Tuesday 18 October 2011

The main features of modern help desk software








Computer and software vendors realized the need to build and maintain help desk centers powered by help desk software in the early 1980s when personal computers started to play an important role in day-to-day business activities and home computers became part of everyday life. In the course of the past two decades, help desk systems evolved from relatively simple software for managing databases containing data on various issues to complex systems that integrate different software modules designed to support complex functionality. In fact, modern help desk systems are able to process simultaneous requests by hundreds and even, thousands customers while keeping track on numerous issues, providing instant solutions, and processing and recording "tickets" related to these issues.
Generally, help desk systems' core module is an issue tracking systems that receives, records, and handles various requests by computer or software users. Of course, such a system can service any other industry but help desk applications emerged originally within the IT industry where customer support employees have to deal with numerous and often complicated issues on a daily basis.
A modern help desk system is able to record phone calls on issues and log customer requests to a database, where solutions to most common problems are entered thus enabling customer support staff to offer instant solutions. Issue tracking functionality allows customer support departments not only to identify a particular customer but to take a brief look at past issues the customer has experienced and solutions that worked best for this particular customer. In addition, advanced help desk software platforms are able to escalate automatically an issue to Level 2 or Level 3 customer support representatives, in case no appropriate solution can be offered by Level 1 customer support.
Recently, help desk applications started to feature advanced functionality allowing software to priorities independently issues depending on a set of factors that are assessed when an issue occurs within particular software or hardware environments or depending on specific needs and business process priorities of a customer. Therefore, many advanced systems are able to identify emergency issues depending on client IDs and redirect such requests to an expert in the field that is able to provide tailored resolution to the problem. A good number of systems can dispatch calls, emails, and real-time online requests to specific customer support specialists or departments to provide faster resolution and secure best response time.
A knowledge base that covers all and every customer is an essential module incorporated into a good help desk system. The extensive use of such a knowledge base enables customer support departments to offer gradually increasing number of instant resolutions to issues that occur during the day-to-day use of software and hardware provided by their respective company. Thus, rich database functionality is crucial for a help desk system to meet present-day requirements of both customers and providers and secure a gradually enhancing service.
Extended communication and collaboration functionality is also essential in development of contemporary help desk systems for a good number of issues cannot be resolved by a single specialist while handling and processing multiple customer requests at a time and is a must-have feature of a decent help desk system. 





Tags :

Computer, software, personal computers, home computers, various databases, help desk systems, issue tracking systems, record phone calls, help desk applications, help desk features, dependant factors, independent factors, client IDs, rich database functionality, extended communication, multiple customers, modern help desk systems




No comments:

Post a Comment