The Best 8 Web-Based Help Desk Tools for SMBs

Software as a service (SaaS) has exploded in recent years, and customer service is another industry affected by this trend. Many SaaS companies offer B2B customer service software to help small businesses manage growing service demands. These tools are also powerful and can have a huge impact on the customer experience, from ticket management to chatbots and knowledge bases.

Helpdesk is a SaaS product that bundles customer service tools into one central hub. They provide a one-stop shop for customer service teams that need to integrate software for sales reps to operate. The help desk support services email, chat and phone support channels and can provide an in-depth analysis of the performance of each medium.

There are several formats and layouts for help desks, but the fastest growing style is the web-based help desk. These help desks provide flexible, customer-oriented internal functions that your service and support team can use on a daily basis.

What Are Web-Based Help Desk Tools?

The web-based help desk tools are online software that help customer service teams perform daily operations and functions. It provides customer service representatives with a variety of features that enhance their ability to complete workflows and tasks. These features include tools like ticketing systems, knowledge bases, and live chat support.

Web-based tools are useful for small businesses because they tend to be cheaper and easier to adopt. Rather than downloading expensive software and creating custom codes or APIs, web-based tools only require logging in through a web browser. The company creates an account on the service's website and the employee logs in to the help desk as a user. This makes it easy for sales reps to log in and start on business days.

Why Choose Web-Based Help Desk Tools?

"We are not big companies. Why do we need this? We already have a call center and email support and they are doing a great job." Although our customer service team can satisfy the needs of our clients. As the company continues to prosper, its demand grows.

Web-based help desk tools help teams manage large numbers of service requests without incurring significant financial risk. In fact, there are many free tools available that give teams the basic functionality to enhance their experience. Also, if the tools do not function properly, the company is not responsible for repairing them. Want to try web-based services with minimal financial risk at stake?

If you're ready to embrace a web-based help desk, check out our list of the best web-based help desk tool providers below.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot offers free help desk tools as a component of the Service Hub package. HubSpot's helpdesk includes a ticket management system and automation features that streamline agent workflow. It also includes proactive service options, such as a knowledge base and live chat tools that you can easily install on your website.

The best thing about HubSpot tools is that they are all focused on helping your business grow. All tools come with a detailed analysis that analyzes the performance of each feature you are using. Customer service managers can monitor these reports and use the results to make recommendations to both service personnel and product management teams.

2. AnswerDash

AnswerDash provides a help desk that enables customer service teams to easily implement and integrate new tools. There is a continuous onboarding process that imports customer data and content directly to the platform. Teams can quickly transfer existing content from frequently asked questions and knowledge bases to AnswerDash for quick access to troubleshooting information.

AnswerDash also has self-learning software to predict possible customer failures and their solutions. Second, it provides practical steps the customer service team can take to avoid future customer frustration. Having this kind of proactive information helps teams anticipate customer demand and eliminate competitors.

3. Oracle

Oracle Service Cloud aims to provide an easy-to-use service platform for teams. It provides a team portal that all staff can access and also has the option for staff to log in via their mobile device. If your team is stagnant or have questions about specific tools, Oracle offers live action and self-service support options such as video chat and virtual assistants. In this way, your team can quickly implement new tools without risking any negative impact on your experience.

For Oracle-provided features, the help desk comes with email support tools to help teams respond to email tickets in a timely manner. In addition, guided support options allow staff to guide you through the troubleshooting steps. Such a hands-on approach to customer service is a way for companies to ensure customer success during all interactions.

4. Apptivo

Apptivo is a help desk with various customization options. Users can customize ticket layouts, contact form fields, and even the in-app interface. Additionally, Apptivo prevents potential internal confusion by allowing users to limit their view access to custom settings. This allows team members to customize their workflow to their liking without affecting their colleagues.

5. Digido

Dezide is a platform focused on quickly solving customer problems, especially through self-service options. For example, one of the most notable tools is a customer workflow. Most companies believe that workflows are used to optimize employee behavior, but Dezide's customer workflows make it easy for customers to resolve their service requests without a representative.

Another useful feature provided by Dezide is a system to deliver incoming service requests. We use learning technologies to evaluate customer cases and select the best employees to meet their needs. In this way, customer failures are always resolved by the best employees to resolve them.

What is Help Desk Service & 5 Help Desk Management Best Practices?

A help desk is a tool that organizes communications with customers so that companies can respond to them more quickly and effectively. The help desk helps support teams provide the best possible experience for their customers.

The help desk service also offers the ability to provide context and insight into the customer experience, compares the performance of the support team, and also offers internal capabilities to ensure the team is truly true. Help desk tools are one of the most essential tools for successful customer base support.

1. Treat all customer interactions as tickets.

Every interaction with the customer is important, so each interaction results in a new service ticket. This not only helps the team track open cases, but also provides the business with up-to-date information on its customers. You'll learn about all the problems they have with your business, making it easy to provide personalized, proactive customer service.

Furthermore, this best practice should be extended to the media. Any incoming message, such as email, phone, face-to-face conversation, social media messages, alerts, online requests, etc., should be treated as a new ticket. This is one of the fundamental foundations for creating an omnichannel experience.

2. Design your help desk based on your user experience.

User experience is a person's overall feelings, attitudes, and experiences while using a product or service. Designing the user experience means creating products and services that provide a meaningful user experience. It generally has a simple and attractive interface and an efficient process to achieve your goals.

Similarly, help desks should be based on the needs and wants of the customer. Agents regularly collect customer feedback and ask what they like and dislike about the help desk. Making changes based on customer feedback improves the user experience and improves customer satisfaction.

3. Don't create a whole new process.

When investing in help desk software, some companies may consider scrapping the original process and starting from scratch. This is attractive, but doing so is time consuming because it requires full training of service personnel. Also, this can be confusing for customers who are used to existing systems.

Instead of changing the whole process, use a help desk to simplify and optimize your current system. This enables agents to focus on quality conversations with clients rather than learning new workflows.

4. Prioritize transparency with clients.

Teams must prioritize transparency with their clients. Honesty and openness build relationships with our clients and strengthen our relationships with our client base. Help desk software helps duplicate transparency by improving the communication process between agents and customers.

For example, you can easily automate service request updates by email or a ticketing system. This keeps the customer up-to-date, so they know the team is working hard and are updated as soon as the problem is resolved. This not only saves staff time, but also reduces the number of emails customers create. They will trust your contact person to return to them, so you don't have to constantly search for more information.

5. Slowly grow and expand.

Every company wants to grow. However, if it grows too fast, it is more likely to crash and burn. This is because organizations may not be able to support a significant increase in workload without the resources to manage them.

Instead, focus on growing through smaller projects. Each team member can plan these projects based on the implementation they want to see in their organization. These projects not only provide agents with something to work outside of their day-to-day responsibilities, but also help build a stronger and more inclusive organization.

Finding the best software can help you adopt these best management practices. Below is a list of the top three help desk options for our customer service team. For a more complete list, see this post, which includes the best help desk software.

Eight Ways Assistive Apps Optimize IT Efficiency

Efficient IT departments are the dream of most business owners because they help other business departments to function smoothly. And in this technology-driven world, most departments in different organizations are using technology.

However, to get the most out of your IT department, you need to provide the right tools to help you get the job done right. Furthermore, it can efficiently link with other business units.

In fact, according to MetricNet, when IT help desk support services employees are satisfied with their work, they are more satisfied with their customers and have lower turnover and absentee rates.

Therefore, you can use the IT ticketing system to provide reliable digital assistance to the IT department to provide the best work experience and increase productivity.

This is how help desk software can make your IT department more efficient:

1. Provide performance evaluation indicators

Reviewing your organization's help desk data can help you analyze the performance of your IT professionals. Check the response time, total number of responses, fast response time, etc. This will help identify the best and weakest areas of your IT team and give you feedback on their work. It also highlights enhancements to improve performance.

According to an OfficeVibe survey, 43% of employees with a high level of engagement at work receive feedback on performance at least once a week. Therefore, evaluate the performance of your IT department and provide feedback to increase your participation in the business.

Also, if one of the IT professionals is familiar with a particular task, you can assign all the similar tasks to it to improve the efficiency of ticket processing.

2. Strengthen automatic ticket allocation

Help desk software allows you to review different tickets and automatically assign problems based on predefined criteria. This helps facilitate all the work of the IT department, since the assignment requires a limited amount of time and effort, and the work is transferred to stakeholders.

Best of all, you can set deadlines, and issues or tickets will automatically be assigned to appropriate technical support on those dates.

For example, you can automatically assign tickets for technical support for different departments of your company. Like the supply problems to the people involved in the store departments, the quality problems to the quality control departments on relevant dates and times, the tax problems to the accounting departments.

3. Promote multitasking

IT professionals have a great opportunity to work on the same ticket at the same time. What happens? IT teams can classify and organize similar problems that they can handle in one trip from the server room. This saves a lot of time in handling problems, but most of them resolve without problems. So maximize IT department productivity in less time.

And, according to the Management Study Guide, multitasking employees are always productive, no matter what happens, as survival rates are high even in the worst case.

4. Convenient

Some help desk apps have mobile apps that IT teams can install on devices like phones and tablets to connect with teams and clients wherever they are. In short, the mobile help desk gives IT professionals the ability to assign technicians, search for tickets, view and reply to tickets, and more without a keyboard. This makes the team run smoothly, even when some members are widely separated because they are still linked.

5. You need a quick setup and it's cost effective

The help desk software is extremely easy to configure and will be up and running in minutes. Well, here's how: The IT department simply signs up for the hosted version and in a few seconds it will start processing support tickets.

It is also profitable for IT departments. The business does not represent an economic burden on your business. They can rent subscription help desk software and the rates are convenient.

6. Achieve transparency

Transparency in the workplace for IT departments is achieved through a team mailbox associated with the IT ticketing system. Let me explain: Through the shared inbox, the IT technical support team can see everything that happens in the main ticket list. This helps prevent a single ticket from being left open. By the way, we also prioritize queue support tickets so urgent tickets are processed first.

7. Centralize communication.

The IT Help Desk application has a user portal that acts as a single point of contact for all information, requests and related IT support. This facilitates communication within the IT department, reduces complexity, and enables the IT team to optimize performance.

It allows them to create tickets, check available problems to process and close closed problems on time from a central location.

8 Customizable

Help desk software allows IT departments to create custom fields and use them to configure databases / reports at their convenience. IT help desk staff can modify, add, or delete multiple fields, depending on how the information is organized. You can organize according to different departments, locations, floors and buildings. These can help you get information quickly when you need to see it at any time.

Top 5 Steps to a Highly Effective IT Help Desk in 2020

It's time to sit back and evaluate the performance of the IT help desk over the past 12 months and create courses for a successful new year. Call it a New Year's resolution, a departmental priority, or just an action plan. Whatever its name, here is a list of the top five items we could focus on in 2020.

1. Understand the key metrics

You can't handle what you don't measure. Lists and measures a set of KPIs to help track the performance of the help desk service. Metrics help define the success of your help desk and hold everyone accountable. Knowledge of key metrics such as first call resolution rate, average resolution time, SLA compliance rate, average end user satisfaction, technician utilization, and cost per call can help you measure the effectiveness of your help desk. Useful Set clear and achievable goals for each indicator so you can plan a course to achieve them. Goals like a fast call resolution rate (FCR) of 80%, an SLA compliance level of 75%, and an average end-user satisfaction of over 90% are examples of specific goals.

2. Listen to the end user and act on the comments.

If you're not investigating feedback from end users, you're not a minority in the world of service management. You can implement a survey after each incident is resolved, or schedule an annual survey to measure overall performance and satisfaction. Effective studies are generally designed to capture input from end users regarding timeliness and resolution of the response, effectiveness of resolution, communication, and attitudes of help desk staff, but directly related to metrics. and the objectives. You can also include a question that is already set. Best practice is to ensure that results are translated into a service improvement plan. This helps help desks not only stay on top of complaints, but also address them.

3. Invest in the training of service desk personnel

Training is like car insurance. You may not need it now, but it will help you when you need it. The training helps service desk personnel confidently answer any questions that come and go. In addition to vocational training, formal training programs help develop the skills, knowledge, and confidence of the technical service team. Develop a training plan and a secure budget and time to train your service desk staff throughout the year.

 4. Encourage the submission of the knowledge base

An effective knowledge base effectively reduces the number of calls, increases technician productivity, and increases end-user satisfaction. You can start with a simple list of frequently asked questions that addresses the issues users frequently ask, and then add new documentation along the way. We recommend allowing administrators an easy way to publish, share and organize knowledge articles, making sure that the knowledge base is on a platform that end users can easily find and submit. Identify users who can collaborate with technicians and other staff to create and review content. Including a specific monthly goal for presenting the knowledge base as a KPI for technician performance is additional motivation.

5. Update help desk technology

If your help desk is still powered by legacy tools, you are missing out on a great opportunity to improve the efficiency of your help desk. New capabilities in leading help desk solutions allow you to automate workflows, provide remote support, and deliver advanced dashboards and analytics. The cloud is fast becoming a popular choice if you want to break the app maintenance chain. Choosing on-premises or in the cloud depends on your operations and IT budget.

Build IT Help Desk Skills To Meet The Latest User Demands

The IT help desk staff is the first line of support for the end users of your application. However, due to the pervasiveness of advanced technology in the average person's homes, the organization's user base has surpassed traditional help desks.

The end user's technical skill set is growing, and in many cases the end user can deal with basic IT or application issues on their own. For help desk service staff, this means that user invocations and requests are for more complex problems than before and require new knowledge and skill sets.

Furthermore, the increasing complexity of software tools in terms of cross-platform capabilities makes it even more difficult to provide support. The more dynamic parts that are relevant to your application, the more potential failure points. This is where the average user cannot troubleshoot herself.

The average user doesn't understand how all of their IT environments work together. Migration to Help Desk Support 3.0: For today's technical support staff, there are no simple questions or ticket clerks. Help desk skills should reflect the skills of junior level engineers who understand the complexity of today's systems, as well as simple Windows troubleshooting. This adds to the overhead of the help desk because quick and accurate resolution of the problem is not cheap.

Plan System Interactions

Understanding how IT systems interact is important. Support personnel cannot work in the silo unless the application providing the service is in the silo. For example, support personnel need to know a little bit about Windows and Linux, and networks and security. They don't have to be experts in these areas, but they do need to understand the basics.

Networking skills must go beyond simple IP addresses. The ability to track IP traffic and identify connection points (including Voice over IP and wireless networks) is an essential skill in the help desk role.

Plus, understand your application's workflow. Identify the role each server plays for your application and the impact of outages or resource contention. The knowledge of the support staff is not as deep as the owner of the application, but it is not. Unlike app owners, who need to know a lot of apps, support staff should know. the mall. This extensive knowledge of the system, coupled with more advanced troubleshooting, forms the foundation of modern IT help desk skills, but its role is not limited to troubleshooting.

Carry out exhaustive communication and documentation.

For more tech savvy end users with extensive communication and documentation, help desk administrators may want to avoid unnecessary repetition of steps or prevent users from hearing something they don't like. To do this, we must ask what the user has tried. This requires IT to analyze the information for troubleshooting as quickly as possible. Staff need advanced communication skills to balance listening and problem solving.

The documents are closely related to communication. When IT managers need to submit a problem to the food chain, senior support staff shouldn't waste time repeating steps that are already in place but not documented. Senior staff costs more per hour, so this combination can be measured in real money.

Invest In Training For New Help Desk Skills

The IT help desk and operations professionals are migrating due to the change in the user base. Support specialists are reaching out to engineers to facilitate efficient problem solving. Management must invest in technical and soft skills training to achieve these more advanced skill sets. This investment can be a quick change as support staff paves the way for a subsequent transition to application ownership and engineering.

This type of staff transfer brings significant benefits to the organization as it brings in enough staff with a deep understanding of IT systems. However, if your organization requires these advanced skill sets, you are willing to pay for them. This cost is still cheaper than hiring a new engineer, but higher than a traditional support specialist.

Help Desk Ticket Categories: Creating Help Desk Ticket Categories

Businesses use proven help desk ticket categorization methodologies, such as CREATE, to increase efficiency in reporting on ticket trends, improve ticket escalation processes, improve reporting, and reduce overall costs of support. You can build a categorization scheme. All help desk ticket categories. Customer service requires the ITIL ticket classification scheme to handle ITIL ticket type problems when customers request help from the help desk service. Proper classification of the ITIL ticket in question when creating a help desk ticket allows the help desk agent to classify the problem in a support depot. These help desk ticket category groups can present insights to help desk agents when they provide the proper support, enable proper routing of escalated entries, and generate trend reports for entry types.

Help Desk enables companies to streamline the help desk ticket classification process, quickly identify support trends, and use help desk categories to focus valuable information technology resources on improving specific business processes. You can reduce your organization's support costs.

Create Taxonomy Of Help Desk Tickets

1.       Collect and export a 6-month sample of help desk ticket data.

2.       Review the exported ticket data and create a future status ticket classification scheme.

3.       Evaluate the proposed ticket classification scheme against production data by applying the proposed classification scheme to the exported ticket data.

4.       Adjust ticket classification schemes to balance ticket classification categories.

5.       Train stakeholders and staff on how to use the new ticket classification scheme.

6.       Implement the new implementation of the production help desk ticket classification scheme.

1.Collect and export a 6-month sample of help desk ticket data.

The help desk support services industry standard requires tickets to be created for all customer contacts for which the help desk is responsible. Although the help desk ticket classification scheme may not be organized at this point, the ticket data contains a large amount of useful data. During the collection phase, the ticket request must be consulted for the 6-month-old ticket data.

2. Review the exported ticket data and create a future status ticket classification scheme.

Check the exported ticket details to find out what's working and where you need to improve. This includes checking the most used help desk ticket categories and the least used help desk ticket categories. Verification of ticket data also includes removing ambiguous categories and improving ticket quality.

To create a future state ticket classification scheme, it is important to understand how help desk ticket categories can help you meet your business needs. The most common ticket category schemes are by type, service, and department.

3. Evaluate the proposed ticket classification scheme against production data by applying the proposed classification scheme to the exported ticket data.

It is time to test the proposed classification scheme. This step is a slow process, but it is very important. Reclassification of exported legacy ticket data with future state classification schemes reveals where the gaps lie.

4. Adjust ticket classification schemes to balance ticket classification categories.

The reconciliation step is a very important final review process to ensure that future state classification schemes are balanced. In this step, you need to run some dynamic reports looking for:

Overpopulation Classification - This is a good time to divide some of the overpopulation `` cubes '' into smaller, more specific terms.

Under classing - If you select too many classification terms, your tickets will take too long to qualify.

Reports: Set up and run some of the daily, weekly, and monthly reports used by the reporting team.

5.Train stakeholders and staff on how to use the new ticket classification scheme.

Implementing a new help desk ticket classification scheme without adequate training of information technology support personnel can lead to confusion, inefficiencies, and implementation issues. Help Desk Building recommends that help desk agents have access to a test environment for help desk applications that implement the new taxonomy. This allows staff to understand the new structure.

6. Implement the new implementation of the production help desk ticket classification scheme.

Migrating your ticket classification scheme to production may reveal issues that need to be addressed. Feedback is important for continuous improvement during the execution steps. There must be a process to allow users to provide comments.

Missing terms: If the user identifies a lost term, a formal request is required for the review process to propose a new term.

Classification time: help desk agents must have a fast and efficient ticket classification scheme.

5 Things A New Help Desk Manager Should Do

Building a position as a new help desk manager is a rewarding experience. Customers value service excellence by being friendly, fast, efficient, and accurate. To reach this level of success, you must quickly audit and understand your new help desk environment so that we can provide you with the best possible service. As a new help desk service administrator, auditing help desk management for your environment does not require immediate proactive changes. However, that means getting information on the most efficient areas and using them in the near future to prioritize improvements. You should seek the consent and support of stakeholders before designing and implementing improvements.

Meet With Key Stakeholder Groups

As a new Help Desk Manager, it is important to quickly build relationships and seek input from key stakeholder groups to be successful. These key groups are your department leaders, the customers you support, the people you report to, and the providers you have contracts with. It is very important to understand the group's perspective of what works and what doesn't. If stakeholders raise a problem that something is wrong, they may not know the root cause of the problem. All items raised should be recorded, researched This will help you discover real or perceived problems. For supplier management, it is important that a new help desk manager is very familiar with contracts, contracted services, and makes sure they have processes to measure their performance. More information about the stakeholders of the help desk.

Learn The Business

While your role as the new help desk manager is primarily customer service, ultimately you must know your company's business, products, and applications. It is important for the help desk to understand what services are mission critical to the business. If changes are made, the new Help Desk Administrator must partner with the development team that implements the changes to ensure success. If there are problems, they should be. documented, communicated and the department ready to provide support. As new services are added, the new Help Desk Administrator must participate in the project and the transfer of support knowledge to the knowledge base must be completed before the service is implemented.

Mature A Knowledge Base

A knowledge base is a repository of customer, application and service support information that has been optimized for rapid recovery to provide just-in-time support. feedback for useful data and supporting information. These data and information become supporting knowledge. There are 8 steps to create and mature a knowledge management system. By creating and maturing a knowledge base, a new Help Desk Administrator will increase the resolution of the first contact, which is solving the problem on the first contact with the customer. A knowledge base will also reduce the recurrence of customer issues as the issue will be resolved correctly the first time. Learn more by visiting our help desk knowledge management guides.

New Help Desk Manager and staff

As a new help desk manager, new staff may be self-managed, managed by the manager of another department, or not properly managed by the former manager who left the company. As a new help desk manager, you must assume you are having trouble with staff functions, work hours, attendance, performance, and training. As mentioned earlier, it is important to set up an individual meeting with a team and staff meeting. Once you gain their trust, you will learn what could be causing some problems for your staff. A good resource is the High Power Management Book.

Create A Mission Statement

The mission statement is the foundation of your department. It defines why your department exists, what it does, and how it does it. The new Mission Statement of the Help Desk Administrator Department is the basis for building organization charts, processes, attitudes and interactions with customers. Help new help desk managers assess their current situation, move toward their goals, and unite the department in a strategic direction. Each company has a mission statement, whether written or not. Take ownership and control of your most important statement. See the Help Desk Mission Statement Guide for more information.

5/6 Help Desk Automation Tool Minimizes Daily Administrative Tasks

A help desk is a resource designed to provide customers or end users with information and assistance related to the products and services of a company or institution. The purpose of a help desk service is often to troubleshoot or provide guidance on products such as computers, electronics, food, clothing, and software. Businesses generally provide technical assistance to their customers through various channels, such as toll-free numbers, websites, instant messages, and email. There is also an internal help desk designed to assist employees.

Organizations use the IT ticketing system to document and track user service requests and incidents. Each ticket is assigned a category and severity so that IT administrators can prioritize requests in queues for investigation, action, escalation (if necessary), and final resolution. 

Traditionally, ticketing systems are just one way to organize requests. It is a front-end to a help system that has long relied on expert human experts to answer questions, implement services, and solve problems.

However, many of the problems with ticketing systems are tedious and mundane, and are quickly resolved using a simple and easily documented workflow. 

For example, if your company needs to recruit new employees, the steps to create credentials, assign application access, and schedule training can be time consuming. Businesses can derive more value from their help desk staff who research and solve more complex problems, such as those related to application performance.

Help desk automation enables IT teams to handle many day-to-day tasks, such as hiring employees and new requests for VM provisioning, through automated responses. New help desk tools set rules and enforce workflows to ensure that every request is fully and consistently addressed. 

Incident response and help desk automation tools increasingly bring together metrics like response time, resolution time, and customer satisfaction. Some also include a customer self-service wiki and documentation. The most advanced tools use artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze the causal relationships between problems and solutions.

IT Help Desk Adopts Self-Service Strategy In Response To Staff Cuts

Almost all IT helpdesks use self-service tools to deal with labor savings because the number of service desk staff has decreased significantly since the recession began six years ago.

According to a study by LANDesk Software, 96% of service desks use self-service due to their small equipment. A study by the Service Desk Institute (SDI) revealed that the service desk team had 50% fewer staff than in 2007.

A study by LANDesk shows that the use of self-service desktop tools is growing rapidly. A survey by SDI revealed that 68% of help desk support services self-service to their users.

Research has shown that the main obstacles to self-service include outdated knowledge and lack of integration with support tools.

The management of user-owned devices is an ongoing trend," said Andy Baldin, vice president of EMEA. “With the rapid adoption of hybrid business-consumer IT in the workplace, service desks are required to support unfamiliar devices and applications.

This puts pressure on the team and it is very difficult to see the high penetration of these innovative solutions by the service desk, such as testing self-service and social media to provide the best service to the organization. It will be encouraging. Research shows that more than a third of organizations support user-owned devices at work.

Research shows that 24% of service desks use live chat to communicate with their users, and 13% use Twitter and 6% Facebook.

"We are pleased to announce that SDI is the best value for money," said Tessa Troubridge, managing director of SDI. "The customer service team constantly responds to the needs of a wide range of employees, but it is clear that we are responsible and innovative in responding to the changing environment." But it is encouraging to find ways to deal with the growing Remit through the innovative use of technology.

AI Help Desk Software Unlocks IT operations and Takes Over SRE Skills

Simple task software-based automation paves the way for more meaningful work among IT operations professionals in financial services companies.

Until 2018, the IT operations team at Freedom Financial Network, a 17-year-old financial services company, focused on reducing consumer debt, primarily focused on help desk service tasks for the 2,200 employees of the company call center. Was. The company has also made progress in migrating to the cloud and adopting Agile and DevOps practices, but wants to take a more automated approach to daily IT tasks and rethink how employees are assigned.

The  quick look at ServiceNow's AI help desk features and Moogsoft's AIOps software, but heard criticism from another CIO about a stealthy startup called Moveworks. The company, officially launched in April 2019, was founded by a former Google employee who specializes in natural language processing at the web giant.

SaaS-based Helpworks AI software integrates with Slack, Microsoft Teams and other ChatOps services along with email. Interact with Freedom Financial call center employees through chatbots and email conversations, and process help desk requests through an AI-powered probabilistic decision-making engine.

"There are many help desk automation tools on the market that do things like reset passwords. "But usually they still need backend people."

Freedom Financial has automated 15% to 20% of its help desk tasks since implementing Moveworks in 2018, and is aiming for 25% to 30% automation by the end of 2019. At the same time, reorganize the IT operations team and retrain them.

AI Help Desk Is Just The First Step In Complex SRE Migration

Freedom Financial IT professionals are already working on SRE jobs. A small team of three former software engineers and an operations-focused systems engineer are using Docker containers with tools like Chef and Ansible to build an automated application deployment platform on the Google Cloud Platform. These SREs supported application development for the company's customer-facing applications, adding SMS and chat support for call center employees, and SMS-based payment support for consumers.

Freedom Financial will train 14 additional IT service desk employees over the next six months. Some support SRE, others support corporate apps like Salesforce, and the rest support app developers. We will also use Moveworks data analysis to identify the most common reasons for help desk requests so that the SRE can address the cause in the long term.

However, while AI help desk software frees up IT employees who would otherwise spend all their time extinguishing fires, they cannot help Freedom Financial's most difficult task, retraining employees.

"I wish I had a better mechanism for training. Freedom Financial has a three-week training program where you can deploy two engineers and integrate them into your product team to learn about their work. Unlike large companies with thousands of engineers, Freedom cannot justify a formal year-round training program.It is difficult to find someone who really understands what that means.I can't afford to have an IBM-style three-year internship rotation."

Meanwhile, Freedom Financial also plans to deploy Moveworks software in a call center environment that call center employees will use to serve their customers. Tonnsen ultimately wants to use artificial intelligence software to automate back-end business functions, such as facilities and human resources services.

"We want to evolve Moveworks to support more communication channels, such as reporting and payment systems.

In the broader market, IT professionals have many choices of AI help desk tools, and their numbers continue to grow. In addition to native ServiceNow help desk automation and AIOps products like Moogsoft, BigPanda, and ManageEngine, providers like Spoke, IPsoft, Zendesk, and Freshdesk also offer Moveworks alternatives.

How do you manage your outsourced service desk?

In addition to prioritizing tickets, there are several other ways to optimize your IT team and ensure that your customers receive the support they need. Managing your outsourced service desk involves coordinating multiple metrics, defining goals, and maintaining employee satisfaction. Below are some best practices to help your team maximize its potential.

Build A Superior Team And Incorporate Your Feedback. Each IT service team is as good as the sum of the team members, their experience, and their skills. Training inexperienced staff can be risky, as they may choose to move into higher-paying positions once they have gained experience. Hiring experienced IT staff can generate higher salaries, but eliminates the need for costly and lengthy training processes. It also helps keep existing customers and increases customer satisfaction. Check to see if you have the tools you need and request regular feedback to make sure your team is happy and maximized.

Don't Overload Your Team. Excessive late tickets may indicate that the ticket management system needs improvement. In some cases, you may be able to reduce your delay by further automating the ticketing process. Overdue work is also a sign that IT equipment is not large enough to handle the workload and needs to be expanded. Recognizing these signs can go a long way in improving employee satisfaction, and therefore customer satisfaction.

Include A Service Level Agreement. Most companies use service level agreements (SLAs) to measure IT service problems and improvements. SLAs establish the basic terms of support services. They indicate an agreement between you and your client; for example, they specify the maximum amount of waiting time allowed for a good quality of service to be considered. It is important to remember that SLAs are different from the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) used to track performance. To derive and implement SLAs, you need to seek constructive customer feedback and discuss how you can improve customer satisfaction.

Improve The Customer Experience. As you know, customer retention not only solves problems effectively, it also depends on quality of service and customer experience. Understanding how to track customer experience can be difficult, especially if customer concerns don't align with SLAs. Analyze the data to understand the difference between good and bad customer experiences. These differences can range from poor communication with individual agents to long latencies. In addition to examining existing data, you can track your customer experience by asking customers directly. Provide an easily accessible customer portal and encourage customers to comment on their experiences.

Monitor The Data, But Focus On Actionable Insights. Tracking KPIs is essential to keep your help desk running smoothly. However, the amount of metrics available can be huge. Volume of tickets received, response rate, customer satisfaction with the service: all these factors provide information on the effectiveness of the system and the performance of service personnel. Comparing team performance and SLAs can be difficult, but you can start by setting a baseline and looking for variations. Investigate factors that can increase latency and customer satisfaction, and take precautions when possible.

Go Ahead And Celebrate Your Progress. Set clear performance goals for what your team wants to achieve and share those goals with your team. Make sure they know you are monitoring their performance. Once the team achieves the defined goals, ask the group to celebrate this progress. Keeping everyone informed will ensure that service personnel are aware of their performance. Then they will probably start thinking about actively reaching the team's goals.

Operating a support desk that provides high-level service requires constant supervision and regular coordination. SolarWinds® MSP Manager is an excellent management system that enables organizations to automate ticket management processes and ensure that IT services personnel have the support they need. With MSP Manager, you can generate support tickets from email details, track KPIs, such as the time spent on individual tickets, and view updates and alerts in a pan.

Ticket Management Best Practices:How Do You Prioritize Support Tickets?

For managed service providers (MSPs) and a variety of other organizations, staying on top of support services is critical to retaining customers and ensuring continued satisfaction. The tasks of the service team generally begin with requests from end-users. The request generates a support ticket, the details of which pass through the IT workflow until someone solves the problem. A well-designed ticket management system and implementation of help desk service best practices are essential for the smooth execution of support tickets.

Most organizations have to deal with the constant influx of requests for IT services, so maintaining a well-managed ticket management system is critical to keeping support services up and running. The ticket management system centralizes communication for end-users and streamlines the work of desk staff. A good ticket management system can promote problem-solving smoothly and improve customer satisfaction.

Fortunately, if you are looking to improve your support services, there are many practices that are easy to implement. This article explores ways to manage your help desk tickets and provides proven ways to improve service desk performance.

How do you prioritize support tickets?

As you know, a support ticket is a service request sent by an end-user and received by a ticket management system. Responding quickly and accurately to all tickets is important, but this can be challenging if you are inundated with requests for IT support. Do you receive tickets on a first-come, first-served basis or choose according to the urgency of your request? What if it takes longer than expected to find a solution?

Here are eight best practices to keep in mind when managing your support ticket queue.

Determine ticket priorities. Below are two ways to prioritize your tickets.

First To Arrive And First Out. The first-in, first-out method processes support requests in the order they are received. The chronological method helps optimize workflow and avoid a backlog.

Prioritize Entries According To Urgency. Most ticket management systems can receive an email and generate the required contact information, details of the problem, and how the problem affects customers. With this information, the team can choose which ticket to tackle first based on the type of problem the customer is facing.

Sort All Support Tickets According To Urgency. This step is especially important for prioritizing tickets based on urgency, but it is an important identifier regardless. This categorization allows support staff to identify the most pressing issues and take time. This type of time management can make a difference if you have a large influx of tickets that requires quick change.

Classify Clients. Ideally, all clients should be treated equally and all problems resolved quickly. However, if you have a small team that handles a large number of requests, you should consider prioritizing your customers with higher payment levels. And quickly track your requests. If desired, create VIP categories within the system first-in, first-out to ensure key accounts receive top-notch service.

Track And Monitor Ticket Status. To speed up your workflow, make sure that each ticket is assigned a status. For example, you can use labels like Open, In Progress, Pending, Closed, etc. Ticket management software helps you track the status of each ticket and easily see new updates on a central dashboard. In this way, you can track the progress of each ticket and prevent requests from being lost or ignored.

Monitor And Automate Workflows. You can automate your workflow by setting alerts on important clients or especially urgent tickets. You can also configure alerts for inactive and expired tickets. By minimizing the potential for human error, you can ensure that key customers receive immediate support and their pending requests are long gone. If a person receives an alert for an unsolvable problem, other teams that have experienced solving this particular type of problem use keyword tags like "system locked" to automate the reassignment process. Warn members. Such labels speed up the workflow and prevent difficult tickets from falling through the gap.

Keep Clients Informed. Automate the first response to the customer and include the estimated resolution time. When the problem is officially resolved, or if it takes longer than usual to reach a solution, please send an appropriate notification. Even without a scheduled schedule, customers appreciate continuous communication and the reassurance that they are evaluating the problem.

Draft Template Message If Possible. Creating a separate response for each customer is time-consuming and impractical. You can use the template message to alert the customer who received the request, provide estimated wait time, confirm that they are solving the problem, or notify them that the problem has been resolved. Customers don't expect a personalized response, but you can easily generalize canned communication by designing a template that recognizes each customer's particular problem.

Encourage Self-Service. Common problems often occur many times. Repeatedly answering the same question wastes time and effort, and waiting for an answer to a recurring problem can be frustrating for customers. In many cases, clients prefer to help themselves when possible. Create a database of peer support portals or IT knowledge to help customers tackle problems that are easy to solve. Join a team and ask them to write and post answers to frequently asked questions, saving you time and effort in the long run.

Best Career Advice for Help Desk Service Technicians

The IT industry is on the way, and help desk technicians have plenty of opportunities to catch the waves.

If you are dissatisfied with your current position for some reason, such as a low salary, few promotion options, or lack of professional development, you do not need to maintain the status quo. Here are some professional tips to help you increase your chances of embarking on a dream help desk service job.

Understand Industry Trends.

The top three IT trends that will affect help desk technicians in the near future are mobility, "bring your own device" or BYOD, and real-time support.

With so many workers using mobile devices (and through BYOD policies, or not), help desk professionals are rapidly increasing the number and variety of devices they need to support. 

Businesses are pushing the boundaries between cloud and mobile computing, but some IT departments and management systems are struggling to keep up. Smartphone and tablet apps are consumer-friendly trends and offer value at a lower cost and lower latency, but they can challenge the help desk.

When technology allowed more workers to work from home, help desk support services specialists were supporting user-supplied equipment. But the mobile device broke the lock. Even for companies that don't support their employees' devices, the mobile market is changing rapidly, and efforts are being made to keep up with the mobile devices offered by companies.

An example: OS X is no longer a niche operating system (OS). Mac desktops and laptops are still common in the field of education and creativity, but the superiority of the iPhone and iPad means that help desk professionals need to understand Windows and iOS systems. 

The expectation of real-time support is putting even more pressure on help desk professionals. The expectation that the help desk technician has the answer is much higher because the user is waiting for the phone, the chat window, or the other end of the session to share the screen. You also need good customer service and organizational strength to meet the pressures of real-time support.

The professional advice here is for help desk professionals who are flexible and want to learn. Rather than resist change, think of it as an opportunity to add it to your toolkit and accelerate your career. Take a look at the tools consumers and businesses use and prepare to support them.

Develop Skills

Help desk technicians often enter the field with general computer skills and receive additional training from their employer. To get out of and out of the help desk hierarchy or establish a leadership position someday, you can develop your IT support skills, including non-technical diversity, to set yourself apart from the crowd.

1. Experience with widely used network protocols and operating systems.
2. General knowledge of software and applications
3. Knowledge of cloud-based platforms in various web browsers and operating systems.
4. Customer-focused temperament that includes friendliness, courtesy, patience, initiative, and a sense of humor.
5. Problem solving skills, such as customer situation analysis and solution research.
6. Good written and verbal communication to describe technical problems without special jargon.
7. Ability to open and listen.

Level 1 positions require general troubleshooting and a small ranking. Specialization is not detrimental to meeting the qualifications of the most supportive jobs. The demand areas today are mobile, networking, data security, cloud products, healthcare and advanced server hardware.

Receive Training

Additional Pro Tips: Take your career at the help desk to the next level by educating you. Most employers prefer that their IT support staff have a technical degree of at least two years, and the associated certifications will be a great advantage. The most in-demand ratings include CompTIA A +, CompTIA Network +, Microsoft Certified Professional, HDI, and Cisco. If you don't have an associate or bachelor's degree, earning a degree is a great way to unlock more opportunities for your ladder. Some employers provide tuition assistance.

Don't miss out on job satisfaction and salary gains in the help desk profession. Our best career tip: Whether you're promoted, elevated, or new positions this year, set yourself up for success by getting the skills, experience, and certifications your IT employers need most. Please prepare.

The Help Desk Evolution: Three Trends Affecting IT Support

According to a study by Robert Half Technology and HDI, IT support services are evolving rapidly. Learn about the top three changes that affect the help desk and the skills you need to stay one step ahead.

Thanks to trends like cloud computing, mobility and BYOD (bring your own device), IT support services need to be more responsive. To complement these new technologies, help desk service professionals need to find new ways to manage privacy, security, and storage to keep up with the ever-increasing influx of new devices.

Below are three workforce trends that confuse IT support services, outlined in Robert Half Technology and HDI's collaborative research, future tech support centers, and implications for IT tech and support professionals. ..

1. Mobility

Help desks manage their assets thanks to the proliferation of mobile devices and Wi-Fi networks, many of which are public or unsecured, allowing employees to work beyond the traditional office boundaries. There are more challenges in doing so. For many organizations like OfficeMax in Naperville, IL, mobility essentially triples the number of physical assets under IT service management.

A way to control this rapid influx of mobile devices? We will have a dedicated technical support team, just like AIG. Global insurers have established internal mobility organizations to centralize the management of mobile devices and ensure secure integration.

2. BYOD

Like mobility, BYOD continues to raise concerns for IT support professionals. Business users not only want the option to work from anywhere, they also want to choose which device to use. However, organizations were reluctant to follow BYOD trends due to security concerns. In fact, according to our research, only a third of organizations allow employees to use their personal devices to access the corporate network.

But is that the best action plan? Perhaps employees work on their devices, whether companies like it or not. BYOD is still there and users will leave IT behind if the business doesn't adapt. The business of IT is to enable users to connect, share and collaborate in a secure environment with unlimited freedom.

3. Real-time Support

Longer waiting time for a week to remedy incidents. In many cases, even the day's wait times seem excessive. Today, users demand access to IT support anytime, anywhere. If there is a problem, they wait for an immediate solution.

Today's users are constantly exposed to Internet services that offer instant results (think social media, text messages, status updates in real time). Now they expect the same quality IT experience. To meet this demand, IT must be highly accessible, available, and secure. And to be accessible, available, and secure, IT support teams must collaborate and innovate, not just "catch and dispatch."

What Does This Mean For IT support Staff?

As more companies embrace virtualization and cloud services, many of today's technical support and support features change. IT is no longer considered a cost center, nor does it function as a cost center. The technical support team helps organizations find new ways to use technology to streamline operations, reduce costs, and better meet end-user needs. However, to do this, support professionals must stay up-to-date on mobile device and app trends.

And collaboration is key. Mobility, BYOD and permanent access requests require further collaboration from the technical support team. Therefore, you need more efficient problem management. Being able to identify past trends and avoid future problems benefits both the IT support center and the business.

Stay Sensitive - The Most Demanding Tech Support Skills

As your help desk evolves into a future technical support center, focus on the skills that make your business successful. Customer service, problem-solving, and communication skills are more important than ever in today's support environment.

The following are the top five support skills according to a survey of 403 technical support professionals by Robert Half and HDI.

• Customer service mindset; passion for customer service (88%)
• Wants to continue learning about technology and trends (80%)
• Social intelligence; understanding of human connections in the digital world (75%)
• A proactive approach to solving the problem. Efficiency (71%)
• Strengthening collaboration with staff inside and outside the Technical Support Center (71%)

Please note that most of the skills necessary to succeed in future technical support centers are interpersonal skills, not technical. This indicates that the focus of support in the Technical Support Center is greater than ever.