It’s been yet another eventful month, with a number of new and interesting apps making their entry onto the Freshdesk Marketplace. Here’s a quick look at the new additions.

No matter what size your company is, big data can make a significant impact on your customer service. And better customer service leads to happier customers and increased sales. In fact, increasing your customer retention by just 5% can result in a 25% increase1 in profits. But the problem is that even many of the largest businesses around aren’t using their data effectively.

Customer service support is shifting dramatically, from a single channel model to an omnichannel one. Today 90% of customers expect to be able to move seamlessly across service channels, including mobile, chat, and online. But the problem is companies are still struggling to do this well. 61% of customers have not been able to easily switch from one channel to another when interacting with customer service.

We live in an era where technology is advancing so quickly that it’s hard to keep up. Think back to ten or even twenty years ago when you needed to get to a business meeting. You had to print out your plane ticket, rental car information, and sometimes even directions on where you needed to go.

We started talking about Messaging Layer Security (MLS) last December and we would now like to give an overview of what was discussed during the second MLS interim meeting that was held on 14th and 15th of January 2019 in Mountain View, CA. Wire is a founding member of the Messaging Layer Security (MLS) IETF working group and continues to contribute with ideas and code.

Did you receive this email from us today? Subject: Basecamp 3 security alert: You must set a new password. You’re not alone! You’ve done nothing wrong, and you’re in good company. 1 in 20 Basecamp users got this email alert. Here’s the full story.

Let’s face it, nobody enjoys dealing with ticket escalations. When a ticket is escalated, it means there’s a problem that your ground-level employees can’t solve. The customer will have to wait, rather impatiently, for a solution; and if it escalates beyond that, it indicates a systemic issue that will require your developers to pull all-nighters. It’s an unpleasant situation all around!

When you talk about your business’s customer experience, it’s easy to get caught up in the bigger picture of what you want to achieve. Meaning, it’s easy to just imagine the ideal experience you want your customers to have, but not actually focus on what will help you achieve this.

When calling a business, people want their issue to be resolved quickly. A recent survey from Clutch found that nearly 8 of 10 people consider an “efficient resolution to their issue” to be one of the three most important traits they value when calling a business. Despite the rise of chatbots and text support, telephone customer support is still critical. People value speed and availability, but some calls still require a human touch.

Onboarding new people at a company can be a challenge. As a leader, you need to create a process that gives a new hire the ability to understand your team’s unique workflow and goals, and also ensure that they are fully equipped to start working and secure their first wins. These few months are so critical for a new employee, and they can be especially hard if you are working in a remote team.