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Published August 31st, 2016 by

Top Features That Should be Present in a Great Help Desk Software

Top Features That Should be Present in a Great Help Desk Software

Choosing any software is not always easy. For one software there are hundreds of vendors out there. Sometimes the software will come with all the bells and whistles, sometimes just the things you need. This all boils down to the price, for every feature there is an additional payment. Sometimes you really have no use for them but they look like they might come in handy in the future, and you find yourself paying for something that you really have no use for. Some vendors are very convincing with their great advertisements that you find yourself paying more than you should have. That is the same with the top online help desk software, there are some vendors that will offer you more than you need so that you will pay top dollar. But this article will help you with that, enumerated below are the only features you will probably need with regards to help desk.

Outstanding Ticket Management

Help desk is the resource in charge of all of the customers’ grievances. It might be setting up problems or software installation, if you have questions about a product; the help desk is there to help you. The heart of all help desk software is the ticket management. This is the most important feature this software could have. All help desk will have this, so the quality you have to look for is it should be outstanding and exceptional. If you are going to pay big money for this software, you should get the one worthy of what you are paying for. Here are some key points that you should evaluate with regards to this feature.

  1. Assess the current workload of your customer support representatives. If they do not have a help desk software yet, check how they are doing the ticketing system. Is it arranged by the severity of the problem or whichever comes first? If you can see that their system is working, then the software you should get should mirror how your current ticketing system already works. If the current system is confusing and causes a lot of waiting time for the customer, then get a software that will help organize the ticketing system.
  2. When choosing a software, check how the escalation of the tickets are done. There might be problems when your agent would not know what to do, so how will the ticket be handled. Does the customer have to wait until a more competent person can handle his or her request or does the ticket escalate to a supervisor to be handled immediately?

Comprehensive History Base

When the same problems are being reported over and over, it might be time to do some tweaking with the product you are selling. But in the meantime, your agents should do all they can to answer all the questions volleyed their way. A comprehensive history base will greatly help with the same problems; because if every complaint and solution was saved in the database, the agents can just have the same answer ready. If your software does not have all the incidents logged, it will take more time for the agents to answer all questions individually. To save time and resolve problems quickly, a comprehensive history database is needed. The software might claim that they have a great knowledge base, but you won’t know that for sure until you tried. Here are some key questions you can ask the vendor when inquiring about the database:

  1. From how long back will the online help desk software be able to store all the complaints? If your company started five years ago, will the software be able to record all complaints from five years ago up to now?
  2. How easy is it to access the saved data from before? Will the dashboard be showing relevant information when a new ticket comes in? It would be good if the searching for answers to questions is easily done with the help desk tools.
  3. Where is the database saved? There are different types of servers, so asking where the data will be saved is important. Also the security of the database should also be asked about.

Access to Metrics and Statistics

Metrics and statistics are used to get the best help desk service a customer could ask for. Steve Wignall of RecipeForIt.com offered formulas to get the best practice of help desk service. One top feature that your help desk solution should have is the quick access to these metrics and statistics. The quick access will help with the evaluation and analysis of the response of the agents to all the complaints they receive. These statistics will also help the agents assess themselves about their performance. Here are some of the top metrics that should be in the software to monitor the health of your help desk service:

  1. New tickets. This will give you a sense of the average number of tickets your company receives in a certain amount of time. This will help you gauge if you have the right number of agents or you should employ more.
  2. Submission method. This is how you most of your customers contact you. Do they use phones, emails or social media. This will help you place more agents in channels that receive more contact.
  3. Wait times. This tells you the average amount of time a customer has to wait for a reply for you and how long it takes an agent to resolve a problem. According to the survey done by Opinion Research Corporation, waiting time is the second biggest frustration of customers. So if you could lessen waiting time, the better.

User Friendly

There are many help desk systems that can be complicated to use because of the many features they contain. One of the most important things for a software is the ease of use. The dashboard, which is most used by agents, should be easy to learn and manipulate. Here are some key points that should be evaluated.

  1. Is the interface user friendly? Waiting time is already a frustration for the customers, you don’t want to add to that because the software is hard to use.
  2. Are the buttons well labeled? When an agent is just starting out, the many different buttons can be confusing that is why they should be labeled. Then when the agent gets the hang of the software more, there should be an option to remove those.

Easy to Implement

According to the Help Desk Institute Practices and Salary Survey, the IT department spends 75% of their time in putting out fires. It might be the job of the IT team to help with problems regarding software and applications, especially the online help desk tools, but this is just too much of their time. When you look for an online help desk software, make sure that the software is easy to implement and won’t cause problems for the agents who will use it. The IT department should focus their time more on how to improve the metrics and statistics of the company and working towards the return on investment goals rather than answering questions all day long. The help desk system should always be up and running to ensure that all customers will be answered promptly and accurately. The IT’s job is to maintain and troubleshoot any problems that occurs with the system but it would be better if the software is easy to implement to begin with.

Easy Integration

A company rarely runs on just one software. That is why the top online help desk software should be easily integrated with all the other systems that your company already uses. You could read about this feature on the website of the software service provider or you could read reviews of help desk software available in review sites. Integration is necessary to get the best practices for the help desk system. Here again are some key points to evaluate:

  1. Integrating a software means configuring the system to fit the needs of your company, taking into consideration the other systems that will be integrated. So ask the software vendor, what the limitations on the software are. Is it easily configurable or will it take a horde of IT experts just to make it work.
  2. Will you need to reconstruct the whole system just to fit the new software in, or is it easily integrated.

Auto Assignment

An online help desk software deals with complaints received as tickets by the software. Choose a software that will assign tickets automatically and intellectually to agents. This means that those who are an expert on a topic will automatically get the tickets that are on their expertise. Auto assignment is common in most help desk software but intelligence might not be so common. Read online help desk software reviews to know which can auto assign tickets logically.

Help desk software is important in handling concerns from clients and customers. That is why you should get the best for your agents. Remember, 73% of customers love a company for their employees and customer care representatives. When choosing software, make sure that all the features mentioned above are included.

Searching for the best help desk software in the market? Check out the reviews at CrowdReviews.com to help with your decision.

Jeev Trika

Jeev is an executive leader with successful experience building research portals which recommend the best products and services in various highly competitive verticals.

Our rankings are completely independent, transparent, and community driven; they are based on user reviews and client sentiment. These help desk software companies had to earn their way up and didn't just pay their way up.

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