Omnichannel Helpdesk Software: Everything You Need To Know

We are in a technology driven environment, where a single customer is present across multiple channels. They will engage with their concerned brands using different touchpoints. This includes telephony, social media, email or live chat. To thrive as a business, you have to offer support across all these channels without disturbing the flow of communication. This is why you need an omnichannel helpdesk software.

 

What is an Omnichannel Helpdesk Software?

Omnichannel helpdesk software is an efficient ticketing or case management system, that offers unified customer experience across multiple channels. The conversation always starts with the customer and is carried forward to whichever channel the customer prefers. The system will recollect the customer’s history, intent and conversations to provide context for the next interaction. This improves your service performance, boosts engagement and enables flexibility.

 

What is the difference between Omnichannel and Multichannel?

Omnichannel and multichannel support are very much similar to each other however, they have one stark difference which leads to a domino effect in your customer satisfaction pipeline. That particular difference is multichannel doesn’t integrate your channels together, to allow you to share context and customer journey. Therefore, each channel’s data is separated from the other with no intersection. This doesn’t serve a holistic purpose of offering a seamless customer experience. So in a disjointed system the interactions remain in silos and the service agents do not understand the context of discussion when the customer switches the channel but continues with the same concern. 

 

How does the omnichannel helpdesk software work?

Omnichannel helpdesk software will maintain context and interaction history across various touchpoints as tickets are created. 

1. Email: Whenever a customer writes to your support mail, an actionable ticket gets raised and the entire conversation that follows is captured and stored.
    
2. Voice: A customer calls in your IVR and get through with the agent, creating a ticket and capturing the interaction.
    
3. Social Media: Whenever a customer mentions your social media id or messages you online (direct message), a separate ticket gets generated on the backend.
    
4. Live Chat / In-App Chat: Customers on your website interacts with your live agents and automatically a new ticket is created in the  Helpdesk software. Alongside the ticket, the entire chat transcript is available as context for future interaction or analysis.
    
5. Self-Service: As the omnichannel helpdesk software captures all customer conversations, it can be used to gauge what are the common problems faced by your customers. Accordingly, you can add the relevant information in your Knowledge Base section and FAQs. This will also benefit your content marketing efforts, alongside empowering customers with self-service.
    
6. Chatbots: AI-powered chatbots can assist customers in resolving their issues. It an offer some guidance, links to  Knowledge base articles and eventually help them in creating tickets in the omnichannel helpdesk software.
   So the customer journey can start from any channel and then the customer may prefer to switch. With a helpdesk software in omnichannel contact center all the previous contexts are maintained and a seamless customer experience can be provided. This will always lead to faster resolution compared to conventional helpdesk software.
   
    

What are the benefits of Omnichannel Helpdesk Software?

There are multiple benefits of omnichannel helpdesk software, apart from seamless customer experience. These organisational benefits will reduce costs where ever possible and increase revenue.

1. Cost Efficiency:
   Time is a very costly currency especially with customer service. More the delay in response, more one can annoy the customer at the other end. With Omnichannel Helpdesk software a lot of time can be saved by the agent as s/he has access to the previous interactions and now better equipped with information. So s/he can move quickly on the issue instead of asking repetitive questions which was already answered in the previous interactions. Around 86% of service teams say having a helpdesk system improves their productivity levels, says Hubspot.
2. Amplified Customer Engagement:
   With consistent support and remembrance across channels, customers can engage and enquire on any channel they prefer without worrying for delayed response. This will make them happy and increase their regard for your brand. With a smart interplay of self-service and real-time support, customers can gain a seamless experience when looking for resolution. On top of that, all of this wouldn’t cost your organization extra man-power or money.
    
3. Higher Customer Retention Rate:
   As discussed, customers enjoy being recognized and remembered just like everyone. They do not want to be treated as just revenue streams. Instead, personalize each conversation with exclusive insights into customer history. Treat your repeat customers with relevant products and solutions. Thanks to omnichannel strategy, you can now resell or up-sell without much hassle.
    
4. Analyze Customer Behaviour For Targeted Experience:
   Mapping the journey of your customers will enable you to understand and predict customer behaviour. For example, if you have a mobile app, you can understand what a customer does while they are accessing your app, which options they look into and where they bounce off. A typical customer’s journey through your app is valuable information to create a customer-centric ecosystem.
   
   For instance, you have an e-commerce business and you are noticing that most of your customers raise ticket about delivery options. Now, thanks to this data, you can engage customers on their cart page proactively and clear out delivery related doubts. You can also improve your knowledge base for the same. Overall, you can now deliver the support even before they ask for it. 
    
5. Optimising Channels Based On Type Of Issues Reported:
   With Omnichannel helpdesk software you can understand the usage of channels and kind of tickets that are created from different channels. This will help you in providing self-service assistant relevant to different channels. For example, you may notice that a lot of tickets are raised for payment related issues in your website and customers are creating tickets from the chatbot on this page. It will be prudent for the bot to guide the same so that the issues are resolved before it reaches the Omnichannel helpdesk software.
   
    

Conclusion:

The communication arena is constantly expanding in today’s digital world. This means newer channels of interaction will keep on increasing. With time, some will sustain and some will perish but as a business you cannot be choosy. You need to be where your customers are. To ensure scalability, you have to offer real-time and efficient support on as many channels as possible and relevant to your business. An omnichannel strategy is fundamental for organizational success in today’s world.