Choosing the Right Type of Help Desk Software for Your Business
Customer support should be the main focus of any organization. This is where help desks come in, they play an integral role in customer support for any business.
It is an important decision to choose a specific help desk as it not only improves customer support but it also can affect the productivity of support agents.
Before making a decision on what type of help desk to use, you first need to understand why they are necessary. Customers use different channels to address their problems and seek solutions for them. Collecting information on and managing these problems manually can lower communication efficacy and create more work. To better collect, manage and resolve the issues raised by customers, there is help desk software available to make the work more efficient and improve communication between the organization and the customer.
We are here to help you identify the different types of help desks and to understand how they may prove to be beneficial or disadvantageous for your organization.
Cloud-Based Help Desk Software
The internet has revolutionized the way that everything works. In cloud-based help desk software, you use cloud computing to provide customer service and resolve any problems that they might be facing.
The benefit of using this type of help desk software is that it is easy to maintain and can be accessed from anywhere in the world. As it is all based on the internet so the problem that rises is dependence. If the servers go down, all that is left for you to do is wait for the provider to get everything working again.
Enterprise Help Desk Software
The enterprise help desk software provides advanced encryption and security, enterprise reporting, multi-brand support, sandbox, and custom user roles. The list isn’t limited to the aforementioned features but they are the most common if you look at the enterprise-level pricing plans.
This type of help desk is suitable mostly for large companies because they can afford it relatively easily and also because it can give solutions to issues both inside and outside the IT sector. The disadvantage it has is that it can be complicated to use due to the multitude of features available.
Self-Hosted Help Desk Software
This help desk is managed and run by the companies themselves, on-premise. The company installs the server and operates it, having complete control over whether to give someone access to the software or not. To effectively operate the software there needs to be an IT team within the company for maintenance, updates and to resolve any issues.
Though it is a one-time payment, you need to have your own in-house IT team for maintenance which can get expensive. Another drawback is that you are responsible for backups and transfer of data, which involves the risk of losing it.
Open-Source Help Desk Software
In open-source help desk software you have access to the source code. These tools are generally free and you have the freedom to customize, use and manage the updates of the software as you want.
However, with open-source software, you might hit a couple of snags. First is hidden expenses. More often than not, open-source providers hide some critical features behind the paywall. The second is usability. This type of software usually requires you to write some code in order to make it work for you. Unless you are an IT professional yourself, you will need an internal IT team to set it up, customize and maintain it.
Help desks allow companies to provide better support with less effort. To choose the type that fits your needs, define what you’re looking for, what your budget and human resources are, and go from there.
This post is a summary of a piece we did for G2. Make sure to check out the original piece for more insights: 4 Types of Help Desk Software: Choose the Right One Now
