I’ll Have What He’s Having: Compare Help Desk Core Features Before Investing

Do fewer dropped calls, more satisfied customers, and a more confident customer service team sound like something you’re after? Have you admired the help desk services offered by your peers to their clients? Then it’s time to compare help desk core features, make the investment, and start enjoying the benefits of an automated help desk.

Start to Compare Help Desk Features with This Example

An automated help desk can mark a new day in your organization, where you’ll see more calls resolved at first contact, your staff meets more goals, and you get the added advantage of a decrease in employee turnover. From web-based to on-premise, or a combination of both, there are several products to look at as you compare help desk solutions. Looking at this interesting case study from a leading vendor with a long-time success record, FrontRange, may help you begin your comparison on solid footing.

A Tale of Getting Needs Met

This is a story with a familiar character – Jim Beam, of the bourbon legacy. Now known as Beam Global Spirits and Wine, the organization’s growth has helped it exceed $2.5 billion in sales and capture the title of one of the globe’s biggest spirit companies. What’s this have to do with your organization? It’s a good way to look at how some of the core features of an automated help desk made a real impact, and to decide if you’ll “have what he’s having.”

The needs of Beam Global Spirits and Wine may sound familiar to you. A bustling help desk serves hundreds of employees across the globe, and there’s also a need to manage several compliance and internal service-level agreements. Several years ago, the company began its automated help desk services with FrontRange but needed to expand on its existing program to meet its needs for growth.

From Humble Beginnings … To Top Technology

A paper and pen – have you ever kept track of customer contacts like that? Then it’s definitely time to compare help desk solutions. This mega-organization started that way too, but the rise in calls pushed them to need a much more intuitive system. FrontRange HEAT, the vendor’s service desk solution, was implemented easily across all 12 departments, with 12 different styles of using the tool – highlighting customization as a key feature of help desk software.

Customized Interfacing Is a Bonus to Notice When You Compare Help Desk  Features

As you compare help desk software, look for the ability to adapt the product across divisions – like finance, invoicing, purchasing, sales and even administration – so that you get big-picture, streamlined management that goes beyond just resolving a call and into deeper areas of business management. For Beam, this meant numerous users interfacing with the software with their own customized screens and processes.

Speed with Tickets, and Rock Solid Reliability

Another feature to note as you compare help desk software is the solution’s ability to continue increasing your productivity, even while it’s being upgraded of configured to meet your current needs. For Beam, this included the ability to continue producing detailed, customized departmental reports even while some divisions had asked for their own tweaks to the way the system managed tickets. The ability of the product to store multi-divisional documents in one handy location also helps boost the functionality of HEAT.

There’s no time to spare when resolving a ticket, and HEAT makes it fast by auto-filling certain fields in new tickets and then sending out a follow-up survey to users asking about their satisfaction. This helps address any challenges early on and is an interesting feature to note as you compare help desk solutions.

Remember After You Compare Help Desk Software, it Should Do What it Said it Would

After you’ve finished your help desk comparison and implemented the product, it has to do what it’s supposed to do (meaning, it should help). Choose a help desk solution that does what HEAT has done for Beam, in that it allowed workloads for staff to grow without needing to train and add more people. It also gets high marks for reliability and for not causing its users a delay in service even during customizations and upgrades.

As you compare help desk solutions, it’s okay to want what someone else is having. That’s how great success stories are made.