Workers on production lines, assembling industrial goods with wrenches is one image that usually comes to mind when people think of the manufacturing industry. But now that we’re in what’s being described as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, that visual is as outdated as the steam engine. According to the World Economic Forum, “the First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanise production. The second used electric power to create mass production.

Congratulations on your big step to onboard a help desk system! You no longer have to worry about unattended customer inquiries or struggle to balance the workload evenly among your support team members. You get to effortlessly assign ownership for requests, track your team’s progress, and measure customer satisfaction. To realize the immense value of a help desk, you need to first set it up the right way for you and your support team.

The pressure is on healthcare companies to deliver a better end-to-end customer experience—otherwise, it is truly an insult to injury. The largest healthcare and insurance groups have their own legacy systems to untangle and integrate, but smaller healthcare outfits are also on the hook—and, arguably, at an advantage—to scale and grow with customers top of mind.

It’s go time for retailers, and no one hustles harder than small businesses getting their brand out there during the holiday season. But those on the small-but-scaling side of retail don’t have to hustle on their own, especially when it comes to delivering an efficient, scalable customer experience through the high season and beyond.

Most businesses maintain some sort of customer self-service tools, whether it’s a chatbot or guide bot framework or a collection of knowledge base articles. Chances are your business maintains some sort of a self-service option, but does your business do a good job of promoting that to your customers? Self-service provides customers the opportunity to solve a question on their own without directly involving your customer support team or help desk ticketing software.

As per Social Stamina, 64% of customers expect a reply within an hour of posting on Twitter, and 85% expect a company to respond within six hours. While this trend in customer expectations applies to almost all industries across the board, certain businesses – such as e-commerce apps – are witnessing an all-time high in traffic. Most companies may be crowded with service-related concerns, drowning customer support agents in an ever-increasing volume of tickets.

The SMB (small and medium-sized business) market is growing – in 2021, the number of small businesses in the US hit 32.5 million, making up nearly all (99.9%) of businesses in the country. In this digital-first environment, the needs of SMB owners will – and have already started – to shift. That is, as this market flourishes, it is increasingly demanding more digital products and services as it migrates away from strictly brick-and-mortar organizations to digital businesses.

There was a time when “growth at all costs” was the prevailing philosophy in tech. But times are changing, and as a result of today’s economic climate, more software and cloud services companies are focusing on profitability instead of growth. They are in protection mode. This drives a focus on quality customers rather than quantity, and a need to develop loyalty and reduce churn.

A customer can expect everything from the ordinary to the seemingly impossible. But whether or not a customer is asking you to take them to the Moon or provide a simple reporting apparatus, your business needs to be able to meet their expectations in at least some manner, or risk the consequences.