Help Desk Software
The best customer support comes from humans using smart technology like help desk software, not from automated robo-agents. Help desks act as a centralized hub where queries and concerns from customers or internal staff are documented; the call center team can then intake, organize, manage, respond to, automate, and report on these issues—all within one intuitive, easy-to-use package!
Customer service software allows businesses of any size to resolve customer questions from receipt all the way to resolution, providing agents a wide array of tools and support along the way. Learn more about the types, features, and benefits of help desk software below, or contact us to see how this software can launch your customer support efforts into the new age!
Types of Help Desk Software
There are different types of help desk solutions that are classified according to deployment, the size of their user base, and source code accessibility. Each classification has its own set of actions and choices that cater to both small businesses and enterprise-level companies alike.
The type of support software you choose for your center can not only affect how your support agents deliver, but their overall productivity level as well. The right type of software can eliminate manual work and improve the communication between you and your customers. See which one works best for your company below:
Basic web help desk
A basic web help desk is usually cloud-hosted or software as a service (SaaS) solution that is hosted on the vendor's server, meaning that subscribers are allowed to access tickets, queries, customer profiles, and reporting metrics via the vendor's website or mobile apps. This support software is scalable, making it ideal for growing small businesses. A significant benefit of a basic help desk is the low entry cost and limited IT skills required.
On-Premises Help Desk
An on-premises (or “on-prem”) help desk is licensed proprietary software that a company installs on their own server. The primary benefit of this is so that you can own and host the system, therefore, you have full control over information privacy and data security. This software typically comes with a high entry cost and will require an able IT team to take care of software troubleshooting, updates, maintenance, and more.
Enterprise help desk
An enterprise help desk is designed to accommodate more end users with its multiple contact points, larger database, and variety of features that most lower-tier packages do not offer. It involves complex modules, including IT asset management, service request fulfillment, SLA management, account management, survey management, advanced encryption, multi-brand support, custom user roles, and sandbox. It is also known for its ability to be customized to fit a company’s workflows.
Open-source help desk
An open-source help desk allows users access to the source code in order to integrate or customize support processes. For example, developers who are familiar with coding can fix bugs in the system, add features, and adapt source code to the company’s required output or workflow. It may be ideal for organizations with IT help desk departments to execute these changes.
Another important thing to note is that help desk solutions are often lumped under the broader IT service management category, however, this isn't always the case. Help desk softwares refers to the specific process of addressing customer issues, whereas an IT service desk includes IT support for an internal audience (such as an organization's employees). For example, Happitu—considered both a basic help desk and an enterprise help desk— is currently used by one BPO customer as help desk software to support both clients and their internal agent population.
How Does Help Desk Software Work?
In order to understand how help desk software works, it's important to understand all of the features that work in conjunction with each other to deliver you a seamless customer service experience.
Multi-channel support for customer intake
This is how your customers contact the support agents to submit issues and questions. Omnichannel points of contact include email, phone, live chat, self-service, social media, web forms, or community forums. The channels you choose will depend on your industry, but it's advisable to offer a variety of different channels so that you can reach and help your customers in the manner most accessible to them. If you try to make them jump through too many hoops, they could grow frustrated with the process and not give you their returning business.
Ticketing system management
Customer issues frequently involve a variety of different teams from receipt all the way to resolution; therefore, sorting, assigning, prioritizing, and tracking tickets helps teams save time as well as improve responses. Help desk ticketing software provides a core system for all agents to organize customer queries, show ticket management and status, and keep track of the team handling the situation in order to avoid duplicate ticket responses.
Automation
Help desk software can automate simple functionalities. This can include all manner of routine or repetitive tasks, such as filling out forms, converting emails into tickets (and vice versa), issuing reports daily, routing tickets to the suitable agents, reassigning an absent teammate’s tickets, notifying supervisors about pending tickets, and so much more!
Escalation
Escalation features allow call center agents to route challenging tickets to managers or other teams that are able to more appropriately handle the situation. Additionally, this feature can allow for multi-level submission in which supervisors have the ability to resolve issues within their authority rather than escalating the ticket even further up. This prevents over-escalation and delivers faster resolution.
Knowledge base for self-service
You ultimately want to help your customers help themselves! A very important feature of a help desk system is that it takes repetitive queries and then compiles and structures them into how-to articles or FAQs. By creating documentation that fits the needs of your business and your customers, this constantly accessible knowledge base frees up your support agents to handle more pressing issues.
Reporting metrics
Help desk software can offer insights for not just sales opportunities, but internal priorities like how your team operates and agent performance. In terms of marketing, you can take a look at the number of product complaints, market demographics, and customer relationships. In terms of internal priorities, you can look at a dashboard that reflects ticket resolution time, customer satisfaction, rep productivity, customer interactions, and more.
Easy collaboration and customization!
Overall, help desk software should make your life easier! When you take such meticulous care of the rest of your product journey and customer experience, you should have a management tool that works just as hard as you. Look for a service that can adapt to your basic workflows and has things like customizable autoresponders and contact forms. Furthermore, your support team members will need a place to work together and offer constructive insights on knowledge base articles and support tickets—especially when managing complicated tickets. Find a help desk solution for easy collaboration between agents, departments and, of course, your customers!
Benefits of Having a Customer Support Help Desk
In a world of instant gratification, studies show that 62% of consumers needed to make multiple contacts to resolve their most recent customer service need. Investing in a help desk solution that provides an accurate path to resolution is now more important than ever to keep customers happy.
In addition, a help desk tool can help create organization out of chaos in order to streamline your process and give your support agents the tools they need to perform at their best. Plus there are so many other great benefits, including:
- Resolve support tickets faster and with more accuracy
- Centrally located information storageAddress Service Level Agreements (SLAS)
- Eliminate missed tickets
- Reduce tribal knowledge using a built-in knowledge base
- Focus on important tasks
- Enable support agents to scale to meet the volume of service requests
- Reduce the frequency of customers being shuffled from agent to agent
- Avoid wasted time and user frustration
- Gain insights through reporting
Get Started on Your Help Desk Solution with Happitu!
A functional help desk should be at the heart of your customer support efforts. Ready to launch your CX insights into the new age?
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