Top 10 Ways a Help Desk Can Help You

Help Desk Software Speeds IT Up

A help desk is designed to enable IT pros to work more efficiently. How? Simply put, a help desk eliminates a lot of pesky manual processes. For instance, many small to medium businesses (commonly referred to as SMBs) require IT techs to answer phone calls and manually log problems, a process that can be laborious and time consuming.

A help desk automates this process by using email. Instead of a user having to stop what they're doing to call or visit their IT manager, they can instead just send an email outlining the issue. Then, the help desk will receive and log that issue automatically. This is more convenient for both parties involved – not only does it streamline communication, but it also keeps organized, trackable records of all issues that are submitted, plus allows a resolution schedule to be established and communicated.

10 Ways a Help Desk Helps You

While there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of reasons a help desk can make your job easier and your business more productive, we’ve whittled it down to the top 10 ways a help desk can simplify an IT pro’s job:
1.
Work more efficiently
Users gain time and maximize their efficency by virtue of being able to email their help desk problems – and any related updates – when it’s most convenient to them.

2.
Multitask smarter
IT techs can work on several issues at once. When traveling to a remote part of the building, for instance, they can determine who needs help in particular areas and visit them all during a single trip, making better use of their time.

3.
One-stop help for your users
Some help desk systems are paired with a portal that gives your users a single place to create new tickets, view the status of open tickets and close out issues that are no longer present. The portal can also be used to relay phone numbers, email addresses and important network information to your users, perhaps reducing the number of duplicate emails you recieve when something goes down.

4.
Track trouble ticket time
Keep track of time spent on a trouble ticket. Reports can be run to determine how much time technicians are spending on all tickets. Certain techs may turn out to be better at certain tasks, so trouble ticket assignments can be adjusted to reflect this, speeding up the time it takes to solve the problem.

5.
Group purchase requests
When employees submit help request tickets for major purchases, you can group these tickets together or run separate reports that include all items that need to be purchased.

6.
Prioritize tasks
Different problems require different priorities. When help desk technicians can more easily visually prioritize their tickets, important help tickets are less likely to fall through the cracks.

7.
Don’t reinvent the wheel
Many problems are reoccurring and can be quickly solved based on work done previously. Help desk software allows technicians to search old tickets to quickly find solutions.

8.
Establish due dates
Keeping track of due dates is much easier with a help desk. Due dates can be automatically or manually assigned, and tickets can be sorted based on the dates the projects need to be completed.

9.
Auto-assign help tickets
Help tickets can be automatically assigned. For instance, technician A works on all hardware issues while technician B works on all software issues. The best help desk software can scan incoming tickets and automatically assign them to the correct technician based on the content of that ticket.

10.
Customize to meet your needs
While telephone-based systems allow specific information to be gathered, a help desk system allows you to gather just as much information, organize it better and do even more with it. Help desk systems contain many built-in information fields and many also allow for custom ones to be created as well. A company can use this information to organize their tickets and sort them by these categories. This gives the help desk a tremendous advantage over phone-based systems.

Source: [www.spiceworks.com]