Help Desk Reviews

Here is a great management idea for your help desks out there.

You should think of your help desk users as a triangle.  At the top point, you have the person who is in charge of it all.  Then under them, we have two people that work under the person in charge.  After that each person gets other people assigned to them.

This way, everybody gets a role and a place in a much more organized business.  You want to make sure each person who has people assigned under them do not have too many people assigned in that place, because then there is a chance there could be a break in communication.

Help desk software like TremenDesk, a hosted help desk solution, makes this task very easy.  From within the administrator interface, you can assign rolls and duties. You could have this group of people only able to see the desk they should be working, and then that group of people only seeing the stuff they should be looking at.  Once again, we go back to the triangle idea of help desk management.

The last thing I want you to remember is that you should always have the right balance of people both above and bellow – because without that, your proverbial pyramid is going to fall.

Help Desk software should be open enough for creative new ways to be thought up, and can be put to the test.  I have seen many help desk systems that are too exact in nature, and that does not help when it comes to finding a solution that fits a wide variety of topics.

You need a help desk to provide you general features, such as:

• A Manual Way to Submit Tickets (via a web site)
• An Automatic Way to Submit Tickets (like via email)

Other features you might want to consider are:

An easy interface to customize the “input” data a customer can give.  You need ways to change the questions asked of the customer when putting in a help desk question, such as name, location, what the problem is, and other account specific details

A way for tech support members to communicate between themselves about a ticket.  Being able to type up and share private notes about a situation is a good way to help troubleshoot before you go back to the customer with a definite answer.

All in all, you have to remember to keep a help desk simple enough, so it fits a wider group of people better.

When it comes to looking for the perfect help desk, you first have to ask yourself – what type of solutions are you looking for?  We are all looking for that leading support platform.  Something that is powerful, flexible and adaptable for our own organizations.

Better Help Desk Features

As far as features go, you want to go with ticketed support that has e-mail management included.  Advanced statistical reporting is important too, because you want to be able to monitor your customer and staff relations.  The ability to publish rich self help resources is something that can not be overlooked in the features department either.  When push comes to shove, teamwork is the keyword to remember.  Any help desk you choose should have a focus of working as a team, rather than pitting one department against another.

Integration also plays an important part of any help desk solution.  How easy is it to make the help desk fit your web site layout, and make the transition from your site to the help desk as flawless as possible?  You might also look at synchronizing task, appointments and contacts.  Sharing login information with third-party databases would be a feature handy to have too.

As you can see, I can come up with plenty of solutions when it comes to help desk management, what I would like to know is what are you looking for in a help desk?

What is the best business help desk solution out there?  TremenDesk.

Let me paint a scenario for you, the average web citizen.  What are you do to when you are running a small to medium sized business, and you start getting a surge of new customers coming your way?  They are all coming in, looking for answers and want to get in contact with you but you don’t have anything other than that puny e-mail address on your web page.  What is a business owner to do?

You enlist the help of a professional.  For a cheap monthly, you can get yourself a help desk to fill your support void.  This way, you can easily sort, configure and get back to your customers before they go somewhere else to do business.

With TremenDesk you can:

+ Create and reply to tickets

+ Assign or unassign tickets

+ Search tickets by any string of text (email, full name, etc) or unique ticket ID #

+ View all tickets from any user

+ Merge tickets

And so much more.  Now your business is booming, the sun is shining and you are better able to handle your new cliental.  Out of all the help desks out there to choose from, TremenDesk has done the most to impress me thus far.

Committing to a hosted help desk solution is a big decision and this is the backbone of your customer support reputation.  It is so important to phone or email the web hosts or software providers that you are considering with top questions, prior to spending your hard earned cash.

Here are our top 10 questions for help desk service reps:

1. How long before my Help Desk  is available to use?
2. Why should I choose your company to host my Help Desk?
3. Do you have 24/7 support?
4. Where will my Help Desk be located?
5. Do you provide backups for free?
6. How secure is my Help Desk?
7. What is the contract duration I am committing to?
8. Is there a money back guarantee and how long is it?
9. Will your help desk solution grow as my business grows?
10. How fast is the customer and tech experience?

We recommend TremenDesk by Lunarpages Web Hosting. Call or email them and see how they score with our top 10 questions

Lunarpages Web Hosting released TremenDesk.com last year and by far this is the best online hosted helpdesk we have reviewed.

TremenDesk is idea for the following types of support/communication:

Schools – Communicate with students, parents and teachers, submit assignments etc

Businesses – Customer Support including technical, billing, sales,  and various tiers of support

Best Features:

Speed – Because the desk is hosted on Lunarpages servers the speed an reliability is phenomenal!

Robust – Can handle thousands of users and queues at the same time.

Versatile – Can be used for various business types, various desks.

Affordable - Starting at under $40 per month, the best solution for your business.

Visit TremenDesk.com NOW!

Security for help desk users and owners should always be a top priority.  So, with that said – what security tips and tricks should you keep in mind when running a help desk or using a help desk.  I will share with you a few suggestions for each.

Here are some good help desk security tips for users and owners.

Help Desk Users

• Do not give out information you should keep private, such as credit card, social security details or passwords.
• Clear your browser history and cache regularly if you share the computer you are on with multiple people or you use a public computer.

Help Desk Owners

• Make sure you keep your scripts up to date, unless you are using an online hosted help desk solution like TremenDesk – which in that case updating isn’t needed.
• Make sure you offer alternatives to the help desk, such as phone support, if clients don’t feel comfortable giving some information over the phone.

You can never be too safe these days when it comes to online security, so my last tip for both types of help desk users (both the owners of them and the users of them) would be to use common sense. 

Help desks are not just for online businesses anymore.  Every single day I hear about a new career type, business or organization using help desks in new and unique ways.

Here are three careers out there that you might not think would need a help desk,  but would be helped by it.

Car Dealerships – A car sales man could be helped greatly by using a help desk.  They could take quotes about what type of car a customer wants one on one via a ticket-based system.  With all the customer’s needs in one place – helping them would only take a few minutes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wouldn’t you like to know how to run a more effective help desk environment?  In the book, Running an Effective Help Desk, Barbara Czegel will guide you through the steps you need to take to get this done. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Ever wanted to know how you can get yourself signed up for one of the best help desks out there on the market today?  The TremenDesk News web site has posted a complete walkthrough on how you can sign up for TremenDesk, the flexible hosted help desk.

Here is just a small sample of the hosting help desk assistance:

Anybody out there can sign up for TremenDesk.  This help desk software is easy enough to order and to use for any business at any level.  Today, I though I would show you how easy it is to quickly get your new TremenDesk hosted help desk ordered and setup.

Interested?  Check out the fully illustrated walkthrough only over at TremenDesk.com.