Nicereply Blog

WideXS is a managed hosting company. We’ve been active in the internet industry since 1996, you could say we were one of the first. Our product range varies from plain domainname registrations, webhosting and for example SSL certificates to firewalled and loadbalanced tailored solutions for larger customers that operate internationally.

How big is your “helpdesk team” and how many customers do you have?

Most questions our customers ask (about 80% to 90%) can be dealt with by our customer contact center. Questions are very diverse, they can be about an administrative issue as well as technical or commercial for that matter. Customers can reach us in several ways; by phone, through email i.e. our ticketing system and through Twitter. Because we serve about 12000 customers with a team of six customer service agents our website is an important point of contact as well. Answers to all frequently asked questions can be found online.

What’s the main reason, you care about your customer support services?

We believe that our customers are the most important asset to our company. It is for them that we do what we do. Knowing our customers and ‘personal touch’ are important to us. I realize it is impossible to know all our customers just because the sheer number but having said that each customer contact is an opportunity for this ‘personal touch’, to show that we care and offer the best solution possible.

What kind of metrics are you using to measure customer satisfaction and performance of your agents?

We have a couple of KPI’s, one being the NiceReply application J. Others are;

-          Number of calls and average duration

-          Number of tickets and the amount of time it takes us to respond

-          A couple of times a year we measure our service by conducting a customer satisfaction survey

Do you have any special motivation programs for your helpdesk agents?

The customer service agents have next to a personal target also a group target that, when they perform conform targets or better, can earn them a bonus

What’s in your opinion is the future of helpdesk systems?

I have to admit that I am not and expert but I do foresee a couple of developments;

-          Companies will automate helpdesk systems more and more. If this indeed helps the customer it is great but in many cases though we see that those automated systems are introduced not to improve customer service but to reduce costs. The latter should be avoided.

-          I foresee that customers i.e. ‘fans’ will get a role in helping other customers. In tradeoff they will receive bonus points or a discount on their purchases with the company

-          We see very advanced systems for large enterprises I expect that these kind of customer service systems will become available for the SMB as well (including all the metrics)

-          Personal contact will always be (and stay) important, people do business with people…

What’s the most important virtue a helpdesk agent must have?

I would say sympathy and understanding. The agent should be able to sympathize whit the customer and at the same moment be able to help him/her with an accurate answer… first time right helps customer satisfaction enormously.

Do you have a funny story from your helpdesk that you would like to share with us? (We know that there’s a lot of them

Sorry… I am sure there are probably many stories but I don’t know any of them