Top 10 Ways a Help Desk Can Help You

What is help desk software?

Help desk software can help companies resolve tech issues faster and allow IT departments to work more efficiently. How? Simply put, a help desk organizes information, streamlines workflows, and eliminates many manual processes. With help desk software (often a subset of a service desk software), no longer will an IT support specialist have to laboriously log issues by hand, dig through disorganized emails to get to the bottom of a problem, track the status of issues manually, or let requests slip through the cracks.

A help desk system automates an issue resolution workflow, centralizes information, and keeps everyone in-the-know with email alerts. And instead of having to track down someone from tech support to get help, employees can simply submit a ticket to the helpdesk team through email or a customizable web-based form. The help desk software will then receive, log, and assign issues to the appropriate help desk technicians automatically, making the process more convenient for all parties involved.

Not only do help desks streamline communication, they also keep detailed records of all submitted issues, making it easier to track updates and report on what work was done (handy for end-of-year reviews). As you can see, there many ways a help desk can make your life easier and your business more productive. It’s no wonder why using help desk software is considered one of the IT best practices that can benefit almost every company. Here are 10 great ways help desk software can simplify life in the office and in IT:

10 Ways a Help Desk Helps You

1. Work more efficiently
   Office workers can submit issues easily and get their tech issues fixed faster, allowing everyone to spend more time being productive, and less time twiddling their thumbs. IT professionals waste less time on unnecessary manual processes, freeing up valuable time for more important work.
2. Multitask smarter, even on the go
   Help desk systems allow IT pros to more easily categorize and prioritize issues, allowing them to better sequence which issues to work on. For example, a tech might want to handle multiple similar issues in a single trip from the server room, making better use of their time.
3. One place for all IT requests
   Most help desk systems include a user portal that provides a single place for users to create tickets, view the status of open issues, and close out tickets once they’re resolved. A portal can also be used to relay important information to users (such as planned downtime), which can reduce unnecessary tickets.
4. Customize to meet your needs
   At a basic level, a help desk ticket includes a title and description of each issue. For more detailed information and better categorization, a company can create custom fields such as department, building location, floor number, or peanut butter preference… then create reports based on that data.

   

5. Analyze IT trends, improve overall workflow
   Because help desks can help you track metrics, such as average time spent resolving tickets, IT managers can run detailed reports to discover trends. For example, if you find a certain tech is very good at a specific task, you might want to give all related tickets to them for maximum efficiency.
6. Prioritize important tasks
   Different tickets warrant different responses depending on their severity. Replacing an old mouse for one person is far less important than repairing a failed server that affects the entire company. With a help desk system, technicians can easily prioritize and sort tickets, so high severity tickets get addressed quickly and are less likely to fall through the cracks.
7. Auto-assign help desk tickets
   The best help desk software can analyze tickets and automatically assign issues based on specific criteria. For instance, you can send all hardware issues to Steve and all software issues to Bob. Or you can assign all tickets from Accounting or Marketing to Sally, and every ticket with the word “password” in it to Mary.

8. Better establish expectations with due dates
   Setting, tracking, and communicating changes to issue due dates is easy with a help desk, which is useful for both the IT pro addressing the issue, and the employee who submitted it. Due dates can be automatically or manually assigned, and help desk technicians can sort tickets based on date projects need to be completed.
9. Don’t reinvent the wheel
   Some tech problems reoccur regularly. With a help desk system, you can record relevant notes on any ticket and even upload files necessary to help solve the problem. Later, anyone on the IT department’s helpdesk team can search through old tickets for help with similar issues.
10. Show what your worth
    With help desk reporting, you can easily run reports to show how many tickets were resolved in the last week, month, quarter or year for just you or for your entire IT department. These reports are great for identifying technology problem areas and for showing the value that IT professionals bring to a company.

Is a help desk right for me?

If it’s not clear by now, a help desk is designed to make life easier for IT pros. With help desk functionality, interactions are simplified, information is organized, and processes are more streamlined.

Most companies find value in using a help desk once they start seeing a healthy volume of issues come in and they need more organization around requests.

The primary barrier for some businesses to implement a help desk system is software cost… with some options costing thousands of dollars. In the long run, help desk software helps companies operate more efficiently, saving money over time.

Luckily, free help desk software like Spiceworks makes it easy to try one out with little risk, especially with a cloud-based service, where you can get set up in minutes. If your company isn’t using a help desk now, download a free one, try it out for a while, and see if it works for you.