When considering a help desk purchase, it is not as straightforward as it appears. Do you buy or embark on an in-house development? There is much to consider before purchasing help desk software. Questions include:
- How will it scale?
- How expensive is it per user?
- What standard features are included?
- Is there local support?
- How frequently are upgrades released?
- Is it a cloud offering or on-premises?
You may also want to read the article “Key Responsibilities of the IT Help Desk”
What will it do for me?
Help Desk software can solve many common problems of using basic email for customer support. These include:
1. Improve poor ticket management
Help desk software can help your support team be more organized by:
- Assigning and distributing tickets to agents who may leave comments and share relevant information with other customer support agents.
- They allow you to manage all support tickets from email, phone, and social media in one organized place.
2. Improve low customer satisfaction
Help desk software is an awesome tool for streamlining customer support. It allows your support staff to work more productively with features like ticket management, community forums, live chat, phone support, analytics, etc.
In a nutshell, this speedier and more efficient customer support will improve your customer satisfaction.
3. Quickly address repetitive questions
Help desk software allows you to create knowledge bases. With resources like video tutorials or an FAQ section, you can provide answers to repeated questions in your knowledge base so your customers will have support anytime they need it.
When to start considering a help desk
Let’s look at three instances when you must consider investing in Help Desk software.
1. When you launch your company
For some companies, this is a no-brainer. However, customer support may not be the highest priority after launching their product. If you’re in this situation, you may decide to delay the implementation of a help desk – but with many free starter help desk options, you should start using a help desk to organise support immediately.
Using a help desk allows you to be more organized when you first launch your product. Features for creating FAQs and other self-service support options also help you avoid a bigger customer support workload in the future.
2. When your developers are stretched out too thin
Your developers can answer customer support emails, but this will quickly crash and burn when more customers come in. Developers can’t afford to balance customer support work and developing their products simultaneously. Not only will your customer support suffer, but so will your overall product.
3. Customers start asking the same questions over and over
In the customer support industry, one of the most frustrating things about the job is answering a question only to get the same question two minutes later. Not only is this distracting, but it’s also very inefficient.
Most used help desk features
FAQs are one of the best customer support resources, and investing in a knowledge base to make your customers’ lives easier is one of the best things you can do for your business. FAQs also allow your customers to have customer support anytime they need it.
Consider Security Issues
Data security against cyber attacks is receiving a lot of attention. You must ensure adequate protection measures are in place to secure your data.
I have written an article dealing with this issue that you may find helpful, “5 Reasons why the help desk cares about information security”.
Contact Us
[wpforms id=”5600″]
Time to decide!
It is not easy to decide when to start considering a help desk. Whether now or later, a help desk is always a good way to increase productivity in your company and keep the customer support clutter at bay.