Help Desk Software

Are you looking to upgrade your help desk software for customers and employees? Have you missed customer emails more often than not? Do you find it difficult to make customers happy?

If you’ve been searching for a solution for these problems, you have most likely come across the term “Helpdesk Software” and are probably wondering what it means. If you want to know how this type of software can help you and your business communicate better to improve your relationships with your customers, you are in the right place. This article is going to answer the following questions.

What is Help Desk Software?

Let’s give you an example of this type of software. Imagine that you are an online retailer selling sportswear on your website and probably get a lot of queries from customers. These questions can be regarding size issues, what materials the clothes are made of, shipping costs, expected delivery dates, refund requests and so on. They may not just want to email you but might also tweet about you or post on your Facebook page or prefer to chat on your own website with one of your representatives, but whatever be their mode of communication, they expect you to listen and discuss their concerns.

If they begin a conversation on Twitter but suddenly switch to your business phone number, they still expect you to combine the conversations in order to answer their questions. This is where helpdesk software can help you immensely.

In the simplest terms, helpdesk software can streamline conversations across multiple channels into one place, allowing you to keep track of user requests. This way, you can communicate with customers more easily, and help deal with other customer support related issues better.

Who Uses Helpdesk Software?

Small to Medium-Sized Businesses

These businesses have very similar requirements. Small-sized businesses can sometimes demand help desk software because of its powerful automation capabilities. The automation allows the support teams to focus on answering questions, while also automatically taking care of routine tasks.

Mid-sized businesses focus almost exclusively on growing rapidly so they need a fast, scalable solution that will help their employees to be as efficient as possible.

1. Helpdesk software can automatically tag, categorize and prioritize incoming requests and assign these queries to your agents based on your requirements
2. This software is much more efficient than email since you don’t have to juggle the same inbox, folder structures, and logins between various team members.
3. You can get help setting up SLA policies to ensure your agents honor deadlines for solving customer problems. In case deadlines aren’t met, helpdesks can also automatically escalate tickets to managers.

Good helpdesk software can automatically ensure that multiple employees aren’t trying to answer the same inquiries, which in turn will stop customers from being spammed by multiple responses from your agents.

Helpdesk Software for Large Businesses

Large businesses require different teams to work together and without affecting performance while coming up with responses for their customers. These businesses need a way to measure their team’s performance and implement strategies to improve quickly if necessary. Helpdesk software can help in the following ways.

1. Enterprise-grade helpdesk software can effectively manage employee availability across shifts, geographies, time zones, and languages. This will ensure that the right employee will give the correct customer the quickest response possible.
2. Versatile helpdesk software can integrate with other tools the business uses such as CRM software, billing and payment systems, and package trackers. This helps to get the right information together before solving an issue that a customer has spoken about.
3. Good helpdesk software can bring your sales, marketing, and support teams together because it increases visibility into each other’s workload and enables them to work together better.

Any good helpdesk needs to be compliant with industry standards for data protection like TRUSTe, ISO 27001:2013, SSAE – 16 & HIPAA, SOC I, II, III, and so on. When choosing which software your business needs, make sure you are looking for data across the globe as well as enterprise-class in-product security features, which will help you manage your data security challenges.

How Should You Choose the Right Helpdesk Software?

There are three main things that each business can look at when making the decision of helpdesk software.

1. Style of Support- How do your customers try to reach you? Do they get in touch with you through email, social media, or basic phone numbers? Do your customers like to speak with agents directly on your website or in person? When answering these questions, you need to make sure the support software chosen will fit your customer expectations and overall style of support.
2. Usability- The bottom line is that helpdesk software with intuitive and approachable UI means your employees can start supporting customers immediately. Just because a helpdesk software provider asks for higher prices does not automatically mean its features are better. Reading reviews and speaking more with each provider will weed out the systems that you don’t need or want.
3. Price- Just as stated above, shop around. You should compare features and read up reviews before deciding which helpdesk software fits your business workflows better. A higher price is no guarantor of quality. Remember, if you are just starting out, even a free helpdesk software can be more useful than just using email, and it is worth a try.

The Essential Features of Helpdesk Software

Just as your business is different from others, helpdesk software also varies. Some provide basic platforms that can be integrated with many plug-ins, where others require a simple login where you can speak with customers. Most software can help you integrate with reporting suites to analyze your performance while others have AI crunching your numbers out of the box, to help you improve your business. Whatever the individual abilities of your helpdesk software may be, you will need these essential features in your helpdesk no matter what.

1. A Multi-Channel Ticketing System- Fully configured helpdesk software can help you control incoming tickets better because of its automatically tagging system. It will then categorize and assign tickets to employees that are best suited for each question. This support software can streamline tickets from multiple sources into one place so your employees don’t have to balance various logins and passwords, enabling them to communicate across channels such as email, phone, social media, or chat, from one place.
2. Collaboration- Very similar to what is listed above, good helpdesk software will help employees cooperate better by increasing visibility among them. By keeping employees informed of ticket owners, responses, and priorities, a good helpdesk software can keep your global team on the same page with no extra effort, leaving them to focus on supporting customers.
3. Automations- Helpdesk software should reduce employee effort that is required in making a customer happy. With powerful automation, support software can automatically handle day-to-day tasks based on all involved. With this basic function of helpdesk software, your business can create custom workflows to conform these automations into your business. This will, in turn, give each customer to the right agent for the most efficient response. 
4. Reporting and Analytics- This is important because you cannot progress in your business if you do not know how successful or unsuccessful you are operating. Every good customer support software suite should have in-built reporting features that let you analyze your performance, to let you know where you and your team needs improvements.
5. Customization- Certain support software can be customized entirely to your business, so that it feels like an extension of what you offer, making the entire experience feel like an expansion of your brand to the customer. By tailoring this experience for your customer, you will also build brand recognition and customer loyalty more easily with this type of full-fledged support.