What is a ticketing system?
Ticketing systems were created to help internal IT teams track and resolve reported issues that required two tiers of support. By creating a “virtual” ticket for each reported issue, IT teams could easily pass on complex issues to their engineering teams, for example, and track the progress of an issue until it got resolved. And they still work quite well in this capacity.
The problem is, many help desks tools adopted the concept of ticketing into their software as a way to handle incoming customer inquiries. But for most customer service teams, the nature of the types of customer inquiries they receive don’t require external assistance and can be resolved by the customer service team alone. Therefore, turning every customer inquiry into a ticket creates extra work for customer service agents and results in siloed, broken communication between the two parties.Why do help desk ticketing systems create poor customer experiences?
Today, the ways customers contact and communicate with brands have changed. Customers no longer stick with one single channel when engaging with a brand. They may jump between several – using whichever one is most convenient to them at that moment. And they expect a seamless customer service experience every time too.
Help desk ticketing systems don’t support seamless ongoing conversations between brands and customers because they keep customer communication in separate siloed tickets stuck in the original channel the communication took place in (ex: email). This makes for frustrating and often inconsistent customer experiences, resulting in customers having to repeat themselves and agents having to jump between several systems or tabs to collect the context they need.
Who shouldn’t use a ticketing system?
Any business that has the need to communicate directly with customers could benefit from using a ticketing system alternative, especially those who want to create deep and meaningful relationships with their customers. These businesses could span from a typical ecommerce business to travel agencies to consumer technology companies and beyond. Historically, help desks have been primarily used by the customer service or IT teams within an organization, but sales teams may have the need to use it too depending on your business model.
How might help desk ticketing systems harm your CX?
It’s a new decade and with that, customer expectations are at an all-time high. They want brands to be proactive and personal, every time, everywhere; to provide seamless assistance across channels; and — most importantly — customers want to feel connected to the brands they buy from. The focus is no longer on how people perceive the brand but rather how they experience the brand. This shift in focus is leading many digitally-forward businesses to move away from transactional engagement with their customers to one that is real-time and relational.
The problem is, ticketing systems are struggling to meet the changing digital landscape of forward-thinking businesses and preventing them from delivering to consumers’ heightened expectations. Here are 5 ways using a ticketing system could be holding your business back:
1. Your customers want deeper human engagement: Unfortunately, treating a customer as a ticket doesn’t exactly scream “We appreciate you!” In fact, immediately converting a customer to a number says quite the opposite. To treat your buyers as the valued friends they are, a more personal approach is necessary.
2. Your customers prefer continuous conversations, not transactional: Every agent’s goal when working in a ticketing system is to close as many tickets as possible. But in doing so, you are encouraging agents to forgo any opportunity to really add value to a customer’s experience.
3. Your customers are omni-present, but you’re stuck in silos: Processing customer inquiries in tickets means that relevant, necessary information is locked up and scattered across parts of the system. This makes it difficult for agents to have an accurate view of all recent communication between brand and buyer resulting in the customer having to repeat themselves.
4. Your customers want quick support, but your software gets in the way: Where tasks could be automated, ticketing systems require extra effort — and often involve switching between several tabs or screens to gather relevant data. Managers might even be manually assigning tickets to agents. All of this is wasting your team’s time and resources with ineffective techniques.
5. You want to grow, but your ticketing system is terrible at scaling: Because ticketing systems were originally designed for IT teams, they almost always require assistance from IT to change or alter and are quite rigid when it comes to customizations. Not having complete control over your setup makes it difficult to be agile and scale with ease.
Why using a ticketing system alternative can improve a business?
It’s no secret that great customer service breeds loyalty. A staggering 96% of buyers across the globe say that customer service is a major deciding factor for where their loyalties lie so it’s worth investing in. By using a ticketing system alternative, such as a multichannel help desk, you can better meet the modern-day consumer’s expectations.
Instead of treating each inquiry as a separate conversation, which is how ticketing systems were built, modern alternatives like Dixa can provide one clear customer conversation history, threading all channels and relevant data together. Not only does this make it easy for customer service agents to review, respond and reinforce great customer care, it’s also a better fit for customers’ needs. It also ensures customers don’t have to repeat themselves, something 72% of consumers say amounts to poor customer service.
Additionally, modern ticketing system alternatives can unify all your support channels and utilize cross-channel customer recognition tools so agents can provide personalized, friend-to-friend support, regardless of how the customer reaches out. Say goodbye to asking for ticket numbers or order numbers, get all the information you need — name, order history, tracking numbers, CLTV, CSAT, and more from the second a customer reaches out.
Empowering your service agents with relevant data enables them to have meaningful conversations with consumers that spark deeper bonds, drive loyalty and ultimately increase customer lifetime value.
See how Dixa’s multichannel help desk software compares to Zendesk and Freshdesk.