By Joe Boye
If you intend to research the market for a good Online Help Desk Software (Support Desk Software) to streamline your support to customers and employees with their IT related issues, you will surely find yourself soon studying a large number of alternative solutions and maybe a little confused about the different features the vendors are highlighting in their offers.To help you with your analysis, here is a list of the 8 main features you should care about when making a purchase decision, with a brief explanation of their main purpose:
1. Help desk tracking software (also known as issue tracking software or trouble ticket software): this feature provides the users with a platform to submit, manage, share and supervise problem reports. Some solutions will also include a dashboard to give supervisors a complete view of the current status the problem reports of interest.
2. Self-Service portal: together with the previous one, this feature will provide your customers and employees with a user-friendly interface, usually web-based, to report by themselves any issue they have with their computers or any other part of the IT infrastructure and track the status of their problem reports. It will also offer access to the knowledge base, automatic knowledge base suggestions and troubleshooters. This basic self-service functions accessible to users will greatly reduce the work-load of the help desk staff.
3. Knowledge Base: This Online Help Desk Software (Support Desk Software) feature provides a repository of lessons learnt from previous problem reports or tips from experts, keeping help desk staff from analyzing and solving recurring problems more than once. As mentioned above, access to the Knowledge Base can also be given to customers or employees, to give them the possibility of solving some of the most common and easiest problems they may be experiencing.
4. Remote desktop applications: this feature allows the help desk staff to access remotely the computers of anyone reporting an issue, to analyze and solve the problem directly.
5. Calendar: Online Help Desk Software (Support Desk Software) provide calendars to facilitate the planning of activities other than immediate response to issues. These activities may include installation of new applications, upgrades and security patches. The calendar will facilitate the identification and communication of available resources and best times of intervention.
6. Teamworking: this facility, usually offered in the form of a set of features, allow for the planning, management and tracking of public and private tasks, appointments and contact management, available to all the help desk staff.
7. Help Desk Support Reports: this Online Help Desk Software (Support Desk Software) provides reports with customizable relevant information in the form of status summaries and metrics like ticket submission rates, help desk response times, cost of resolution, ticket history and post frequency, customer feedback and customer staff ratings. It is critical if you want to have timely, comprehensive and efficient supervision of your infrastructure status and help desk performance.
8. Content publishing: this feature facilitates the publication of news articles to your support desk, RSS and an e-mail list, managing a file download repository. This is important to keep users and help desk staff informed of anything relevant affecting the IT infrastructure.
Now, just focus in those you really care about, and make sure your vendor is offering an Online Help Desk Software (Support Desk Software) that gives you those features. This will surely save you time and money.
There are important things that you can't forget when choosing a good help desk solution. Check them in 9 Tips to Choose the Right Help Desk Solution.
For more interesting details and tips about help desk solutions, their most common features, types, advantages, good practices and other resources visit our site Help Desk Solutions.
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