7 Hot Features of Online Helpdesk to Boost Conversions
In this pro-pandemic era, business digitalisation transforms service hotlines into online helpdesks and chatbots. This article will talk about 7 hot features of Online Helpdesk and how they come to 3 key successful factors to boost conversions, in comparison with the limitations of service hotlines and chatbots.
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7 Hot Features of Online Helpdesk to Boost Conversions
There are various online helpdesks to subscribe from in the e-commerce market, from around 5 USD per month to hundreds. Different solution providers have different niche functions to offer for specific needs. In general, the higher the price, the better the solution is tailored for scaled businesses. In other words, higher price plans normally do not offer better conversion features. Below are the 7 hot features in the market that do help boost conversions:
1. Multi-channel Live Chat
Online helpdesks start with being able to chat online, easily. As technology advances, there are more communication channels and devices evolving in different scenarios. Effective online helpdesks handle inquiries from all channels in one place to reduce response time and boost conversions.
2. Online/Offline Reply Modes with Team Alerts
There will be time no live customer service representative is available. An Online/Offline reply mode with team alerts extends CS availabilities by teamwork, approaching to solve inquiries in 24/7 by human to boost conversions. You can send customised reply messages in different time zones and
3. Flexible Work Shifts
A traditional helpdesk provides a team of full-time customer service to answer inquiries. As their profession is just customer service, all the time the answers you get are not specific enough to clarify the uncertainties. Some online helpdesks on the other hand provide automatic ticketing systems to direct tickets to related professionals on duty. This practice provides relevant expertise to your customers while saving the cost to hire full time staffs for customer service.
4. FAQ to Knowledge Base
Online helpdesks accumulate frequently asked questions (FAQ) from inquiries. Effective online helpdesks offer to build up a knowledge base from FAQs to become a self-helped desk. Customers can browse for specific answers without the need to connect with a CS representative.
5. Animated Display Icon
An online helpdesk cannot help convert unless it is being found in the first place. Modern helpdesks let you customise your display icon to be GIFs or other animation formats, to emphasise your brand and catch your customer’s attention to begin with. Better helpdesks can even set conditions to pop up marketing messages to further boost sales conversions.
6. Re-marketing Workflow Integration
Traditional customer service hotlines are often conducted verbally by CS department, which is separated from the sales department. With the digitalization nature of online helpdesks that are empowered by data, companies can now easily integrate CS communication into re-marketing campaigns to quantify the ROI in customer service.
7. Embedded with CRM
The hottest solution in e-commerce right now is customer relationship management (CRM), as it helps analyse the fundamental marketing questions of knowing your customers for follow up actions. CRM embedded helpdesks dramatically increase conversion rates down the sales funnel.
Chatbot Value Proposition
There is a limitation on the live chat feature that it is very difficult to guarantee an instant response time in a 24/7 time frame. Chatbot is born to provide 24/7 fully automated replies. Enterprises are adopting chatbots to deal with tremendous inquiries being repeated every day. However, the weakness of chatbots is its limitation in personalisation. For those equipped with better personalised chatbots, the price can be easily jetted up to a few hundred or even thousand dollars to purchase or build, making it hard for SMEs to get acceptable ROI on that.
Key Successful Factors (KSF) for an Online Helpdesk
To summarise, highly-priced online helpdesks or chatbots do not necessarily mean better customer service in general. The higher asked price normally better fits scaled business, or addresses specific business needs that are not commonly available in other platforms. Accordingly to the survey from Harvard Business Review stated above, the KSF of customer service is the speed and level of personalisation. To start using an online helpdesk, it’s better to choose one according to usability and price to value, then depending on your needs to integrate the helpdesk into a personalized chatbot later. Below are the 3 most important KSF for a good online helpdesk:
1. 24/7 (fast)
Speed to response is the essential factor for a good online helpdesk, and at the same time is the most important KSF.
2. Multi-channel communication (Simple)
The most important channel to communicate is live chat. Nonetheless, the more the available channels to communicate, the better the user experience delivered.
3. Personalised and knowledge-based replies
All auto-bots aim for better personalisation, while online helpdesks aim for automation and 24/7. Some online helpdesks let you seamlessly integrate professional CS teams into the system, to offer breakthrough O2O user experience in the customer service journey.
See how ebixPRO Online Helpdesk can improve user experience
User Reviews on ebixPRO Online Helpdesk
Online Helpdesk-the helpdesk system for Conversions
Quoting from a user from the business manager of Promoketo- Sharleen Lam “different from chatbot solutions, ebixPRO Online Helpdesk provides a 24/7 self-service helpdesk with a knowledge base, a simple cost-saving alternative to using chatbots. Customers cut out the time and effort to explain their situation in order to get the answers, providing a shortcut to solve problems. The self-service desk is represented as a widget shown on websites. Customers just follow organised FAQ paths to get their customised answers there. Further, they can log in right in the widget to track their purchase or delivery statuses. This is just a few powerful yet cheap solutions I get from ebixPRO Online Helpdesk.
ebixPRO Online Helpdesk Functions- from the simply useful live chat to the all-in-one Online Helpdesk
There are many practical functions available in ebixPRO Online Helpdesk. The embedded work-shift function, integrating with all relevant full-time and part-time staffs from different departments, helped us improved average response time.
The cross-channel communication steps further to enhance customer experience, allowing customers to interact with CS through live chat, emails, SMS, and external social channels (Wechat, Facebook, Line) anyhow at the same time.
Mostly importantly, all functions are Free without any limitations. If any situation, it is just a great value added to your eShop, blogs , or corporate websites, boosting your conversion rates in your sales and marketing funnel. There is no need to pay huge upfront investment and see if the system will actually work anymore.
Arthur: ebixPRO team
Date: 2021-01-26