5 Ways to Automate Customer Support Processes

"The service desk is the centerpiece of a successful IT Service Management operation."

So states ITIL - the IT Infrastructure Library. One of the marks of success is efficiently resolving problems. But when the number of problems becomes large enough, some processes are missed, leaving some customers thinking that the service desk isn't serving them very well at all. Tickets are not escalated properly. Resolutions are slow in coming. Calls are not closed in a timely manner. Incidents are poorly recorded and tracked.

Many of the processes that bog down when handled manually can be automated so the system takes care of the busy work, leaving agents to handle calls. Here are 5 ways automation can help your IT Management operation, or any other help desk operation, succeed.

1. Automatically escalate tickets to higher support levels along with an automatic notification of a new issue.

2. Automatically create tickets from e-mails rather than manually transferring information from the e-mail system to the incident management system.

3. Automatically update customers about their open issues. Always communicate in a timely manner with the customer, even if the news is not good or is only "still waiting".

4. Automatically receive alerts about increased activity. Promptly discover backed up phone queues, increased activity on the part of one customer, or if an SLA is about to be missed.

5. Automatically receive or send reports via e-mail on a predetermined basis.

Each of these steps is one (or more) fewer tasks for the agents to cope with. This leaves them to do the important work: helping customers.

To learn more about help desk automation, go to www.phaseware.com for information on the PhaseWare Event Engine, which works with Tracker to take customer service to a whole new level.