By Jocelyn Ian
For some businesses the opening hours can seem quite restrictive to certain customers, who might only be able to contact a company during evenings and weekends when the customer service operation is not open. If your company is not in a position to extend opening hours, or to hire employees to cover this extra work, it could be best to approach an external contact centre provider to cover an emergency business helpdesk. That way, you are covered for any customer queries that come in during the out-of-hours period for your company, but it also ensures your internal staff are focussed on what they are good at.
The emergency help desk is of great help to many customers, helping them with certain technical problems, troubleshooting certain services and products, and offering post-sale care which enhances the reputation of the company brand. You see this more often in the tech sector, or for other companies where items are sold that require installation, or in financial institutions, where some customers require assistance with online banking processes and the like. Whatever sector you work in, handling customer queries in a fast and efficient way, is a fantastic way to increase brand reputation and to improve customer relations, which can only be a good thing in the long run.
One of the immediate benefits of offering a competent emergency helpdesk to your customers is that it improves levels of customer satisfaction. Customers understand exactly where they need to go for any help with your products or services. It also helps to alleviate the pressure on your normal customer service hotline, allowing specific queries and problems to be addressed within the emergency helpdesk setting.
Another benefit is that it helps to improve the quality of your products and services over time. The greater the level of information and detail that you acquire as feedback from customers, the better you can improve future offerings. If there is a trend of a certain problem, it is something that you can learn to address quickly. Software and reporting can help with this intent.
In a similar way, this level of detail ensures that your emergency helpdesk professionals are learning about different parts of the business at all times, enhancing skills, and consistently raising standards of response to customers. The longer your emergency helpdesk is open, the better it will naturally become, and the better service your customers will receive.
Think about what it is exactly that your company needs assistance with. If the hiring of an external contact centre to act as an emergency customer helpdesk is something that will improve your company, then you should seek out a professional company with experience within your sector. It can free up your internal staff to deal with issues that they are best dealing with, whilst ensuring that your customers are never left waiting, and that they have answers to queries, and solutions to problems immediately, rather than having to wait for your already overburdened internal teams to reach a query in the queue.
