Many small businesses wonder if they should have an IT help desk or just rely on tech-savvy individuals to solve problems. The answer typically depends on the size of the company, and there are reasons to consider each. Searching for the best help desk software can help your team decide whether an application is valuable for your business after all, by trying to tally between the many capabilities which vendors provide, and the service gaps which exist in your business.
With businesses increasingly depending on cloud services and remote work today, it is imperative to establish an IT support system for employees and customers, no matter where they may be located. Whether this happens via a dedicated IT department, or a third-party service provider, the benefits of having a help desk program that is dedicated to IT-related issues is worthwhile - and for a few good reasons.
Before you begin the purchasing process, compare help desk products to determine which vendors offer the features you need, and within your budget. This is crucial, as it will help you and your team invest in the right product, without having to regret later.
The below list of help desk benefits will also help you to understand what your business may or may not require, much better. Read on to know more!
1) A single, centralized place to report issues.
The IT help desk provides a centralized location to deal with technical issues. Employees don’t have to wonder if they should call a particular engineer or programmer or member of the support team. They simply dial the IT help desk with the knowledge that they are trained to handle complex problems. Top help desk software also offers intelligent routing capabilities, forgoing the need for a human agent to receive incoming inquiries; this way, inquiries are automatically routed to the right person, thereby speeding up escalation and resolution.
2) Ticket generation and feedback optimization.
An IT help desk can make sure that issues are handled in the order they are received by generating tickets for employees. This also provides a time frame for when the problem should be resolved – if there’s just two other tickets for the help desk to deal with, the employee will know the IT staff will be coming by soon.
Help desk software for IT support may also offer the option to create canned responses to issues that are either common, or have no immediately identifiable cause. Agents can simply select and send these pre-written responses, to reduce turnaround times yet provide users with actionable information.
3) A predetermined and seamless workflow.
The staff of an IT help desk can be trained on a common set of procedures. This provides a systematic approach for when they have to handle technical issues – they’ll start with the most common solution, and move on from there. This tends to solve problems much better than trying out different things at random to see if they work.
Help desk products also help with automating such workflows, through custom configurations. In turn, this can significantly reduce the need for agents to engage in mundane and/or repetitive tasks, so their time and skills can be better spent on crucial tasks and problems that require their undivided attention.
4) Historical logs and analytics.
The IT help desk can create a historical log of all the different problems they encounter at the company. This documentation can then be used as a reference point if the issue should pop up again, since they’ll know how the problem was resolved. Historical logs are also useful if an employee is having an ongoing problem and needs to contact the IT department multiple times to settle the issue.
All this data can be taken several notches further by evaluating trends and patterns pertaining to inquiries; forecast potential issues before they occur, in order to get prepared well ahead of time. As gradually accumulating historical logs convert to big data repositories, use cloud-based BI tools to support key business decisions on the part of you and your various teams. From evaluating the most common type of inquiries, to understanding user sentiments as inquiries are made, your business can gain massive benefits from the data that is generated via help desk software.
5) Proactive prevention.
The IT help desk can use the information they gather on a daily basis to run performance reports. These can then show which computer systems and pieces of hardware are consistently experiencing bottleneck issues. The company can then be proactive about replacing them (provided it’s within the budget) and not have to worry about the system suddenly crashing at an inopportune time.
6) Performance surveys.
It can often be difficult to accurately judge job performance. An IT help desk can manage this issue by sending out automatic surveys after an issue is concluded. If the IT staff took too long to solve the problem or behaved in an unprofessional manner, the survey will reflect that.
