May 25, 2011 - Major Mid-West University selects SpiceCSM for its internal helpdesk. The idea started as a solution to fix the problems that occurred with using student workers. Limited hours caused stress amongst the workers when they could not easily find the information that they were looking for. SpiceCSM and the unification of multiple systems and guided processes with embedded iframes reduced training time, allowing the University to hire students who can work limited hours. The CIO stated, “My customers, the students, faculty, and university leadership demand flawless support. I am constantly reminded that, we are in a competitive environment and that social media can kill our reputation as a tech savvy institution. SpiceCSM allows me to meet my leadership’s directive to employ students in our help desk and provide terrific service in a cost effective manner. SpiceCSM has reduced training time and allowed us to
With gas prices sky rocketing and the costs of everything else following why not help yourselves and your employees by allowing them the freedom of working from home. I know crazy right? There are many mixed feelings on this. I aim to tell you the good, the bad and the ugly and how it really can be a good situation for everyone. How can I trust my agents? Monitoring and using cloud based programs allow you to view what your employees are doing and how well they are doing. With the proper use of reporting and supervisory roles, anyone can be anywhere. You can easily see how your employee’s metrics look. Things such as wrap time, pre call, hold time and agent states all will give you total visibility. Your quality experts and supervisors can still listen to calls also either archived or live. When people know these things and are being
“The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.” So what does this mean for you? Well take your most common & frequent issues (20%) and track and analyze these. Soon enough you will have found 80% of your problems. “ Microsoft noted that by fixing the top 20% of the most reported bugs, 80% of the errors and crashes would be eliminated” This is a significant number of case and calls not coming into your customer care center ultimately, saving you money.
Tracking the common & 
frequent is not difficult. What you need to do is an analysis of what the brunt of your cases
Many times people shudder to think of the time and investment that is involved with customer care programs. We are in a transitional place from software to the cloud. Does the thought “too easy” come to mind? Many businesses welcome the idea of SaaS but when it comes to adoption and implementation run screaming the other way. It does not have to be painful; sure that is what they all say. But there are many things that separate the genuine “turn-key” applications.
Can I use this immediately?- How long will the set up take?
- What type of integration will this require?
- Can I use several systems together?
- What is the down time?
Sometimes I think that we put aside our opinions on customer service and just accept bad service due to the product or service that we are receiving being a necessity. Think about it, how many times have you had less than acceptable service at your Doctor's office? Most of the time we feel awful which makes everything else seems bad. Do we really stop to think about what they could be doing better? No we usually don’t.
Recently, I had one of those experiences that really make you think of all the rest. I took my two year old to the Doctor’s office. This was not the regular Doctor that she normally sees. Instead due to the severity of the issue, this was one that was close to our home. Wow! That is all I can say.
I recently read an article for Searchcrm.com titled “Self-service success rates plummeting, but why?” The article showed how the rates have fallen over the past years. (See graph below) The fact is that it can be more painful then helpful. Self service is meant to help you solve your own issue.
My question is if you don’t know what is wrong how do you know what to fix? It is easier than to search through oodles of articles reading them and ending up twice as confused. How many times have you just wanted a simple quick answer in a very short period of time? I know I do… in fact every time I need an answer I want it immediately. I absolutely dread calling support to wait on hold and then speak with someone
Saving time is saving money; let your IVR- Helpdesk integration help you. We recently integrated with InContact an ACD platform, which offers telephony services. This allows us to gather information from the caller before placing them in queue. Why shouldn’t you do some preliminary information gathering? I can’t think of any reason not to.
When partnered with the right helpdesk solution this will allow auto generation of a case based on ID, name, account, etc. this saves the agent’s time by saving clicks. With the correct IVR you can shave a minute off of each call. You do the math. Allowing your customers to enter in their information into the IVR will also allow for a more personalized greeting also when the call arrives to the agent. Who doesn’t love to hear their own name? A good balance of do it yourself
On the topic of outsourcing, ComputerWorld UK (March 2010) states:
"[C]ompanies expressed frustration with the quality of work being provided, according to a survey, but most businesses still said they chose the cheapest outsourcing option instead of the best quality. Nearly all businesses - ninety-four percent - admitted that the focus on cost was increasing the likelihood of their projects failing."It is our belief that when companies searching for an outsourced help desk are willing to sacrifice quality of service for low pricing, there can be a serious negative impact on customer satisfaction and retention. With that said, we are also firm believers in the power of an outsourced help desk solution. The key, as with many other functions of a fine-tuned organization, is to do your homework first. Here are three important topics (not directly related to cost) for you to think about when selecting an outsourced customer service or support
In an ideal, cloud based, customer service oriented world everything should be at the tip of your fingers. Guess what? It can be.
Offering your agents a “unified helpdesk” can prove to be not only cost saving but also boost your customer service. Many in house and outsourced contact centers have many tools for their agents to use to support their customers. The agents are often spending time switching back and forth between applications. Why not have all of your tools integrated into the support process? One screen many uses. Network devices, email accounts, and billing platforms are some examples of common tools needed by our agents.
Other benefits of this type of application are that if you do outsource or co-source, you have complete visibility into the day to day
How many times have you called for support and expect a knowledgeable response? Of course we all do. How many of us would like friendly service along with knowledge? A recent article written by CRM Advocate explains to us turn offs were:
1.) Acting irresponsibly toward the customer (58%)
2.) Over communicating with the customer (58%)
3.) Irrelevant content (53%)
4.) Not communicating enough (36%)
5.) Censored content (28%)
Making sure that we provide the best tools to our customer support professionals is vital. Also, what would you do if you could hire more on soft-skills and not just technical knowledge? In my past experience training in the call center setting I experienced this very thing.
- Agents with knowledge who do not know how to “relate” with the customer
- Agents who can “relate” and who lack the
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