A Help Desk software is a single centralized information hub and support management system where every customer queries are addressed and issues are resolved. Also called as ‘Customer support software’, it helps companies to provide efficient support to customers by automating the customer response and resolution process using the Ticket Management System.
Usually Help Desk comes in two types or varieties :
1. Self Hosted / On Premises Help Desk Software
2. Cloud / Hosted / SaaS Help Desk
Self Hosted Help Desk can be installed on your own server and everything will be under your control and access whereas Cloud based Help Desk is the software hosted on a third party set of servers called “Cloud”. So which one is better – Self Hosted Help Desk or Cloud Help Desk ? Let us analyze the best out of both the types of Customer Support Help Desk system.
On-Premises / Self Hosted vs Cloud Based Help Desk:
With the above points, we will not be able firmly say whether Self Hosted or Cloud Based Help Desk is the best. Both has its own advantages and disadvantages. So it is in our hands to decide which Help Desk is best suitable for you. It is important to choose the Help Desk Chat Software that satisfies all your organization requirements and which helps you to provide 100% customer satisfaction.
Anyhow, Help Desk Software like Output Desk offers you both the solutions – Self Hosted & Cloud.
All of the features of Help Desk Customer Support is available in both the solutions.
Features of Help Desk Software – Customer Support Software
Irrespective of the hosting type, Help Desk Chat Software offers you many features that can enhance your customer support, increase your customer satisfaction level and improve employee productivity and operational/business benefits.
The main features that line up your Customer Support Service are :
- Ticket Management
- Live Chat
- Collaboration
- Automation
- Social Media Engagement
- Reporting & Analysis
Ticket Management – Simple & Easy Ticketing System
Ticketing system or ticket management system automates the customer requests/queries from multiple channels such as Email, Live chat, Web chat, Social. Centralized shared hub for all your customer interaction is the Ticketing System.
➤ Shared Inbox for Team
Track the incoming support tickets from multiple channels in one central inbox. Automatic conversion of all incoming customer requests into tickets with Ticket categorization, ticket assignment and prioritization. Streamline your customer support workflow with Shared Team Inbox.
➤ Canned Response
Save replies of frequent common queries and send instant replies to customers. Canned responses are nothing but predefined responses or saved replies for common queries of your customers.
➤ SLA Management
Setup the response and resolution time for each tickets using SLA Policies and automate your ticketing system.
➤ Collision Detection
Avoid sending multiple responses to tickets. Know which agent is replying to which tickets.
➤ Ticket Log
Entire Conversation of each customer from any channel is logged which helps you to access, understand your customer well with Chat or Ticket histories and provide the best support. Track the entire communication of your customer.
➤ Merge or Link Tickets
Link the tickets of a customer by merging the tickets. Merging the tickets of a customer helps you to track everything about that particular customer easily.
Many more Ticketing features which automate your support service are available which are discussed under Automation session below.
Live Chat
Engage with the visitors of your website through live chat. Provide support to your customer through real time live chat. Setup contact or web form in your website which gets converted to tickets when your customers submit the web form.
➤ Live Chat within Ticket
Get every live chat as Tickets in Help Desk Software and easily track customer conversation history. There is no need of navigating between different tools.
➤ Omnichannel Help Desk
Allow your customers to contact you from any communication channel such as email, live chat, website form/contact form, facebook, & twitter.
➤ Send Chat Invitation
Convert your website visitors to your customers by inviting them to live chat. Use Pre-set attractive Chat Invitations in your website to chat with customers.
➤ Offline Chat
Pave way for your customers to reach you even when you are offline. Receive the submitted offline chats as Tickets in your Help Desk and provide support to your customer through Email when you are back at desk.
➤ Know your visitor’s mind
Read what your customer is typing in real time live chat before they send you the message. It will be easy for you to provide quick and right support.
And many more including Ticket automation which is discussed below under Automation.
Collaboration
Working as a Team is better than as individuals since team work involves improvement in your customer support. It will be easy for you to work together as a team ans provide quick and right efficient support to your customers at the right time.
➤ Private Internal Notes
Specify the important information of tickets as Internal Notes within the Tickets so that every support agent can view and understand more about the tickets. Internal Notes are private only to the support agents of your organization.
➤ Collaborate with your Teammates within Ticket
Discuss on major issues with your teammates within ticket just by allowing them inside your tickets using @mention. Just add the name of your teammate in the Internal notes section using @mention. This feature will be very much useful at times of urgent help from higher superiors and come out with best solutions.
Automation
Automate your tickets and save your time spent on customer tickets. Ticket automation can be done by using SLA Policies(as mentioned earlier) and Ticket Chat Rules. Tickets can assigned automatically to the right agents and right team/department automatically.
➤ Ticket Rules
Ticket Automation can be done through triggers which are set as Ticket Rules. Triggers can be set to start at the time of ticket creation as well as when receiving reply from customer via email or live chat or web form. For instance, triggers can be set for emails, subject lines, department, agent so that the ticket/chat gets assigned to the right department/ agent. Many such actions can be automated using Ticket rules.
➤ SLA Policies
SLA Policies are also used for automating ticketing system. You can set the responding and resolution time for tickets. It is an agreement/target that your team must respond to customers and resolve their issues within the time set. When the team fails to provide support within the set time i.e when the SLA policy is breached, the ticket can be escalated automatically to higher officials. It can be used to prioritize tickets. Add holidays to pause SLA policies during holidays.
➤ Chat Rules
Separate rules can be set for live chats. Chats you receive in your ticketing system can be routed to right agents automatically. Triggering actions such as sending invitation, routing chat, hiding chat bar can be done based on certain conditions such as website visitor country, url, region, etc. So when chats arrive, right support can be given quickly and spam chats can be ignored/blocked using “Banned IP” option.
Social Media Engagement
Manage your customers communication from all your communication channels in a unified single platform. This will help you to respond to your customers from Help Desk Software itself without moving to social media accounts. It is very important for a company to provide omnichannel support to your customers in this Internet world. Some of the communication channels are Email, Live Chat, Web Form, Facebook, Twitter.
Reporting & Analysis
Monitor metrics such as agents performance, source of tickets, visitor, sla, etc and identify the areas of improvement. Enhance your customer service using reports that have complete insights about your ticketing system. Real time reports are
- Operator/Agent Report – Displays the list of operators and their corresponding number of responded tickets and chats.
- Chat Report – Metrics on resolved chats, missed chats and offline chats.
- SLA Report – Metrics on tickets executed based on SLA policies, tickets responded within time, resolved within time, etc.
The above discussed features are the ones that are available in every help desk software. To take your customer support service level to the next level, you will surely need Ticketing Help Desk Software like Output Desk.