Today, we have many tools at our disposal and a wide variety of channels to communicate with customers. However, this diversity of options can sometimes be overwhelming when it comes to choosing a solution. This makes it a challenge, for example, to find the ideal help desk software.
Not all software is adaptable to our business model. That’s why, when choosing, we have to take into account several factors… The main one? The tool’s functionalities!
If you are interested in knowing what are the key features that a good help desk software should offer you, don’t miss today’s article. Let’s see!
Firstly… What is help desk software for?
In the past, the use of help desk software was limited exclusively to attending to user requirements in the IT area.
Today, thanks to its effectiveness, this tool is used by support teams to deal with customer requests.
The goal of a good help desk is to ensure a level of customer satisfaction that is close to 100%.
And how does it achieve this? Thanks to its ability to:
- Centralize and manage customer tickets.
- Automate routine tasks.
- Optimize support agent response times.
In short, help desk software serve to:
Efficiently manage customer requests.
It can be difficult for customer support agents to handle all customer requests manually. Especially if these requests are related to different products and services.
Help desk software allows support team members to access all customer requests. These help desks offer a centralized platform that is also capable of creating and assigning tickets automatically to provide greater efficiency.
Create knowledge base
An agent’s experience in resolving a problem can be of great help to the entire team. By creating a knowledge base, all useful knowledge related to customer support can be centralized.
In this way, agents can get quick answers to issues that have already been solved in the past, and as a result, respond more effectively to the customer’s request.
Analyze data to improve service quality
Help desk software can collect enormous amounts of customer-related data. This information is vital to measure the performance of the customer service department, identify weak points and analyze the level of user satisfaction.
All this is with the aim of creating new strategies to improve service quality.
6 key features your help desk software should include
When it comes to this type of tool, the market has excellent options. And all of them are constantly evolving to adapt to the needs of the market.
Want to make the process of selecting your help desk a little faster? Then, we recommend that you start by taking into consideration these 5 key features that your help desk software should include:
#1 Self-service portal
Your help desk software should integrate functionality that allows you to contain a certain amount of information to respond to different problems. This functionality should give you the opportunity to create.
An interactive FAQ section is available at the help desk and to customers. And that is updated as requests are solved.
Tutorials based on a knowledge base to train new helpdesk participants.
Interactive documentation to find information of all kinds, classified according to their nature and subject.
In short, with this feature, you should be able to generate a knowledge base that supports a self-service portal where your customers can find information quickly and without the need to contact an agent.
#2 User-friendly interface
The tool should give you a complete overview of all support tickets through the centralized user-friendly interface control panel.
There are two important resources that this feature can help you manage better: time and user satisfaction level. With an intuitive interface, agents can quickly understand how to get the most out of the tool.
In addition, agents will be able to easily access customer history to give them more efficient and immediate responses.
#3 Omnichannel support
Today’s customers want options, so they can choose the one that best suits their needs and is most convenient for them. This is how it has become increasingly necessary to offer various support channels, not just mail or a phone number.
However, it is not enough to offer them different options, you must make sure you have all these communication channels centralized.
Why? Because no customer wants to feel thrown from one channel to another or answer the same questions several times. With help desk software, you can centralize all your communication channels. In other words, you will have visibility of the customer’s entire history no matter where they contact you.
In this way, you offer an omnichannel, intuitive, and contextual service to each user.
#4 Reporting
Software is a tool that processes large amounts of data. For this reason, they cannot lack the functionality to convert this data into reports. Reports are essential to perform analyses that allow a deep understanding of the work your team is doing.
For this reason, help desk software should give you access to detailed reports on agent performance. In addition to that, it should also generate reports on the load in the number of tickets per user, department, agent, type of request, etc.
You can use these reports to optimize response time, balance the load between your agents, detect problems, etc.
#5 SLA
For your customers to have realistic expectations about your services, you need to establish Service Level Agreements.
With your help desk software, you should be able to define the standards for your teams, configuring your own SLA policies in the platform. Thus, you will be able to establish precise deadlines within, which support tickets must be processed and resolved according to priorities.
In addition, software with this functionality should allow you to create reminders and alarms to avoid non-compliance with policies.
#6 Security for your data
Every company must make the protection of its data a priority. Therefore, it is necessary that the software you purchase encrypts your communications between browsers and web servers.
Some basic security features that a help desk should have:
- Custom SSL certificates.
- IP and network restrictions.
- Identity and Access Management.
Finally, it is necessary that you remember: these are only recommendations. The characteristics of the help desk you choose also depends on the needs of your business and the objectives you have set for yourself.
And if you require a helping hand in this process, then contact us. At GB Advisors, we are dedicated to software consulting in companies like yours 😊
Did you find this information useful? You can also download a short PDF guide with this information here:
