Help Desk Reviews

With the economy going the way it is, many people out there today are looking to start their own home business.  Whether your selling t-shirts, or building the next great online service, you need help to get this done.  Let’s take a look at what you need to remember when setting up shop.

Setup a Place of Business

Now, you might be running your business out of your cellar, however you need to give the impression that you are bigger than you really are.  Go up to your local post office, and see if you can setup a PO Box address – so people can reach your business by mail.  This also helps to keep your personal mail separate from your business mail.

Read the rest of this entry »

What should you be looking for in a help desk?  There are many different help desks out there in many different shapes and sizes.  Here are a few thing I would recommend you check in on before you make your final choice.

Script vs Hosted Service

I would highly recommend going for a hosted script, that somebody else can manage the backend for.  Why?  Well, it takes one more monkey off your back, and allows you to focus more so on the customer service and support you provide through the help desk.

Built in Tools

How many other built in tools does your help desk choice have?  Having quick response management is a must, and a built in knowledge base is really nice.  These are two features I like to see built into any help desk I am checking out.

Quality Tools and Support

Find out how responsive the help desk provider really is.  Before choosing one, contact their support team or try posting a support message on their message boards and see how responsive they are to your questions or issues.  This is the best pre-test you can do, before you really need their help.  You should always know what to expect, so this trial test with the support methods they provide should help shine a light on things.

So those are my must-have features for any help desk I use, what about you?  What tools and services does your perfect help desk need to have?  Let me know in the comments!

Most companies out there will wait until it is too late before they try to find a reliable help desk to help with with their support needs.  Waiting for the need might cost you in the long run, because you will have to start to maneuver staff around, have work disruption and suffer from a loss of business.

So when is the right time to get a help desk?

This is no simple answer for everybody, however I do have some general advice I think all could learn from.  You need to be able to stay ahead of the curve though, so you are ready to meet the problem, before it runs you over.

A truly effective IT help desk will prevent problems for you rather than fix them.  Get that sort of mind set right now if you want to be a success.  Go out and start looking for much more than just a fix to the problem – find a helping hand.  Personally I have had a lot of luck with TremenDesk.  Why TremenDesk?

• It has helped us increase our productivity, giving us tools to answer customers quickly.
• It is easy to use, so there is less training time for new employees.
• Our internal stress over meeting the customer demands are now gone, because TremenDesk allows us to manage current and past customer situations with ease.

There are just a few solutions we have found that TremenDesk, the better IT Help Desk has provided us.  Don’t wait for all heck to break loose.  Go find yourself a help desk to use before you need it, so you can meet that demand, rather than trying to satisfy it later.

Are help desks only for questions?

Now sure, many help desk out there are mainly focused at clients or customers sending in their questions – however applications like TremenDesk could really be used for much more.

Things to keep in mind when setting up your help desk would be…

What are your clients’ demands?  Do they need to reach you for support, or do they need something else?  Many help desks out there are setup to receive things like feedback from projects, advertising requests, and much more than just your common Q and A.  So that might be something to keep in mind when it comes to setting up your own hosted help desk.

The thing to remember is that your only limitation is your own imagination, and as long as you are meeting the customer’s needs, you should be set.

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!

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

A help desk is a place where you can get information and assistance with technical problems you might have.  Many of them are broken off into two categories, the ticket portion and the tutorial portion.

In the ticket portion, you have a way for customers to contact a company or business, to answer a question or to get a response.  The tutorial portion often has FAQs (frequently asked questions) answered, and popular help articles that give information for topics that are most asked about.

As for the history of the modern help desk, here is a little more information about that from Wikipedia:

In the mid 1990s, Middleton at Robert Gordon University found through his research that many organizations had begun to recognize that the real value of their help desk(s) derives not solely from their reactive response to users’ issues but from the help desk’s unique position where it communicates daily with numerous customers or employees. This gives the help desk the ability to monitor the user environment for issues from technical problems to user preferences and satisfaction. Such information gathered at the help desk can be valuable for use in planning and preparation for other units in IT.

So as you can see, at it’s core – any help desk’s purpose is to help the customer get more information, by any means necessary.

There are definitely a lot of things to take into consideration when it comes to picking the help desk that is right for you.  TechRepublic has done an excellent article on this very topic that I would like to share with all of you:

Here is just a little taste before you dive into the real deal:

The consulting firm I work for recently asked me to find a solution to meet our help desk needs. Specific qualifications had to be met for this help desk system to become “the one.” I assumed the task would be simple — after all, I’ve spent the last 10 years covering software of all sorts, including help desk tools. The reality was much different. There are a LOT of help desk systems available. So many, I quickly realized just how challenging the selection would be.

Read the rest of 10 things to consider when choosing a help desk system.

They have touched upon many important factors here.  Making it easy, branding, ticket management, web interface, personalization, security, features and budget play a key role.  One help desk system I know of that meets all the qualifications is TremenDesk.

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.

Are you looking for Help Desk software? Now there are many choices out there, from small to large – but only one gives you the benefit of being low in maintenance and high in value.  That help desk system is none other than TremenDesk.

There is no need to learn Perl, PHP, or any other complicated scripting language to use this fantastic help desk solution.  Oh no, you see it is a “hosted” help desk suite.  What this means for you is that the install and the upkeep on the back end is all managed by the dedicated TremenDesk administrators.  All you have to worry about is keeping your customers happy through the help desk interface that TremenDesk provides.

Give the 30 day free trial a shot, there is no credit card needed, and this way you can see what many have already seen, TremenDesk is by far the best hosted help desk system out there today.