Ultimate Guide to Help Desk with Features & Benefits

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Deliver Efficient Customer Support with Omnichannel Helpdesk

Turn your customer issues into meaningful conversations across all channels in a unified manner with Omni24’s omnichannel help desk.

Connect All Support Channels at One Place
Integration of all support channels (email, chat, social media, phone) into one platform helps customers in a smooth transition between channels without needing to repeat their issue. It saves time and improves the overall customer experience.
Automate Your Processes with Workflows
Setting up custom workflows helps to automate repetitive tasks, which saves plenty of time for your team. It ensures that no support request goes unanswered and also increases team productivity.
Prioritize Critical Conversations with SLAs
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) help you prioritize critical conversations by setting response times for different channels. It ensures you never overlook important customer inquiries and keeps your team accountable.

Streamline Your Support Operations
Consolidation of all support channels into a single platform streamlines your customer service efforts. Omni24 makes it easy for teams to manage client inquiries from one platform without the need of switching tabs.
Make Team Collaboration a Breeze
Shared inbox software and collaboration tools together make team collaboration a cakewalk. Omni24 makes it easy for teams to work together, assign tasks, and share knowledge for better customer resolution.
Track Agent Action with Audit Logs
Audit logs allow you to see every interaction between agents and customers. This helps you to identify areas for improvement and ensures compliance with company policies.

Do you ever have trouble managing your customer service inquiries? If yes, you are not alone with the increasing popularity of digital customer service, keeping happy customers is an ever-evolving challenge.

An effective help desk is the backbone of a successful customer service strategy. It effectively handles tracking and resolution of customer service queries and leads to increased customer satisfaction. Leveraging the right help desk solution can ensure that all of your customer interactions are handled quickly and efficiently.

1 What is a Help Desk? Definition
2 6 Different Types of Help Desk
3 Must-Have Features of a Help Desk Software
4 How Does Help Desk Benefit the Business?
5 How to Implement and Manage a Successful Help Desk?
6 How to Choose the Best Help Desk for Your Business?
7 Best Help Desk Tools to Consider
8 What Makes of a Good Help Desk: 7 Key Characteristics
9 The Role of AI and Automation in Help Desk Management
10 Harnessing the Power of Help Desk for Business Growth
11 Scale Your Conversations with Omni24’s Digital Customer Experience Platform
12 FAQs on Help Desk Software

What is a Help Desk? Definition

A help desk is defined as a centralized resource that provides assistance and support to users who have product or service-related queries. It includes desktop computers, mobile devices, software applications, networks, internet connectivity, etc. Businesses usually have an IT help desk or a technical support team to manage user requests and issues.

The primary purpose of a help desk is to ensure that technology is functioning properly and to provide support when there is an issue. It provides a single point of contact for users to report their issues or inquire about technical problems.

A help desk uses knowledge management software, customer relationship management systems, and automated ticket management systems to quickly address user requests. Help desk staff are experienced personnel who have a deep understanding of the products, policies, and procedures of the business and provide effective resolution of customer issues.

6 Different Types of Help Desk

A help desk is a centralized resource that provides technical support to users both internal as well as external. There are several types of help desks designed to cater to different needs.

1. Internal Help Desk

An internal help desk is designed to provide support to employees within an organization. It handles issues related to hardware, software, network connectivity, and other IT-related problems. Internal help desks are essential for ensuring smooth operations and minimizing downtime for employees.

2. External/Customer Support Help Desk

External help desk is focused on providing support to customers or external users of a company’s products or services. It helps resolve issues related to product usage, troubleshooting, and general inquiries. External help desks play a crucial role in maintaining customer satisfaction and building brand loyalty.

3. Call Center Help Desk

A call center help desk is designed to handle a high volume of incoming calls from customers or users. It typically involves a team of support agents who assist over the phone. Call center help desks are commonly used in industries such as telecommunications, banking, and customer service-oriented businesses.

4. Web-based Help Desk

A web-based help desk allows users to submit support requests, track issues, and access knowledge bases through a web interface. This type of help desk is convenient for remote support and can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection. It often includes features like email integration, self-service portals, and automated ticket routing.

5. Managed Service Provider (MSP) Help Desk

MSPs offer outsourced IT support services to other businesses. Their help desks are designed to provide remote monitoring, maintenance, and support for various IT systems and infrastructure. MSP help desks are particularly useful for organizations that lack dedicated in-house IT resources.

6. Specialized Help Desk

Some companies may have help desks dedicated to specific areas or domains, such as networking, cybersecurity, software development, or healthcare IT. These specialized help desks employ experts with in-depth knowledge and expertise in their respective fields.

Must-Have Features of a Help Desk Software

Help Desk software is a great solution for businesses that look forward to supporting their customers efficiently. Let’s explore what it has to offer that benefits your business.

Shared Team Inbox

A shared team inbox allows support agents to collaborate, assign tickets, and manage customer conversations from a single platform. The inbox feature is a great way to streamline communication and increase customer response time.

Knowledge Base

Help desk software generally includes a searchable database of information that customers can access for self-service support. This helps customers quickly find answers to their questions without having to contact your team for assistance.

Omnichannel Capabilities

The omnichannel capabilities help customers make an easy transition between different communication channels like email, chat, and social media, to contact your team. It empowers your support team to unify all client queries in one place and manage them effectively.

SLA & Audit Logs

Service Level Agreements (SLA) are often included with help desk automation software that allows businesses to track the average time the team takes to respond to customer inquiries. Audit logs also allow you to track changes that were made by various members of your team over time.

AI Chatbots for Support Automation

AI Chatbots can automate customer service tasks and handle and manage them 24×7. It can provide instant responses to common queries and the complex queries are directed toward the right department/ team to provide the relevant response to the query in real time.

How Does Help Desk Benefit the Business?

Help desk software is a powerful tool for businesses to provide customer support, collaboration, automation and data analytics. Understanding the benefits of help desk can significantly enhance overall efficiency.

Customer support automation: The role of help desk software is to automate manual tasks and operations that free up valuable time and resources. The time can be allocated to more important tasks that eventually will increase the efficiency.

Deliver awesome customer experience: A good help desk software enables companies to deliver exceptional customer experience. The features like automated tickets and notifications, real-time response times encourage customers to get in touch with the support team when needed.

Improve team productivity & collaboration: Help desk software enables the support staff to collaborate on issues in real time, improving productivity and communication internally. It streamlines the process of approving changes/requests based on user feedback from other departments which leads to faster resolutions.

Provide 24×7 customer self service: Businesses can offer an easily accessible self-service portal with a help desk tool. Customers can have 24×7 access to common issues without needing to connect with the support team. it provides convenience to those who need help when the support team is not available.

Provide contextual answers: A help desk software allows businesses to store indexed knowledge bases and FAQs which enables agents to quickly access answers to related questions. It reduces the response time to answer basic queries and saves time for complex issues that require deeper understanding.

Measure your customer support performance: Companies can closely monitor team performance and trend analysis in order to provide suggestions where necessary. Also, provide metrics into customer satisfaction levels which is vital for understanding areas of improvement within your customer support process.

How to Implement and Manage a Successful Help Desk?

Help desk is often the first line of contact between customers and your business, so it’s important to get it right. Follow these help desk best practices to run a successful customer service.

1. Define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

The first step in measuring and improving help desk performance is to establish clear and measurable KPIs. These KPIs will help evaluate the effectiveness of the help desk and identify areas that need improvement.

Some common help desk KPIs include:

First response time: How quickly help desk agents respond to customer inquiries.
Average resolution time: The time it takes to resolve a customer issue.
Customer satisfaction rating: Feedback from customers on their satisfaction with the help desk support received.
First contact resolution rate: The percentage of customer issues resolved on the first contact with the help desk.

2. Implement a Ticketing System

A ticketing system is a critical tool for help desk management. It helps to streamline the customer support process by organizing and tracking customer inquiries.

Leveraging a ticketing system can assist the help desk agents in the following ways:

To prioritize and assign tickets
Tracking response times
Monitoring the status of each ticket

It also allows for easy data collection and analysis to measure performance against the established KPIs.

3. Setup Workflow Automation

Setting up workflow automation is a great way to manage the help desk effectively. It allows you to automate manual and monotonous tasks that involve time and impact productivity.

Workflow automation helps in the following ways:

Automating repetitive tasks such as ticket routing and categorization can save valuable time and ensure that customer queries reach the right agents promptly.
Automating response templates and knowledge base updates can streamline the support process.

Integrating your help desk software with other systems such as customer relationship management (CRM) platforms can also provide a complete view of customer interactions, enabling agents to deliver personalized solutions faster.

4. Implement AI Chatbots

Deploying AI-enabled chatbots help businesses in managing help desk effectively. Bots can be used as the primary point of contact to handle routine inquiries and provide instant responses 24/7.
Delivering instant response improves the average response time metric and boosts customer satisfaction.

Key ways chatbots help in managing the help desk successfully:

AI chatbots have the potential to analyze conversation patterns to identify common issues, enabling proactive problem-solving.
Chatbots can also be programmed to escalate complex queries to human agents, ensuring a seamless transition from automation to human intervention when necessary.

5. Implement Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Customer satisfaction surveys are an effective way to measure the quality of help desk support and gather feedback from customers. The surveys can be sent after each customer interaction or periodically to evaluate overall satisfaction levels.

Thoroughly analyzing survey results, businesses can identify areas that need improvement and take necessary actions to enhance customer satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction surveys can be used in the following ways:

Customer feedback acquired through surveys helps to identify the gaps in the support delivery and improve the service quality.
Surveys compute customer satisfaction with KPIs like CSAT, and customer loyalty that impact the financial stability of a firm.
CSAT surveys help in retaining unsatisfied customers and increase their lifetime value.

6. Provide Ongoing Training and Development

Continuous training and development are essential for help desk agents to stay updated with the latest technologies and best practices. Through help desk best practices, agents will be upskilled and will be able to contribute their best toward customers.

Here are a few help desk best practices to follow:

Arrange regular training sessions: It can help improve their technical skills, communication abilities, and problem-solving capabilities.
Investing in training programs: This will showcase to your employees that their professional growth is valued and leads to better customer support.

7. Implement Self-Service and Automation Options

Self-service options are a good way to manage the help desk. Businesses can implement self-service options such as FAQs, and knowledge bases to guide customers with the right solution to the problems. Leveraging AI-powered chatbots can significantly reduce the strain on the help desk.

When customers can find solutions to their problems without agent intervention, leading to faster resolution times and improved customer satisfaction.

Follow these best practices:

Encourage customers to refer self-service options that are avialable on the website/app
Implement chatbots on main page of the website to guide the visitors to find solutions seamlessly.

8. Regularly Evaluate your Help Desk performance

Help desk performance is not a one-time effort but an ongoing process. Evaluation is essential to know if it is functioning correctly or not.

Follow the help desk best practices for effective help desk management.

Regularly evaluate the implemented help desk strategies and reassess KPIs to ensure they align with organizational goals and customer expectations.
Stay updated with industry trends and technology advancements to implement innovative solutions for better help desk performance.

How to Choose the Best Help Desk for Your Business?

A wide range of help desk options are available in the market. So, it becomes essential to evaluate your specific requirements to ensure you select the most suitable solution.

1. Assess Your Support Needs

Begin by evaluating your current and future support needs. Determine the volume of support requests you receive, the channels through which customers prefer to communicate (e.g., email, phone, live chat, social media), and the complexity of the issues you typically handle. The assessment helps to identify the essential features and functionalities you require in help desk.

2. Scalability and Flexibility

As your business grows, your support needs will likely evolve. Choose a help desk solution that can scale seamlessly to accommodate increasing ticket volumes, additional support channels, and expanding team sizes. Look for software that offers flexible customization options, allowing you to tailor the system to your unique workflows and processes.

3. Integration Capabilities

Modern businesses often rely on a variety of software tools and platforms, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems, project management tools, and communication applications. Ensure that the help desk software you choose integrates seamlessly with your existing technology stack to streamline data sharing, eliminate redundant data entry, and enhance overall operational efficiency.

4. Self-service Capabilities

Many customers prefer to find solutions independently before reaching out to support teams. Evaluate help desk software that offers robust self-service capabilities, such as a comprehensive knowledge base, frequently asked questions (FAQs) and community forums.
These features can significantly reduce the workload on your support staff while empowering customers to find answers quickly.

5. Reporting and Analytics

Comprehensive reporting and analytics are essential for measuring the performance of your support operations, identifying areas for improvement and making data-driven decisions. Look for help desk software that provides detailed reporting on key metrics, such as ticket volume, resolution times, agent productivity, and customer satisfaction scores.

6. Ease of Use and User Experience

Both your support agents and customers will interact with the help desk software regularly. Choose a solution that offers an intuitive and user-friendly interface for all parties involved. A well-designed user experience can streamline workflows, reduce training requirements, and improve overall satisfaction.

7. Security and Compliance

Depending on your industry and the nature of the data you handle, security and compliance may be critical considerations. Ensure that the help desk software you select offers robust security features, such as role-based access controls, data encryption and compliance with relevant industry regulations (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS).

8. Pricing and Cost-effectiveness

While cost should not be the sole deciding factor, it’s essential to consider the pricing model and overall cost-effectiveness of the help desk software. Evaluate the upfront and recurring costs, as well as any additional fees for features, integrations, or customizations. Consider the potential return on investment (ROI) in terms of improved efficiency, customer satisfaction, and long-term cost savings.

Best Help Desk Tools to Consider

Help desk software provides valuable support to businesses that require customer service and technical assistance. The right service desk tool can make a huge difference in the success or failure of a company’s customer service offering.

1. Omni24

Best Help Desk tool for your business

Omni24 is an AI powered omnichannel customer experience platform to help businesses deliver superior CX and help desk management with an omnichannel approach. The platform leverages automation to enhance customer engagement, improve operational efficiency and deliver personalized experiences at scale.

The robust platform’s intuitive design, coupled with powerful features, makes it a great choice for brands looking to enhance their CX capabilities and deliver exceptional customer service.

Key features:

Omnichannel inbox: Consolidates conversations across all channels into one dashboard for streamlined management. Enables quick responses and efficient ticket handling across multiple platforms.
Self-service portal: Provides a customizable knowledge base and FAQ section for customers. Empower customers to find answers independently, reducing the volume of simple inquiries handled by agents.
Customizable workflows: Create tailored workflows to match specific business processes. Ensures consistency in handling different types of customer inquiries across the team.
Smart routing: Automatically assigns incoming queries to the most suitable agent based on skills, availability and query type. It ensures efficient workload distribution and faster resolution times.
Ecommerce integrations: Seamlessly connects major e-commerce platforms, providing agents with real-time access to order information. The software enables agents to perform order-related actions directly from the support interface, streamlining customer service processes.

Pricing: Omni24’s pricing starts from $29/user/month and goes up to $149/user/month based on the features and add-ons. All plans come with 14 days free trial.

2. Veemo Support

Top Help desk tool to manage customer support

Veemo Support is an omnichannel help desk software to streamline support operations into a centralized interface. The software is a part of Veemo’s customer engagement suite of products designed to streamline and enhance various aspects of business operations.

Veemo Support offers a range of tools to automate workflows, manage tickets efficiently and provide self-service options to customers.

Key features:

Unified ticket management: Centralizes all customer inquiries from multiple channels into a single ticket view. Enables agents to respond to and manage tickets efficiently with context-aware tools.
Intelligent automation: Offers customizable automation rules to route, prioritize and assign tickets based on predefined criteria. Includes AI-powered features like automatic categorization and suggested responses to speed up resolution times.
Self-service portal: Create knowledge base, community forums and FAQs for customer self-help. Reduces ticket volume by empowering customers to find answers independently.
Team collaboration tools: Provides shared ownership, parent-child ticketing and internal notes for seamless teamwork. Includes a team inbox for collaborative problem-solving and knowledge sharing.
Omnichannel capabilities: Supports seamless customer interactions across multiple channels and provides a consistent customer experience.

Pricing: Veemo’s pricing plans start from $29/user/month and go up to 129/user/month based on the features and add-ons. The software pricing is also customizable as per business requirements.

3. Zendesk

The Ultimate Help Desk tool to empower your team

Finally, Zendesk is an all-in-one CRM platform with tools designed to streamline every aspect of customer service operations including incident management, automatic replies, and automated case resolutions powered by data analytics insights that enable better decision making when handling different customer scenarios.

With customizable branding options integrated into their software suite UI/UX features promoting brand consistency are yet another advantage offered by Zendesk while access reports offer complete visibility over agent productivity levels.

4. HubSpot Service Hub

Best Help desk tools that streamline customer satisfaction

HubSpot Service Hub is a part of the HubSpot CRM platform and offers help desk capabilities along with other customer service tools.

Key Features: Ticketing system, knowledge base, live chat, customer feedback management, and integration with HubSpot’s marketing and sales tools.

Pricing: Starts from $45 per month for the Starter plan.

5. Zoho Desk

Enhance your efficiency with intuitive help desk

Zoho Desk is a part of Zoho’s suite of business applications and offers help desk capabilities for customer support teams.

Key Features: Multichannel support, automation, knowledge base, reporting and analytics, and integration with other Zoho apps.

Pricing: Starts from $14 per agent per month for the Professional plan.

6. Jira Service Desk

Top help desk solutions for effective support

Jira Service Desk is a help desk solution built on top of Atlassian’s Jira platform, making it suitable for teams already using Jira.

Key Features: Customizable service desk, automation, SLA management, knowledge base, and integration with other Atlassian tools.

Pricing: Starts from $20 per agent per month for the Standard plan.

What Makes of a Good Help Desk: 7 Key Characteristics

A good help desk plays a crucial role in providing effective support to customers. Here’s the list of help desk’s key characteristics that help you improve your efficiency

Knowledgeable and well-trained staff: A good help desk is staffed with knowledgeable and well-trained support agents who possess a deep understanding of the products, services, or systems they support. They should have strong technical skills, problem-solving abilities, and the ability to communicate complex information clearly and concisely.
Responsive and timely support: Faster response times are essential for a good help desk. Users or customers expect their issues to be addressed quickly, and delays can lead to frustration and dissatisfaction. A good help desk should have clear service level agreements (SLAs) and processes in place to ensure timely responses and resolution of issues.
Multi-channel support: A good help desk should offer support through multiple channels, such as phone, email, live chat, self-service portals, and knowledge bases. It allows users or customers to choose their preferred method of communication and ensures that support is easily accessible.
Organized ticketing system: An effective ticketing system enables easy tracking and management of support requests, prioritization of issues, assignment of tickets to the right teams, and clear communication with users or customers throughout the resolution process.
Robust knowledge base: A comprehensive and up-to-date knowledge base is a valuable asset for a good help desk. It should contain articles, FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and other resources that users or customers can access for self-service support. This can reduce the workload on support staff and empower users to find solutions independently.
Continuous improvement and feedback: A good help desk should have processes in place for continuous improvement. It includes regularly collecting user or customer feedback, identifying areas for improvement, and implementing changes or updates to enhance the overall support experience.
Integration with other systems: A good help desk should seamlessly integrate with other business systems, such as customer relationship management (CRM) software, asset management tools, and reporting platforms. The integration enables better data sharing, streamlined workflows, and more efficient support operations.

The Role of AI and Automation in Help Desk Management

Customer service processes have undergone a significant transformation with the rise of AI tools and automation technologies.

1. Superior customer experience: Leveraging AI-powered chatbots helps businesses provide instant responses 24×7. Bots can be easily scaled based on the volume of service requests. Bots reduce wait time for faster and more efficient support that boosts the overall customer experience.

2. Efficient ticket management: Help desk teams can automate ticket creation, classification, and routing processes. AI algorithms can analyze incoming tickets and route them to the right department/agent based on predefined rules. It saves time leading to faster resolution and higher customer satisfaction.

3. Intelligent knowledge management: AI-driven self-service portals and knowledge bases enable customers to find answers to their questions without human intervention. By empowering customers to find solutions on their own, businesses can significantly reduce the volume of incoming support requests and free up their help desk agents to focus on complex issues.

4. Proactive problem identification: AI has the power to identify potential issues before customers even report them. By analyzing patterns and user behavior, AI systems can detect potential problems. The proactive approach allows the help desk team to address underlying issues, prevent further escalations, and provide a seamless customer experience.

5. Data-driven insights and analytics: Automation of help desk management provides valuable insights to understand customer needs and pain points. By analyzing client interactions and feedback, businesses can identify areas of improvement in their help desk operations. It also helps in making data-driven decision-making that accelerates overall business performance.

Harnessing the Power of Help Desk for Business Growth

A Help Desk System is crucial for organizations looking to enhance their customer support processes. Such systems provide a centralized platform for managing inquiries, ensuring efficient tracking and resolution of customer issues while improving communication among support teams.

Improving profitability through a Help Desk System as it reduces operational costs associated with managing support requests. Automating repetitive tasks and organizing inquiries enable quicker response times. Hence, leading to increased service quality as well as higher customer satisfaction, which can ultimately boost revenue.

Client engagement also benefits from an effective Help Desk, facilitating timely responses and personalized interactions. Satisfied customers are more likely to remain loyal, driving long-term success and building positive word-of-mouth referrals.

Scale Your Conversations with Omni24’s Digital Customer Experience Platform

Omni24’s DCX platform harnesses automation and AI to deliver unified customer experiences across digital channels, while keeping human touch.

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FAQs on Help Desk Software

Can help desk software integrate with other business systems?

Yes, most help desk software offers integrations with other business systems like CRM, project management tools or e-commerce platforms. These integrations enhance the overall effectiveness and efficiency of your customer support operations by allowing seamless data transfer and improving collaboration between different teams.

How can I ensure a successful implementation of help desk software?

To ensure a successful implementation of help desk software, it’s crucial to involve all relevant stakeholders, including your support team and IT department. Set clear goals and expectations, provide thorough training to your staff, and establish standardized workflows and processes. Regularly review and optimize your system based on customer feedback and emerging trends.

Can help desk software be customizable?

Yes, many help desk software solutions offer customization options to align with your brand and specific requirements. You can often customize the user interface, email notifications, ticket fields and even create custom reports. Ensure that the software you choose offers the level of customization you need to make it a seamless part of your overall customer support strategy.

How do I contact the Help Desk for urgent support?

For urgent support, you can reach out to Help Desk through multiple channels. The website always has a 24/7 live chat available to raise a ticket. Alternatively, many websites also offer email addresses along with customer service contact information for further querying.

Does the Help Desk offer remote assistance for software troubleshooting?

Yes, our Help Desk provides remote assistance for software troubleshooting. Our technicians can securely connect to your device using industry-standard remote access tools. It allows us to diagnose and resolve software issues efficiently, without the need for on-site visits. Remote assistance is available during our regular support hours for most software-related problems.