Help desk Software
Is the next step in your business roadmap improving your customer support?
Then it's time to invest in robust help desk software. Here's a wall-to-wall overview of what help desk software can do to your business.
Try Zoho DeskA web-based help desk software - What, Why, and How
If you have more than one person working in your customer service department, then you've definitely heard of "help desk software". If you're wondering whether a help desk ticketing system could add any more value to your customer support operations than a shared inbox, then you've reached the right place.
Take a look at this extensive guide to understand all about help desk ticketing systems.
What is a help desk software?
Customers contact the help desk when they have a question or a problem. An employee from the company then addresses the question to the customer's satisfaction. In reality, all you need is a well-facilitated means to reach out to someone from a company when some help is needed.
Help desk software keeps track of all your customer conversations across multiple channels in one place, so your help desk team can support your customers better and faster. A cloud-based help desk software also helps you get real-time insight into the messages you're receiving from customers and how your team is performing.
How can a help desk support software suite your kind of business?
Any business, big or small, strives to get 100% customer satisfaction. A powerful tool like online help desk software makes that goal reachable, as it helps in addressing customer grievances on time and agents' saves time by automating routine tasks.
- For small businesses
- For enterprises
Help desk software for small business
For small and medium businesses, help desk ticketing software can help you make the best use of limited resources.
Self-service
A help desk ticketing software allows you to set up your own Knowledge Base, with FAQs, "How to" articles, and more. This way, your agents can focus on tickets that really need their attention. You can empower your customers to find answers they need using your help desk tool, even before they call your customer support center. Learn More
Automations
Automate day-to-day tasks so your staff can spend their time driving more customer requests to closure using help desk software. Set up automatic assignment rules to route tickets to the right agents, create Service Level Agreements to escalate issues, set notification rules to keep agents and customers updated about their issues' progress, and write macros to carry out routine tasks on any ticket you apply them to.
Mobile Apps
Help desk software comes with mobile apps that allow you to stay on top of things without being tied to a desk 24/7. Using mobile apps, you can get instant updates about tickets, view customer information, and respond promptly. Learn More
Help desk software for enterprises
For enterprises, a help desk software must be able to identify bottlenecks and give management better insight into the customer support system.
Customization
You can make your help desk software your own by customizing it to fit your needs. You can change the templates of ticket forms, emails, and notifications to create ones that resonate with your customers. Help desk ticketing software lets you define the status of a ticket from creation to completion.
Advanced Process Automation
As you grow, it gets harder for your team to adhere to the process flow. With powerful process automation offered by help desk software, you can set up all your internal processes within your help desk, implement them automatically, and instantly spot bottlenecks that are causing delays. A good help desk ticketing tool ensures that your processes stay on track. Learn More
Analytics and insights
Spotting delays is the first step. To fix the issue, you need to know why the delay is caused. That's where the reporting and analytics part of your help desk software comes to your aid. With customizable dashboards and reports, most ticketing tools allow you to schedule reports to your inbox on a regular basis, so you can keep track of every function, review the data, and make the right decisions at the right time.
Artificial Intelligence
A help desk software not only helps you with your current customer support goals but also simplifies your processes for the future. The intuitive chatbots and Artificial Intelligence features learn from the data your system feeds it, and in turn, answers customers when they need help, notifies managers when there are unusual patterns in the daily ticket traffic stats, and analyses the customer sentiment in every ticket to help agents prioritize their work accordingly. Learn more
For small businesses
For small and medium businesses, help desk ticketing software can help you make the best use of limited resources.
Self-service
A help desk ticketing software allows you to set up your own Knowledge Base, with FAQs, "How to" articles, and more. This way, your agents can focus on tickets that really need their attention. You can empower your customers to find answers they need using your help desk tool, even before they call your customer support center. Learn More
Automations
Automate day-to-day tasks so your staff can spend their time driving more customer requests to closure using a help desk software. Set up automatic assignment rules to route tickets to the right agents, create Service Level Agreements to escalate issues, set notification rules to keep agents and customers updated about their issues' progress, and write macros to carry out routine tasks on any ticket you apply them to.
Mobile Apps
Help desk software comes with mobile apps that allow you to stay on top of things without being tied to a desk 24/7. Using the mobile apps, you can get instant updates about tickets, view customer information, and respond promptly. Learn More
For enterprises
For enterprises, a help desk software must be able to identify bottlenecks and give management better insight into the customer support system.
Customization
You can make your help desk software your own by customizing it to fit your needs. You can change the templates of ticket forms, emails, and notifications to create ones that resonate with your customers. Help desk ticketing software lets you define the status of a ticket from creation to completion.
Advanced Process Automation
As you grow, it gets harder for your team to adhere to the process flow. With powerful process automation offered by help desk software, you can set up all your internal processes within your help desk, implement them automatically, and instantly spot bottlenecks that are causing delays. A good help desk ticketing tool ensures that your processes stay on track. Learn More
Analytics and insights
Spotting delays is the first step. To fix the issue, you need to know why the delay is caused. That's where the reporting and analytics part of your help desk software come to your aid. With customizable dashboards and reports, most ticketing tools allow you to schedule reports to your inbox on a regular basis, so you can keep track of every function, review the data, and make the right decisions at the right time.
Artificial Intelligence
A help desk software not only helps you with your current customer support goals, but also simplifies your processes for the future. The intuitive chat bots and Artificial Intelligence features learn from the data your system feeds it, and in turn, answers customers when they need help, notifies managers when there are unusual patterns in the daily ticket traffic stats, and analyses the customer sentiment in every ticket to help agents prioritize their work accordingly. Learn more
What are the key functionalities of a help desk support software?
Most companies give out an email address and/or a toll-free phone number to their customers. Customers can reach the company through these when they need help. Help desk software simply automates as much of this as possible.
Generally, customer service help desk software consists of at least 3 parts, and together these 3 functionalities form the crux of the help desk's operations.
Ticket management
This is the quintessential part of any support software which helps organize customer requests and helps you cut through the clutter. Here's how:
The support software pulls customer emails from your customer support email address and lists them in a single place online—almost like rerouting emails to a more organized tab.
It allows the help desk executive to answer calls from customers and log them on the cloud, easily.
It allows customer support executives to read and respond to customer feedback on social media, such as Facebook and Twitter.
The essential aspect of ticket management is that your help desk team can see all the customers who've reached out for help, and keep records of their responses
Automation suite
A good service desk software goes a bit further, enabling better assignment and implementation of work. That means
You can ensure that questions from customers are redirected to employees who are capable of answering them well.
You can set up automatic notification rules, which alert you when the customer has replied or left some feedback.
When a support executive hasn't responded to a ticket, or when a ticket is taking too long to get resolved, SLAs can ensure that these are brought to your notice and taken care of immediately.
This is how a service desk software automates certain tasks, thereby ensuring the quality of service.
Reporting and Optimization
This part of ticketing software constitutes the most important function of customer service. It pulls pertinent information about all the critical aspects of the web-based help desk. Managers and leaders can track and understand things like
Ticket load on the customer service team
Turnaround time and resolution rate of each member of the team
Average customer happiness levels.
and much more. Metrics like these in a ticketing software give managers a quick perspective of how things are faring and let them make changes for the better.
What are the added perks of using the best help desk solution?
All the help desk software available in the market provides the basic features required to communicate with a customer. However, if you want to up your customer support game and gain instant customer loyalty, you may need certain powerhouse capabilities.
Omnichannel communication
Instead of switching between various communication channels, you can get a help desk software which can collect customer queries from email, live chat, phone, social media, web forms, etc, and organize them under one tab. Learn more
Collaboration
As your customer support department grows bigger, you need the best help desk software for your agents to communicate better and get the job done without any crossed wires. Service desk software comes with various options to help your teams work on tickets a lot faster, without the loss of vital information.
Community
The Community feature is a public forum facilitated by your help desk software, where your support team can drive customer engagement. Your customers can post questions, answer each other's questions, and discuss ideas. With customers helping each other, your support team can lighten their workload and build engagement all at once. There is no better way to reduce the customer waiting time and to get immediate feedback.
Security
Data security, yours and your customers, take top priority. A good help desk tool must be GDPR compliant, and meet industry standards of ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II—this gives customers more control over how their data is used. Learn more
Flexibility
To get the best results, your help desk support software needs to blend in with the tools you're already using. Can your help desk system be extended and integrated with the apps your team relies on? Learn more
What if you're not satisfied with the help desk software after buying it?
Most of the help desk software options, including Zoho Desk offers a free trial of 15 days on any plan. Evaluate, compare, understand, then decide. You can even evaluate and compare Zoho Desk with its competitors, and take a look at pricing plans before you make a decision.