Help Desk Collaboration Tools to Consider when Choosing Help Desk Software

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No business runs perfectly, and in today’s world of “Business at the Speed of Thought,” resolving problems as fast as possible is key to corporate growth. It’s not just that external stakeholders and customers are often frustrated at the long delays in resolving their problems–it’s often difficult to even get an acknowledgment to service requests. Employees also face this situation and it can lead to both demoralization as well as a loss of operational coordination, and the time frame for resolving problems is often left open ended. Help desk software has done a great deal to help to eliminate these issues, but to ensure that a company makes the right purchase decision, it is important to tie specific business needs with software that offers the right help desk collaboration tools.

When looking for help desk solutions, the follow help desk collaboration tools are essential:

  • The user experience must be interactive. This involves ensuring that a ticket number is issued and the user is aware of the work order status. The user should be able to check their status and the expected time frame for service / response at any time. Trouble ticket software can facilitate this process.
  • The process for submitting the service request must be simple and quick.
  • Priorities must be automatically assigned per predetermined parameters.
  • Continuous status audit must be available to ensure that no requests are forgotten or unanswered.
  • There must be a system of automatic escalation for requests with delayed responses.
  • Since there will be times when other departments will be involved in the resolution process, live help desk collaboration with others must be available to ensure that needless duplication and lack of coordination do not occur.
  • Real time monitoring of queues for manually overriding priorities must be possible.
  • Regular, easy-to-use statistical information detailing response and resolution times must be available.
  • Post service feedback forms should be automatically sent to users and the responses docketed with the request and resolution data to allow for analysis of user satisfaction levels.
  • Custom conditions, actions and triggers should be easily defined to allow situation-specific responses.
  • A database of service requests that can be sorted on the basis of frequency, nature of the request, or any other defined parameters must be available for management examination. Being able to take preemptive action to remove common or frequent service requests will reduce the load on the help desk and streamline operations further.
  • A self service portal that allows users to rectify minor problems on their own will both increase user satisfaction levels and reduce the help desk workload.

The availability of the right help desk collaboration tools will ensure that users feel that that their needs have been noted and that assistance will be provided quickly. There are a large number of help desk collaboration options available. Look for help desk collaboration tools that meet not just a business’ existing needs but are scalable to meet projected future requirements.