An undeniably important part of a great company is an equally great IT support team. You would be surprised to learn that as high as 58% of Americans choose to switch companies if they don’t get good customer service. That tells you how much your technical support team can affect potential business opportunities.
When people trust your company for its services, they expect you to solve their issues quickly and efficiently. Failing to do so can result in customer dissatisfaction and a bad reputation. In this article, we will discuss the best ways to create an impressive IT support team so that you can retain your clientele and attract new business at the same time.
Why Do You Need an IT Support Team?
Whether you are an established company or just putting down roots in the industry, having expert IT advice is an asset that you must have. After all, the cornerstone of any successful business is customer satisfaction.
If a customer needs your assistance, your support team should be equipped with every possible tool to solve their problem quickly. It's crucial that they feel valued after this interaction and have something good to say about your customer service.
Investing in a competent IT support team can turn around the experiences of your customers and show them that your company values them and is willing to go the extra mile for them. When these positive reviews reach other people, you will be looking at a whole new clientele and a potential growth of business in no time.
Ways To Create an Effective IT Support Team
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Understand The Expectations of Customers
The first rule of creating an IT support team is to not jump on the bandwagon. Don’t assume that everything that your competitors are doing is the right way. Instead, look into understanding what your customers want from your help desk and what you are lacking.
Do they want faster response times?
Do they need more self-service options or stronger internal support?
The more you explore these questions and learn about your customers’ expectations, the better you can set your goals and objectives. Focus on meeting user expectations and you are already on a good path.
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Communication is Key
The most frustrating part of contacting the customer service of any organization is that a lot of time the IT team is not aware of their own products and services.
To be a top contender in your industry, it's imperative that your team is equipped with maximum information about the product or service and has the tools, as well as means, to answer related queries efficiently.
A competent IT support team should be well connected with its own members along with their clients. Effective external and internal communications both culminate to form great customer service.
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Hire The Right People For The Job
Picking the right people to join the technical support team is crucial for a company. Before hiring anyone for the job, there are certain questions that you should ask to determine if they are an ideal candidate or not.
Does the person have an empathetic personality?
Are they emotionally intelligent to make the customer feel heard and respected?
Can the person communicate well and speak eloquently?
Depending on the nature of the job, ask them about their technical skills, IT knowledge, certifications, and licenses. Only after ascertaining that the person has the necessary experience, skills, and personality for the job should you proceed ahead.
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Get The Best IT Tools
Investing in IT support tools can be expensive and time-consuming but nobody can deny that it has numerous benefits in the long run. IT help desk software such as ProProfs Help Desk, Web Help Desk, and Hubspot Service Hub can assist you in organizing all incoming customer communications in a single platform so that all your queries and feedback can be dealt with together.
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Learn To Triage Customer Issues/Requests
When running a business, you will get hundreds of issues and requests from your customers. Logically, you can't respond to all the clients at the same time. There are not enough people or resources to make it happen.
Instead of juggling all these problems at once, prioritize according to severity. Evaluate the possible impact of these issues on the business and judge the urgency of the user's problem. Then determine which issues need to be dealt with immediately and which can wait.
Prioritizing problems can streamline IT support operations dramatically and make it easier to deal with customer requests one by one.
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Create a Knowledge Base
The foundation of an effective technical support team is a knowledge base. All members of the team should have access to a handbook of IT problems and their solutions so that when they are troubleshooting customer problems, they can find the answers quicker and resolve issues faster.
A knowledge base entails a detailed answer to tech issues so that the team knows what to do step-by-step in case a customer is having a crisis. It should also include any additional resources that the tech support team needs to look up to help the customer faster.
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Provide Quality Training
A great team is not created overnight. You can only make it truly great if you are ready to invest time and money in teaching them how to do their job well. IT solutions are complicated to explain so you need to be clear and empathetic when giving directions.
A frustrated customer can easily lash out if you are not being helpful or sensitive to their issue. So your staff must learn how to approach a problem and abate it smartly.
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Set SMART Goals For The Team
Setting achievable goals for your team is important to ensure that you are not expecting the impossible from them. You need to ensure that your criteria for measuring the efficiency of the support team is correct.
For example, rather than focusing on the number of issues resolved, focus on the average time taken to resolve the queries or the number of issues resolved at first contact (FCR).
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Provide an Option of Self-Service Help
A lot of issues that customers come with don't need in-person interaction. Your company can extend the knowledge base they provided their IT support team to the customers as well. Users can browse through the base themselves and figure out the solution.
People sometimes like to solve their issues on their own to avoid interacting with other people or waiting for assistance. This can benefit the customer and technical team alike. Fewer issues can allow technicians to resolve other, more pressing problems.
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Efficient Use of Consumer Data
Customers like interactions that are short and useful. Try to use the consumer data to your advantage such as addressing the person by their name to personalize the interaction, noting down the relevant technical information in advance, and so on.
Having technical information about the consumer's product can help you skip follow-up questions that might prolong the interaction and annoy the user.
Moreover, you can make detailed notes of the problem in case the issue needs follow-ups or referrals so that the consumer does not need to repeatedly state their problem.
Takeaway
Technical solutions are not easy to explain but an empathetic tech personnel with good people skills can help customers with both their attitude and knowledge. If your company lacks a good IT support team, it's time to consider hiring help desk services to ensure a quick response to your customers' issues.
FAQs
- What is the best IT help desk software?
Zoho Desk, Freshdesk, HubSpot Service Hub, etc.
- What is the best KPI in IT customer services?
Number of queries resolved at first contact or average time taken to resolve a query.
- Is self-service better or personal interaction?
Depends on the issue and the customer. Some people prefer to solve issues on their own but some problems are too complicated to be resolved without expert assistance.