Why You Need to Implement Ticket Deflection

Customers rely on you to keep your channels of support clear and effective. Hopefully, one of the channels you employ is an IT help desk. In today’s world, it’s hard to provide top-notch customer service without one.

Presuming you’ve already implemented an IT help desk, have you considered optimizing your system through ticket deflection? If not, it’s something you’ll want to consider because it can save your organization time and money. Not to mention, it can help create higher rates of customer satisfaction.

What is Ticket Deflection?

Ticket deflection is the art of preventing customers from submitting tickets, and instead, helping them resolve their issues immediately through automated self-help options.

The way this works on your website is simple. Instead of allowing anyone to submit a ticket right away, your system will be programmed to offer help first in the form of articles posted to your site. If the customer’s needs aren’t met by those options, then they can select to submit a ticket.

In the end, ticket deflection doesn’t prevent people from opening a ticket – it just gives them other options to try first.

Why do I need to Implement ticket Deflection?

Ticket deflection is a help desk technique that helps you and your customers. It helps your business by reducing the amount of time your support staff spend helping customers resolve small issues, and it helps your customers by providing them with immediate help.

Here are just some of the reasons you need to employ ticket deflection with your help desk software.

·                 Not all customer requests need a ticket.

Tickets are time-consuming and require resources to resolve. However, not every customer issue requires a ticket. Much of the time, customer issues can be resolved through blog posts, FAQ sections, and knowledge base articles.

Imagine you have a customer who can’t figure out how to reset their password, so they submit a ticket. That customer not only has to wait for an answer, but your customer support reps have to open, read, and respond to the ticket. It would be faster and easier if your system sent that customer a blog article with instructions and screenshots showing them how to reset their password.

·                 Your service reps will be less burdened.

Deflecting tickets will give your service reps a lighter load, which will help them concentrate on more pressing requests. With a lighter load, they’ll be able to devote more attention and resources to customers who need the most help. This, in turn, will help those customers feel better taken care of.

·                 Customers with simple needs will be quickly satisfied.

Part of ticket deflection involves directing customers to self-help resources, which increases customer satisfaction. For example, a customer might submit a request through a chat bot and your system can automatically suggest related articles. The customer can then click on the suggested links to resolve their issue. Much of the time, this is sufficient. If not, they can still submit a ticket.

·                 People want self-help options.

If you’re wondering whether or not customers will be happy about being given links to resolve their issue, you’ll be happy to know that 67% of customers prefer self-help options over interacting with live support agents. They’d rather read a blog or watch a video than call for support or email.

·                 You can scale your customer support efforts.

With fewer tickets for your support team to manage, any expansion to your support team will help customers who need more serious support.

·                 Better customer support equals more revenue.

When you implement ticket deflection, you’ll solve simple problems faster and complex problems will get more attention, which will reduce customer churn and increase customer satisfaction.

·                 Your customer support team will be happier.

Let’s face it, nobody wants to answer the same simple questions over and over again. When you deflect tickets with self-help options for simple requests, your agents will be happier, which will make them more productive.

All of these benefits to ticket deflection will ultimately support you in creating the best possible customer service experience.

Are your agents overwhelmed? Try ticket deflection

If your agents are burdened with a high volume of support tickets from your help desk, it’s time to try ticket deflection. With fewer tickets submitted, your agents will be free to help customers with high-priority issues and customers with simple requests will find answers immediately.

The end result is more satisfied customers, happier customer service reps, and a bigger bottom line.