Leading the hunt for the best helpdesk software to recommend to your manager? Or are you the helpdesk support manager looking to compile a shortlist of products to trial for your team?
Here are a few points to consider when selecting your next helpdesk software.
Step 1. The Product
Choosing the right helpdesk software for your support team is so important. Your whole team will be using it day in, day out. It’s not the sort of software you can each choose your preferred tool to use (though thats a nice idea!) such as one person might prefer WinZip while another might prefer to use WinRAR and both get to the same end. It’s also not a piece of software that you can switch out at the drop of hat, such as the whole team use a utility like WinZip this week and maybe next week you all decide to use WinRAR.
Helpdesk sofware is much more important because what you choose will determine not only what your team spend each of their working day using, but will determine how they perform. As helpdesks tend to serve end-users or external clients, its pretty important that your helpdesk team performs optimally, especially as most helpdesk support teams are always so busy. For your team to perform well, you need a helpdesk solution that is easy-to-use and well thought out whilst also cost-effective to satisfy the purse.
Step 2. The Vendor
Once you have considered the tool, its also important to consider the company behind the tool. When you need help, what kind of help are you going to get? Can you call and talk to someone. Each time you call, is it a different person? The best way to find out how well a company responds, is to email or call them during your trial! Try it with us! What you want is some continuity of personell dealing with you, someone you can talk to if you wish and ask advice. You want a company that does not just send quick meaningless responses by email (we have all experienced that and we all know how frustrating being a “number” can be so you really dont want that kind of support for your own helpdesk!)
Aside the customer service delivery, Target Helpdesk Software offer professional services from implementation assistance to get you up and running as fast and smoothly, offer training to get your team up to speed without delay if required and offer professional services for custom development and consulting.
Step 3. The Platform
This is simple but not always obvious. You want to take advantage of latest technology, which is why we built Target Helpdesk, 100% on .NET. It’s stable, reliable, high performance and goes pretty much anywhere Windows goes. Using latest .NET technology for example, meant we were Vista compatible and now Windows Server 2008 compatible without changes. This is simply because, with a 100% .NET application, the application only talks to the .NET framework and the framework in turn deals with the Operating System.
In terms of operational platform, don’t make the classic mistake of thinking web-only will make things easy. How many times have you spent most of your day at your desk using Outlook Web Access (OWA)? Probably not many when you have Outlook client available. OWA has its place and is great for when you are out-and-about. You want your helpdesk support team to be productive and that means a desktop client will almost always outperform the web-only. The web-only is an easier sell, quick single install and access everywhere. We have a Web Portal for both operator and client access, but we recommend and still find our users much prefer the desktop client, just like they prefer Outlook client. In fact, we have migrated clients from web-only solutions to our solution specifically for the productivity of the desktop-client.
Target Helpdesk is designed by support professionals, for support professionals, used by us every day as both a CRM system and helpdesk system for supporting clients. Target Helpdesk is designed to do much more than just call logging. It monitors and reports performance, shows the value you add and saves you time, every day. Check out our features page. As a company, we provide personal service right from when you start a trial to implementation, support and account management. Try us and see! As for the platform, Target Helpdesk is built 100% on .NET, desktop, windows service and web portal. We continue to aggressively develop the product to ensure it continues to meet the changing needs of business, your business of delivering great service that is.
If you are tasked with implementing a helpdesk system, contact us. Whether you just want to discuss your project or get assistance with setting up a trial, we will be happy to help you.
