Help desks are being pushed to accomplish more with less… and less due to funding restrictions, increases in attrition, and an ever-increasing docket of IT projects.
Help desk teams respond to these circumstances as best they can, usually by prioritizing client inquiries or directing them to higher layers of assistance. To keep up with the volume, they could sometimes try to rush calls. While some of these tactics may seem reasonable at the time, they always have drawbacks.
Unfortunately, your consumers are responsible for that cost. This is how.
1. Customer Irritation is a Result of Weak Agents
The perception that you no longer care about them is one of the key reasons clients leave your business. When a customer has problems that need to be resolved, they want to know that the help desk staff is there to assist them.
But problems take longer to fix when your crew is overburdened. Longer wait times for customers occur, and worn-out staff members at the help desk could neglect to follow up.
Your consumers could hunt for assistance elsewhere—online or by asking their coworkers—as a result of your uneven services. (And the suggestions they get could just make things worse.)
The decision-making abilities of your support desk crew may suffer as a result of fatigue. They might underestimate the seriousness of a customer’s issue or escalate the case too soon. In some instances, overworked employees may struggle with their soft skills, which can lead to less pleasant, if not outright rude, treatment of clients.
The answer is? Examine your procedures first. Do you have established, standardized procedures to make sure your team can simply track tickets? Implementing these habits can be quite beneficial if you don’t already. But if you currently have sound procedures in place, it could be time to look into methods to strengthen your team by adding more personnel.
2. Less assistance is given to your clients’ other IT projects
There’s a good chance that your clients depend on you for services beyond help desk assistance. Customers depend on your team to assure the success of IT projects like software rollouts, migrations, and other similar initiatives.
Unfortunately, a busted help desk indicates a general shortage of available IT workers.
Your help desk will shift tickets to anybody when it is overloaded with inquiries. All of a sudden, the highly qualified and highly compensated staff members in your IT division are too occupied with Tier 1 support requests to work on the more significant strategic initiatives that your client needs completed.
The chain reaction simply keeps going. Maintenance may also be neglected after your IT personnel are overworked. If this continues for an extended period of time, your customer may become exposed to cybersecurity concerns, job interruptions, and system breakdowns. It’s a risky position that might have detrimental effects on both you and the clients you serve.
The answer? Such situations can occasionally be brought on by a single project, such as a software launch that generates an unexpected surge of support tickets. Sometimes it’s because of a persistent personnel issue. The best course of action in either situation is to provide extra help desk service to relieve the strain on your IT department.
3. Your clients no longer trust you to provide support
Customers who are dissatisfied will call a support desk that is overloaded. Additionally, as we already indicated, irate consumers can look for additional support.
This behavior is known as “shadow IT” or “underground support,” and it can really be highly risky:
- As your consumers use unsupported programs or unapproved workarounds as temporary fixes, issues and vulnerabilities could go undiscovered.
- Your own metrics also stop being accurate. When in fact the exact reverse is true, a decline in call volume may appear to indicate that your consumers require less help from you.
- Additionally, you’ll lose understanding of the problems and problems your consumer genuinely faces.
- The problem of compliance is the last one. If your clients are using unauthorized solutions, they may be unintentionally breaking regulatory laws, which may be a very expensive error.
The answer is? You should be wary of any indication that your clients are depending on unofficial assistance, even in the best of times. It’s time to hire extra support if it’s taking place as a result of your help desk team’s heavy workload.