Ping! Automated Notifications Help Solve Issues While You Sleep

Every organization handles help desk complaints, requests, and support queries. Ticketing systems automatically triage these issues to relevant problem-solvers in a process called escalation. Companies can define rules for escalating issues from one person to the next (called a workflow), ensuring customers’ questions and problems get resolved right away.

The average smartphone user gets up to 46 push notifications per day. That means in the time spent at your office, you’re glancing at that miniature screen at least every 10 minutes… and that’s average!

But when do push notifications help? There’s no denying in a modern digital world how productive and good we are at task-switching and checking items off our agendas. But how many company workers are actually closing the loop when it comes to managing incidents?

If you have a hand in resolving issues at your work’s help desk, notifications will help you close out requests quickly. From issue creation to closure, workers need updates, so they can procure solutions with zero interference - and no missteps. That's when automated, traceable notifications come in handy.

Even if there is a misstep, the notification audit-trail ensures you'll know exactly where to go to fix it, giving you all the tools to make progress in solving issues. 

Using notifications offers numerous benefits:

1. The ability to automatically escalate help desk problems with defined rules for notifying the right people at each stage of an issue’s process
2. Improved company performance when resolutions stay on track with efficient communication and accountability
3. Banishing tedium so employees spend time focusing on their professional strengths
4. Automation reduces your organization’s exposure to data security risks and human error
5. No Issue lost by reducing risk of human error
6. 100 percent visibility for reporting critical information, like knowing an issue’s status and caretaker
7. A measurable boost in cross-departmental collaboration and customer service when resolutions turn around quickly and effectively

See:

When Are Notifications Useful? 6 Benefits of Automation Software in the Workplace

1. Escalation and Defined Rules

The formula is obvious.

Issues arise. → Your crisis team is alerted. → A response is mapped out. → An agent with the right resolution saves the day.

And let’s be honest: the quicker you’re alerted to your customer’s issue, the faster you can respond to and resolve it.

What is less evident is choosing the right tool to trigger those alerts. How will you reach your action team to correct an urgent issue and reduce the impact of a crisis? Or better yet, how can you avert crisis entirely?

Software automation sounds like a pretty solid solution. It takes under 10 minutes to plug your company into automation software. The bonus? End users receive notifications for nearly any instance, including:

• the moment someone submits a request, query, or issue,
• when an issue gets escalated to the next phase,
• if other users add notes to an issue,
• when someone completes their assigned role in a Task Manager,
• when you add a subtask to an existing issue,
• when an issue resolves and closes.

2. Company Performance

Notifications ensure you’re always answering your customers, too. “Less than 10 minutes of setting up automation tools guarantees a customer never slips through the cracks. They’re always engaged and aware of their problem’s resolution status,” says CEO Dan Flowers.

Life and work are easier when outputs deliver instantly and the relevant response team can contribute, elevate and/or implement solutions in an issue’s lifecycle.

3. Banishing Tedium

Dialing zero for the operator became obsolete for a reason. Notifications come in handy because there’s no longer a need for someone to oversee repetitive procedures like this. Instead, that someone can be used more strategically elsewhere, focusing on initiatives that drive your organization’s competitive advantage.

4. Reducing Redundancies

Daily administrative tasks consume a worker’s time. This sometimes causes more harm than good to employee productivity. (Consider the time spent importing Excel spreadsheets into database pivot tables, or combining datasets—all of which invite room for error.)

Put an end to manual workflow processes. It doesn’t matter if events and triggers vary between departments. Whatever your needs, you can automate different processes to rules you pre-define in a workflow. As any good issue tracking solution would say, if you can draw it, we can solve it. (At least, that’s how we handle things!)

Combine real-time notifications with API Integration and take full advantage of automated messaging. This failsafe combo offers instant delivery to the right eyes and skill sets to respond appropriately to an issue ticket.

5. Reducing Risk of Human Error

Help desk tickets come from every angle—sometimes without category or label. An unassigned issue is no problem, though. Notifications help alert end users to take charge and get the ball rolling. Take a Round Robin feature, for example. Auto-assignment ensures issues reach the right person the moment it’s submitted. Every notification ping ensures no issue will slip by unnoticed.

Automatic notifications also reduce human involvement in escalations—which means you can spend valuable human resources on human strengths, like empathy with your customers or graceful, creative pivoting when handling solutions. Notifications are useful because no one wastes time double-handling alerts—not to mention they cut down on human error, inconsistencies, data risks, and the potential for important information to go missing.

Read how Issuetrak software keeps information organized.

6. Improvements to Your Reporting Process

Notifications increase visibility and unity, making reporting more effective. (No emergency button or paper reporting required.) This is especially true in systems with an auto-assign feature like the Round Robin mentioned above.

Seek an API that supports integrations like incoming email (IEM) (like our 14.9 release did). Per your designation, it will automatically convert emails to issues. This stores a record of your actions and keeps employees and stakeholders up-to-date on an issue’s status. As an incident makes its way toward resolution, everyone involved can remain aware of its progress.

How do you know you've outgrown email for customer support?

7. Increased Collaboration (And Employee Value) Across Departments

Maybe IT can tell you what works best in their department—but not necessarily what Sales needs to succeed. Notifications are the savior that walks on water when it comes to cross-departmental collaboration. A quick checkbox and send-off show an issue has escalated or a task is available, saving time and tedium. How grueling would it be to cross the office to Development or wait on hold for HR to get a notification through? No, thanks. Not in this remote world.

Notifying each other of an issue’s escalation does wonders for the team feel. Workers get holistic oversight of a process. Teams discover new insights from new perspectives. Best of all, team members understand their contributions to the larger organization, increasing organizational learning. Remember, a happy workplace shows itself on the customer service front. (Hint: positivity is contagious.)

There’s no price you can put on that type of gained value. When teams collaborate fluidly, they hatch new projects and objectives that might’ve gone unnoticed without the cross-functionality notifications provide.

Workplace harmony matters. How can collaboration make a difference in your workplace?

Make The Most Of Notifications

Convinced yet? Just look at your phone…I’ll bet the notifications have piled up since you started reading. Seriously, how did we ever get by without that efficiency? We certainly weren’t half as productive as we are—or could be—with automated notifications.