For managed service providers (MSP), customer support is absolutely core to their business. Where the various services provided may be the main customer-facing offering, without a supporting team to attend to client needs and answer questions, an MSP is sure to face challenges retaining clients. Empowering your customer support team only further serves your business, and one simple way to do that is by introducing a helpdesk and ticketing system. By fielding requests through one centralized spot and capturing them as tickets, a lot of uncertainty is removed around the work. This means less time for customer support teams spent communicating back and forth with clients to get all the details, and more time spent figuring out solutions to address the clients’ wants and needs. In terms of helpdesk and ticketing, one client believed that OneDesk’s offering would help their support team’s efficiency.
Our client is an MSP that analyzes data and unearths insights for their customers. They provide reports and build out custom solutions for their customers’ data needs. They previously have been using ProjectManager.com to manage their work, but as their contract with them is coming up for renewal, it made sense to explore other options that might provide more bang for their buck. Our client’s goal is to find a tool that would be able to manage incoming IT tickets and allow them to stop using e-mail to take in these requests. Because they are starting to branch out into providing support contracts, their previous workflow of taking in work via e-mail or phone and having someone manually log the details in ProjectManager.com would not be ideal for capturing all the contract information. This software also does not have a customer-facing interface unfortunately, which would otherwise be a bonus for optimizing their process of bringing in new work.
Using the customer portal to take in customer requests
One want that our client highlighted early in working with us was their desire to move away from using e-mail to take in new requests. The key issue they have been experiencing with e-mail as the main means to receive requests is that there is no structure or requirements for what information the customers provide. This then results in a thread of e-mails back and forth to gather all of the necessary details, which can drag out the time it takes for work to begin. OneDesk’s answer to this challenge is the use of our webforms through our customer portal application. For every type of ticket, our client can define a form with required and optional fields, which streamlines the process of logging requests and ensures that all the needed information is gathered upfront. For the issues that our client sees with their previous workflow, these webforms can save them a week’s worth of time going back and forth gathering requirements. Aside from being a place to access webforms, our customer portal also allows customers to view previously logged requests and start conversations about the work. From one customer portal, our client can add multiple webforms, one for each type of request they take in, making it clear what information is needed, no matter what kind of request it is.
Automations to reflect workflows already in place
With a dedicated support team, our client sees value in the same support agents handling requests from the same customer organizations. This allows the particular support agent to build a relationship and rapport with the customer over time. Using OneDesk, this process of assigning requests from a single customer organization to the same support agent can be achieved using workflow automations. Workflow automations are actions that OneDesk can automatically do once a certain trigger criteria is met. For this case, the trigger criteria would be for newly created tickets with a requester from a given customer organization. Based on this criteria, our client can then set the subsequent action to be to assign the ticket to a particular support agent or even a team of support agents. As this happens automatically, our client’s active and manual involvement is eliminated, allowing them to spend their time on more important work and less administration.
Tuning permissions to keep teams focused
Because our client oversees both development and support work, they want to be able to manage both types of work while maintaining some differences between responsibilities of support agents and developers. In OneDesk, we have different roles and types of users that can both be used to define and set what users can access. Types of users focus on the concept of administration and see varying levels of permissions for managing work and how it is set up in OneDesk. Roles are used to designate managers and leads of projects, giving certain users jurisdiction over how project work is organized and whether or not they can manage the project team members. User permissions can be tuned for a wide range of actions and can be set for each individual user. A use case that our client identified was limiting those who could interact externally with customers via conversations on tickets. With a fully-staffed support team, it doesn’t make sense to have developers interacting directly with customers and so our client voiced a desire to remove this functionality for their development team. For all of the developers on the team, our client can turn off the permission setting that allows them to post customer replies. Administrators can even turn on and off which applications their users can see. In cases where our client doesn’t want their support agents distracted by development projects, this can be helpful for ensuring they aren’t distracted by irrelevant tickets and tasks, and vice versa.
With our full set of features and endless customizability to suit any needs, OneDesk became the frontrunner for our client’s next helpdesk and ticketing software. The flexibility and level of fine-tuning that is possible in our product gives our client ultimate freedom and control in how they can streamline their team’s workflows and processes. Beyond just our software, the OneDesk support team is also available to take on any questions without our client having to purchase a premium tier support plan. With quick replies and short response times, the OneDesk team elevates our software offering with their keen insights and solutions. Together, OneDesk’s software and support are able to address any need or concern that our client has for managing their work.