Customers appreciate quick, straightforward, and accurate responses to their queries. There will come a time when email, excel, and notes will no longer suffice to manage your customer service issues. The only way to automate your support process while keeping customer satisfaction high appears to be to use help desk software. Businesses can use a help desk, rather than overflowing email accounts that end up bottlenecking your customer service, to optimize communication systems, start providing faster responses to customers and enhance customer satisfaction.
What exactly is a web-based help desk application?
A web-based or cloud-based helpdesk software is a program that runs on a web server rather than as dedicated software on a local computer. A help desk ticketing system helps in the creation of a ticket, which is simply a file that includes all quantifiable insights into the reported issue. Requests must be captured and recorded for a ticketing system to function properly. After the request has been converted into tickets, you can track it through its entire life span, from generation to being resolved, using an automated ticketing system. A help desk ticketing system should automatically obtain as much data as possible when converting queries into tickets, like the email address, contact information, and device name, when converting these queries into support tickets. Doing so reduces the likelihood of data omissions or loss of data that can happen when data is entered manually.
Choosing the Right Help Desk System
In today’s market, there are a number of different help desk solution providers selling various types of systems for specific businesses. Choosing a help desk ticketing system can appear to be a difficult task in the face of so many options.
Web-Based Help Desk
A web-based or cloud-based help desk is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) program that runs on the help desk provider’s servers. You can simply log into the locally installed desktop or mobile app to gain access to all of the features of the help desk. You must choose between monthly or yearly subscriptions rather than making a one-time payment. The company takes care of upkeep, backups, and security, so your company doesn’t have to, which is the best part about using a web-based or cloud-based help desk.
Open-source Help Desk
Developers can access the source code of an open-source help desk. To put it another way, your developers can change or improve the tool based on your company’s requirements. Over time, your company can maximize the utility of the helpdesk by adding new features, fixing bugs, increasing security, improving the UI, and so on.
On-premise Help Desk
An on-premise help desk, also known as a self-hosted help desk, is licensed proprietary software that a company purchases. In layman’s terms, after having purchased the licensed software, businesses own and host the help desk under their web server. This means that businesses are fully responsible for storing information on their in-house servers, customizing the platform to meet individual needs, performing backups, and so on. A one-time setup fee is usually required for a self-hosted help desk, but updates may necessitate additional expenditures.
Considerations Before Investing in a Help Desk Tool
Ticketing systems are available in a variety of sizes, with a wide range of features, capabilities, and functionalities. Even though there are many help desk ticketing systems on the market, only a few will meet your requirements. It can be difficult to select the best one for your business.
We’ve gone over a few things to think about when choosing a helpdesk solution.
Type of Hosting
Long-term growth is essential for all organizations. If the help desk ticketing system you choose is incapable of meeting your company’s evolving demand, you should reevaluate. Ticketing software is typically available in three formats that we have discussed earlier: cloud-based, on-premise, and open source solutions. All the solutions have distinct benefits and drawbacks. Compare the three types of hosting and pick the one that best fits your needs.
User Friendliness
Instead of complicating your job, customer support software should be designed to make it easier. As a result, make sure to select a product that is easy to use. Even if you bought a powerful help desk solution with a lot of powerful features, it won’t prove to be extremely beneficial if your employees don’t know how to use it properly. You should invest in a solution that is reliable, simple to use, and requires little to no upkeep and training to deal with this. Take into account inquiring about the software’s features and functionality, and customization options offered by each help desk provider you’re considering, to ensure that the software meets your needs.
Integration
The typical business infrastructure comprises multiple tools and networks that automate processes and streamline operations. For seamless information exchange, ensure that the software you’ve chosen can integrate with your existing business processes and other third-party applications. For example, if you are using any e-commerce or live chat application, consider how adding customer support software will benefit or impact them, in addition to other systems. There are numerous options available, so you’ll want to select the best software for your needs.
(Tip: WSDesk – The ELEX help desk plugin and WSChat, a live chat plugin, work together seamlessly. You will end up saving a lot of time if your website’s helpdesk and chat support are managed by the same customer service representatives because you can seamlessly import agent profiles from WSDesk instead of creating new agents profiles. When used in conjunction with the Pay For Support Add-On for WSDesk Support Ticket System, you can easily generate a new revenue stream by charging for your high-quality technical expertise.)
Technical Assistance
If a help desk ticketing system provider offers technical support, it is one of the most significant factors when selecting customer support tools. You’ll want a help desk that is extremely simple to use and has a proactive technical support team so that your employees can get started right away.
Value for Money
Naturally, one of the most significant factors while selecting a help desk ticketing system should be the price. Buying an expensive help desk software with a long list of additional tools isn’t always the best decision. Begin with a basic budget and decide on the features that you absolutely need within that budget. It will assist you in gaining a better understanding of the value that software provides to your company. That is the best part about using a free web-based help desk software when you start, and you can invest in the premium as and when your business, as well as your requirements, grows over time.
What Should You Look for in a Help Desk Ticketing System?
A company’s success depends on its ability to provide excellent customer service. The ELEX WordPress Helpdesk plugin provides every one of the necessary components for a helpdesk system, in addition to being very easy to use.
- In just a few clicks, you can create and manage an unlimited number of tickets, as well as an unlimited number of agent profiles.
- Because of the AJAX-based design, support agents can use the entire functionality of the plugin without having any loading issues.
- Triggers and automation for streamlining actions based on predetermined rules and conditions.
- With the dedicated email address of your domain, convert your unread emails to tickets using IMAP or Google OAuth. After importing emails into the ELEX WordPress Helpdesk plugin, you can delete them. Tickets can be created and ticket responses can also be sent via email. Customers can also be emailed status updates on their tickets.
- By blocking specific email IDs, you can prevent spammers from sending and receiving emails.
- Common responses for queries are accessible to all customer service representatives enabling them to respond much more quickly. For frequently asked questions, WSDesk allows you to create and save “Canned responses.” Additionally, because QuillJS is integrated with WSDesk, Agents have a variety of rich text formatting options when writing responses to customers.
- Generate support agent performance evaluations for the last seven days and quickly assess what you can do to enhance the customer support operations.
- Using the Satisfaction score, evaluate each support agent’s performance. The Satisfaction survey, which can be completed with a simple trigger, is used to determine this score.
- To help customers more effectively, attach pictures, documents, and zip files.
- All tickets and settings information can be easily backed up and restored using an XML file. While moving to a different domain, keep all of your tickets and current WSDesk settings.
To Wrap Up
After you’ve looked into the points discussed in this help desk software guide, discuss with your customer support team and figure out everything they want out of the help desk system. Determine your customers’ expectations, align the goals of your support team, and examine the software to boost your overall productivity.
If you’re looking for a feature-rich yet affordable help desk tool, your search has come to an end. The WSDesk help desk has been meticulously designed to make employees and customers happy. WSDesk is trusted by thousands of companies to make every customer service interaction count. If you have any other questions regarding IT web-based help desk software, please let us know in the comments section below.
