Help Desk Software

Acquiring new customers for business growth is essential, but more than that, retaining present customers is equally important. If you don't ensure the satisfaction of your present customers, they can leave bad reviews for your products and services, and that can even fail your best-proven marketing strategy. Especially in this age where people are highly active on social media, it just takes seconds to spread anything negative about services/products/brand and spoil the reputation of a business.

As quoted by Sam Walton (The Founder of Walmart) - “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”

To sustain and grow your business, it becomes important to ensure that you are providing efficient and flawless customer support. Whether it is before or after sales, customers prefer exceptional and instant services at a zero or low cost.

A help desk software helps the customer support team in speeding up the process of handling customers' queries and complaints and ensuring their satisfaction. But, there is more to help desk than just solving the issues of the customers. This buyer's guide to help desk software would throw some light on the basics to the detailed aspects of the help desk solutions, helping you to select the best one for your business.

Help Desk software system is a tool that empowers the customer support team to respond to customers and internal staff queries by managing support tickets starting from receipt until resolution. It is also known as helpdesk ticketing software, that includes a wide range of applications and systems. Whether a consumer needs to replace a pair of shoes just delivered or wanting to troubleshoot their internet connection, help desk system software makes it easy for the customer support teams to help their customers quickly.

You have set up your business, have advertised effectively, and earned a decent amount of business. Is that enough? If you want to get ahead of your competitors by providing the same quality and price in your products and services, you need to provide extraordinary customer services. The below-mentioned factors can justify how a help desk software system can help you in providing exceptional services to your customers.

Company Size

Several small and medium-sized companies don't have a separate customer service department. In that case, the employees, including engineers, developers, managers, operation executives, etc. need to solve the queries of the customers besides their own core jobs. This affects the quality of customer services and their overall performance. The help desk software system allows employees to respond to the queries of the customers quickly and, at the same time, ensure that their roles in the company do not suffer.

Maintaining Professionalism

If you have launched a product or service that is too technical and your customers need help to understand it & to use it, they are going to approach you with a plethora of questions and suggestions. In this case, a help desk system software helps you in answering all the customers' queries without missing even one. These queries and suggestions are extremely useful in unearthing new ideas for the products or services you provide, ultimately enhancing the quality of your services.

Centralizing Information

In business, you are constantly having conversations with your customers about the products & services you provide. Moreover, you also require information from your sales, service & operation departments, and a help desk software system allows you to centralize all this information about the customers, their queries, and the solutions provided. This would save a lot of time whenever you need to access the required information.

Importance of Customer Experience

Regardless of the size, type, and sector a business belongs to, customer experience is the most important factor that can decide the success or failure of an organization. Advertising and promotions can help you in grabbing the attention of your customers and prospects, but the experience you would be providing them would help you in retaining them for a more extended period. Not communicating at the right time, or not providing the right solutions to your customers can encourage them to move to your competitors and also ruin your hard-earned reputation. A help desk system software can ensure flawless customer support and long-lasting relationships with your customers.

Monitoring Customer Support

Using help desk software, you can record the communication your customer support representatives are having with your customers. It can even monitor the resolution time-period, customer satisfaction, and the performance of your customer support agents. This helps in improvising the services, eliminating the flaws in the services, if any, and streamline the entire process, enhancing the overall quality of your customer services.

Managing Customer Requests Efficiently

An organization might be selling several products and services. Handling complaints, queries, and requests for all the different product lines would be a difficult job if done manually. A help desk software system allows customer support representatives to access all the customer queries from a centralized location, assign tickets, and ensure resolution of those queries within a specific timeframe.

Creating a Knowledge Base

The experience of one customer support agent can be of help to another. Moreover, these customer support representatives work in shifts, and talking to a different representative every time a customer calls and explaining the problem, can be a daunting task for the customer. A help desk software creates a knowledge base of the customers' queries and conversation records helping the customer support representatives to address those queries flawlessly.  

Analyzing Performance

A help desk system software stores the information that helps in analyzing the performance of the customer support agents, and their conversation with the customers. This allows you to eliminate all the flaws you have in your processes, improve the quality of your products and services, which leads to exceptional customer satisfaction and growth of the business.

In the 20th century, businesses used to rely mostly on face-to-face interactions to resolve the queries of the customers. The customers used to visit the company's office or store to get their problems relating to the product resolved or acquire the service. During this century, there were many technological changes experienced, and one of them was a mainframe computer. At that time, the customers used to communicate their problems using the telephone, and the customer service agents used to record those issues using mainframe computers and then address those issues through relevant channels.

In the 1960s, the companies began setting up call centers and training staff to record and handle customer queries in a systematic manner. This was also the era of interactive voice response. During this time, the customers started registering their problems through email and sending inquiries through the form. The customer service agents also used to answer customer queries through email.

After the internet was made officially available for public use in the 1980s, many companies started outsourcing their customer service department. In the 1990s, the use of email and live chat systems increased, and due to that, US companies started outsourcing their help desk jobs to the companies in India and Philippines. The real use of help desk software came into use in the 2000s, when the companies applied different kinds of help desk software solutions. At present, the massive use of internet and networking systems has made help desk software systems much more interactive due to which communication has been easier between the customers and the agents. The customers can now easily submit and track their queries using a help desk software.

The customers need timely & perfect services, and help desk software solutions can simplify your entire process of providing perfect services to your customers. The below-mentioned aspects justify the fact that a help desk software can simplify the customer service processes in your organization -

Accurate Information

When your customers are contacting you for any kind of information about your products and services, you are supposed to provide the right answers for the first time itself. Through help desk software solutions, you can give access to your customers to the online tutorials and guides, helping them to get the right answers for their queries easily. 

Ticketing System

The helpdesk ticketing system allows you to assign a particular query of a customer to a specific agent. That helps in following a quick & professional communication process, without any confusion.  

Timely Response

A help desk software allows you to access all the information about the customers’ queries on your fingertips. This helps you in providing timely response and serve your impatient customers efficiently.

Prompt Problem Solving

If you take several days to resolve the problem of a customer, it might not be healthy for your business in the long run. The help desk software centralizes all the information that helps you to solve the problems of your customers promptly.

Past Records

The help desk software solutions is capable of storing all the conversation that a customer has with the customer care agent. This helps the service agents to access the information about the solutions provided in the past to the customers, and solve the similar queries arising in future easily.

Customer Service Help Desk

A customer service help desk focuses on solving the queries of the current and prospective customers of a business organization.

IT Help Desk Software

An IT help desk software is for supporting end-user, support teams and IT admin staff. Whether it is accessing a tutorial, or resetting a password, an IT support help desk can solve the issues of the users.

Business Help Desk

Besides IT, there are other departments in an organization like HR, finance, operations, etc. The business help desk can help employees to post their queries relating to their leaves, salary, etc.; similarly, the finance professionals and the stakeholders can post their queries relating to accounts payable, expenses, etc., and acquire help from respective departments.

Many of the business entrepreneurs, analysts, and consumers believe that there is no major difference between a help desk and a service desk. But, there is a difference in terms of their process, and functionality as given below -

A help desk is designed to help customer support teams to provide solutions to the queries of the customers. Whereas a service desk is the communication center on which the customers, employees, and stakeholders can rely for acquiring the services.

A help desk focuses on providing answers to the queries, whereas a service desk focuses on delivering the services. A service desk covers aspects like problem management, change/configuration management, service requests management, and knowledge management. Moreover, a help desk covers aspects like ticket management, self-service, communities, and forms.

Multiple Communication Channels 

The customers use multiple communication channels like email, phone, live chat, social media, etc., to report their complaints or ask a query for the product or service they have purchased. Providing proactive customer support through multiple communication channels has become a key to keep your clientele happy.

Self-Service

The customers now prefer to find the information on their own instead of having to contact a service representative for help. Due to this reason, many customers now prefer to use FAQs and an online knowledge base to solve the queries relating to the products and services they have purchased. Precisely, self-service has become a major aspect that can help in providing excellent customer experiences. 

Cloud Computing

The cloud-based help desk software also known as online help desk software can help organizations to leverage better, cheaper, and quicker customer support. These online help desk solutions are highly scalable and provide access to information from anywhere, including mobile devices. There are no hardware or maintenance costs associated with these SaaS-based help desk software systems. Due to these advantages, the online help desk software is currently in demand and is being applied by several organizations in the service industry.

A help desk support software works based on the features and the target users. Here are some must-have features you need to look for in your help desk software.

Ticketing Management

Ticketing management is the core feature of help desk software. A helpdesk ticketing software helps in recording and organizing the customer complaints and requests in the form of tickets. These tickets are then assigned to specific customer support representatives. The helpdesk ticketing system displays the information about which ticket is assigned to which representative, and all the communication associated with it.

Mode of Contact

There are multiple ways through which the customers contact an organization's help desk like phone, email, social media, live chat, etc. Many help desk solutions support multiple channels of contact. In contrast, some simply can integrate them so that it becomes easy for the customer representatives to solve the queries of the customers.

Knowledge Base

The help desk support software can compile the customer queries, questions, and feedback into FAQs and how-to tutorials. This allows you to free up your agents in case the customer requires the information available in the knowledge base. Moreover, you can provide 24/7 support to your customers through the knowledge base.

Automation

The help desk platforms can automate the routine and predictable tasks like filling up forms, converting emails to tickets, assigning tickets to representatives, etc. Also, it can notify the managers and representatives about the resolved and pending tickets without any human efforts.  

Dashboard

The dashboard in a help desk software system allows customer support representatives, and managers to view the important information like pending tickets, complaints received & resolved, overall performance of the customer support agents, and many more aspects that can show the current situation of the customer support in an organization.

Tickets Escalation

Some of the help desk solutions provide a feature known as ticket escalation where a customer support agent can assign the ticket to higher authority in case he/she is not able to resolve the complaint, or the query is too difficult to handle. This helps in quick and accurate problem-solving and satisfying the highly demanding customers. 

Reporting & Analytics

The help desk system solutions can provide important information like frequent customer complaints, minimum time taken in solving an issue, customer preferences in terms of products and services, and many more aspects, which can be the significant source of market insights enabling higher conversions. By using help desk software, this vital information can be converted into attractive reports which can be highly useful for the managers, supervisors, higher authorities, and even business stakeholders.

Deploying a new help desk software system means you are investing a huge amount of money and time. Moreover, if it doesn't turn out to be the right one as per your business requirements, it can be a major setback for your business. So, here are some important factors that you need to consider before you select a help desk software.

Decide Based on your Business Requirements

Before you decide your business requirements, you need to ask yourself questions like 

• What is the age of your business? 
• Who is your target audience?
• Which communication channels would your audience prefer the most?
• In which customer support tasks do you need the automation?

And many more such questions, which can help you in deciding your business requirements. After that, you can select help desk software that has features capable of helping you overcome your business challenges.

Consider your Budget

While you are purchasing the help desk support software, you need to consider your budget also. Not everything expensive is good. Sometimes, you can find exceptional features in a free and open source help desk software, which you can even customize as per your business requirements. So, if you have a budget constraint, you can go for free help desk software; otherwise, a paid software within your budget and including the features you require can be your choice.

Check Scalability & Integrations

As your business grows, you would want your help desk support software also to scale and provide additional features. Moreover, you are already using many other applications in your business, which you would like to integrate with your help desk software to provide additional functionality. So, you just need to check that the help desk management software you have selected is scalable enough to grow with your business, and also can integrate with the other software tools you are using in your business like CRM, marketing automation software, email marketing software etc.

Trial Before Purchase

Many help desk system solutions provide a specific trial period before you make a purchase. Ask your customer support team to explore all the functionalities of the help desk tracking software you have chosen within the trial period, evaluate its benefits and shortcomings, and then decide on investing in it.

The price of the help desk system solutions depends on two factors - the number of users and the type of features. In case you have a limitation in your IT spend, you can go for free helpdesk software like Faveo Helpdesk, Zoho Desk, Spiceworks, and many more free helpdesk software tools. 

If these tools do not include the features you are looking for, depending on your investment budget, you can consider a help desk software system with a minimum cost like OfficeAmp worth only $1/month or with a maximum cost like NTR Cloud for Help Desk worth $804/year. If you are not comfortable with monthly or yearly subscriptions, you can also go through the details of the help desk tools requiring one-time payment like HelpDesk 3, which is worth $39 and Sitehelpdesk, which is worth $800.

For more options, you can go through the complete list of help desk system solutions intricately curated by the GoodFirms’ team.

Once you have invested in a help desk software, it becomes important that your customer service department uses it. Your employees might be reluctant to change, as they need to come out of their comfort zone initially to learn using the help desk tracking software. To make the most out of your investment into a help desk management software, it becomes necessary to make your employees embrace the new technology seamlessly.

Make everyone in the organization aware of the launch of new help desk software through email with the advantages of using it. After making them aware, you can call out a meeting and explain to the users about the process of how the help desk management software system would work and gel with the current process of managing customers. Also, organize your team and assign tasks relating to using the software to each team member. This would make them feel accountable and enthusiastic about this new change in the organization. A new user training or demo of the software would help your employees adopt the new help desk system easily and help you achieve the goal of providing impeccable customer service to your clients.

The customer support software industry is experiencing a transformation with the use of smart applications to fulfill the demands of the customers' high expectations these days. Although it remains static that the customer support agents are using customer support ticketing software to solve the queries of their customers, the changing aspect is the use of intelligent technologies in the making of help desk systems these days. So, here are some upcoming trends that are predicted to lead the future of the customer support software industry -

Personalization

Neither all customers are the same, nor are their requirements. They approach with their multiple queries at times, and all they need are the personalized solutions. The help desk system software providing personalized approach and suggestions is likely to close customer queries quickly and provide ultimate satisfaction to them. For example, sending personalized suggestions about the services you offer based on the customers’ previous purchases from your company can also help in up selling your services.

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning are being used almost everywhere these days, and the help desk is no longer an exception. With chatbots and intelligent search features, the help desk software system has enhanced the user experience and ease of providing prompt services to the customers. Many organizations have already executed AI & ML in their help desk processes to provide customer support that is one step ahead of what their competitors are providing. Very soon, AI and ML powered customer support software solutions will become indispensable in the help desk industry for better decision making in incident management and demand planning.

Proactive Customer Service

Gone are the days when the customer service agents used to wait for the customers to lodge a complaint or query about the products and services they have purchased. Now, the customer support agents need to initiate and offer help to the customers before they even ask for it. If you require to go a step further by amazing your customers with the help before they even ask for it, your customer support ticketing software needs to include functionalities that can support this trending approach of proactive customer service. For example, sending an automated email to the customer asking if they need to service their car after six months of availing the service.

IoT (Internet of Things)

IoT devices contain sensors that can generate real-time data and send that data over several devices. This real-time data can help customer support teams to address issues before they become problems for their customers. Attending the data coming from the devices can enable companies to leverage high-quality customer experiences and foster deeper relationships with them. For example, if a customer reaches out for a battery failure in an IoT enabled smart device, the customer support agent is already equipped with the basic information about that failure due to the real-time data transfer. This refrains customer support agents from asking repetitive questions to the customer, which saves time and adds to a better problem-solving experience.

Here are a few points that can support your decision to rely on GoodFirms' list of best HelpDesk software.

• Goodfirms follows the practice of listing software used in different business sectors after a thorough research process based on the latest technologies and trends
• This list of software and tools by Goodfirms includes in-depth details with authentic reviews given by the users who have already used these tools
• GoodFirms is consistently expanding the software listing categories and authentic reviews due to which it has been able to gain the trust of many companies located worldwide

Customers are becoming more demanding day by day, and also they have the power to make or break your business. A single bad experience of your product or service can provoke them to raise their voice against your brand. They can easily rate and review your business over a plethora of social media platforms available these days. That means your customers can speak about your brand anytime and anywhere. Thus, it becomes important to execute the right help desk management software. Besides quality & price of your offerings, extraordinary customer support also plays a major role in taking your business to the next level.

We hope that this buyers’ guide to help desk software can help you in selecting the right software sufficing the needs of your business. Still, if you have any queries, you can contact us as our support team would be happy to help you.