Help Desk Ticket Response Time : 10 Ways To Reduce It

Azita Marine was facing some issues related to its help desk response time. The average response time for customer tickets was very high, causing some to feel frustrated.

In the times when a customer is a king, the help desk is the throne. From providing support to managing requests and keeping track of progress, the help desk is responsible for ensuring customers’ happiness via communication.

Unfortunately, even with the best of intentions, things can go wrong. The same was happening with Azita Marine, their response time was lagging due to a lack of streamlined processes and manual tasks. And they needed to find a way to improve it.

The solution she chose was outsourcing IT help desk services.

But is it the only way? Are there other methods businesses can use to manage a large number of tickets most efficiently? Well, let’s find out that today in this article.

To understand this, you can keep yourself in customers’ shoes. If you had an issue with a product or service, wouldn’t you want it resolved as soon as possible? Of course, you would! And that’s why response time is so important.

Additionally, from the business perspective, a shorter response time means a satisfactory customer experience. Plus, word-of-mouth about the company will be more positive.

The studies show that the cost per minute of service desk handle time averaged $1.60. Therefore, a reduced response time of just one minute could save a company around $100 per week or $5,000 per year!

As mentioned earlier, outsourcing your help desk can be the best option if you don’t have the internal resources to manage it. But what if that’s not an option for you? What other methods can you use to reduce the response time?

• Measure ART
• Create Fool-Proof Workflow
• Add Priority to the Tickets
• Categories the Ticket
• Set Clear SLAs
• Use Canned Responses for Common Problems
• Use Autoreplies
• Use Chatbots
• Customer Service Software
• Make Use of Automation

You cannot go ahead without measuring and analyzing the current state. There’s no necessity to reinvent the wheel; study the current process and find out what’s working and what’s not. This will help you to focus on areas that need improvement.

How to measure Average Response Time? Divide the total responses by the overall time given for responding during a specific period.

After analyzing the current state, it’s time to streamline the process. This will help avoid confusion and duplication of work, as everyone will know their roles and responsibilities.

Let’s suppose a BPO is handling outsourcing service of cloud server support. So the customer raises a ticket mentioning the problem they are facing with the server. In this case, the agent will follow these steps:

• Analyze the issue and try to resolve it.
• Escalate complex issues to the concerned department.
• Once resolved, the agent will update the customer.

This will help agents quickly identify and prioritize the ticket. As a result, it will reduce the response time as the agent can work on the most important tickets first.

For example, you can add these categories:

• Urgent
• High
• Medium
• Low

Ticket categorization will also help to segment the tickets and assign them to the departments efficiently. This can be done by adding labels to the ticket based on the department it belongs to, such as “sales,” “billing,” or “technical support.”

The SLA is an agreement between a service provider and a customer that establishes, in measurable terms. The terms mean – what services, quality, and timeframe will be provided.

You can clearly define working hours and ensure clients know that only these working hours are included in a response time.

For instance, if your business hours are 9 am to 9 pm from Monday to Friday, and a call is logged at 8.55 pm on a Friday. In that case, if you respond by 9.05 am the following Monday morning, your response time would be classed as 10 minutes – rather than three days.

When you encounter the same problem multiple times, it only makes sense to create a template for it. You can use pre-defined answers for all the repetitive queries, resulting in quick resolutions.

When responding via email, you can set up an auto-reply message. This will let the customer know that their email has been received and is being processed. The reply can be as simple as, “Thank you for your email. We will respond to you as soon as possible.”

This will help reduce the number of follow-up emails from customers asking if their message has been received.

Chatbots are widely used computer programs that can simulate human conversation. They are normally used in online customer service to answer simple/common questions quickly.

For example, a chatbot can provide answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs). And the bot will escalate queries only if it can’t find a solution.

Not only does investing in quality customer service software increase the efficiency of your customer support. But it also gives you more insight into who your clients are.

The conversation threads with a client are typically saved in a centralized manner, which helps reveal –

• what services/products they purchased,
• any issues they previously had,
• what solutions were offered, and so on.

This saves a lot of time, makes it easier to find the right solution, and facilitates agents’ work.

If you use a ticketing system, various processes can be automated:

• Ticket assignment – You can automate the ticketing system so that it assigns the tickets to the right agents based on skills, knowledge, and expertise.
• Notifications – Set up automatic notifications when a ticket is updated or created. This way, the appropriate department will be notified as soon as there is any activity on the ticket.
• Workflows – For instance, you can set up a workflow to automatically assign a ticket to the relevant agent when a ticket is created.
• Escalating tickets – Set up an escalation process, so tickets are automatically escalated if they are not resolved within a certain time frame.

In the BPO industry, the quality of customer service is often the deciding factor in whether a client will continue to do business with a company.

If you implement even a few of these tips, you will significantly improve customer satisfaction levels. And as a result, your business will start to thrive.

So, don’t wait any longer; put these tips into practice and watch your business grow!