Continue reading »]]> Summary: A good IT help desk is almost always there when you need them. But before you call, run through this quick list of common issues that you can fix without the help desk’s help.

It’s 6:15 and you’ve got a big presentation tomorrow morning. You’ve been working on your Power Point deck all day. You’re almost finished … just looking for that last fact to include to really drive the point home. All of the sudden, your internet connection drops. You’ve got to get  back on line quick or you’ll be at your desk all night.

Your thought might be to call the help desk. Depending on the time and how deep the bench at your help desk goes, that might be a long wait. So, before you call the help desk for any reason, try a bit of self diagnosing first.

Here are some common ailments and resolutions to try before calling your IT Help Desk.

For almost any problem, try the following steps:

Restart the application (program): Some times an application or program just freezes. Before calling the help desk, try to restart the program. Many windows programs will have created an autosaved version of the project you’re working on…sometimes. The quickest way to restart your application is to press the ctrl, alt and delete programs at the same time. Then select Task List. Click the program that’s frozen up from the list and click End Task. Then restart the program.

Reboot.  When you think about all of the functions going on in a computer at one time, it’s not surprising that they misbehave some times. You’re on the internet, working on a Word document, running antivirus software along with about 50 other things. The best thing to do is reboot.

Common IT Help Desk problems and what to do about them:

Computer won’t shut down. Just hold the power button down for about 5 seconds and you’ll achieve a ‘hard shut down’ or ‘cold boot’. Wait about about 15 seconds and press the power button again to restart. This is exactly what the help desk will walk you through without the call to IT.

Printer won’t Print: Reboot the computer and turn the printer off for 20 seconds. Turn the computer and printer back on and, more often than not, the printer will be back on line and you’ll have avoided a call to your IT help desk. If it’s a network printer, you’ll probably find the same results just by rebooting your computer.

No network (internet connection): Shut down your computer and ‘burp’ your modem. This is done by powering down and restarting your modem. Your modem will take several minutes to run through it’s start up sequence so take your time.

How to get ready to call the IT Help Desk:

IT Help Desk Error

Basic Information: Before you call the help desk, make note of the kind of computer you’re using, the operating system and any details of your problem. If it’s a printer, make sure you know the model number.

Error message. Before you call your IT help desk, write down any error codes you see. This is important because restarting your computer (which you should also do before you call) will make this error code disappear. (hopefully)

Be at your computer. Don’t walk away when you call. You’d be amazed if you knew how many people needed time to get back to their computers and remember what their problems were in the first place. Your IT help desk is in big demand…if you do call, be ready!

Depending on how quick the IT help desk is at your company, college or business, there are a number of reasons you may want to contact them for assistance with your computer problems.

Continue reading »]]> Spiceworks, a company best known for network monitoring and help desk software, offers a powerful set of tools to make the IT professional’s job easier. And best of all it’s free. The free Spiceworks download allows IT pros to quickly scan their networks and get solid data on the ‘health’ of their systems, individual machines and even create help desk tickets about the network.

Whenever software or services are promoted as free you can expect strings to be attached. Especially when you’re looking for a software package to integrate well and have a good support system in place. These things are even hard for expensive competitors let alone a free package like Spiceworks.

But the bottom line is this — Spiceworks keeps their promises. The tools are easy to use, powerful and accurate. And if you chose Spiceworks you’re not alone – the company says that their software packages are used in one-quarter of all small and mid-sized businesses.

So how do they do all of that without charging? Advertising.

IT relevant companies support Spiceworks buy ad placement. Microsoft, Dell and HP just to name a few. TechCrunch called the company the “Facebook of IT’ – clearly an appealing place to be for advertisers. The ad placements are fairly unobtrusive in the consoles and won’t slow you down.

Another advertising tool from the Spiceworks suite is actually pretty helpful. From right in your console, you can purchase products from companies like Newegg and CDW along with custom companies you’d like to add.

INVENTORY MONITORING

The software system offered by Spiceworks allows you to do many tasks. It is most powerful as a way to track and manage all of your networked assets. In addition to automatically scanning your network you can manually add assets and even include individual property that isn’t on the network, like a projector.

Spiceworks Review - Admin

The Spiceworks tool allows you to monitor software versions, disk space and bandwidth usage. You can do all of this in a number of customizable views that allow you to tailor Spiceworks to your company’s specific need.

One of the great aspects of Spiceworks is the ability it gives you to drill down to the individual nodes of your network. By doing this “node diving” (as we call it around our office) you can see the bandwidth-pull of individual areas.

The monitoring tools of Spiceworks are incredibly useful as well. As an administrator, you can set up individual alerts to give you notification of disk usage, maintenance or warranty information.

One of our favorite tools in Spiceworks is the ability of an admin to monitor if users have tried to download and install unauthorized software to their machine. (not that any of us have ever tried)

You can even remote out to user’s computers through the Spiceworks interface.

HELP DESK

Spiceworks Reviews

The help desk system of Spiceworks is also useful. It’s not as robust as a standalone help desk software package, but Spiceworks’ tool does allow users and IT customers to report individual issues through a completely customizable web portal or through email. The ability to customize this portal is surprising in free software. Most free software doesn’t allow you to include branding elements or even define your own fields.

The help desk portion of Spiceworks also allows you to manage individual help requests through the admin panel. This panel lets you see and prioritize different open tickets or assign individual tasks to members of your support team.

Spiceworks has also developed simple text commands for use on your mobile device to make responding to requests quick and easy.

INTEGRATION

Integration is a common complaint about many help desk and network software tools. Even the ones that aren’t free. Spiceworks actually handles integration fairly well. As an example, it can use your Active Directory to build a contact list that allows you to quickly identify individual users profiles and what assets they are using.

REPORTING

Spiceworks also offers report generation and metrics analysis. There are about 20 pre-built reports and more can be customer generated. Things like open and closed help desk ticket reports, software by asset and purchase tracking are all part of the out of the box package.

The reporting system also allows you to create your own reports to quickly respond to requests.

Spiceworks Review - Admin

COMMUNITY

The Spiceworks community is clearly a win for Spiceworks. Members of the community are passionate and will quickly respond to any questions you might have. Spiceworks says over 1 million IT pros use their community forums. Sure you can find answers to your IT questions…but spend a few minutes on the forum and you’ll realize these folks aren’t only talking about Spiceworks!

One of the best parts of the Spiceworks community is Spiceworld; the company sponsored conference for IT pros. Each year the event happens in the company’s hometown of Austin, Texas – or you can check out one of their annual get-togethers around the globe.

Continue reading »]]> Outsource Help Desk

Summary: Outsource help desk services are provided by many companies. Outsourcing is more than a trend; it’s a reality in business today. If you decide to outsource help desk offerings to your employees or customers, strategize and plan before pulling the trigger.

Many management teams continue to ask themselves the same questions, “Should we outsource help desk support?” and “If we outsource help desk operations, will the company save money?” And more often than not, companies are finding the answer is yes.

An example of a company that has announced plans to create an outsourced help desk is Spirit Aerosystems. Spirit supplies commercial airplane parts to the industry world-wide. This year, Spirit announced that they will be outsourcing a number of IT roles including their helpdesk. New contracts were drawn up with IBM and HP to manage the roles from remote locations. Interestingly, workers for Spirit who were being impacted are being offered jobs with the new supplier. Helpdesk outsourcing will impact 135 employees and 13 contractors.

A top quality helpdesk provider will offer a broad range of services and reduce your required workforce. Many have also designed their services to create a seamless, 24/7 environment to aid your employees and customers whenever and wherever they need it.

Help desk outsourcing is usually designed to relieve a burden on an organization. It allows your internal IT department to focus on their core responsibilities. Rather than supporting the day-to-day needs of employees or customers. Rather than dealing with retrieving log-on information and Internet Explorer settings, your IT team can work in a much more big-picture strategic manner.

Now this isn’t to say that a company that decides to outsource help desk functions will do so without some growing pains. Outsourcing help desk responsibilities is a huge undertaking that requires people to learn how to work differently. It also may uncover some unexpected resistance from rank-and-file employees who feel threatened by the reduction in work force.

I got an email from a reader who openly and sarcastically called the customer service at her company the “help-less desk”. Horror stories pop-up from people making call after call in an attempt to find a competent analyst on the other end of the line.

Customer Service Representative

It also requires a great deal of open communication and planning. Recently, a fortune 100 company signed a large contract with HP to provide all of their helpdesk needs. Outsourcing was the right choice for the company as they were looking to reduce their work force, limit fixed cost and increase the reliability of their helpdesk.

All went fairly smoothly. HP had a dedicated and well-trained staff in place supporting the company with call centers around the world. They had greatly reduced the overall number of calls and shortened response time nn .

Unfortunately, the company’s internal IT department and their outsourced help desk had little day-to-day communication and IT had not invited the new vendor in to their planning sessions. A new wave of laptop computers were set to be deployed replacing outdated IBM Thinkpads. The new computers, ironically, were HP brand and had a disc image created without the aid of the help desk team. Shortly after the initial deployment, incompatibilities between the new PCs, helpdesk software and the companies existing servers began to show. As the server problems became apparent, the calls began to flood the outsourced helpdesk. As the help desk began to react, it lost its ability to remote out to the new computers. It also didn’t have a benchmarking machine to use to diagnose the problem.

Clearly, communication is a key component to when you look to outsource help desk responsibilities. Planning and transparency will determine the success or failure of the roll-out of an outsourced help desk.

Continue reading »]]> The definition of customer service can vary depending on your company’s goals the persona of your customer.

A company offers goods or services to the buying public. Those customers then have questions, need additional information, guidance or information. Here’s one way to define customer service: Customer service provides information throughout the purchase funnel and after the sale to improve the experience.

At its root, customer service is a marketing function thinly veiled as a service. How do you attract and retain customers? Great customer service. How to you build loyalty? Connect with your customers through great service

All great companies need a vision to define customer service for themselves. A clear set of objectives, principles and goals to help formulate what customer service means to that company.

In uncertain economic times, creating a vision of what customer service is to your company is one way you become invaluable. Every part of your company touches your customer in some way. Help your company define customer service and you’ll be tackling one of the most important parts of your business.

Each company creates its own definition for customer service. Through things like your dial-in help centers, VRU/IVR systems, forums and chat you’ll define the tactics of your customer service organization. But creating a big-picture holistic vision based on customer engagement and the personality of your company will lead you in the right direction to utilize individual tactics in the most effective way.

A number of companies have built their brands and reputations on exceptional customer service. Each of these companies use great customer service as a tool to define a personality. Companies who have created a customer service strategy based on their own definition create an emotional attachment between you and their brand. They give their brand a personality by evoking emotion from you through consistent and sustainable touch points. Southwest Airlines, e-retailer Zappos, Apple and Nordstrom have all established exceptional customer service vision as a core definition of their companies.

We like to think of ourselves as a Customer Service company that happens to fly airplanes
(on schedule, with personality and perks along the way).  How may we help you today?

Southwest Airlines Customer Service Page.

What ways can you help define customer service for your company?

1. Define how your department or business unit fits in to the overall customer service organization. How does your role support marketing, public relations, customer contact, sales and advertising? If you understand how your team fits in to the overall approach to interacting with customers, you’ll start to understand your company’s customer engagement strategy. This will help you see the gaps and where you can have the biggest impact.
2. Understand how technology can support a customer service strategy. Phone systems, email, social media, paid search, web, mobile and traditional mail all have a technology support side to them. Understanding the trends in each of these categories and your own technology tools will help you see where you can have the most impact.
3. Prioritize your customer service goals. Affinity, loyalty, sales, lower costs and efficiency are a few of the many possible goals of your company. Every customer service organization must have a clear primary goal.
4. Who is your audience? By defining your audience you’ll be able to see what you can do to support customer service for your company. It’s more than a broad definition like, “women 18-54”. If you create personas of individual customers you’ll be better equipped to understand what makes them happy.
5. Don’t be shy about promoting your great customer service. If your company is known for putting the customer first, don’t be afraid to tell the world. Frankly, your customer service team deserves the attention.Simple tactics can work just as effectively as huge marketing campaigns. This customer loyalty video created by Zappos is a good way to see how they’ve used ‘personality’ to define their brand and promote it. And who wouldn’t want a customer service video that cost nothing to make engage hundreds of thousands of customers and potential customers through online views.

Reading a dictionary definition of customer service won’t help you create a great brand unless you can understand what customer service is to your organization.

Continue reading »]]> Good customer service is one of the things most business leaders think their company does well. Most customers disagree. For consumers to get the best customer service it pays to be strategic, calm and tenacious. For a business, understanding those traits will help a customer service organization better plan for the consumer’s needs.

On a recent visit to Starbucks, a new barista just couldn’t get it right. As I approached the counter he was engrossed in conversation with a customer about a job he was hoping to get elsewhere. Eventually, he freed himself and came to the register to take my order. He stood silently, staring at me. No “hello”, “can I help you” or greeting of any kind. After the visit I quickly fired off an email to Starbucks and received an apology and a stack of drink coupons as a thanks for alerting them.

How would your customers respond to a bad experience with a member of your team? Would they let your company know? Would they tell one friend at work? Would they tell 100 friends on Facebook or the world on Twitter?

As a customer coming upon these situations in your private life, what would you do?

Understanding how your customer interacts with your business is crucial to creating a customer service strategy. It doesn’t involve flow charts or xml maps … it requires thinking like a customer.

Many companies are salivating at the chance to reduce their costs and use social media as a growing share of their customer service strategy. Clearly there is a move to social media, but obviously that’s not the solution for every business – or every situation. Retail organizations have embraced social media. But many customers are still taking traditional routes.

Great Customer Service

Your customers’ expectations are growing every day. They expect a quick answer on the telephone. A prompt reply to an email and a nearly instant reply to their tweets. But if all customer service departments were able to respond like that, every newspaper and television station wouldn’t have a full-time reporter dedicated to helping their readers and viewers clear up service complaints.

Kimberly Palmer, US News personal finance columnist, recently interviewed Jon Yates. Yates writes the “What’s Your Problem” column in the Chicago Tribune.¹

Yates isn’t allowed to use his position as a reporter for personal gain. That means he can’t mention his day job when he has his own customer service complaint. But as someone who has represented consumers for the paper, he knows when and how to escalate a problem.

After trying the traditional routes of phone calls and emails, Yates brings out the big guns:

According to Yates, “It’s my cardinal rule of problem solving: always threaten to take your business elsewhere, and follow through if the company doesn’t respond.”

But even that might not help your customers elevate their problems. I recall the old Seinfeld skit with Jerry and Elaine parroting a desk agent at a rental car company. When the agent went to speak to a manager, Jerry and Elaine act out the conversation with the agent pretending to ask for help.

At times, your customer is going to strike-out by trying the traditional means of contacting you and go right to the CEO’s office. And you’ve got to have a plan in place to respond to the customer who is passionate enough to try to contact management directly. If they’ve got this much passion they deserve to get some attention.

“My advice is to skip the customer call center altogether and go straight to the top,” Yates says in US News, “Ask to speak to the chief executive. If you can’t get through, write the chief executive a letter. It works way more often than you’d think.”

I strongly agree with the Tribune’s Jon Yates, “Often, a company’s leaders have no idea that customers are being treated poorly, and are so appalled by a disgruntled consumer’s letter that they help almost immediately.” ¹

If your business understands what consumers expect from your customer service department, you’ll be far more effective building your strategy. And that time up front can be a big cost and resource savings once the organization is built to truly serve that customer.

¹ How to Solve and Customer Service Challenge

Continue reading »]]> Customer service is at a turning point between traditional customer service and a new direction: social customer service.

At the last cross-roads, many companies chose to move their customer service operations overseas to reduce costs. The next opportunity to drive down costs even further may be social media. Will the call center of today be the social media center of tomorrow?

45% of retail companies have been contacted through social media for help from customer service. Retail has the highest percentage of any business category. Tech companies, like telephone providers and cable companies, have been contacted 35% and 33% respectively. Surprisingly, healthcare providers only note that 9% of their customers have contacted them through social media. ¹

It would be easy to predict that these numbers are actually a lot higher, but companies that don’t monitor social media as a customer service tool may not know how their customers are trying to reach them. Remember, these numbers are provided by survey respondents, not by customers.

The big question on these numbers is how many consumers tried and failed to reach a company’s customer service departments through social media and didn’t get a response. The future of customer service may be social, but many companies have yet to build organizations to monitor Twitter and Facebook – let alone respond.

Some companies also choose not to respond with a social customer service approach. This doesn’t always stem from a lack of awareness. Other reasons such as legal concerns, training and resource allocation also come in to play.

Another great stat Zendesk provides is that 76% of consumers have used, or are willing to use social media to contact customer service. Respondents note that 62% of consumers have used social media for issues relating to customer service. Will the call centers of today be transitioned to the social customer service centers of tomorrow.¹

As a cost savings, one thing social media will enable is the outsourcing of more customer service departments. Statistics show that customer service satisfaction is increased over 22% when a consumer contacts a native speaking representative. Social media takes cultural differences, colloquialisms and xenophobia out of the equation…and increases profits.

Social customer service programs are still in their infancy. Although many companies are anticipating a sea change in consumer interactions, most are just getting started. As different social media platforms continue to clarify their usefulness and ‘voice’, customers are also learning how to capitalize on the differences.

Character limits in Twitter can be answered quickly followed up by a private message. A Facebook post can quickly turn in to a full-fledged diatribe and photo exposé.

But social customer service CRM strategies don’t just happen. Just like a call center, social media contacts are often fairly routine. Missing instructions, service outages and bad service are easily answered and diffused.

Businesses also need to realize that a tweet can turn in to a marketing opportunity. Author Peter Shankman wrote,”The Greatest Customer Service Story Ever Told, Starring Morton’s Steakhouse.” Before boarding a flight to Newark, Shankman posted the tweet below.

Social Customer Service - Shankman Tweet

Amazingly, 2 hours later when he landed at EWR, a tuxedo-ed server stood waiting by baggage claim. The story spread through social media like a firestorm and @Morton’s had a priceless marketing victory. All for the price of a Porterhouse.

^{1 Zen Helpdesk Social Media and the Future of Customer Service}

http://www.zendesk.com/blog/social-media-and-the-future-of-customer-support

Continue reading »]]> Summary: An IVR, or Interactive Voice Response System, must evolve to meet today’s customer expectations.

An IVR system is your company’s first chance to make a good impression.  It’s more than a way for a business to filter customers. It’s the first time to define your company’s personality. The automated system is the outward facing voice of customer service and the start of a transaction. A well designed IVR system is a marketing tool. So, why do we let our IVR systems seem so…automated?

Call Center Tech defines IVR as “A computer phone application that accepts touch-phone keypad selection input from the caller and provides appropriate information in the form of voice answers or a connection to a “live” operator.” http://www.call-center-tech.com/vru.htm

An IVR system is an opportunity to put your best face forward and let the customer see a better side of your company’s service. We’ve compiled a list of 10 easy ways to put some life in your IVR system.

1. Drop the IVR clichés: “You’re important to us.” is a tired phrase that is so common in IVR systems that it’s lost all meaning. Many of your customers respond to these types of cliche’s by thinking, “If I’m so important, why don’t you hire more customer service reps to take my call?”

2. Replace the Pros: Instead of hiring a polished and perfect voice talent to create your IVR system’s welcome messages, one refreshing idea is to use a real employee. Even if it’s just to say, “Hello”. Rather than  the automated voice talent giving the first greeting, using a ‘real rep’ to record your messages is a chance to hear the real people behind the automated system. It’s an instant chance to connect with a customer on an emotional level and encourages callers to be patient.

3. Offer an IVR Out: I wouldn’t have called if I didn’t want to talk to a live operator. I would have emailed or checked my account on-line. The average call cost will increase a bit, but giving your customers the chance to speak to someone immediately will build a relationship and give you the chance to up sell.

4. It’s not one and done: Many IVR projects set a short timeline for completion. Company’s that take a “set it and forget it” approach to IVR systems miss out on the opportunity to understand the customer experience and improve their system’s accuracy. Refusing to dedicate resources to the IVR’s long-term results will result in low customer satisfaction, high abandonment rates and disappointing accuracy.

5. Less is More: Over the years I’ve managed many teams of copy writers. One lesson I commonly shared with them is paraphrased from a movie, “A good writer knows not what to write. A good writer knows what NOT to write”. Listen to your IVR messages and read the scripts. What words, phrases and full messages could you edit out. A quick and efficiently written IVR script will do more to improve customer satisfaction than bloated hyperbole.

6. Map it, Observe, Map it: As you plan your IVR system map out what you think the customer paths will be. Let it run for a predetermined amount of time. Then study the analytics and make adjustments. All of your pre-work and planning won’t let you find the IVR dead ends. The best way to find traps, loops and abandonment is to let real customers use the system.

7. Be transparent. You know the old line about presentations. Tell them what you’re gonna tell them. Tell them . Then tell them what you told them. The same can be said for IVR system scripts.

8. Let the customer hang up first. A recent post on a retailer’s forum was titled, “Allow Callers to say GOODBYE. geez”. When we’re trying to minimize call time and up efficiency, we forget to be polite. Even in IVR, don’t be afraid to give the caller some space, time to relate and some time to say goodbye.

9. Different strokes. An IVR system designed for a video game company needs to be designed as a different experience than an insurance company. Understand your customers and speak to them in a familiar voice. As most adults under 35 own a smartphone, you’ve got to imaging that their expectations are different from a less tech savvy population.

Smartphone Adoptoion

10. Look forward. Your call center system is going to change a lot over the next 10 years. With Twitter training people to expect an instant answer, your systems will have to react to customers with higher expectations.