There are many aspects to running a business. Making a sale is great, but if a product isn’t flawless, it’s likely that there is going to be customer contact. In addition, the internal workings of a company can always be improved to become more efficient. Employees become more educated and processes get refined.
In order to help a company with these things, there’s help desk software. This makes communicating with customers easier. It brings together and helps solve issues about products or processes. Overall, it improves the knowledge of any employee at a company as well. Helpdesk software is here to stay.
Types and Features of Help Desk Software
When it comes to help desk software, there can be quite a lot of variety. The software needed will depend on the needs of the company. Oftentimes, multiple large features are packaged together into a full helpdesk suite. When considering business needs, each of the following work as full programs or as features.
- Ticketing Programs - This is one of the most common types of help desk features. Ticketing allows the creation of customer service or technical support ticketing. This creates an organized system of issues that need to be resolved. Tickets will receive different levels of importance based on how crucial they are to business operation. If a software company finds a major security bug in their system, that’s more important than if an image isn’t displaying correctly. Tickets can be resolved, with the resolution known for eternity for similar incidents.
- Incident Reporting - Someone manning a help desk can’t do their job unless they have all the details. Incident reporting software allows employees or customers from far flung areas to ensure that all the information about bugs or issues is reported to the right people. Once people have all of the information, issues can be resolved. Incident reporting is great for a company from a legal perspective, as it will allow all of the details of any situation to be preserved.
- Customer Contact - One major feature of help desk software is managing the ability for customers to reach a company in multiple ways, while bringing all of the contact into a single location. It should combine phone, chat, email, text messages all into a single place.
- Analytics - An analytics module for help desk software assists is determining patterns of issues. Internally, a company can determine if they need to increase training in specific areas for their employees. Externally, they can find out if their products or services are properly resonating with their customers, or if specific features are causing too many problems.
Help Desk Software Providers
There are a huge number of wonderful programs designed to assist a business in conducting an orderly internal and external help desk. Considering the usefulness to business, it’s no surprise that companies have chosen to create these software offerings. While the following list is full of great software offerings, it’s far from comprehensive. New programs are being created by hungry startup companies every day. Many of these will grow into industry leaders.
- Zoho Desk - Zoho is a web based system, meaning companies won’t have to maintain servers or anything that costs extra money. Zoho Desk also merges very well with their other business software offerings. Zoho Desk is incredibly customizable and one of the best offerings for internal company improvement.
- Zendesk - Zendesk allows for customizable help desk options and is already in use by some of the biggest companies in the world. Despite this, it maintains the flexibility and scalability to be of use to businesses of any size.
- Freshdesk - Freshdesk is a great bargain help desk software and perfect for small businesses. It’s very intuitive and easy for people to learn how to use. Despite this, it has all of the features that a business can need.
- LiveAgent - This software offering is very popular and known for their easy integration of customer service and online live chat. LiveAgent also allows for social media integration, making it easier than ever for customers to reach your business.
