What Is A Mobile Help Desk?

This is a guest post from Zendesk, a leader in customer service software.

Hiring skilled customer service agents is the most important part of providing an exceptional customer service experience. But once you have the right people, in order for them to realize their potential, you need to equip them with the right tools. Now that 96% of people use cell phones, part of supplying agents with what they need is giving them a way to do their job from a mobile device.

For agents that use help desk software to do their jobs each day, mobile help desk access is an important feature to make their lives easier.

What is mobile help desk software?

A mobile help desk is a collection of customer service tools that enable agents to do their jobs effectively on a mobile device. In most cases, a mobile help desk consists of a mobile app that brings the features available in your company’s help desk software to a small screen. A good help desk mobile app will offer the main resources and functionality agents use on their desktops, but adapt it to make it easier to use in the mobile format.

3 benefits of a mobile help desk

Mobile functionality doesn’t come standard with every service desk option. But a product that offers a mobile app can offer some important benefits to your agents, and your customers by extension.

1. Agents can work from anywhere

   In the early days of the coronavirus crisis, businesses found themselves scrambling to figure out how to give employees access to the tools they need to work from home. For businesses using products that already offer mobile access, the issue was less complicated. If you have a help desk that provides support across all device types, agents can tap into all the information they need to do their job effectively on whatever device they have handy.

   They can pull up the company’s knowledge base from anywhere and find the answers customers need fast. And when things fall back into some semblance of normal, your agents will be able to use that same mobile app to provide customer support from waiting rooms or their morning bus commute, helping them get more done.

2. Keeps customer data unified

   Customer satisfaction so often depends on the context. To provide exceptional customer experience, agents don’t just need to know about the customer’s current issue. They need to know all about their relationship with the company. A well designed mobile help desk allows agents to access the most up-to-date customer information from any device they use. They can find what products the customer has, what past issues they’ve been in touch about, and their current ticket status.

   And they can update customer data in the mobile service desk in real-time to ensure the next agent that works with that customer also has the most up-to-date information.

3. Faster response times

   Your agents aren’t always conveniently sitting in front of a computer when a customer request comes in. And one of the biggest customer service trends in recent years is the expectation of faster response times.

   When all of your agents have the option to respond from their phone, they can address issues faster. An agent out for a walk can get a notification on their smartphone the moment a customer needs help and access the ticketing system to address their needs—all before they ever get back to the house.

Top 6 features to look for in a mobile help desk

For a customer service desk mobile app to be an effective tool for agents, it needs to offer the right features. Some of the most common ones to prioritize are:

1. An intuitive app

   Making the service desk accessible on a mobile device isn’t good enough. It also has to be designed well to make using it easy and intuitive on all screen sizes. If agents on mobile find it difficult to find the right article in your knowledge base, share relevant links with customers, or tap into important customer details, it won’t help them do their job better.

   A mobile app is only valuable if it actually makes the mobile experience of a product better.

2. Access to up-to-date customer profiles

   Many misunderstandings and frustrations can be avoided if agents have current, accurate customer information. For example, if an agent recommends a common troubleshooting tip to a customer that doesn’t work, the customer will get in touch again. If the next agent they reach doesn’t know about the last interaction, they may provide the same tip again. It’s easy to imagine how you’d feel like the customer at the end of that call. In fact, most of us don’t have to imagine it, because it’s so common.

   A mobile help desk needs to give agents a way to access customer profiles that are updated in real-time, and easily make new updates to them based on each new interaction for the next agent to see.

3. Live chat functionality

   A useful help desk mobile app will enable customer interactions in all the main channels customers like to use. One of the most important on mobile is live chat since it’s a channel where speedy responses matter more than most. If agents can respond to live chat inquiries in real-time on their mobile devices, they can help customers looking for fast, simple answers at a higher rate.

4. Compatibility with multiple device types

   Your agents likely use a range of mobile device types. For your mobile help desk to work well for all of them, it needs to work just as well on iPhones, Androids, and various tablets. If the mobile app the vendor provides isn’t compatible across device types, it will lock out a portion of your agents.

5. Security

   Anytime agents are adding or accessing customer data, security is an important concern. And ensuring security is strong across device types is a challenge. A service desk product that provides high-level security features on the desktop should be able to provide the same for their mobile version. Before agents use a service desk on mobile devices, make sure you’re confident it provides the necessary security.

6. Notifications

   To take advantage of the benefit of faster response times, agents need to know when a ticket comes in. Mobile notifications ensure they get pinged on their device right away. That means even if an agent is doing laundry or on Zoom call, as long as their phone’s nearby, they’ll know within seconds that there’s a new customer service inquiry to attend to.

Empower your agents

A well-designed and feature-rich mobile help desk can give your capable agents what they need to be even more effective. And it means more of your customers will get faster responses on the channel of their choice.

This post was originally published on the Zendesk Blog.