How to Set Up a Simple & Efficient Open Source Help Desk Management System for Residential Societies?

In a home, people may encounter so many small and major issues in a day regarding waste management, electricity issues, cleaning, water supply, and so on. Then how would it be in a residential society where a lot of families live?!

Usually, in a home, we have to call the concerned persons to resolve each and every issue. But in residential societies, families will be living in different flats or apartments in the same building or in the same plot. And, all complaints are raised to the responsible committee or association.

It is never ending as the association or the committee in charge has to receive complaints every day. Some complaints could be very urgent like problems in the water supply as it must be resolved as soon as possible. We can’t even imagine a day without water! Some other issues like issues on CCTV cameras can take time to resolve. Hence, there are issues that must be prioritized and solved on time.

Since there are so many families who report issues at different times in a day, the committee has to report and contact the concerned person to solve it quickly. In most cases, the committee members or the concerned person might be a resident in the same society and they may not be available all time to listen to all complaints from the residents. Sometimes it may take a long time to fix an issue as the committee may miss some complaints among other priority issues. When it comes to a family, even a small issue could stop their whole day.

It would be better if you provide a portal for the residents to raise a complaint online for solving them in a systematic way.

So how can you make it in a systematic way?

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Time to Go for a Help Desk!

Yes, a help desk is a much needed tool for a committee/association to manage the complaints and concerns of their residents. Your residential society might have a website, so, you can add a dedicated page and portal for receiving complaints using a help desk tool. If your residential society does not have a website, no worries, as it is quite easy to create a simple website for adding the complaint form or portal in it.

How Does the Process Will Work with a Help Desk System?

Well, it is basically removing the inconvenience and issues that could be encountered due to the manual processing. When it is done manually, residents have to wait till the association meeting or keep calling the person who manages the complaints from the residents. Since it is manual work, there is a high chance of missing some complaints or delaying the time of getting them resolved.

When the reporting is done through a support help desk system, it will be easy for the residents as they can raise a ticket at any time from anywhere. When you consider the members of the committee, they won’t miss any small or major issues raised by the residents. They can solve it by assigning it to multiple people at the same time.

Other benefits of using a help desk system are,

The solution is trackable by the residents as well as the association.
Each resident can have an account to raise the tickets. Hence all the tickets raised by a specific resident can be easily tracked.
The member in the association can also create a ticket on behalf of the resident.
If the family members got stuck with the issue, some other person from anywhere in the world can raise the tickets.
Association can take immediate action to solve the issues based on the priority and urgency of the tickets.

In addition to these points, there are a lot of benefits you would get by using a robust help desk system.

How Can You Add a Help Desk System?

Since there are so many help desk software, plugins, and tools available in the market, you can choose one for your residential society. But most of them might not fit into this domain as they miss some features you require or some might be overpriced to have the features you require. And, building one custom help desk is not budget-friendly and it is not required as there are open source help desk systems available in the market.

Basically, open source help desks are built with an intention to tweak them according to the requirements of any business or person. Hence, you can go for an open source help desk system and go through its available features. If all the available features are quite satisfying, you can go for it. But here, we need to add some specifications for our residential society. Hence, you can either take the source code of the system if they are available for the public and build a system with the help of an expert developer.

But some advanced systems help you to personalize a system from their side. So, which is the best open source help desk management system for residential societies?

Open Source HelpDesk & Customer Support Ticketing System – Simple & Flexible is one of the best in the industry that comes as an out-of-the-box solution, but it is customizable according to your needs.

Open Source HelpDesk & Customer Support Ticketing System in a Nutshell

This help desk system is a complete package that allows you to make the system fit into any domain and it works irrespective of any website platform such as WordPress, Wix, or Shopify, etc without compromising on the performance. And, it comes up with all features of an established help desk plugin that already has 10000+ happy customers – WSDesk – ELEX WordPress Helpdesk & Customer Support Ticket System Plugin.

Their ticket management is impeccable and they come with 3 subscription plans from which you can choose one according to the number of tickets you are required to manage in a day. They ensure 100% data privacy and security as you can store your data on your server without any external intervention. And, it is an agent-friendly system as you can add unlimited agent profiles and configure them to trigger proper notifications to them for faster responses.

Here, in this scenario, you can add the members and the concerned persons as agents in the system who are responsible to manage the tickets. And their expert team is available 24/7 to listen to the issues you may encounter while using the system. And they will help you with any customizations on features that need to be added at any time.

They will also help you to set knowledge base articles or documentation with the help desk system. Here, you can add the document or a sheet of the contact details of technicians, plumbers, etc. Also, if you would like to integrate any live chat or third-party tools with the system, they are also open for that as well.

Moreover, if there is no person to maintain and manage your residential society’s system, you can hand it over to their team itself since they offer managed hosting services. If you do so, they will be taken care of by your system, its version updates, and feature updates with high security on your data.

Well, now let us check how you can add this system with Open Source HelpDesk & Customer Support Ticketing System for your residential society complaint management with an example.

1. Install WSDesk Plugin on Your Website

The first step is to subscribe, install and activate the plugin on your website. You can subscribe to it from its product page.

To know how to set it up in your website and configure the basic features, refer to the article – How to set up WSDesk – WordPress Helpdesk Plugin?

2. Create a Support Form/ Portal on Your Website

Customers need to raise tickets through the portal or support form you provide on your website. Since it is a residential society help desk system, you are required to add the essential fields related to the amenities and utilities on the form. If you are not technically savvy, then their expert team will help you to create the perfect portal for you.

Check an example of a support form I have created on a residential society help desk system in the screenshot below:

This is just an example of a form. You can add any required fields according to the issues that could be faced by your residents.

On this form, the residents can enter their email ID for the agents to get back to them with the solution, and a subject to raise the issue, and their flat number and description for more details regarding the issue. I have added 2 drop-down pick up lists, one for choosing the apartment and the other for choosing the amenity or utility on which they are facing the issues.

Why I have added these 2 drop-down lists is because, according to the apartment, the committee can assign the concerned person who manages the issues on that specific apartment. And, according to utility or amenity chosen by the resident, the association can contact and assign the technician or the concerned person to deal with it.

Check the screenshot below:

Residents can enter the details and attach a file if required to give more clarity regarding the issue and, click the Submit Request button.

Check an example in the screenshot below:

After submitting the form, the page will show a message as in the screenshot below:

If they click the ‘Check your Existing Request’ button, they can view the status of their ticket as it is solved, pending, or unsolved. If they have raised tickets before, it will be shown as in rows. Check the screenshot below:

They can view the ticket number, requested date and time, the person assigned to solve the ticket, and the status of the ticket.

The residents’ part is done and they can wait for the solution for their problem.

Now, let us check how it will work on the backend side, that is, the dashboard of agents or the person in charge.

The persons who are handling the complaints can go to the WSDesk dashboard and view the tickets there. Check the screenshot below:

Here, the agents/admin can see all received tickets and the agents/responsible person to deal with the tickets. Here you can see that the tickets were gone under specific apartments and show the total number of tickets received from each apartment under Ticket Views.

The responsible person can open the ticket to view the details.

Here, I have assigned the ticket to a member who deals with CCTV issues – John, and he added a reply message after solving the issue by choosing ‘Submit as Solved’.

You can submit the response with the corresponding status of the ticket and close it when the issue has been resolved.

After solving the issue, when the resident checks the ticket they have submitted, they can view the ticket as Solved.

This is how it works!

But, this is just an example I have shown in this article. If you need to incorporate some different features and functionalities in your residential society, feel free to discuss it with the support team. You will get help to build a system exactly the way you want it.

To sum up,

Complaints in residential societies are never ending. It will be raised by the residents every day on different things. Hence, it is an ideal way of raising complaints and solving them in a systematic and trackable way. With this simple, yet robust open source help desk system, you can make the process smooth and easy.