Unlike the plot of many sci-fi movies, the human race has yet to be dominated by artificial intelligence. And since we are not living in the world of I, Robot or The Matrix, we still need smart individuals to work alongside the technology we use. Neither can achieve maximum efficiency without the other.

Integrating people and technology is a critical step in constructing efficient collaboration within a business. A lack of integration might hold any business back from achieving its maximum potential growth.

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At first glance, "inventory" might appear to be yet another item on a company's balance sheet. However, as most businesses know, the importance of tracking inventory cannot be understated. In an economy that constantly demands efficiency, it is becoming increasingly common for businesses to adopt Information Technology Asset Management (ITAM). Although managing the life cycles of inventory can be incredibly complicated, ITAM offers clients real-time monitoring of all assets, which enables businesses to significantly lower the risk of asset loss.

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Colleges present different challenges for IT help desks than businesses. For starters, they have different customers and different hours. Students are extremely tech savvy, much more so than the average working adult, and possess high expectations not only for the technology available to them, but also for support.

In addition, students often use their own technology and work away from a physical campus. Unlike in a traditional business setting, in which employees mainly work on the company's devices, IT help desks must contend with compatibility issues more often.

Given these distinctions, it is not particularly surprising that a successful help desk for an institution of higher learning is fundamentally different from that of a business.

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More than ever, businesses are analyzing market data in an attempt to better understand consumers' buying habits. However, data is often outdated by the time it reaches businesses, or the information is too broad and generalizing to draw any real conclusions. Analyzing market data is analogous to "looking in a rear view mirror," according to the authors of "Customer Intelligence: Connecting the Dots for Service Insight," who emphasize the importance of customer intelligence in anticipating consumer needs.

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Every tech-savvy person has heard (or even experienced) customer support horror stories at least once. These tales usually lament the struggle of dealing with users who seem to have no right to be anywhere near a computer: users who cannot find the "any" key, users who cannot tell the difference between the spacebar and backspace key, or users who do not even know what an operating system is.

Even though home computers have become easier to use, customers might still feel confused or frustrated. When business customers contract engineers for new software, it is often difficult for the tech-savvy to speak the language of the customer and nail down exactly what features the client is seeking. Effective communication is vital in both customer service and business-to-business relationships, and learning how to speak the language of your client is often easier said than done.

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If there is one thing that is constant in this day and age, it is change. Today's business pace demands perfectly smooth transitions or large amounts of money can be lost from interruptions in productivity. The optimal part of change is growth. If growth is the goal, then improving customer service should be top priority. According to author Seth Godin, "Customer service, like everything an effective organization does, changes people. Announce the change you seek, then invest appropriately in a system that is likely to actually produce the outcomes you just said you wanted." In order to have the best customer service, your company needs to have the best and most up to date software that addresses your customer service needs.

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The recently released 2015 Dimension Data Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report highlights a serious problem in the customer contact realm: the fact that customer experience levels have dropped for the fourth consecutive year, and are at their lowest level since 2011. More than half of the surveyed companies reported a connection between customer experience levels and profit growth, confirming that improving customer experience is vital to revenue.

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In a previous blog post, we discussed how important it is to have a variety of contact options for today's consumers, based on findings from the 2015 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report. However, many companies are finding it difficult to integrate these new options into their contact centers.

As expected, a majority of call centers have the capability to support customers over the phone and through email. These capabilities line up with the previous generation's expectations in a support center, as most customers over the age of 40 prefer support over telephone or email. However, the next generation's first choice of webchat is only supported by 45% of organizations, and 35% of organizations without webchat have no plans of offering it in the future.

According to data from the Report, an average of 79% of companies are afraid that their systems will not meet demands in the future. However, the cost of integrating a new support system can be expensive, and new software may not be compatible with older machines. One solution that the Report proposes is hosting contact centers in the cloud, which can reduce the cost of integrating a brand new system greatly while expanding support options.

In fact, the Report found that 89% of organizations currently using cloud architecture agree that it has reduced costs. Other benefits from cloud technologies noted in the Report include access to new functionality, improved flexibility, and better reliability. Yet half of the organizations surveyed do not even use hosted technologies.

Giva's customizable cloud technologies are easy to use and can save your company time and money. Read about how the Giva Difference has changed the way many companies handle customer contact on Giva's case study page!

Best Practice simply means the most effective way that has been determined to accomplish a desired goal. In order to improve, an organization must assess its current practices against those used in other organizations. The following are some Help Desk Best Practices, summarized from Giva's free whitepaper on this topic, recommended to be used when evaluating what your company is doing and why, and what your company should be doing and when, as well as what features and functions you should look for in help desk software.

Part one detailed several best practices for help desk optimization. Listed below are additional recommendations for implementation.

Perform Root Cause Analysis Every Day to Determine Why Problems Occur

It is important to be able to track the root of issues, so the actual cause of problems can be determined.  This helps with forward planning and being able to determine which areas of IT (hardware, operating systems, networking, etc.) might need more attention.  Ideally, the help desk software should allow for easy tracking, and even possibly requiring, the selecting of a root cause before closing a ticket, and/or entering/requiring problem resolutions.  Further, root cause reports should be available, to identify specific issues and trends.

Implement Service Level Agreements Linked to Impact on Firm Revenue

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are an important part of help desk accountability to the customer, and compliance with them can impact customer satisfaction or even revenue.  A help desk should not only implement SLAs, but should be able to track compliance in various levels of granularity, from the overall help desk or service groups (eg. facilities, networking, etc.) to the individual agents; and SLA trends reports should be available, which can be valuable to management, in understanding how effectively services are being provided.

Utilize Predefined and Customizable Help Desk Reports

Agents and management should have a wide variety of reports available that they can quickly access, easily customize, share with others, and use to analyze their areas of responsibility to keep the customer service process flowing smoothly.  The reports should also provide the right data to assist in better decision-making.

Use Real-Time Reporting Features That Decrease Time Required to Prepare Reports

Having real-time reports customized and automatically e-mailed to users, or easily downloaded in various formats (eg. Excel, PDF, etc.), can further provide useful data for quicker analysis and better decision-making, and can save time and money.

Implement an Asset Management System That Is Integrated With the Help Desk Software System

Having an asset management system integrated with a help desk software ticketing system not only can better provide root-cause analysis, but the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) foundation in part requires tracking changes to assets, which can also help in saving problem-diagnostic times.   This type of asset management can include software license tracking as well, helping IT departments better track licensing compliance.

Implement an Integrated ITIL Change Management Software System

Integrating a change management system with the help desk software system can reduce problems due to change-related failure.  Not only can the help desk be prepared ahead of time with information about upcoming changes, perhaps even notifying its customers beforehand, but once implemented, issues can be tracked, and backout plans implemented if necessary.  Further, problem tracking analysis can help better plan for future changes.  This type of system keeps the change and help desk teams much more coordinated and functioning as a cohesive unit.

For a much more in-depth look, please refer to Giva's free whitepaper on Help Desk Best Practices.