March 15, 2024
5 Tips On How Helpdesk Teams Can Benefit From Scheduling Automation
5 Tips On How Helpdesk Teams Can Benefit From Scheduling Automation
5 Tips On How Helpdesk Teams Can Benefit From Scheduling Automation
Scheduling in an organization refers to the management of various activities carried out by employees during their work hours. Generally, employees schedule their meetings, appointments, events, presentations, or work. Most of these activities are saved on calendar applications or productivity solutions employed by the company.
Scheduling these activities is a task that is traditionally carried out through a series of conversations via email, phone, or in-person. For example, doctor's appointments were booked by the patients via a phone call where the receptionist would offer multiple availabilities of the doctor from which the patient would choose a preferred time slot. This traditional method of back and forth communication has been automated with the help of scheduling automation solutions.
Scheduling automation refers to the automation of scheduling workflows that include availability mapping, approvals, calendar integrations, notifications, etc. A scheduling automation solution with robust features ensures employee availability with an integrated calendar application, no-code booking forms for websites and apps, customizable notification options, productivity application integrations, and more. Most organizations and departments that need to connect with the customers or 3rd party stakeholders on an ongoing basis are bound to benefit from scheduling automation software.
Importance of scheduling for helpdesk teams
Helpdesk teams - whether in-house or outsourced through MSPs (Managed Service Providers) are built to maintain business continuity by solving IT issues and disruptions. Help desk teams focus primarily on query resolutions within the stipulated SLA's. This means that the administrators or sysadmins spend most of their time interacting with their requesters to understand the problem and execute a solution before marking a ticket resolved. Scheduling a time with the requester thus takes priority in the job. Automating the task would leave a huge impact in terms of time saved and resources managed.
5 tips on how helpdesk teams can benefit from scheduling automation
Integrating your scheduling automation software with your organization-wide productivity applications would help build a one-stop shop for requesters and clients to schedule their services with the team. Enabling requesters to choose a preferred time for discussion and service execution within the SLA window helps overcome lengthy back and forth conversations, meeting cancellations, and no-shows. In terms of SLAs, helpdesk teams stand to save a considerable amount of time and money thanks to such integrated automation.
Once a service request is raised by a requester, they receive an automated email that conveys the assigned ticket number, service provider, and query details to the requester. Adding a link to the scheduling form of the assigned service provider in this email would help guide the requester in booking a slot as per their preference for a quick query resolution. Appointo, one of the leading no-code appointment booking solutions allows users to add appointment booking to their website without the need for coding expertise - a feature that can be leveraged by helpdesk teams to cut down on scheduling back and forth. Appointo's no code booking form can be incorporated into the service desk portal or intranet website for the same.
Often helpdesk teams face a barrage of queries or issues from multiple employees complaining about the same problem or raising the same request - for example, a group of employees using the same printer may all end up raising a printer issue request due to breakdown. This can be overcome by scheduling a common resolution discussion for the group through a group scheduling feature. Simply addressing the same issue with multiple people at one time would ensure the SLA's are not only correctly logged into the system but also resolved in time.
As requesters schedule meetings with the helpdesk team members assigned to their requests, the scheduling software can trigger a customized notification email with calendar invites and query details, Customizing the notification emails with FAQ links or commonly faced queries under their requested topic would be of enormous help to both the parties. The requester may find a quicker solution to the problem without requiring the team’s help or eliminate a bunch of possible issues even before the resolution meeting is in place. Customizing the notification email with helpful links, FAQs, and other details related to the query topic is a surefire step towards leveraging the benefits of scheduling automation software.
Most helpdesk queries are assigned to a sysadmin or technician based on the nature of the query by the helpdesk software algorithm. Although, some queries are complex and may require technicians from multiple fields to take a look in order to come to the solution. Let's take for example a request raised by an employee to check for their inability to access a website. This issue can be linked to firewall rules where the technician is required to whitelist the website to resolve the same or can be linked to the internet service provider in which case a different helpdesk technician will be required to look into the issue. In such scenarios, it becomes useful if the scheduling software has the ability to pull together relevant technicians for the resolution into the same query resolving meeting.
Appointo, the appointment scheduling automation software with robust features such as custom notifications, group bookings, and appointments with multiple team members is the right solution for your helpdesk team. The software's ability to integrate with major calendar applications in use across industries and its easy-to-use UI has helped many professionals across geographies streamline their scheduling process. Take a free trial now!
