Did you know worldwide, Microsoft reported that 96% of consumers say customer service is an essential factor in their choice of loyalty to a brand?
A good help desk support system is invaluable for creating a great customer experience. But choosing the right one can be tricky. Here’s what to consider when choosing help desk software.
1. Knowing how much to spend on a help desk software
The formal way of calculating your help desk budget is to build a total cost per ticket/incident metric. You can find it by dividing the help desk operating expenses by total ticket volume during any given time.
Operating expenses should include:
- Staff costs and facilities costs.
- Software costs.
- Channel costs like VoIP phone or video conferencing.
Once you’ve got insights into what you are already spending, you can find the help desk solution that meets your needs.
2. The type of help desk software you would need
Here are four common types of help desk software that will help you narrow down your search:
1. Cloud-native
A cloud-based or web-based help desk software is hosted on the vendor’s servers.
You are required to pay monthly or annual subscription fees.
You don’t need to worry about maintenance, data backup, or security, as the vendors deal with these.
2. On-premises
You will have to install the system on your server and look after its data backup, maintenance, and security.
You will need to purchase the software license and pay a one-time setup fee. Though this would be relatively costly than cloud-native software, here you get complete control over the data.
3. Enterprise
Enterprise software can be used by huge support teams that need advanced features like change management, IT asset management, multi-brand support, enterprise reporting, and more. Unfortunately, this also makes them the most expensive of all options.
4. Open source
An open-source help desk software allows developers to access its source code and then modify or enhance the tool depending on your business needs. It’s a cost-effective and highly scalable type of software. However, it is only recommended for small-sized businesses as it doesn’t offer great safety and capacity to handle big volumes of tickets. Your team can tailor the tool over time, add or remove features, fix bugs, make it more secure, enhance its user interface, and more.
3. Setting your customer service goals
What are the customer service challenges that you want solutions for?
- Do you want fast response times?
- Want to offer multi-channel support?
- Have more agents behave in a more friendly manner
- Want to speed up query resolution?
- Increase agents’ productivity
These are the most common challenges any customer service department would face. Chances are, you might need help with all of them.
You can get inputs from your help desk agents and your customer feedback to know which particular challenges you need to deal with. Then, find the right help desk software whose solutions align with your needs.
4. Looking out for the best features
If the above point didn’t give you enough clarity in buying the right help desk software, you might want to look for the features you’d want.
Features to look for in the best help desk software are:
Knowledge access: Enabling agents to quickly retrieve product information and routing customers to FAQs.
Database capacity: You should have enough space to store your entire customer database and all knowledge-based articles.
Customization: Allow for branding the interface and templates.
Scalability: Allows you to add or minus features, additional agents, and ticketing support capacity if needed?
Integration: Should support quick and easy integration with all your customer service software.
Optimized for Mobile: You must help your agents offer support on the go and help you to track the operations.
Security: Must offer excellent encryption for customer data safety.
5. Reading the reviews
One of the most effective ways to ensure you invest in the best help desk software is by looking at what its customers say about it. Take a look through the company’s reviews and testimonials.
Don’t just go through what’s on the website. Instead, look into software review forums like Trustpilot, PCMag, Capterra, and more.
Moreover, their Twitter feed can help you show how many disgruntled customers they have created and the problems they’ve faced.
6. Ensuring the reliability of its tech support
Glitches or system problems in a support help desk can cause a ruckus in your customer service endeavors. These problems can interrupt or take the system down completely, making it difficult for you to respond to customers on time, creating angry customers, or even losing important data.
To mitigate these issues, you need to ensure the tech support of your helpdesk software is efficient and active round the clock.
7. Taking it for a test run
The most basic yet effective thing to do is take free demos. Almost all helpdesk support software gives out free trials. And in case the software does not live up to your expectations, you shall go ahead and not purchase it.
Final Words
A helpdesk software helps you offer excellent customer support and service, something that is of utmost importance in this day and age of cut-throat competition. We hope this quick guide will help you find the best help desk support software for your business.
