How to Set Up a Simple & Efficient Open Source Help Desk Management System for Real Estate Builders, Construction Sites & Warehouses?

Customers are always curious and interested to know the progress of work since you commit their work to its finishing line. The same can be seen in real estate, construction fields, and warehouses. That is, when a customer is required to build a home or their office, they have to consult a construction company and discuss it with experts from various departments such as architects, engineers, suppliers of materials, financial managers, and so on.

Only after these processes are complete, they will start working on the project. These projects must be tracked by the customers to know the work progress at any time from anywhere in the world. And, if they find any issues or defects from your side, they need to contact the concerned person. But how can these queries and concerns be managed and solved by the construction companies when multiple individual customers, as well as organizations, raise their concerns through multiple sources at the same time?

Customers might raise queries and concerns through phone calls, SMS, email, and social media platforms. So each and every query must be tracked and solved on time for earning loyal and happy customers. Customers may need to know about the current working status of their building, or they need a discussion with the architect regarding the design change they require in their office room and so on. But, how can you manage your customers’ queries from multiple sources at the same time?

There we need to consider the idea of a help desk system!

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The Idea of a Help Desk System

It would be better if there is a help desk system for the customers for making everything on track and systematic. And, in the backend, the construction company could assign the employees to handle the queries as tickets received from multiple resources. The support team can assign the tickets to various departments, such as engineers, vendors, technicians, electricians, and so on based on the requirements and urgency of the tickets received. They can set the priorities on the tickets and solve them one by one.

The same happens in the real estate and warehouse industries. In real estate, you can create portals for the buyers or sellers accordingly to avoid the problem of handling a multitude of calls, enquiries, and SMS in a day. If you miss some queries, or unable to attend a call, you might miss a great sale of that day!

Similarly, in warehouse industries, you might require to receive tickets and queries from customers if they encounter some issues while using the products you manufacture. If they are some equipment or machines, you might require to give proper training sessions frequently in the beginning stage of their usage. Also, you should be there to solve other technical issues by assigning to the various experts in your company. After solving the issues, you can close the tickets one by one.

Hence, you will become a customer-friendly organization as well as your customers will always be happy and satisfied.

So you have to find a perfect help desk solution that totally fits all your requirements or one that is capable of adding all your requirements along with its existing requirements and personalization options. It should be trackable by the customers as well as the team that handles the system. Also, all queries and concerns from multiple sources must be automatically converted to tickets and received under the respective departments. From where the support team must be able to assign them to different agents/experts to handle the issues. Finally, it should be closed on time based on its urgency and priority. This is what, an ideal help desk system should help you to work it out.

Which is the Best Help Desk Solution in the Industry?

If you search on the internet, you would get a handful of help desk software, tools, extensions, and plugins with different sets of features as free of cost as well as paid ones. But, they won’t completely satisfy all your requirements as you need some customization and personalization to make it a system for your organization. And, if you get one help desk software that is capable of satisfying all your needs, it may not be compatible with your website platform and third-party tools you need to integrate.

The perfect and cost-effective solution is to opt for an open source help desk system.

The Importance of an Open Source Help Desk System

As I have already mentioned, an open source help desk system is a cost effective solution as it won’t cost that much to build a complete custom help desk software for your organization. You can download their source code from a public platform and tweak its features with the help of an expert developer.

But, some teams would help in the customization of their systems from their side itself. You can contact and sit with them to discuss your requirements and ideas. They will tweak it and add or remove the features to make it a tailor-made help desk system for you. Hence, you wouldn’t compromise on the quality of the system since the personalization will be done by the developers of the help desk system itself.

Open Source HelpDesk & Customer Support Ticketing System – Simple & Flexible is such a help desk solution as you can approach its team to alter the system for your organization.

The Major Peculiarities of Open Source HelpDesk & Customer Support Ticketing System

The first and foremost advantage of using this open source help desk system is it is compatible with all website platforms such as WordPress, Shopify, Magento, Wix, etc. It comes from the family of an established WordPress help desk system – WSDesk – ELEX WordPress Helpdesk & Customer Support Ticket System plugin that runs with 10,000+ happy customers. Hence, it inherits all its features into this open source system. But choosing this open source help desk system benefits you in many other ways.

It is an agent-friendly help desk solution since its ticket management is awesome. They do not limit you from adding as many agent profiles as required. You can understand the solved, pending, and unsolved tickets in just a glance. And, easily understand the tickets received and their count under the respective departments easily. And, the support team can assign the ticket to solve the issue for the concerned person. You can set notification triggers to send it to the agents for closing the tickets on time.

You can either make the support portal as one of the pages on your website or, as a separate subdomain for better performance. And the data can be stored on your server for ensuring 100% security and data privacy.

The help desk system’s support team is available 24/7 to assist you regarding any technical issues, security problems, and so on. And, they will help you to set the knowledge base and business case articles efficiently as the customers would get a list of these articles when they type similar text on the subject field in the portal. This would reduce the number of tickets and make the customers proactive in dealing with issues.

It is open for any third-party tool and software integration with your system. And, they will help you integrate your email, live chat, and social media accounts with the system by converting queries from these platforms to trackable tickets.

If you are required to handle your entire help desk system for concentrating only on your business, they offer managed hosting services for you. You can hand over your help desk system in their hands and focus on your business without any concerns about the software and feature updates.

Well, still the main highlight and peculiarity of this out-of-the-box help desk solution is its extreme customization and personalization capability. So, I shall explain an example of the custom help desk solution I have configured with this open source help desk solution for a real estate company.

Their requirement is to provide a portal for the customers who would like to visit the plot/house/flat to buy.

An Example of Setting Up a Custom Help Desk Solution for Real Estate Company

Step 1: The first step is to install the WSDesk plugin on your business website. Go through its product page and documentation for more details regarding its subscription and basic configuration processes.

Step 2: The next step is to create a support form or portal for the customers to raise tickets. You can create a custom portal with the help of a developer or the help desk system’s expert team as it requires personalized fields according to your profession.

Check the example below of a support form I have created for the real estate company.

This is a customized form as some of the fields are drop-down lists as the customers can choose one option from the list. When they choose one from the list, it would go under the corresponding department in the help desk system. Check an example below:

This is a customized form, you can create one as you required.

Customers can fill-up the form and click the Submit Request button. Check the example below.

After submitting the request, it will display to the customer as in the screenshot below.

The customers can view all tickets they have submitted by clicking the Existing visit request.

In the backend, that is, in the help desk system, the ticket will be received and the responsible person can assign it to the concerned party to fix the details regarding the visit. Check the screenshot below:

You can view the tickets received for different projects in this tab. The support team member can assign it to the concerned person in their team or the project team can be directly taken care of the tickets.

The concerned person can open the ticket and assign it to the agent. Check the screenshot below:

After solving the issue, the agent can close the ticket by submitting it as solved. Check the screenshot below:

The customer can view the ticket and its status by clicking the Existing visit request button.

The customer can view all the tickets they have raised in a list and their status. Check the screenshot below:

This is how it works. The customer can view their ticket status at any time anywhere in the world.

This is just an example I have explained above. Your real estate or construction company might require a different set of features and fields in the portal. You can configure them accordingly with this open source help desk system.

Conclusion

The help desk system helps to provide the best customer service and support effectively in a systematic way. You can communicate your special and unique requirements with the support team and get your personalized help desk system as soon as possible!