Wednesday, October 28, 2009

How to Buy Help Desk Software - (Support Desk Software)

support desk software

By SDKP

Help desk software (support desk software) is an essential part of help desk employees having the information and resources they need to perform their jobs to the customers' satisfaction. IT help desk software (support desk software) is particularly challenging to choose. Here's how to evaluate help desk software (support desk software).

Instructions

Step 1
Make sure you understand what the help desk personnel need in their software. The customer support software they have determines how well they can help the customer. If necessary, spend a day observing what it is they do for customers. Reading what they do on paper and seeing the actions they perform are two very different things. You may see customer service software applications that will decrease their time spent with each customer while improving the services they could be providing.

Step 2
Choose customer support software (support desk software) that integrates email management into the system. If you have employees who assist customers over the phone, but that may need to communicate with supervisors during their help desk activities, using an email system is usually more efficient than asking a customer to hold and then physically finding a supervisor to consult with. Like physically looking for a supervisor, calling a supervisor that is probably already on the phone is just as impractical. Use employees’ own multitasking skills to speak to customers over the phone while emailing. If your help desk employees assist customers through email, the email management system in their help desk software program must be efficient and highly organized to prevent lost email.

Step 3
Buy customer service software (support desk software) that helps customers to help themselves when they have a problem. This saves your company time and money each time a customer finds the answer to his own question instead of asking your employees. A help desk software (support desk software) program that has built-in customer service information like troubleshooter pages will cut down on the amount of time your employees have to spend with support tickets.

eHow Article: How to Buy Help Desk Software

support desk software

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Help Desk Software - Managing Your Most Important Assets - Your People (support desk software)

support desk software

By Mike Barone

In any organization where you have a dedicated support staff covering IT issues, you have a valuable asset on hand. It's also an asset that you may not be using as efficiently as you might think. This asset is your help desk team.

Most organizations realize they need help desk software (support desk software) long after they've assigned their help desk personnel, and have established policies. Some organizations, such as small school districts, put technicians in each building at first. This usually results in a technician whose constantly being interrupted by stakeholders who want to know how their project is coming along.

Help desk software will help considerably with this issue. Each trouble ticket gets entered into a central repository, where it can be assigned by type (Mac or PC, printing problems or some other criterion) to an open queue, where workers can take it out.

Hosted help desk software (support desk software) is the latest iteration to this basic idea; the central database of trouble tickets is hosted on a web site (either one that your business runs, or one that you lease through a specific services provider) and this allows anyone with a web browser coming from the right range of IP addresses to look at the problem queue.

Hosted help desk software (support desk software) lets your technicians report in from the field, as they resolve problems. Even better, they provide your end users with a convenient way to look up problem tickets and see what has been done; freeing them from the urge to flag down a tech when they see her walking down the hall.

Many help desk software solutions also provide the ability to set up a knowledge base; this will act as a series of pre-programmed questions that will let some of your end users solve their problems directly without generating a ticket at all. On the other end of the spectrum, help desk software packages make it easy to escalate an issue to the next level up in your support team, from opening help desk calls to second tier and even third tier support.

In addition to this, well managed help desk software (support desk software) will allow the person who submits a ticket to sign up for updates on the status of the job, often times with filters attached, such as when a technical support agent changes it from open to pending, or cites it as being fixed. This greatly improves the overall transparency and accountability in your organization, and improves the customer's knowledge of what's going on.

The generalized utility of help desk software is in measuring how effective your support is. Good software can tell you what your most common categories of support calls are, and can even track which of your employees handles which problems most efficiently.

Some help desk software (support desk software) is also integrated into asset management software, utilities that can canvass your entire network for certain types of software and build up a specific inventory of every asset you own. This can be a great tool when it comes to checking to see if your office is in compliance with software licenses for commercial products.

For more information on Hosted Help Desk Software visit Adminitrack.com. Adminitrack is an authority in Hosted Issue Tracking and Help Desk Software.

support desk software

Friday, October 2, 2009

How Help Desk Software Can Benefit Your Business (support desk software)

support desk software

By D.X. Tang

There is no small organization or large corporate network remaining in business for longer without an adequate customer support service for troubleshooting.

Customer Support Software and Help Desk Software (support desk software) are useful aids to manage your communications with both actual customers and potential clients. This type of software help you centralize email inquiries, live chat sessions, and online issues among other activities.

A typical Help Desk Software package often includes a convenient way to record issues received by phone, as well as those submitted via online support ticket system.

Help Desk Software (support desk software) also contributes to enhance interaction between staff and customers, providing them with top-notch technology that usually comprises knowledge and problem management, workflow, data analysis and reporting of issues submitted each day.

It does not really matter if your business is as small as less than three people working hand in hand, Customer Support Software and Help Desk Software will create the necessary aura of professionalism that your business needs.

Detailed reports and analytics are basic to tackle effectively all those issues handled by your Help Desk Software on a daily basis, but the software itself contributes also to develop teamwork efficiently.

Taking advantage of modern technologies, Help Desk Software (support desk software)enables Staff to Staff live chat, and it can also be configured as add-on package for other compatible Customer Support Software.

When it comes to determine which is the most adequate software for your company, experts recommend evaluating your present technology and consider an upgrade if necessary to make sure your chosen Help Desk Software (support desk software) is compatible with your business system.

There are software packages expressly developed to work under certain native operating systems that run on personal computers, such as Windows, Linux or MacOs.

However, numerous Help Desk Software (support desk software) packages are developed as scripts that run basically over an Internet Server, while others combine both,a server-side Customer Support Software, and a Help Desk Software client running from your PC or used for remote administration.

Furthermore, doing a research on a comparative basis among the different customer support solutions available in the market you will find that many of them are compatible with software that you already use, including Microsoft Outlook, Word, or Excel.

This characteristic allows a seamless integration of new Help Desk Software into traditional software applications you are familiar with, making easier updating contacts, sharing task, events, and bits of information already recorded elsewhere.

Just by adding Customer Support Software or Help Desk Software (support desk software) to your business, you are adding value to your products and services, promoting tacitly trustworthy and customers’ confidence.

While Customer Support Software is focused to provide assistance to your clients whenever they have a trouble or need something to ask for, Help Desk Software is aimed to offer a global solution to manage different aspects of you relationship with clients and staff interaction.

Help Desk Software improves productivity of your business and efficiency of your workers, increasing also customer satisfaction and improving communication and troubleshooting.

There is another fact to keep in mind talking satisfaction of your customers. The Internet has literally diluted geographical frontiers so if your business is online, it's more likely that international customers approach you.

Whether national or worldwide, the implementation of Help Desk Software is an excellent strategy for any business, reducing the need of toll-free hotlines, and saving money in long distance calls between offices, or those calls placed from customers located abroad.

In the other hand, if you are running a conventional telephone support, the installation of Help Desk Software (support desk software) onto your system will lead you to identify those areas requiring more attention or substantial changes to improve performance and boost your sales.

Customer Support Software is also a convenient way to obtain feedback from users of this system. Afterwards, the information obtained can be added to your Help Desk Software database for further analysis and improvement of your business affairs.

Act now and let that your Help Desk Software reveal you the secrets of customer satisfaction contributing to your success.

John Bennet is the owner of PerlDesk, a company that provides customer support software and help desk software. http://www.perldesk.com was launched in November 2001, and has since become a leading product in the help desk field.

support desk software

Sunday, September 13, 2009

The Benefits of Web-Based Help Desk Software

support desk software

By Kent Pinkerton

Web-based help desk software (support desk software) has become the most popular way to manage technical inquiries and issues. The ability to access your help desk from any PC in the world is a very convenient tool. These programs offer flexibility and accessibility that was unavailable in former product versions.

Like other help desk software (support desk software) products, web based products offer the ability for customers to create their own trouble tickets. Effectively managing trouble tickets can save your business both time and money. In some cases, having an informative F.A.Q. menu allows the customer to troubleshoot his or her problem without contacting the technical support department. Customers enjoy finding the answers to their problems quickly, without the traditional wait times.

Companies waste valuable resources when they do not effectively manage their customer issues. Web-based help desk software (support desk software) is much more productive than having multiple email addresses for customer messages. By offering a web based help desk, companies can manage their tickets by directing them to the appropriately trained personnel. Using this type of product can save thousands of dollars every month and prevent employees from becoming overworked and burnt out. Many companies also praise the flexibility of working with a web-based system. Customer and technical support can be managed from anywhere in the world. The web-based option overall is much more flexible than stationary help desk programs.

When researching your options for web based help desk software (support desk software), please be aware that some companies may have hidden charges. Constant updates can become troublesome and costly – it is wise to know what updates are expected and how frequently prior to purchasing a software package. Some software providers require additional purchases of database software components, web-servers and/or middleware. Know exactly what you are buying and what the future expectations are to ensure your satisfaction with your software.

Help Desk Software Info provides detailed information on help desk software (support desk software) solutions, including IT help desk software, web-based help desk software, free help desk software, help desk tracking, help desk support software, and reviews of help desk software programs. Help Desk Software Info is the sister site of Recruiting Software Web.

support desk software

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

How to Build a Help Desk

support desk software

By Henry Amon

Help desk
Help desk

A help desk is a little more than what it sounds like. The help desk is generally referred to as the department that takes care of computer and computer-related problems for a company or organization. As as result, the help desk is often the busiest department in an organization. The best way to build a help desk is one employee at a time rather than hiring a whole team at once. Building a help desk is really just a matter of understanding the company's problems and needs and building and applying a system of rules and techniques to solve those needs on a regular basis.

Instructions

Step 1
Build a team. This depends on the size of the company or department the help desk will be supporting. You may need one person to several hundred people. A good rule is to have one person for every 50 to 75 people who are supported. With a small team or just a one-person help desk, you will need someone who can do a variety of jobs as well as have administrative abilities. The first person will have to be able to do things such as hardware repair, network support and software troubleshooting. When you add another person, regardless of where they belong on the organizational chart, they should have varied experience and abilities The second person, for example, might need to be someone who specializes in networks.

Step 2
Get or make a reporting system. You need a way for users to report the problems or requests they have. If it is a small organization, the system can be just filling out a note and dropping it in a request box or making a phone call or sending an email. For larger help desks, there is help desk software that can be deployed to accept help requests from a website or by email or manually by an analyst.

Step 3
Develop procedures that everyone can follow. Create procedures for special requests that are urgent or different in nature from regular help desk requests. Such a request might be to borrow a laptop or a request to set up an online meeting that will need to happen right away. Make it known what the procedures are to all on the help desk and to the users it supports.

Step 4
Create FAQ lists and other "self help" documents to hand out or to put on the website or Intranet. Make these help sheets for common issues that can be resolved by the users with a little guidance. This will cut down on requests and save time.

Step 5
Communicate effectively with the users about upcoming changes. Word of mouth is good, but a website explaining common procedures as well as upcoming changes is essential.

Step 6
Determine your limits. Make it clear what kind of help you can provide and what you are unable or unwilling to do. Mission creep can easily slow down a help desk. You don't want to support every application a user buys, and you may not want to be making house calls for users who have problems at home.

Tips & Warnings

Take your time to get it right and be willing to revise the system.


support desk software

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

A Review of Popular Help Desk Software (support desk software) Programs

support desk software

By Kent Pinkerton

Variations between help desk software (support desk software) programs include pricing, the numbers users accepted and ticket management options. As a result, determining the needs of your company is critical.

One popular program is Support Wizard. In consumer reviews, this product received ten out of ten stars. Support Wizard offers everything your business needs to provide world-class customer and technical support. Customer self-service, live help and outstanding ticket management tools can streamline your business’ management and help you to maintain a loyal customer base.

Another help desk software program, Parature, offers many of the same benefits. Consumer reviews are outstanding for this program and many business owners recommend it to their associates. Parature is a comprehensive program that is fully customizable and user-friendly. Live assistance and award winning ticket management are a couple of the most praised features of this system.

FootPrints is also an award winning help desk software (support desk software) program. FootPrints is 100% web-based, meaning that your technical and customer support teams can access the database from anywhere on Earth. It is completely customizable and the company offers outstanding support. FootPrints offers an excellent ticket management tool and is one of the more affordable options in help desk software (support desk software) programs.

Researching and deciding on a help desk software (support desk software) program can be a daunting task. You should first decide what specific issues your company needs help with and then consider what will best support your customers accordingly. If you own a small business, a free help desk software (support desk software) package might be a good option. Make sure you understand the limitations on users and on the number of trouble tickets available with free programs. If you have a large or expanding business, take a look at the many online help desk software (support desk software) reviews that are available. Reading consumer reviews of the various products can give you a better idea of whether the particular program will be a good fit with your company’s and your customers’ needs.

Help Desk Software Info provides detailed information on help desk software (support desk software) solutions, including IT help desk software (support desk software), web-based help desk software (support desk software), free help desk software (support desk software), help desk tracking, help desk support software, and reviews of help desk software (support desk software) programs. Help Desk Software (support desk software) Info is the sister site of Recruiting Software Web.


support desk software

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Getting The Best Help Desk Software

support desk software

By Sonny Castro

The best help desk software (support desk software) can spell the difference between profit and loss. Many small businesses use this product to cut costs and improve efficiency. You need not worry about data indexing, logging, assigning calls anymore. The program does it for you. You can also customize the software (support desk software) according to your needs. The right product will help streamline operations. The most common queries can be answered through automated process, leaving the staff free for other tasks.

As is evident help desk software solution helps improve customer satisfaction. Firstly it provides quick resolutions to all customer queries. Secondly, it offers accurate responses and solutions to all the queries. Thirdly, the software (support desk software) identifies all the problem areas in products and services. So everyone knows what the situation is and works to resolve the problem.

A basic help desk software solution comprises of a user interface from a web browser. This means that your staff can easily navigate the whole software solution. When an inquiry is made by a customer, the software (support desk software) assigns it a unique ID. This helps the staff to track the query and resolve it.

Another feature that a typical help desk software solution has is the reporting system. It reports how much time was spent on an inquiry and who all were involved in resolving that specific inquiry. It also allows for communication between the staff and customers through email, live chat and automated phone follow-up.

Spam in your inbox can be a headache if you are running an organization. You cannot go through all the emails to select one when you have so much spam to deal with. If you choose the best help desk software, you will find that these have spam blockers. The program allows only genuine emails through. Then it sends off the appropriate response.

You need not spend a whole lot for the best help desk software. They are very economical, and easy to install. Most companies offer technical support during the installation process. If you do not want to spend a lot, and you have a small business, a free program found online can also help.

Getting the best help desk software is a start to efficient and better business operations.

Sonny Castro is an online marketer and entrepreneur who specializes in online niche products. His new product, the insanely popular Three Pillars Help Desk is now available. For more information, please go to: http://threepillarshelpdesk.blogspot.com

support desk software

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Help Desk Software For Your Website

support desk software

By John Horsch

If you are offering products and services online, it will greatly help if you get to monitor the movement of sales, as well as the activity and responses of your clients. Using this type of information is greatly useful if you want to improve your business. You will discover that considering their problems and concerns will optimize your system as well as the way you do business. Here are some tips on how you can stay visible and helpful through your site.

You Can Get It for Free

There are actually plenty of help desk software (support desk software) that can readily be downloaded and installed into your system. These come for free, with several focusing on helping individuals customize and improve their web sites. You only need to have the system requirements to effectively upload the program. You can set up and configure a ticket-based support system or help desk (support desk software) for your web site to cater to your clients more effectively.

Your customers can now submit support tickets and your employees get to have a functional web-based interface to manage help desk tickets and reply to various concerns. Expect several features such as unlimited categories, unlimited personalized accounts for your employees, file attachments, canned responses, easy-to-use web interface, easy-to-translate languages, custom fields in the submit ticket form, effective ticket search capabilities, email notification of new replies and tickets and many more.

You can also customize the appearance of the help desk (support desk software), editing the style, header and footer. The test can be stored in a single language file so you can translate the script, requiring you to edit only a single file. The software also comes with an install script that is responsible for the database setup so your help desk stays operational with little work. The program should be compatible with the different operating systems.

Why Your Web Site Needs It

Useful help desk software (support desk software) is a web-based application that is created purely to create solutions for browers. A lot of other tools began as client-server applications, with little focus on the web. However, the new approach emphasizes a powerful cross-platform format wherein you can track progress and keep in touch with your customers for full support. A reliable product also comes with a 1-year guarantee, wherein you get unlimited product support via phone or email, maintenance agreements and updates.

How Your Site Can Benefit

In a web help desk (support desk software), knowledge base functionality is often built in so you can manage the creation of a database that is both expansive and searchable. Common requests with corresponding resolutions will easily be available to clients, administrators and technicians even if they browse independently. You can attach one or more files as well to every FAQ so that the knowledge base continues to grow.

Technicians and clients can benefit more by updating their knowledge constantly through email alerts and other web-based notifications. New tickets and ticket updates can immediately be emailed to the proper clients. Technicians and administrators can be alerted once jobs are still incomplete, unassigned or left unattended over a certain period of time.

You can be sure that client's concerns online are answered to very well. Scheduled tasks and other assignments are also very unlikely to be missed because of the iCalendar integration. You get full ticket information for every calendar entry.

John Horsch writes premium high quality articles ranging from Internet Marketing to Gardening. Each is researched and edited with the greatest degree of professionalism. John has been writing articles for Internet consumption since 2001. Get More Quality Articles Here:

http://johnhorsch.com/

support desk software

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Support Desk Software For Small And Medium-Sized Businesses

support desk software

by john mce

Small and average sized businesses that appetite to abound beyond and get a bend in the bazaar charge accumulate and advance business practises continually. Technological solutions are generally basic to accretion ability and furthering key business objectives. An acceptable archetype of this is support desk software. It has helped abounding companies to accumulate processes and accumulate bigger clue of banal and chump account activities.

As businesses grow, their annex on IT solutions generally increases. Middle sized businesses accept generally already automatic several amount business functions, as these systems become added analytical to befitting the business active smoothly. Sometimes problems action backs the agents of a midsize aggregation abridgement the IT agents and budgets all-important to deploy, run and administer advice board software advised for beyond enterprises.

It is important back advance in a software system that it is accordant with your computer systems and accessible to use. It needs to be accessible abundant for the agents to use and accede centralized and alien support desk solutions. The aftermost affair you appetite to do is advance in software which will end up slowing bottomward your business or costing you money.

Consider what the best important appearances of your business are, like: centralized and alien communication, chump service, advice documentation, reporting, ability base, automation systems, alien ascendancy and more. Having these conversations internally should advice you apperceive what you appetite and get what you need.
If you're still puzzled, software professionals are accessible to admonish you. It can be a acceptable abstraction to actualize a support desk anticipate catchbasin aural the organisation to actuate the businesses IT needs. This will advice the software bell-ringer get a bright abstraction of what you appetite the software to do.

With advice board software, a business does not necessarily charge to aggrandize its blast alarm administration system. It ensures the business offers 24 hour chump abutment and incorporates self-help features. It streamlines time administration and several processes can be automated, like advancement a database, banal records, movement of goods, business trends etc. Support desk software is an admired apparatus for businesses that use analytics to strategise business affairs for the future.

Support desk software can be the axial point through which problems are detected and managed. It absolutely can advance to faster advance and a added automated business process. Support desk software is generally how baby businesses go from average to large. Let the computers do the assignment for you and watch your business account from technology!

About the Author
Sunrise Software's helpdesk and service desk software products provide solutions to your IT service management requirements; whether it's improved call logging, incident management or change management functionality Sunrise can help.

support desk software

How Java Works

support desk software

by Marshall Brain

Have you ever wondered how computer programs work? Have you ever wanted to learn how to write your own computer programs? Whether you are 14 years old and hoping to learn how to write your first game, or you are 70 years old and have been curious about computer programming for 20 years, this article is for you. In this edition of HowStuffWorks, I'm going to teach you how computer programs work by teaching you how to program in the Java programming language.

In order to teach you about computer programming, I am going to make several assumptions from the start:

* I am going to assume that you know nothing about computer programming now. If you already know something then the first part of this article will seem elementary to you. Please feel free to skip forward until you get to something you don't know.

* I am going to assume you do know something about the computer you are using. That is, I am going to assume you already know how to edit a file, copy and delete files, rename files, find information on your system, etc.

* For simplicity, I am going to assume that you are using a machine running Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT or XP. It should be relatively straightforward for people running other operating systems to map the concepts over to those.

* I am going to assume that you have a desire to learn.

All of the tools you need to start programming in Java are widely available on the Web for free. There is also a huge amount of educational material for Java available on the Web, so once you finish this article you can easily go learn more to advance your skills. You can learn Java programming here without spending any money on compilers, development environments, reading materials, etc. Once you learn Java it is easy to learn other languages, so this is a good place to start.

Having said these things, we are ready to go. Let's get started!

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