This article may be interesting for people who are in the process of choosing the first helpdesk system for their company, for those who already have helpdesk but looking for something more, for people who hesitate about its benefits and just starting to look towards helpdesk system from afar.
For all companies, customers are their most valuable assets. It is their main resource, their money and their guarantee of future success. So it is very important to solve the customer problems in the most brilliant way. Good support always makes any company much more attractive to deal with, and their products much safer to buy. Accurately selected helpdesk is a necessary tool for the company to build a good customer relationship.
Choosing a solid, versatile and modern helpdesk system is quite a challenge nowadays. Extremely fast business development, new technologies, various startups and continuous integration of all industries with IT makes it even harder to determine which helpdesk components the company really needs and which will really work for the company.
Let's highlight the essential components of any good helpdesk system, regardless of the area it is used.
Single User-Friendly Entry Point
Should it be internal or external user, he only needs to log in once to his account. Multiple accounts will deter most of users.
Entry point must be user-friendly and easily accessible even for first-time users. Ideally, there should be 2 interfaces: one for customers with very simple and intuitive interface; the other one - for technical staff, this interface should provide all the tools required for request processing.
Customized Tickets Templates
Good customization allows to design helpdesk tickets including all company-specific processes and features. More precise workflow configuration means spending less time and valuable resources on the problem resolution.
Workflow Automation
System automation provides an efficient helpdesk workflow. Core of the system must be perfectly designed to have an ability to trigger events and automatically perform some actions. Any activity should be registered by the system as events that can automatically trigger actions (for example automatic route transition, assignment, mailing, creation of tasks and subrequests, etc.).
Integration With Company-Specific Business Processes
Helpdesk should have an ability to integrate with a variety of business processes in which the company is involved. It should provide multiple entry points for requests (for example, users must be able to submit requests from project interface, sale order, CRM, HR application, etc.). It also should have an ability to associate requests with different types of documents and various data.
Task Delegation
Somebody have to do the real job and solve the customer's problems.
A wise task delegation can be a key to the success of the company's helpdesk team and vice versa. Tickets should be assigned to persons with the appropriate qualification. Load management is also very important - there should be no such cases when one person has many requests assigned and the other one - none.
The good system integrates with HR data and should not assign employees who are ill or on vocation. For small companies this is not so important, but for big corporations it is very essential. Just imagine the work of the helpdesk team manager without automated assignments in the company with hundreds of thousands of employees.
Service Level Agreement
Time is money. All customers like and want some service guarantees so they can plan their future businesses.
A good helpdesk should also have a great SLA customization options. Most often, companies provide different levels of service to different customers and services. All of this should be easily configurable.
SLA also keeps a company's helpdesk team in shape.
Logging Tickets
Helpdesk is a tool for solving problems. Logging and analyzing of each issue allows to highlight problem areas of the company. Some of the problem can be eliminated, others can be optimized due to new ways to solve them.
Analyzing not only customer tickets, but all system's data (SLA records, incoming sources, channels, related products, etc.) allows to improve the company in every possible way.
For companies who always look for ways to improve, it is a source of endless development.
Effective Comunications
Without good communication with users it is difficult to solve their problems. Most customers are more satisfied when you talk to them, that way they feel like you take care of them.
Interface of helpdesk should allow customers to quickly communicate with support team from any point. There should be a good chatter with an ability to share media files and documents. Customers should be able to choose the most convenient way for communication (live chat, email, phone call, etc.).
It is also necessary to log communications with users. This will help to resolve some controversial issues with customers.
Analyzing communication data allows to configure chat bots with automated greetings and replies, set up auto-emails.