Tech support has to exist. Tech inevitably changes, evolves, and goes wrong. And tech support plays a central role in managing all of these scenarios. But where does this service sit in the overall user experience? Should tech support sit alone as a service? Or should it be considered as an integral part of the everyday user experience? We look at the ways that tech support has a crucial influence on overall user experience.
What is user experience?
The user experience, also known as UX or UE, encapsulates the way that a user interacts with and experiences a product, system or service. The experience is impacted by how its utility, efficiency and usability is perceived by those people using it. UX is a huge factor in marketing and client retention for most businesses. It’s true that many aspects of user experience are subjective. However, there are clear aspects of function and application that are unarguably crucial. When a user’s experience includes so many aspects of interaction between a company, its services, and its products, tech support has a clear part to play.
How tech support influences user experience
What are the ways in which tech support impacts the overall user experience? This influence can work both directly and indirectly, but both are crucial.
Issue Resolution
Clearly, when problems arise, they are detrimental to the overall user experience. However, the nature of technology means that issues are inevitable. Using an IT helpdesk software with asset management makes resolving issues a breeze! Therefore, it is how many issues are resolved that are most crucial to how the user experiences the service and system. Any challenges or issues must both be successfully and promptly resolved. Clearly, this has a direct and very visible impact on the overall user experience.
Expertise
When IT support is called upon, demonstrative expertise can elevate the user experience. This can be achieved within your service desk by specialising your teams, which allows pieces of work to be allocated and undertaken far more efficiently than if everything was directed to the same destination. By doing this, more specific areas can be focussed on, such as strategic development, change management or incident resolution. Once your teams are able to focus on their areas of expertise, user experience will automatically improve.
Documentation
Whether between teams or within teams, good communication relies on clear reporting and documentation. This is an area of your service desk that is key in laying the foundation for good user experience. When systems archive and document data, it can be used for future problem resolutions. In this way, the response and knowledge of your tech support service is improved for future users.
Knowledge and Training
Your tech support services are perfectly placed to share knowledge and impart training (both formal and informal) for users to better utilise your systems. Good user experience within IT service is constantly in a state of flux. It is only as current as the last time of use. This is why the constructive knowledge sharing of your tech support can maintain good user experience. It’s also why it’s so important to maintain ongoing training programmes within tech support teams.
Empowerment
Knowledge sharing is just part of the way tech support can play a crucial role in empowering users, though. Good service desk provision should promote self-service options. Users are empowered when given the opportunity to self-serve. In this way, portal tools within service desk systems are incredibly valuable. Users can not only track the management of their service requests, but also find solutions on demand. These dynamic portals therefore improve the user experience by allowing the user to control their experience.
Assistance
Good tech support should provide continual assistance, rather than simply responding to service requests. This means proactively supporting users and systems. Continual assistance and joined up thinking can be demonstrated by proactive problem solving. If a problem recurs multiple times, any user will become dissatisfied. That is why it’s vital for service staff to access the correct tools and expertise to actively resolve incidents and problems successfully. In this way, the overall user experience is improved.
Relationships
Tech support is not an island! As an integral element of a business, relationships and communication are key. Regular updates and reporting are crucial in constructing a foundation of good user experience. Service extends so much further than just problem solving. As a collaborative part of an organisation, users both internal and external rely on successful relationships between tech and business. These relationships can only be achieved through constant communication via service desk functionality.
Strategy
For different businesses the requirements of a service desk may change rapidly and be used to monitor and manage growth. With good service desk software, your tech support procedures can perform flexibly to grow with the business. These change management tools are there to facilitate and support growth and expansion, maintaining good user experience. The importance of tech within strategic change simply underlines how crucial it is for the overall user experience.
Customer Satisfaction
Positive user experience is intertwined with good customer satisfaction. So, it’s important to understand customer satisfaction as part of overall user experience.
Measuring experience
Data is key for tracking performance. This is where a good reporting system becomes important. Reporting presents and interprets data in a constructive and proactive way. This allows your tech support teams to use that reporting data to further improve service where required. Continual improvements will ensure ongoing customer satisfaction.
Managing satisfaction
Customer satisfaction should be actively managed, with key targets set and monitored. The service desk must support the aims of the business to an agreed standard. Therefore, your service desk should produce SLA’s, to allow your tech support and business to meet priorities with more clarity. With this structure in place, your customer satisfaction automatically feeds into the overall user experience.
Conclusion
User experience is so often assumed to be simply about product design and the digital journey. However, it runs much deeper than this. Solid overall good user experience relies on the user being given the level of service that provides satisfaction. In this way, the tools and procedures of your tech support must be up to the task.