Your guide to choosing a help desk software solution

You already know that your business wants to provide the best quality of customer service, but have you envisioned the rest of the process? Before you blindly choose the first help desk software claiming to be the best on the market, it’s important to make a list of your criteria. After all, every company has different needs and desires, and it’s only natural that the tools you’ll use are the best adapted. You’ll need to consider everything from pleasing your customers to providing a productive work environment for your customer service representatives, meeting your company’s goals, and making sure that you have the necessary resources available.

This guide will walk you through every aspect you should examine when it comes to choosing the right help desk software for your business.

Your customer

Help desk softwares have an ultimate goal of supporting the relationship between you and your customers, which is why you should first consider their needs. So, close your eyes for a second (after you read this paragraph, of course) and picture the path of an ideal customer experience. Ask yourself these questions:

Form of communication: How will they reach you?

Do your customers prefer to reach out to you via phone, social media, email, live chat, or a combination? Perhaps they are more interested in a self-help solution where they can access your knowledge base themselves? Take a look at the past patterns of communication and evaluate how you can make your support system as convenient as possible for your customers.

What is the ideal path your customers expect to receive solutions?

Will a customer service representative walk them through each issue step-by-step? Will they be directed to articles after a brief chat? How many departments and help guides should they go through before they receive an answer? These are some of the vital questions you should ask yourself when choosing a help desk software that will be the most beneficial for your customers.

How quickly do your customers expect their issues to be resolved?

In the age of social media, people expect replies quicker than ever before. Even if you’re not to the point of offering customer support via social media, (although if not, it’s definitely worth considering) you should still note that replying in a timely manner can make or break a good reputation with your customers. The idea of “timely manner” can differ from industry to industry and business to business, so this is a personal evaluation you’ll have to make when finding a suitable software.

In what language are your customers reaching out to you?

Depending on your industry and span across the globe, your customers might speak a plethora of languages. This is especially true for eCommerce sites that ship internationally. The best way to reach them in their native tongue is to provide multilingual support. Therefore, it could save you both time and hassle if this option is already incorporated into your chosen software.

Where can you improve your customers’ experiences?

Within your customer service solution, there will always be adjustments to make. There are probably missing features or certain procedures that you have not been able to implement yet in your current help desk software. To understand what these are, your customers’ feedback is a great place to start. Once you’ve came up with a list, look for a new software solution that will help you take this next step towards offering improved services, as well as channeling new challenges.

Your team

It’s just as important to find a help desk software that will make your team as happy as you hope to make your customers. Therefore, you’ll want to make sure it meets their basic working needs by asking the following questions:

How will you train your team on the new software?

When asking this question, you’ll need to factor in your available resources and time. Will you need to set aside a week or just a day from their normal daily routine to train them on this new software? Then, who will train them? You might need to pay for a consultant to come in and educate your team about the software. However, it’s also possible that this can be done internally either by someone from your IT department or potentially your team will be able to individually teach themselves.

What is your team accustomed to?

Is it being able to manage tickets from multiple support channels in one place? Is it the ease of flow within your call center from one department to another? Maybe it’s another workflow that the team is comfortable and productive with? Whatever the case is, you should be willing to accommodate those that will be serving your customers directly on a daily basis.

Will this solution allow your team to function faster?

Just like asking your customers for feedback, it’s equally important to do the same for your staff. Ask them what resources they need to solve your customers complaints and issues better. Is there something you were unable to offer in the past that a new software could? This new software should work out the kinks that will lead your staff towards a more productive work environment.

Your overall business

Every company functions differently, from customer needs to structure, location, or the overall landscape. Therefore, support solutions that fit your company might not fit another. This is why you must ask yourself the following questions about your business’s plans:

Will you need a software that’s scalable?

Does your company have hopes of growing in the next few years? As the answer is probably yes, you’ll want to make sure that the help desk software you choose can handle the large adjustments in your staff. This means everything from expanding departments to working across multiple communication channels. Make sure that the software’s limits are not below your reach in terms of data storage, maximum user accounts, etc.

How will you measure your performance?

Are you looking for a help desk software solution with built in analytics features? Such as, how many tickets were received and solved within one week. This is one important way to measure your performance as a company, as well as individual staff.

How long will it take to implement?

It can seem as though simple help desk software solutions are easy and fast to set-up, while the ones offering more intricate features and resources can take weeks, or even months. When making the decision about which software to choose, you shouldn’t have to compromise quality for efficiency. So before signing the contract, you want to ask: does this help desk software offer advanced enough capabilities, along with the experience to use them easily? If the answer is no, move on to the next choice.

Do you have the available resources?

Everything from money to staff should be factored into your decision. Will you need to hire someone to install it and implement heavy coding to merge it onto your website, or is the software completely self-manageable? Then there is training and employee resources at hand. And how does all of this fit into your budget limitations? Begin by writing down your needs and restrictions, then consider your options at hand.

Separate the essentials and non-essentials

Now that you’ve considered the pros and cons, and made a laundry list of every aspect that the perfect help desk solution could offer you, it’s time to narrow down your list once more by separating the items that you desire from the fundamentals.

Hold tight to your essential items

These are the things that your customer service department cannot function without in order to perform their job. For example, multilingual support, a call center, ticketing system, and more. Your resources are crucial and sometimes limited as a business, therefore you need to make sure that no fluff makes its way into this tab.

Cross off the inessential items

Here you should throw everything else on your list that you can certainly live without. Maybe you considered live chat or a call center, but simply aren’t sure that you have enough staff to support such a function. Perhaps you like the idea of building custom reports or having a mobile app version of the help desk software, but your business can live on without these luxuries. Like spring cleaning, really think about what you don’t need to have laying around to occasionally use.

Test out Wix Answers

When making your decision, compromise shouldn’t be factored in. This help desk software solution is one great example of how your business can have its cake and eat it too. Used by Wix itself to support over 130M users, as well as our customers’ customers (yes, we know that’s a mouth full), this software was developed for scalability, dependability, and ease of implementation. Built in are the following features:

• Quick and easy set up process - no tech skills needed.

• Highly adaptable.

• Extensive knowledge base capabilities.

• Readily available call center.

• Multi-channel ticketing system.

• Informative business stats and insights.

• Ability to support multiple languages.

• Fully customizable.

Listed here you will basically find the answers to the above-mentioned questions. But of course, you’ll want to make sure yourself that the software that checks off every box on your list is still the perfect fit for your business - and it’s only natural. That’s why Wix Answers offers a 14 day free trial for you to test the usability on both the user and back-end interface.

Ready to implement a completely intuitive and reliable help desk software solution? Get started with Wix Answers today!