Hello Freshworks Community!
Welcome to the first edition of our new blog series highlighting the powerful Freshworks marketplace apps designed to streamline helpdesk operations. In this inaugural post, we’re diving into apps that specifically enhance how you manage and customize ticket fields in Freshdesk. Stay tuned for more tips and insights in the coming weeks!
In today's customer experience (CX) industry, helpdesk teams are expected to resolve issues quickly and efficiently, all while keeping customer satisfaction high. However, navigating through cluttered interfaces, and handling repetitive tasks can slow down even the best support agents. Fortunately, Freshdesk offers a variety of marketplace apps designed to address common pain points in the CX industry, enhance team productivity, and streamline processes. Below, we dive into several key Freshdesk apps and offer tips to help your team get the most out of them.
1. Simplifying Agent Views
Pain Point: Information Overload
Oftentimes, teams have to contend with information overload in the ticket details page and Helpdesk agents often struggle with cluttered interfaces filled with impertinent ticket fields that divert their attention from key information needed to resolve tickets. This can lead to inefficiencies, confusion, and errors.
Use Case:
Imagine a technical support team that frequently receives tickets containing fields such as "Billing Information" or "Shipping Address," which are unrelated to their team. By using the Hide/Disable Ticket Fields app, Admins can hide these fields for the Tech team, ensuring they focus only on technical details and those fields can be displayed for teams that do need and rely on them to carry out their objectives.
Solution:
The Hide/Disable Ticket Fields app helps reduce this clutter by enabling admins to hide or disable specific ticket fields for certain groups or user roles. By tailoring ticket views to only show relevant information, this app significantly improves productivity.
Best Practice:
The best way to go about it is to tailor field visibility based on the complexity of the ticket. For example, show only the necessary information for junior agents while giving senior agents access to all details for comprehensive problem-solving.
2. Fine-Tuning Data Collection
Pain Point: Inconsistent Data Entry
Inconsistent data is a nightmare for every team as different departments need different types of data. Often, agents are overwhelmed by unnecessary ticket fields or inadvertently modify critical customer-entered data, leading to inconsistencies.
Use Case:
A CX team handling both product-related and shipping-related tickets may use different custom ticket fields for each scenario. By setting up an app based on ticket type, product-related tickets might show technical fields like "Error Code," while shipping-related tickets focus on "Delivery Status."
Solution:
Introducing the Custom Ticket Fields app, specifically built for these types of scenarios. The app allows admins to show or hide specific fields based on ticket type, group, or product. Additionally, it prevents agents from changing fields that were completed by customers, ensuring data integrity - goodnight nightmare and good morning source of truth!
Best Practice:
CX Teams should use custom fields strategically to streamline agent workflows by surfacing only the most relevant fields for each ticket type, improving response times and accuracy.
3. Being Precise with Dropdowns
Pain Point: Too Many Irrelevant Options
Many teams find that they have too many irrelevant options when it comes down to dropdown fields and this can hinder productivity. Agents lose time searching through unrelated choices, which can lead to errors and delayed responses.
Use Case:
Consider a multi-product company where agents manage tickets for various product lines. Using the Set Ticket Field Options app, you can set different dropdown options for each product. For example, a ticket marked as “Software Issue” will only show software-specific priority levels and not hardware-related fields.
Solution:
The Set Ticket Field Options app allows Admins to customize dropdown ticket fields so that agents only see options that are relevant to the ticket or their role. This minimizes Ambiguity and improves ticket handling speed.
Best Practice:
To ensure maximum efficiency, teams should regularly update the options based on the most frequent issues to keep dropdowns concise and relevant.
4. Lock Down Fields Based on Conditions
Pain Point: Incorrect Field Modifications
In some cases, agents may accidentally edit fields that should remain unchanged, leading to incorrect data entries or delays in ticket resolution.
Use Case:
Let’s say you have a "Priority" field that should only be modified for certain ticket types (e.g., "Urgent Support"). With the Disable Fields app, Admins can lock down the field for lower-priority tickets, ensuring the system remains consistent and minimize the risk of manual errors.
Solution:
The Disable Fields app allows Admins to disable non-mandatory fields based on preset conditions, such as the ticket type, the role of the agent, or other specific criteria. This ensures that critical fields remain unchanged unless absolutely necessary.
Best Practice:
Furthermore, it is best to set conditions not just by ticket type but also by agent experience level. For example, restrict field modifications for newer agents to reduce potential mistakes.
5. Managing High Ticket Volumes
Pain Point: Updating Tickets One by One
Manually updating multiple tickets can be time consuming, especially when dealing with high volume queries or systemic issues affecting many customers at once.
Use Case:
A team dealing with a service outage affecting multiple customers could use the Bulk Ticket Update app to bulk update tickets with the same resolution note, saving hours of repetitive work.
Solution:
The Bulk Ticket Update app allows agents to upload a CSV file containing updates for multiple tickets, thereby reducing the need to manually edit each ticket.
Best Practice:
This app is best used to quickly adjust ticket priorities, statuses, or reassignments during a crisis when multiple tickets require updates with consistent information.
6. Automating Data Entry with Smart Parsing
Pain Point: Manual Data Entry
Manually updating specific ticket fields like contract numbers or product IDs from customer descriptions can be tedious and error-prone.
Use Case:
An e-commerce company that frequently receives tickets with order numbers in the subject line can use the Ticketing Parsing app to automatically extract and populate the "Order Number" field, eliminating the need for agents to manually enter the data.
Solution:
The Ticket Parsing App automates this process by searching for predefined patterns (such as a contract number) in the ticket subject or description and automatically populating the relevant ticket fields.
Best Practice:
Teams should regularly review their parsing patterns to ensure they match current ticket trends and keep the automation effective.
Trends and Best Practices in CX Helpdesk Automation
As the customer service industry continues to evolve, the use of automation in helpdesk systems is becoming essential to delivering exceptional customer experiences. Some key trends include:
- Increased Automation: More companies are utilizing automation tools like workflow automations and AI-based ticket triaging to reduce human error and enhance process efficiency
- Tailored Interfaces: Customizing agent views to display relevant information helps reduce clutter and improve response times, enhancing overall agent productivity.
Freshdesk’s Marketplace Apps, are designed to help teams overcome common challenges in the CX industry. By adopting these tools and applying best practices, you can enhance team productivity, improve response times, and ensure a seamless customer experience. Take the time to explore these apps and experiment with settings to tailor them to your team’s specific needs. The appropriate app, when properly configured, can significantly enhance your team’s performance
In our next blog post, we’ll be exploring more ways to enhance your help desk efficiency with apps that handle ticket auto-merging, scheduling ticket responses, and removing unnecessary texts from ticket threads. These tools are ideal for maintaining your inbox clean, organised, and ensuring timely resolutions. Stay tuned to discover how you can further streamline your workflow!
Cheers
Willam Smart