From Service Desk to Customer Service Centre


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Susannah Richardson looks at how you can transform your service desk into a customer service centre.

Within the service industry, the main channel of communication between the customer and the service desk has traditionally been the telephone for customers to make, change and update their service requests.

While other industries, such as retail and finance, have started offering multichannel customer service and self-service solutions for their customers, the service industry has been somewhat slower to adopt these.

Over the last few years, we have seen a major change in the nature of our customers. They are now expecting quicker response times, greater visibility, more control and a greater variety of channels to receive customer service, including email, social, chat, mobile apps and self-service.

The service industry therefore needs to take action and move away from the traditional, inflexible service desk and offer a more diverse customer experience.

1. Give your customers an element of power with self-service

With customers demanding more visibility and control over the customer experience, there is only so much a service desk can do to meet demand.

By offering self-service technology, such as online portals and customer mobile apps, the customer is able to access, view and change information at a time and on a channel that most suits them.

This not only gives them the flexibility they are demanding but also benefits the business, as less traffic is routed to the service desk and agents are able to deal with more complex queries via the telephone.

2. Provide consistent customer service across all channels

As customers demand customer service via a range of channels such as email, social and chat, businesses are struggling to keep up with demand, causing an inconsistent and disjointed level of customer service.

This can be resolved by implementing a solution that can manage multimedia in a single universal queue, rather than agents having to deal with complex piecemeal technology and legacy systems.

All these channels can be intelligently routed to the service desktop based on skill, urgency or requirement, allowing the service desk to deal with incoming requests in a more efficient manner.

3. Increase productivity with technical training and automation

The traditional role of the service desk is to log customer requests and schedule them for the next available or most skilled engineer to go out and visit the customer.

However, what if the service desk could provide some level of expertise in trying to find out more about the service request, equip the engineers and, on some occasions, even help solve the customer’s problem remotely over the phone?

Susannah Richardson

Training the service desk agents with a level of technical understanding can help to improve the customer experience. It can also help provide customers with instant advice and solutions on the phone, meaning they do not have to wait for an engineer to come and visit their site.

This can have a positive impact on the business, as they are ensuring their engineers are only visiting the customers that have more complex or urgent service requests – saving them both time and money.

With thanks to Susannah Richardson at mplsystems

Author: Megan Jones

Published On: 22nd Apr 2015 - Last modified: 18th Dec 2018
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