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Tag Archives: helpdesk experience

Help Desk Metrics

7 Help Desk Metrics for Service Desks and Internal Help Desks

In this post, we discuss 7 key help desk metrics you need to track if you’re using a service desk or internal help desk.

These seven KPIs will help you understand:

  • What works and what doesn’t
  • How to measure help desk performance
  • Where are the gaps in your process
  • How to further improve your customer support
  • Lots more

So if you want to know how to measure, analyze and evaluate your help desk support, then this post will help you. 

Let’s start. 

#1 Ticket Volume

Ticket volume refers to the number of incoming support tickets. 

You can track it by using a ticket creation report in your help desk or customer support software. 

It shows the ticket volume ITSM or support team is managing during any given time period.

This will give you a sense of how many tickets your team can handle in a day, week, or month. 

It makes it easier to pinpoint when the workload is increasing beyond a manageable point. 

That’s why this metric will be incredibly important to plan staffing. 

Service Help Desk Metrics

#2 Opened vs. Solved Support Tickets 

In a good help desk and service desk, tickets opened and tickets solved rates should be parallel. 

Tracking tickets by status is useful to evaluate technician performance and responsiveness. 

By looking at these metrics every week, you can make sure you’re keeping up with demand. 

If the rate of solved tickets is always behind, you may need to add more staff. 

If there’s a sudden increase in opened tickets, it can alert you to a service delivery issue. Or any other disruption, for that matter. 

#3 First Contact Resolution 

First contact resolution refers to the amount of tickets resolved without being reassigned. 

It shows how many requests are handled in one rather than over multiple interactions. 

High rate of first contact fits hand-in-hand with customer satisfaction. 

It means customers get an answer quickly and painlessly, improving their customer experience. 

At the same time, resolving tickets on the first try can improve your efficiency. 

This is simply because, with high first contact rates, fewer agents have to touch the ticket. 

#5 Average Response Time 

Average response time is also referred to as first response time

It’s the time between a support request being made and the first documented action taken.

Tracking this metric is essential for ensuring agents are responding in a timely manner. 

The longer the first response time is, the more you risk harming customer satisfaction.

Most people simply want their requests acknowledged and need to know what to expect. 

If you’re transparent about longer than normal wait times, people will usually be understanding. 

#4 Resolution Time

Resolution time is one of the most important help desk performance metrics. 

It tells you how long an employee or customer must wait for their issue to be resolved. 

Resolution time starts from the time submitted, to when it was closed by the agent. Ideally, you want this period to be as short as possible. 

That ‘s why resolution time is an important aspect of the overall customer experience. 

Also, tracking this metric over time is a helpful way to assess staffing needs. 

#6 Backlog

If your internal service desk receives too many tickets, that can lead to an extensive backlog. 

Backlogs can hurt customer satisfaction, overwhelm agents and increase turnover.

Creating a good knowledge-base or using automated workflows can help deal with backlogs.

Tracking backlog metrics helps uncover opportunities to reduce workloads. 

Internal Help Desk Metrics

#7 Support Agent Performance

Tracking the agent utilisation or performance is important to evaluate team efficiency. 

Individual performance rates can help you identify which agents are top performers. 

Also, it can show opportunities for additional training. 

These help desk metrics assist you to pinpoint where agents perform well and where ticket volumes are high. 

Get started with help desk performance tracking

So, we got you through the key help desk KPIs. 

Still, there are many more that should be tracked. And it’s hard to keep a good eye on all of them. 

Are you thinking about hiring help desk professionals?

Outsourcing a help desk could get you more time to focus on your core business.

Contact us at Demakis Technologies and reach out to one of our Support Helpdesk experts. 

Help Desk Practices

5 Help Desk Best Practices

This post contains five service desk best practices.

In this new guide, you’ll find out how to improve help desk management by:

  • Assisting customer service employees
  • Cutting down their workloads by half
  • Reducing time from query to answer
  • Streamlining workflows
  • Lots more

So if you’re looking to set up your service desk that truly benefits your business, you’ll enjoy this quick guide.

Let’s begin!

What makes a good help desk?

A good helpdesk should be:

  • Centralized: all queries should be transparent and coming in from one direction.
  • Fast and intuitive: a help desk should anticipate queries to provide fast answers.
  • Supportive: the best solutions support teams with clear steps and instructions.

Setting up a solution is another matter. And the fastest way is to get a help desk service provider to guide you and do the hard work instead of you.

Once your service desk is set up, here is a checklist of five best practices to ensure its success:

Support help desk

#1 Create a Knowledge Base

When employees need IT assistance, they often don’t know who to turn to for help. An internal help desk could assist employees in this situation: 

A help desk solution can automatically direct queries to the department in charge and provide answers quickly from the source. 

Ideally, every help desk software should include a knowledge base with simple answers that doesn’t require live assistance. 

This way employees could look for the answers themselves instead of opening another ticket. 

This practice also leaves more time for the IT team to solve complex issues that actually require dedicated and hands-on support.

#2 Develop a Service Catalog

When you decide to create a service catalog, you should keep the needs of the end-user in mind. It should cover all the steps needed to open a ticket and make a service request. 

The catalog should come with simple instructions, including at least some of the following pieces of information: 

  • Each item’s name and category
  • Service cost
  • Issue tracking
  • The approval structure
  • Delivery expectations]
  • Key contact information

#3 Hire and Retain Great Employees

Finding and hiring help desk professionals with great skills is essential for the flow of your business, but learning how to keep them is equally important. 

The key to keeping a great staff lies in the employee experience that you offer, and it can be improved in a number of ways. 

For example, help your team gain valuable skills by investing in customer support training.

One way to be practical about it is to engage seasoned agents in the process of onboarding and training. 

They have vast knowledge to share with newbies, and the whole experience will make them feel more appreciated. 

Focus on the candidates who are both skilled enough for the job and passionate about helping others.

#4 Nurture the Culture of Helping

If you provide your team with all the training and tools they need to offer stellar customer support, the quality of your help desk will thrive.

On the other hand, if your management is centered around reducing operational costs, the support’s quality is bound to suffer. 

If the team feels encouraged and equipped to do better, they will end up being more proactive and willing to assist the users before they even report a problem. 

In fact, the users eventually start seeing help desk solutions as go-to partners that are here to solve their problems. All the while using the service desk to optimize operations.

You can start by communicating clearly about the expectations regarding the average response time, the expected ticket resolution times, and other key service elements.

Help Desk

#5 Use Workflows to Keep Track of Each Ticket’s Details

Your company’s success depends largely on the quality of the internal support. 

Each time an issue happens, both the help desk employees and the customer should be able to access the status of the problem in a second. 

Moreover, any member of the help desk staff should be able to take over a ticket at any point during the resolution process, get access to the entire workflow behind the solution, and get it closer to being done. 

A seamless support process reduces the anxiety levels of everyone involved, making them feel more satisfied and eager to work towards the solution, which also improves the overall customer experience.

Get started with these help desk best practices

Are you looking to get started with help desk support?

Demakis Technologies is here to help.

Contact us today and one of our service specialists that can help you implement all the strategies needed for success.

conversational ux

Conversational UX: Definition & Benefits (+ 5 Best Practices)

This post will help you learn everything you need to know about conversational UX by answering the following questions: 

  • What is conversational user experience?
  • How does it impact tech and web users?
  • What are the best ways to include it in your business?

If you are interested in learning how to improve user experience with this innovative approach, keep on reading!

What Is Conversational UX?

Conversational UX is a type of user experience that uses voice, chat, or any other form of language-based technology to simulate real human conversation. The end goal is to create the feeling of true human communication. 

It defines the way businesses build chatbots, with seamless interaction as the final goal.

chat bot ux

Why Is Conversational UX Important?

Let’s go over the three main reasons why conversational UX design is important:

Higher Agent Efficiency

When live agents are free from dealing with basic questions that chatbots can handle, they can focus on more delicate requests that cannot be completed without human contact.

The agents will no longer feel overwhelmed by the number of mundane tasks and they will be able to handle more queries.

More efficient workflows will also uplift the agents’ mood which directly improves the quality of customer support.

Better Customer Experience

Today’s customers have high expectations when they interact with businesses. 

They seek convenience and solutions that will work around their schedule. 

That is why the use of chatbots that are available 24/7 can improve the quality of the helpdesk experience dramatically.

Client satisfaction, another benefit of conversational UX, is one of the best marketing strategies. 

According to Deloitte, customers are very likely to share positive experiences with nine other people.

More Conversions

Conversational UX can be a great tool for lead generation, upselling and cross-selling. 

For instance, many businesses use chatbots to collect valuable marketing information from visitors before they get a chance to ask questions. 

Gathering visitors’ names and email addresses helps marketers create strategies to increase the number of conversions.

everything you need to know about conversational ux

5 Conversational UX Best Practices

If you’re looking to implement or improve your conversational user experience, take a look at our list of five best practices: 

Establish the Basics First

Although jumping into the practical parts of conversational UX, in order to do it right, you need to determine some of its basic components. 

Trying to answer the following questions will help you set the foundations for your new chatbot UX project:

  • Where will you use the conversational interface? (website, social media etc.)
  • What will be its format? (a voice-based or text-based interface).
  • Does the project require advanced features such as AI?

Match Customer’s Intent

In order for your design to work, it needs to go hand in hand with your customers’ intent. 

You will only be able to write successful scripts if you have a good understanding of all the potential conversational UX use cases.

Customer interactions are either related to sales or to support, and you should determine which of the two types dominates your business.

If most of your interactions are sales-based, create conversational UX scripts that lead to conversions. 

On the other hand, if the interactions are mostly support-related, build a design that spins around informational use cases.

Gather Customer Context

Sometimes chatbots are unable to gather the context of the conversation, and the best way to prevent that is to build your chat flow with both optional and mandatory variables in mind. 

Mandatory variables are the key pieces of information that are crucial for the communication to flow, while optional variables stand for additional details that are not essential for the conversation, but they can make it more efficient. 

Chatbots will use this data to move smoothly through the conversation and provide helpful answers as fast as possible. 

Mimic Natural Conversations

The best chatbot scripts are written with the customer’s perspective in mind, and formulated with structures used by humans. 

There are several useful ideas that can help you mimic real human interaction:

  • Know the language your client base uses, avoid jargon and complicated terms.
  • Keep the answers short and concise.
  • Use ‘welcome back’ intents.
  • Include different agreement tokens such as ‘Perfect’, ‘I think so’, etc.
  • Create repair sequences to use after an error or a misunderstanding occurs.
  • Include phrases that show politeness and sociocultural elements.
conversational ux scripts

Analyze and Review Regularly

Your conversational UX interface needs to keep up with the changes in your customers’ needs and desires. 

To keep exceeding client expectations, you will need to revisit the setup regularly and modify it as needed. 

Take some time each month, or stick to any other interval, to inspect the efficiency of conversational flows, as well as to analyze past conversations. 

Look for patterns that will help you fine-tune the scripts and address common pitfalls.  

Need Help Getting Started with Conversational UX?

If you think your business can benefit from conversational UX but you are not sure where to start, feel free to contact us at Demakis Technologies.

One of our seasoned professionals will be happy to assist you.