickly. If you can’t solve it immediately, reassure the customer that you have a plan to resolve it and give them an estimated timeframe.

Diagnose — Commit to finding out why a service failure occurred and take steps to prevent it from happening in the future.

3. Being flooded with service tickets

There are times when the help desk software becomes flooded with queries. This could be due to a new product launch, defective products, or during busy seasons. An influx of queries means your help desk agents are overloaded and can barely take a bathroom break.

As service tickets pile up, stress levels skyrocket. Make sure you have enough agents to keep up with incoming service tickets. Plan ahead and hire more agents or outsource during your busy periods or when you anticipate an influx of customer support queries.

4. Working with an inefficient help desk system

One of the biggest challenges help desks face is not having the right tools. Around 44% of businesses admit that outdated customer service systems are preventing their help desk agents from delivering high quality service.

This is not an area of your business to skimp on. Your help desk relies on two things to provide excellent customer support: well-trained agents and robust help desk software. From intake of queries, management of queries, data collection and reporting, the software you choose should provide a seamless experience.

Choose a system that provides multi-channel support, i.e. queries from different channels like email, phone calls, text messaging, social media and live chat all feed into one system. Agents should also be able to view all service tickets and customer interactions in one place — no screen hopping.

5. Crisis management

Crises come in many different forms. It could be a PR crisis, backlash from a catastrophic product failure, or a security breach that comprises customers data. It could also be a natural disaster. It’s a huge challenge to service customers when a natural disaster has damaged office infrastructure or resulted in power outages.

Whatever the crisis, it places tremendous pressure on help desk agents who are on the frontlines fielding calls and messages from unhappy or angry customers. Keep them updated on the action the company is taking so that they can provide customers with an informed response.

6. Disappointing the customer because there is no solution to their problem

At times, there isn’t an answer to a customer’s problem. Perhaps the customer is seeking a solution the company doesn’t provide. Many customer service agents feel a sense of disappointment when they can’t assist a customer. In this case, you can offer an alternative solution, if there is one. If not, you’ve done all you can and a simple sincere apology that you can’t do more will suffice.

Your help desk team needs support to do a stellar job. If they’re struggling, it can be demoralising and may lead to a high turnover of staff. Empower your team with proper training, provide the right tools, and allow them the space to share their concerns and challenges.

Successful companies always aim to keep their customers happy. They strive to support them with the best people and more increasingly, the best technology. Here I review OneDesk, a popular customer service solution.

What is OneDesk?

OneDesk is an application that helps you support your customers and manage projects. It does this by combining helpdesk and project management tools and enabling interactions between team members and customers through email, a customer portal, live chat, and mobile app. Anyone in the organization can be authorized to access support tickets, projects and customer feedback. This breaks down silos and keeps everyone in sync.

Who is it for?

Aimed at SMBs as well as large enterprises, OneDesk is used by customer service managers, project managers, helpdesk and customer support teams.

Free Trial

One of the handy things about OneDesk is that they offer a free trial so you can try out the software before you subscribe. Signing up was easy; all I needed to do was enter my email address and name. I quickly received a link with my log in details.

Getting Started

Once inside OneDesk, the first thing I did was go to the ‘Get Started’ window. Here there are four options:

• Quick Set Up
• Explore OneDesk
• Interactive Tutorial
• Set up your account

Explore OneDesk is a user guide which provides a wide range of information and videos on how to use the software. There is also an interactive tutorial which I found useful. I spent some time here familiarizing myself with the various apps. The Set up your account option is a wizard-like interface that walks you through each step of your account set up. Once this was complete, I was ready to use OneDesk.

Administration

My next stop was the Administration panel. Here you choose your subscription options, add your company logo, set up your emails and perform other admin tasks. You also get options to add integrations with other apps such as Zendesk, Trello and JIRA.

Helpdesk and Ticketing System

At the core of OneDesk’s software is its helpdesk. The ticketing system enables you to capture support tickets, assign users, and respond to customers from one central place. Using the sample tickets that came with the demo, the system was fast and I was processing tickets in no time. Advanced ticketing tools such as Service Level Agreements (SLAs) can help improve your response times and ensure you keep your commitments to customers.

 Customer Facing Apps

OneDesk comes with four customer facing apps that enable you to work closely with your customers during the ticket resolution process. Let’s take a look.

Live Chat

The Live Chat app enables you to support your customers by resolving issues and answering questions in real-time. This results in better customer engagement and serves as an historical record of customer communications. I was able to add the Live Chat app to our website and it worked smoothly. The chat can also be automated for out of office hours and installed on your intranet for team messaging.

Webforms

By using the Webforms app you can create forms that let your customers submit tickets direct from your website. Multiple forms can be used to capture different types of tickets and workflows. This is how you capture service requests and provide agents with the relevant details for ticket resolution.

Customer Portal

The Customer Portal is where customers log in and submit tickets, check status, and discuss their issues. They can make feature suggestions, request new services, and share ideas. Once again, the Customer Portal was easy to install, and I was able to change the appearance in the admin panel.

Knowledgebase

More and more customers are choosing self-service and the included Knowledgebase lets customers help themselves. The Knowledgebase app serves as an information hub and empowers customers to find answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ). Training modules and technical data can also be stored here to further enhance the customer experience.

Easy set up

All the above apps were installed by pasting a small snippet of JavaScript on our website. This added a floating button to our web pages where visitors could open the apps. I was able to individually turn on and off the apps depending on which ones I wanted to be visible.

Project Management

Something I found unique to OneDesk was the inclusion of project management software. Creating new projects was straight forward and I was able to plan, monitor and track tasks until project completion. Tasks can be linked and visually compared, dependencies created, and schedules generated with automatic CPM calculations. You can create and export your own reports or use the included templates and Gantt charts. I currently use stand-alone project management software, but I can see the potential in using one that is integrated with my helpdesk.

Mobile App

With more of us working remotely these days, a mobile app is a must have when it comes to choosing customer service software. OneDesk’s mobile app provides a Helpdesk and Project Management system on the go. Available on iOS and Android, OneDesk Mobile allows remote workers to submit timesheets by starting the in-built timer or completing a timesheet. All that team members need is a mobile phone and they can support customers from anywhere and at any time. This means faster updates, response times and ultimately, better customer service.

Pricing

OneDesk includes all features for a simple user-based, per-month price. The price includes unlimited customers and unlimited projects and starts at $30/month for a 5-User Plan. Discounts are available for charitable or educational organizations.

Conclusion

Overall, I enjoyed using OneDesk and I can recommend it to anyone who is looking for a robust customer service tool that provides a help desk, live chat and a knowledgebase with the added bonus of a fully functioning project management system and mobile app.