A help desk serves as the first point of contact for both customers and employees. Customers require assistance, and they go to the help desk. The help desk management software comes to the rescue when employees need someone to resolve problems with a printer, update access control on a laptop, or troubleshoot software issues. When customers are unable to access their logins, require assistance with setup, or experience a bug, they typically contact the help desk.
If you are looking at adopting a new help desk management software, you may have lots of questions. What can a help desk platform do? What are the benefits of customized help desk software for my business? What are the goals I should keep in mind when picking between help desk software solutions? The type of help desk you select can have a significant impact on your company and its support team.
Let’s take a look at some approaches to answering these questions!
What can a help desk management platform do?
Help desk software is a tool for arranging, managing, and responding to service requests. A help desk may include a shared inbox, knowledge base software, and a live chat solution, among other things. The heart of customer service is a functional help desk.
Because it consolidates all of your customer support interactions into one omnichannel tool, using a help desk platform is a great way to improve your customer experience — 75% of customers want a consistent experience regardless of how they engage a company (via social media, in person, by phone, etc.).
The best help desk software enables help desk agents to handle a wide range of end-user “enquiries” in one place and at once – whether they are cases, requests for service or information, or complaints. This means that several phone calls (or other forms of contact, such as emails or social media complaints) about the same issue or requirement are recorded as tickets, linked together, and assigned to the same person or team working on it. All issues are ticketed and monitored by the help desk software, ensuring that tickets are never left forgotten, lost or delayed.
The functions of a help desk software
A help desk should help your company perform the following tasks:
Provide a centralized point of contact: Customers, whether internal or external, should always know where to go for assistance.
Respond to questions in a timely manner: When customers require answers or step-by-step instructions, they should be able to use self-service or contact a help desk agent.
Make time for other tasks: A well-managed help desk centralizes knowledge and provides workflow guidance, making it faster and easier to solve customer problems.
Customer satisfaction can be measured: Customers should be able to rate the help desk and provide feedback to help improve processes, knowledge bases, and solutions.
Essential features of a help desk platform
Email assistance is available
Email support to a specific address, such as support@website.com. These emails will then be converted into tickets automatically, allowing agents to benefit from a structured ticketing workflow.
Portal of self-service
The self-service portal is an easy-to-use interface for submitting questions in the form of help desk tickets or getting instant answers from the knowledge base.
Knowledge base in help desks
A knowledge base is a repository of frequently asked questions and useful articles such as how-tos and best practices. It offers a self-service experience that can increase customer satisfaction while decreasing support requests.
Service desk automation
Help desk software can automate common tasks to free up agent time while maintaining consistency in actions. When a new priority-one issue is created, automation can close an inactive ticket or notify a manager.
Analytics and reporting
Companies can use help desk software reporting features to track key metrics such as agent productivity, customer satisfaction, and support costs.
Forums Space for Communities
Community forums are places where users can ask questions and get answers from the community.
Management of SLAs and SLOs
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are agreements between a company and its customers. The objectives or goals outlined in the SLA are referred to as Service Level Objectives (SLOs). These SLOs define the expected service levels that agents must work within, such as time to first response or time to resolution.
Quality-based SLOs, such as maintaining customer satisfaction levels above 90%, can also be used.
Customization
Most help desk software allows businesses to customize their help desk to include the company’s colors and logo. Custom integrations can also be built on top of the help desk to extend the software’s functionality.
What are the different categories of help desk software
Now, let’s look at the various kinds of help desk software and see which one best suits your needs.
Help desk for IT support
An IT help desk assists internal staff by resolving issues ranging from a simple password reset to a network outage.
Help desk for customer service
A customer service help desk focuses on the external customer, answering questions and assisting with problems with products and services they’ve purchased.
Help desk for businesses
Outside of IT, teams such as HR, finance, and legal can and do set up and run a business help desk. HR can assist employees in modifying payroll elections or obtaining employment verification letters. Contract review requests can be handled by legal. Finance can also answer questions about accounts payable and expenses.
And there are several ways of implementing the help desk software too, which can be:
Help desk software that is hosted in the cloud
You can provide customer service and support functions in the cloud computing realm using cloud-based help desk software. Because of the inherent nature of the cloud, the transition from your existing system to the cloud is simple. You do not need to instal software on your current network. By logging into a website, you can access all of the features of a help desk. Furthermore, because it is a web-based service, your employees can access it from anywhere in the world. All they require is a computer or smartphone with an internet connection.
Help desk software that is self-hosted
An on-premise help desk is another name for a self-hosted help desk. It is licensed proprietary software that is hosted and owned by the company. After purchasing the license, a company must install and maintain it on their server, which requires a one-time payment. The owner company has complete control over who has access to the software and who does not. In addition, the company requires a capable IT team to handle software maintenance, updates, troubleshooting, and other tasks.
Help desk software for enterprise level businesses
An enterprise help desk system is used by large companies because it includes features that most lower-tier packages do not. Among these are advanced encryption and security, multi-brand support, custom user roles, enterprise reporting, and sandbox. Enterprise-level software is also known to be more customizable, allowing businesses to automate some of their teams’ more sophisticated capabilities.
Help desk software that is open source
You get access to the source code with this type of help desk software. You are free to use and modify it as you see fit. There are communities that work on the help desk’s development as well as tracking and fixing bugs. Companies can manage updates provided by these communities rather than improving code on their own.
What are the benefits of help desk software for my business?
Let’s look at five advantages of help desk software systems and how they can help your business grow and perform.
1 Improved performance and assistance
Assume you were communicating with customers via email before deciding to implement a help desk. In this case, the software will assist your team in providing better quality service by eliminating manual work and providing greater clarity about who works on what issues. If you were already using a help desk tool, switching to a different solution can expose your team to new opportunities and a more robust tool set.
2. Customer self-service options to appease customers
According to American Express, more than six in ten U.S. consumers prefer to solve simple problems through a website or a self-service portal. Almost every help desk solution allows you to create a web page with guides, tutorials, and FAQs for your customers to use in order to get their questions answered quickly.
3. Greater clarity and focus for customer issues
A help desk allows everyone on the team to see who is working on what issues and what issues are open. As a result, the software aids in the reduction of collisions. When two team members respond to the same message, this occurs. And, because private notes can be left inside a ticket, team members can share important details to keep other employees informed.
4. Data-driven choices to drive the business forward
You can have a help desk collect metrics such as ticket volume, team performance, and customer satisfaction. You will then have a better understanding of which areas require improvement, who your top performers are, and what your customers expect. When you have real insights at your disposal, you are more likely to make decisions that produce results.
5. Keeping problems from occurring
All problems are saved in the help desk database. As a result, you can analyze which types of issues occur more frequently than others and take action to resolve the issue. You can also make use of all the data you have on the platform to develop new guides and walkthroughs, or to enhance the product in order to solve the problem.
What customer support processes can you automate through help desk software?
Ticket routing, escalation, alerts, and scripted responses are all examples of automated help desk tasks. By automating these tasks, you can reduce the workload of your support team while also providing faster and more consistent assistance to online customers.
Help desk automation software allows you to automate repetitive processes, freeing up time and energy for your support team. Some of the support processes that can be easily automated to save your team time and mental energy are as follows:
- Ticket generation via multiple channels
- Keeping track of ticket lifecycles
- Answering basic questions
- Obtaining customer feedback
- Updating customers on the status of ticket resolutions Conducting audits of the effectiveness of customer service touchpoints
- Sort tickets according to their importance.
- Close and record closed tickets
- Recruit new service agents
- and much more
Some businesses are concerned that automating processes will result in an inauthentic customer experience. However, rather than inauthentic experiences, automation exists to eliminate the most time-consuming and mundane tasks, giving agents more bandwidth to devote to problems that truly require a personal experience.
What are the goals I should keep in mind when picking between help desk software solutions?
So, now that we’ve talked about general advice, let’s look at some specific actions you can take. The most important first step is to spend some time thinking about what your help desk should accomplish and then writing those goals down as simply as possible. Remember that these accomplishments do not have to be quantifiable. They must, however, be things that you and your customers are passionate about. Here are some examples of things you might be interested in:
- Customers find it simple to contact the help desk when they require assistance.
- The help desk responds quickly to customer concerns.
- The help desk communicates effectively with users, keeping them up to date and exceeding their expectations.
- When necessary, the help desk collaborates with other parts of the IT organization.
Take the time now to come up with your own goals. You might divide the list with must-have features, nice-to-haves and so on. It helps define and prioritize what the new solution should do. Here are a few ideas to get you started.
- Integration and data exports enabled
- Analytics to make data-driven decisions
- A self-service help center
- Offers omnichannel support
And maybe you’re nice-to-haves might include:
- Live Chatbot
- Internal team collaboration
- Community forums
- Multilingual support
The point is, your goals will be different according to your business needs, so take some time to think this through and consult with your customer facing agents to get their ideas on board.
While some help desk products provide the full range of customer service features, each has its own set of industry-specific functionalities. When you’re trying out the basics for the majority of the trial period, don’t forget to test the software’s unique qualities along the way. These features were created after analyzing use-cases and have the potential to completely transform your customer service.
Once you’ve decided on your final options based on team size and cost, put them to the test. Most companies provide a free trial period. You can enlist the help of your entire team to ensure that users of various roles are satisfied with the software’s performance. If the help desk software appears intimidating at first, seek assistance—most help desk companies are eager to show you around their product! You can also get a sense of the quality of service you will receive from them as a customer.
Looking for the Perfect Ticketing System for Your Business? Wavity Can Help!
If you’re looking to enhance customer and agent processes within your business more effectively and efficiently, then you need a help desk ticketing system. The purpose of Wavity’s IT help desk software is to improve customer satisfaction while decreasing service desk call volumes. It is a centralized system for managing IT issues and customer service requests.
The Wavity help desk and ticketing software assists customer service agents by helping to organize their work, improves efficiency, and the overall customer experience.
Wavity help desk software will help you:
- Bring support requests into a single window
- Automate support for recurring issues
- Get real-time insights and analytics
- Achieve higher response and resolution rates
- Self-service options to help you save time
- And so much more!
You can create dynamic dashboards with only the tools you want and need using our simplified, no-code solution. Build the ideal help desk for your company and don’t worry about additional construction or maintenance. It couldn’t be simpler. We’ll even walk you through the process so you can start creating custom help desk applications right away. Request a demo today, and take a look for yourself!