Monthly Archives: May 2020

VOIP Opens Doors for Professional Parents

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VOIP enables working parents to telecommute while staying home with their kids.

In our society, it’s generally agreed that a fulfilling life is one where you can rock at your career and be a parent at the same time, but sometimes the two do not overlap well. Being a dedicated professional and being a good parent shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, especially since to be a good parent, you usually need to have a good job. The business world, in its own way, has waffled between seeing parents as steady reliable workers or as non-team-players. But the real problem is not that parents are more or less dedicated (everyone has their unique work style), it’s that parents can’t be in two places at once. Until now.

VOIP Parents Can Be in Two Places at Once

Traditionally, professional parents have had to make tough decisions. They have to choose when to come back to work after a new baby is born. They have to choose which spouse takes sick time off work when a child is ill. And for single parents, these choices are even more difficult. But often the problems associated with being a parent aren’t about not being dedicated, they’re about not being able to come into the office. This is exactly why VOIP along with sister-software on the cloud are opening doors for professional parents to finally do the impossible: To stay home with the kids and show up for work at the same time.

VOIP Telecommuting When a Child is Sick

When a child is too sick to go to school, a parent must stay home to take care of them. Especially if they can’t find a babysitter or don’t have a retired grandparent available for the task. The child must be comforted, fed nourishing food, and monitored for ‘go to the hospital’ symptoms. But other than that? The child is home napping in bed or watching cartoons in a semi-awake state and the parent is left… cleaning the house? Balancing their checkbook? Weeding the garden?

Trust us, we know that most parents with a napping child home sick would rather be tearing through their work to-do list. With VOIP, a parent can now set up their home office to take the calls they would usually take and collaborate on their ongoing projects with little to no interruption. They can answer the phone for their regular clients and even participate in staff meetings, all while also responsibly home with their sick child.

VOIP Telecommuting With a New Baby

In fact, even parents of newborns can take advantage of the ability to smoothly telecommute with a VOIP platform. Parents who have just brought home a new infant will go through that hallmark hectic sleep-deprived time when their brains are nothing but adrenalin and oxytocin. But once the baby starts sleeping through the night, often there are several hours a day where nursing mothers and bonding fathers have time to kill. They finally have enough sleep, the baby naps for up to 16 hours a day, and they’re left twiddling their thumbs.

When it’s not yet safe to head to the office but the house is quiet, this is where VOIP closes the gap. Parents who might be out of the office for another several months can come back and start picking up the slack from their understaffed team. They can get re-acquainted with projects making their later come-back easier and they can start re-engaging with clients, taking service calls, and managing projects in a way that is beneficial to both the company and the professional parents. The company gets their team back together early with one telecommuting member, the parent gets to refresh their mind from baby-time, and the team gets a few adorable pictures and video chats of a smiling baby to warm hearts and boost morale.

VOIP is the Key to Work-Life Balance for Professional Parents

Companies are always looking for new ways to improve employee work-life balance while getting more productivity from the team, not less. And VOIP is the key. VOIP unifies your phone and communication systems so that no matter where employees are located, they can jump in as if they were sitting right in the office. And while employers might be thinking “This will be great for business trips and unifying multiple offices,” VOIP is also the solution for parents. So they can clock in hours even when they’re home taking care of a child.

Finally, being a good parent doesn’t have to occasionally clash with being a dedicated professional. Because parents can finally be in two places at once, without even switching their phone number. Contact us today to discover how setting up VOIP for your business can keep your professional parents engaged and happily clocking hours even when family obligation takes them out of the office.

Are VoIP Services Included In Your Customer Support Strategy? (Part 2)

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Business woman on the go using her mobile phone to resolve problems with customer support

Having the right tools is key to delivering the best possible service to customers.

In our previous blog, we talked about VoIP services and other features that can be included in a business’s customer support strategy that can be used to provide high-quality services. There are various other features and components that a business can use in call centers and other customer service areas to provide an overall better experience for customers and clients.

Customer Self-Service

Today, many customers appreciate the opportunity to resolve some of their smaller issues on their own without having to call into a help desk. This is why it is becoming important for businesses and organizations to find customer support software that includes self-service options. A self-service option will give your customers the ability to find answers to some of the common problems they are having with a product or service.

Your customers will be able to obtain control over their problems by searching through the self-service option. When customers are having problems that other customers have been able to resolve, the community feature of a self-service customer portal can be very useful. Customers will be able to share their experience with the problem and share details about how they resolved the problem.

A self-service option will be convenient for the customers because they will be able to attempt to resolve the problem at their own speed and at their own pace.

Mobility

We are all aware of how important mobility has become. Customers love being able to use systems and software that do not require them to be sitting in front of a desktop computer in order to access it. Being able to resolve problems while being active and mobile can be a difference-maker for customers. Many of your customers will use your products and your services while they are out of their homes or out of the office, and they will often use the products and services on a mobile device.

If customers are using their devices to access your products and services, the chances are high that they will likely use the mobile device to reach out to you when they need assistance. This is why we recommend using customer support software that will allow customers to contact you through their mobile devices. If customers are accessing what you offer through a mobile device, they should be able to be assisted by your customer support team or access the self-service portal through that same device.

You will need customer support software that will provide you with the ability to notice which customers may need more assistance than others. Unfortunately, many customers do not receive the help they need and they will not contact the customer support team again because they did not receive the help they needed the first time.

Customers will become upset or distressed due to the lack of support. This is why it is a good idea to use various measurements in your customer support software so you can identify the customers who will need your agents to put in additional time and effort to assist those customers.

Customer support software that reports in real-time will allow you to stay in the loop on everything that is going on within your system. It will be easier for you to understand how impactful the features and components are. You will also be able to identify any weak points. Your customer support software will become a cornerstone of your business or organization. It is important that you look for features that will allow you to provide a high level of customer support for your customers.

There are many things you will need to look for when it comes to customer support software, but we hope the features we have shared with you today can give you a better idea of what you should look for while you are on your way to revamping your customer support system.

What features in customer support software do you think your business can use to provide a better customer experience? Contact us today for more information on VoIP service and help desk services.

Are VoIP Services Included In Your Customer Support Strategy? (Part 1)

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Voice-over-IP (VoIP) phones in a row in an office desk

In the service industry, having a VoIP system is critical in providing the best possible customer service.

As more technology and equipment are being added to meet the needs in our personal lives and business lives, the need for greater customer support will continue to be crucial.

The customer support or customer service software you are using will continue to be a vital piece of your success because it is becoming more than a system that assigns tickets to customers. Your customer support software should be an essential asset to your business due to its ability to hold a wealth of customer information.

As you begin to assess your customer-oriented strategies and your processes, there are various features and components you should look for as you begin to make changes to your customer support strategy. What are some of the features you should include in your customer support strategy?

Voice-over-IP(VoIP)

VoIP is one of the most popular tools that can be used to improve the interactions between your business and your clients/customers. With VoIP features on your side, you will have one of the best technologies to boost your customer support. VoIP services will provide your business with the ability to offer high-quality customer service.

Phone calls will always be an important part of customer service. As more businesses begin to use SaaS platforms and others, the impact of voice components will continue to change. This is where VoIP can make its grand entrance. Many businesses are using VoIP services to transfer phone calls, record phone calls, host conference calls, and more during a time where we do not see as many landline devices as we have seen in the past.

VoIP services can be used by businesses in all industries and of all sizes. VoIP will enable you to be available to your clients and customers at all times and respond in a timely manner. With VoIP features, you will be able to direct phone calls to the proper department in a timely manner. If your business performs in multiple areas across the globe, VoIP will be flexible enough to support all of your teams.

Ticketing System

What would the perfect customer support software for your business or organization consist of? Would it consist of a solution that would offer an effective way to manage tickets? Would it consist of a solution that would allow you to effectively interact with your customers? Did you know that an inbuilt ticketing system can be a mix of both of these features?

Yes, you can have a solution that will allow you to create customer support tickets through more than one channel. After the tickets have been created, you will be able to present the customer support tickets to your agents. As a result, you will see a decrease in the amount of time it takes to resolve the support tickets. When it does not take a significant amount of time to resolve one support ticket, your agents will be able to move on to the next ticket in a reasonable amount of time.

One of the most powerful tools you can have in your customer support software is what we refer to as tagging. When you have tags as a feature in your customer support software, you will be able to easily add more data to your tickets. After you have loaded the tickets with supplemental data, you will be able to customize workflow with the data you have loaded.

When a new ticket is loaded into your customer support system, the words that you have listed in the description will go through the system. Your customer support software will have the ability to scan each description that you have created and make a comparison to any tag that has previously been used. When the system locates the best matches for the tag, the new tags will be added to the ticket description.

For more information on VoIP services and other features that can impact your customer support strategy, please do not hesitate to contact us today.

Stay tuned for the second part of this blog that will address additional factors and components that can be included in your customer support strategy.

Seven Ways to Improve Your Help Desk Office Efficiency

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Three women smiling and working an IT help desk with headsets and laptops

Having a team that works efficiently together takes time to build, which is why a lot of small businesses rely on SystemsNet

It would be nice if every help desk job was predictable, reliable, and ran like a well-oiled machine, but they don’t. Depending on the company, the space, the managers, and the team in question, help desk offices can be anything from a rowdy pen of adult children on phones to a structured regiment of serious professionals. Admittedly, most techs would prefer to find an employer whose help desk office is somewhere in between. The best places are the ones where your manager and co-workers take the work seriously when it matters but can still laugh off a joke or the ridiculous behavior of trouble customers, where you can have snacks but the workstations are clean, and where the quota policies make sense for both efficiency and customer service. Of course, to create an environment this functional and friendly, it takes a talented manager, a well-designed work environment, and a smooth infrastructure for the team to work with each other and the clients.

If you want to improve your help desk office efficiency, think about it from the technician’s point of view. Their work experience determines the quality of the notes and documentation created, service provided, and customer satisfaction.

1) Keep the Temperature Comfy

Office thermostats have been a well-known enemy of employees for decades. Everyone is familiar with the bizarrely uncomfortable work environments created by overzealous, inefficient, or badly programmed office thermostats. The fact of the matter is that people, like computers, have an optimal working temperature and any other temperature will become a distraction from an already complex job of solving technical problems and walking customers through understanding and accepting the solutions. Unfortunately, even two people who look identical can have slightly different temperature preferences. A great way to address this is to vote every six months on the ideal temperature, usually somewhere between 65 and 75, and then provide blankets, space heaters, or fans and cool water to those who have edge-case preferences.

2) Desk Sanitization Supplies

One of the worst ways to start a shift, especially in customer service, is to come in to a sticky, trash covered, or otherwise dirty workstation. While many offices know that desk sanitization is a good way to reduce the big waves of sick days as something travels around the office, there are actually a large number of reasons to make regular desk cleaning a policy. If every workstation is equipped with wipes or something equivalent, this allows people to sanitize after a shift, clean up any accidental messes, and make sure their station is completely clean at the beginning of a shift. This not only reduces annual sick days, it also makes starting work more pleasant.

3) Manager Rescue Policy

When you listen to tales of tech support, one theme that shows up over and over features the hero stories about managers who know exactly when to step in. When customers have gotten unduly abusive, when the problem is clearly above your authorization level, and when there’s clear indications of scamming, it’s great to know that your manager is on your side. Having a supportive manager and a policy of backing up employees on problem calls can improve the morale and confidence of the entire team.

4) Provide Hot Beverages

Tech support is not a brainless task and doing it on the phone only makes it harder. Most people don’t actually talk all day long, but this is the job and your agents are ready to do it, as long as there’s something hot to drink after the tenth consecutive call. Many offices provide coffee but it’s important to remember the dehydration effects of caffeine, not to mention that some people have a dietary restriction. Make sure to provide a form of hot water, tea bags, and hot cocoa mix as well. Hot cider is also a fun way to mix it up and keep everyone healthy.

5) Lose the Phone Tree

Your customers hate the phone tree. We don’t have to ask, it doesn’t matter what your industry is because everyone hates the phone tree. You hate phone trees. If you absolutely must have an automated operator to sort initial calls, consider reducing the branches before connecting to a human representative. The longer your customers argue with a half-deaf robot, the more likely they are to yell at your phone tech when they finally get through. No one likes getting yelled at, and this is what the phone tree creates.

6) Sound Absorbing Office Materials

The most efficient help desk offices can have dozens of techs working in the same room without disturbing each other. However, there are only a few very subtle ways to make it work. First, you need to turn the thermostat down a degree or two and second, you need sound absorbing office materials. Cube walls, light fixture covers, wall art. Any unused surface you can find that can support a soft texture can be used to reduce the amount of sound that travels across the room.

7) Modular Personalization

Personalization of the work area has always been highly debated topic in the business world. Whether employees should be allowed to personalize at all and if so, which employees do personalize is always a matter of individual office protocols. That said, permitting employees to personalize in small ways as long as there’s no mess or disturbance is a great way to make your office unique and give your team a little bit of psychological space.

In the question of shared workstations, you can even make it possible to personalize on the job and depersonalize the station at the end of the shift with individual boxes or baskets for each person who shares a shift-assigned desk.

There are many ways to make your office more supportive to your team and these are just the beginning. With the right attitude for approaching your help desk work environment, the quality of your service and even the skills and capabilities of the technicians themselves will visibly improve. Contact us today for more help desk insights.