Workforce Management Featured Article
Workforce Management Solutions Ease Strain on Help Desks
The modern help desk is in a state of flux. Like all business departments, the help desk is under significant pressure to operate more efficiently, close tickets faster and offer a higher level of customer service and support – often while simultaneously cutting costs and staff. While this may seem like an insurmountable challenge, technology exists to aid and augment help desk staff while encouraging departments to run more smoothly and efficiently.
Workforce management software can be a valuable asset for help desks, streamlining calls and workloads and helping agents and technicians better manage their time to offer a higher level of customer service. To understand why workforce management is a great complement to help desk software and agent expertise, it’s important to examine some of the main issues plaguing most help desk departments.
Most help desks are burdened by too much volume in the form of calls, emails or in-person walkups. That volume is compounded when issues are unresolved and keep cycling back to help desk staff. Other problems bogging down the typical help desk include long resolution times or issues that become “lost” and are not addressed, difficulty keeping track of end users’ assets, which can be extensive, and repetitive time-consuming tasks that would be better off automated through a self-service portal driven by a knowledge database.
Workforce management solutions can aid with all of these issues, helping to streamline and route calls and tickets to the best agent or technician available. Most importantly, this type of software will integrate with help desk solutions, ensuring the agent works through the entire ticket or escalates it all the way to resolution.
Workforce management can improve help desk efficiency and productivity from the onset, providing forecasting and scheduling features that ensure the proper staff is on hand at the right times. One of the key benefits of these types of solutions is that they offer real-time data, enabling help desk managers to make routing and staffing adjustments as needed to handle increased volume and improve resolution times.
Help desks are already high-pressure, high-volume departments subject to intense criticism and scrutiny from other parts of a business organization. Workforce management solutions can help departments run smoothly and more efficiently, making them better prepared to handle real and anticipated demand and challenges and ensuring agents are maximizing their resources and productivity.
Edited by Alicia Young