The ultimate help desk migration handbook

Overview:

The help desk is the nerve center of business operations. As a centralized database that stores all communications between a brand and its customers, it is critical to ensuring a seamless support experience. Despite its importance, many businesses initially opt for free or low-priced help desk software. This could be because they have a limited customer base upon launch or a minimal budget for client support. As a result, some systems have become outdated and suffer from several notable issues, such as poor scalability, integration troubles, clunky UIs, and a general lack of modern features.

When should you migrate your help desk?

Before we get into the services that can help migrate your data, let’s take a moment to learn when it’s time to upgrade your current system. As mentioned earlier, many existing customer support systems have outdated features and can be difficult to upgrade or scale. It’s not unheard of for companies to simply use email inboxes for support. While effective initially, such a limited setup becomes very restrictive in the long run as companies expand. 

As a result, many heads of operation deal with many recurring issues — tickets are frequently unassigned as the software isn’t fitted with an auto-routing capability; calls are missed due to software lags; customers aren’t able to help themselves due to a lack of self-service features; and so on. It’s at this stage that you should consider help desk migration. Let’s look at some of these tell-tale signs in more detail:

Current software lacks advanced functionality

One of the biggest problems associated with a traditional support solution is that agents have to work with outdated features, affecting productivity. Without an efficient ticket management system or automated workflows, customers may be left waiting too long to get the needed support. Meanwhile, customer support staff are burdened with repetitive and time-consuming manual tasks. As your business evolves and requirements change, even the most streamlined support teams may struggle to keep up with the rising demand. This is an unambiguous indication of the need for more advanced features. This leads to many companies switching help desk platforms and migrating their data.

Email isn’t cutting it anymore

As mentioned, many businesses still rely on email for support, especially in the early stages. This significantly hampers efficiency. One of the biggest problems associated with using a shared email inbox is that it makes collaboration a tricky prospect. Support agents may find it hard to tell whether a colleague has already handled an email or has to rely on an endless chain of forwards to communicate within their department. The fact that emails are easy to lose doesn’t make the process any easier. Companies may find that migrating to a help desk platform with omnichannel support capabilities can vastly improve customer satisfaction and give them an edge over competitors.

Issues with the current vendor

Often, sudden changes initiated by the software vendor may also trigger the need for a help desk migration. A vendor could, for instance, alter the price of their offerings or remove certain features that your company relies on. Many businesses also migrate help desks if their current vendor lacks adequate support or updates the software regularly. This can also happen if the software isn’t integrating well enough with their existing business tools. Occasionally, a vendor may even decide to retire their software altogether. Desk.com is one example of prominent software that was retired in 2020, leading to many companies needing help desk migration.

Need for a cloud-based, cost-effective solution

Companies are constantly evolving. As brands grow and change, so do their customers. As the customer base expands, efficient support becomes increasingly critical to delivering positive experiences. The most effective way to deal with growth is to migrate to cloud-based tools with a higher server capacity to maintain efficient operations. This is also a cost-friendly solution, as the provider takes over responsibilities associated with maintenance or security. With this setup, companies spend less on infrastructure concerns and more on efficient support.

To split or unify teams

When one company acquires another, support teams and customer bases must be consolidated. Conversely, data must be separated when companies open new offices or launch new products. Seamless data migration between systems is the only way to ensure both these processes go smoothly.

Compliance regulations call for it.

All organizations must adhere to strict regulatory standards within their industry and location. Companies should know how often regulations change and how difficult it is to keep up with the latest standards, especially when dealing with crucial customer data. Help desk migration may be required in case of any pertinent changes to the regulations or if they find their current system is no longer compliant. Examples of this include recent changes outlined by the GDPR and HIPAA.

Ways to prepare for a help desk migration (moving your help desk data)

Here are essential steps to prepare your organization for this pivotal move:

1. Define your migration goals and objectives: Start by clearly outlining what you aim to achieve with the migration. Whether it's enhancing customer satisfaction, improving response times, or integrating more advanced features, having clear goals will guide your decision-making process and help you choose the right platform that aligns with your business needs.

2. Inventory and audit your current data: An in-depth audit of your existing data is crucial. This includes tickets, customer information, support articles, and other relevant data in your current system. Identify what needs to be migrated, and archived, and what may require cleaning or updating. This step is vital for minimizing the risk of data loss or corruption during the migration process.

3. Select the right migration partner: Choosing a migration service or software that fits your specific requirements is paramount. Look for providers with experience in migrating data from your current platform to the new one. Consider factors such as the provider's reputation, support offerings, security measures, and whether they provide a trial run or demo to test the migration process.

4. Train your team: Prepare your team for the change by providing training on the new help desk platform. Familiarize them with the new features and workflows to ensure they can hit the ground running post-migration. It's also a good idea to involve your team in the migration planning process, as their insights can help identify potential issues or areas of improvement early on.

Using an API or CSV files can greatly improve the migration process. Of course, the software you’re moving should allow for this type of export data from the prior service and import data into the new service. Using custom fields and field mapping can be a great exercise in ensuring you’re getting the correct data import into the new software.

The benefits of help desk migration and getting the right service desk software

It is important to remember that help desk migration isn’t an overnight process. The data transfer procedure involves moving crucial items—from help desk objects like tickets and contacts- to knowledge base objects like articles and videos. Simply hiring a professional developer isn’t enough to ensure a seamless experience, as even a minor error when moving from one system to another results in massive delays and extra costs.

Improve customer retention rates

Many businesses value customer retention as one of their most crucial metrics, and for good reason. Research suggests that even a 5% increase in customer retention rates can raise profits by 25% up to 95%. Considering that help desk software is an important point of contact for any customer, an outdated system can seriously impact your bottom line.

It enhances productivity 

Help desk migration may come at a cost, but it adds immense value to the company in the long term. Put yourself in the shoes of the average customer support agent expected to work with an outdated system. Imagine spending so much time reading through emails to decide which are most urgent and filing each message accordingly- all before you can respond to customers’ concerns and questions. Doing this as part of the team is even more difficult, as collaborating on such a platform requires a lot of coordination.

Following a successful migration to a modern help desk, most of these manual tasks are automated, freeing time to devote to high-value customers or those with more pressing issues. Estimates suggest that this level of automation cuts down costs by as much as 13%. Think about it: Help desk software automates ticket assignments, supports auto-replies, and handles post-incident surveys, making the complicated migration process worth it. At the same time, a consolidated help desk platform offers you a host of data that enables you to analyze a team’s performance and look out for areas of improvement.

It offers a global reach

Many modern help desk platforms are cloud-based services enabling remote working teams to operate efficiently. Migrating to such a service allows companies with international clients to hire agents who speak multiple languages, regardless of location. Cloud-based services also enable global teams to work more efficiently by providing remote access to a ticketing system. This ensures smooth operations even when team members are out of the office or in another part of the world.

Intuitive interface and advanced analytics enable better workflow

Migrating to a modern cloud-based help desk software also allows businesses to access highly customizable built-in reports and dashboards to stay constantly updated on their state of operations. With this data, you can easily track your team’s productivity. You can also generate reports that show how customers have been rating your service, which will help you identify areas of improvement. Without a centralized solution for your customer service records, your company will miss the bigger picture.

Help desk migration best practices

Hopefully, the benefits of help desk migration are well established by this point. But to truly benefit from a new and efficient cloud-based help desk platform, companies must develop a comprehensive migration strategy. When help desk migration is done in haste, it will lead to wasted resources, lost revenue, and increased workloads. You can ensure a smooth transition by conducting a thorough analysis of your existing data and identifying potential issues that could emerge in the migration process. Let’s take a closer look at some of the best practices that should be part of your migration strategy. 

Audit existing data

Before the migration process begins, it’s best to conduct a comprehensive audit of your existing data, including all records related to tickets, customers, agents, and knowledge base. What will this do? A CEO and expert in data migration services outlines a few crucial reasons in Forbes—it helps identify and clear out duplicate records, eliminates junk data, and removes errors and inconsistencies. It ensures that the data you’re migrating to a new system is complete and on point.

Bring all stakeholders on board

It’s essential to inform all customer support agents about the upcoming changes. Give them a chance to test out the new platform and identify potential issues that could slow down productivity in the migration process. Most help desk service providers offer training programs to help employees adapt to the switch, along with free trial periods in which you can test out various features. During this stage, inviting customer feedback on the self-service capabilities is crucial. This can be done through surveys or by collecting customer support interactions.

Backup your data

Data migration is a complicated process that has the potential to go wrong. While working with certain migration services can help ensure the process goes smoothly, it always helps to have a backup plan, especially when dealing with your most important company data. Make sure you choose a reliable backup tool, schedule regular backups, and verify the integrity of your backups. It is also worth creating a re-migration plan to restore your data in case something goes wrong.

Timing the migration

The migration process requires some downtime, so you must identify the best time to begin. When ascertaining the appropriate window for your migration, avoid peak hours and busy days, identify patterns of lower customer activity, and be prepared to roll back any features if they don’t match your requirements. And, perhaps most importantly, don’t forget to inform customers about the expected downtime.

Use migration software to streamline the shift

The data mapping process can be intimidating. It involves matching fields in your current system to corresponding ones in the target system by creating a comprehensive mapping document. It is also critical for companies looking to import data accurately without loss or distortion. Because of the many complexities, some companies opt for an automated data migration service, such as Help Desk Migration for Freshdesk.

This migration tool lets you import your data to Freshdesk in just a few clicks, significantly simplifying the complicated mapping process. It has an intuitive design and easy setup, so you don’t need advanced coding skills to execute seamless data migration or put your customers through long, frustrating downtimes. It also offers free testing, during which you can import 20 random tickets and 20 knowledge-base articles to see how well it works. Help desk migration also allows you to add tags to your tickets to easily differentiate between old and new data on the new platform. You can also automatically skip attachments to further speed up the process and schedule a time for the transfer so it doesn’t clash with your peak hours.

Common challenges associated with help desk migration 

While migrating to a new help desk platform is a strategic move towards better customer support and operational efficiency, it is not without its challenges. Recognizing these potential hurdles upfront can help you prepare and mitigate them effectively. Here are some common challenges businesses face during the help desk migration process:

• Data loss or corruption: One of the most significant risks during migration is the potential loss or corruption of data. This can happen due to technical glitches, improper mapping of data fields, or during the transfer of large volumes of data. Ensuring thorough data audits and backups before the migration is crucial to minimizing this risk.

• Downtime and disruptions: Migrating help desk systems can lead to temporary downtime or disruptions in customer support operations. Planning the migration during off-peak hours and informing customers in advance can help manage expectations and reduce the impact on customer service.

• Integration issues: New platforms may not integrate seamlessly with your existing business tools and workflows, leading to operational inefficiencies. Identifying integration requirements and compatibility issues before migration can help avoid these challenges.

• Resistance to change: Change can often be met with resistance from staff who are accustomed to the old system. Providing adequate training and highlighting the benefits of the new platform can help ease the transition and foster acceptance among team members.

• Cost overruns: Unexpected costs can arise from extended downtimes, additional training needs, or unanticipated technical support to resolve migration issues. Planning your budget with contingencies in mind can help manage financial risks associated with the migration.

• Underestimating the scope of migration: Failing to accurately assess the volume of data and the complexity of the migration process can lead to extended timelines and resource allocation issues. A comprehensive pre-migration assessment is vital to setting realistic expectations and timelines.

By anticipating these challenges and planning accordingly, you can navigate the complexities of help desk migration smoothly.

Why migrate your help desk to Freshdesk? 

The next big step after deciding to make the change and embrace a new help desk platform is finding the best system for your needs. Here are just some of the reasons why our customers choose Freshdesk:

Enhanced ticketing capabilities

Our goal with Freshdesk is to skyrocket agent productivity and minimize customer response time. One way we do this is through an enhanced and simplified ticketing system. With Freshdesk, you will be able to do so much more than just send simple replies. By filtering tickets based on specific properties and keywords, you can make sure that the most critical cases are dealt with first.

Collaboration

By allowing for collaborative ticketing, our platform ensures your support teams can work together to solve emerging problems as efficiently as possible. Do you find that many of your customers face the same issues? Merge their tickets and send bulk updates to customers as the problems are resolved. Are you struggling with a ticket or need an extra pair of eyes to manage a customer query? Add a team member to the case to discuss solutions or split the ticket into several sub-tickets so multiple people can work on different aspects of the case. Are you afraid of redundancy and working on the same issue as another team member? Don’t worry; our agent collision detection will ensure that doesn’t happen. And if your agent Brenda is best at dealing with payment issues, while Adam is swamped with a backlog of complaint cases, our intelligent ticket assignment tool will assign cases based on agents' skill sets and current workload. Freshdesk is designed to promote team collaboration, making your agents more productive and your customers happier.

AI-powered automations

Support agents waste a lot of time dealing with multiple customers with the same problems or inquiries. Our chatbot, powered by Freddy AI, can save valuable time. When a customer reaches out to your company with a problem, such as receiving a damaged item, Freddy AI will recommend the knowledge base articles with the best solution for it. It will also suggest ticket fields to categorize the customer’s inquiry. Once the customer is happy and has said thank you, Freddy AI will prevent the ticket from opening again.

Omnichannel support

With Freshdesk, you can accept customer communication from various streams, like email, social media, WhatsApp, chat, your website, and through the phone—and then unify and manage all of the messages on a single platform. Meeting customers where they are is an efficient and cost-saving method that makes users happier and more loyal.

Better self-service experience

Freshdesk helps your customers help themselves by ensuring a well-rounded knowledge base for them to explore. How? By letting the entire team contribute based on their unique experiences. For example, an agent who has just solved a tricky ticket can convert their replies into an article to help others in the future. Other team members can add and build on each other’s content as they learn more. Analyzing views, likes, and dislikes on the articles will make it easier to shape the content to the customers' needs and preferences. Freddy AI can then help customers with automated responses and lead them to the appropriate knowledge base article for further education. Freshdesk also ensures that your knowledge base reaches your customers on all platforms.

Performance analytics

With Freshdesk analytics, you can measure help desk productivity, resolution time, individual agent performance, and customer satisfaction. The metrics are very easy to understand, without the need for specialists to analyze the data for you. This will help you identify issues before they snowball, understand your agents' strengths and weaknesses, and help your whole team reach their CSAT goals.

Security and integrations

Beyond these features, Freshdesk also ensures enterprise-grade security and comprehensive audits of networks, systems, and regulatory compliance to protect our product and platform. We also enable integrations with more than 1,000 apps available on the marketplace, including WhatsApp, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.

Final thoughts

Now that we’ve taken a comprehensive look at the help desk migration process and understand the many benefits that come with it, what’s stopping you from giving it a try? Check out a free demo of the Help Desk Migration tool and see in practice how you can benefit from Freshdesk’s intuitive and scalable platform. If you have further questions about the migration process, don’t hesitate to reach out!