Help Desk Software Features and Functional Requirements

It is also known as service desk software, which is used to manage customers' requests for resolution of a problem.Normally, help desk support team use this software.

Without having a clear concept about the functionality of help desk , you will not be able to make up your mind whether to buy it or to custom built it for your business needs. So, let’s start developing concept about this software by learning about its purposes and functions. Help desk representatives serve the customers or users using an issue ticketing system, which is basically a special piece of software that is popularly known as help desk software. Primarily, it supports both the agents and customers in order to process, manage, monitor and control the flow of customers or users’ requests.

What are the benefits of this software?

Both the customers and business( small to large) owners get benefited in numerous ways by implementing this service desk or help desk system or software into the customer service department of a business. When a customer need help about any issues on the product, he just know that how to contact a single point (let it be via email, phone or chat) to get the solution or service. For the business owners, they also look into that very single point to receive customer complaints and to direct it to the appropriate department. In addition, a help desk helps to increase customer satisfaction and gives a way to measure the key performances of your products.

Key Features and Functional Requirements?

At first you need to develop the software requirements list including traffic handling capacity and the medium through which you can receive the requests from your customers. More or less the followings are the list of features and functions that you need to consider having in the package that you will purchase:

• When you decide to buy help desk software, you need to know that its only purpose is to serve your customers and to make your trouble-ticket management system easier for you and for your support desk team. So, the features and functions of this software need to be user-friendly so as your customer can send you a trouble ticket without thinking twice about where to click on your website to send a request of support to your customer service department.
• There should be file attachment option. You can let your customers send you images, videos, .pdf or word files. Of course, you need to be careful about uploading any executable files. So, before buying your software you need to be sure that you can specify the types of files that will be allowed to upload by the users.
• Having a spam identification and protection system is a must-have feature in any ticket management system software.

• This software should allow you to create unlimited number of help agent accounts. Also check that if there is any licensing or extra payment issue in case you want to use this software in other geographical locations or in your branch offices.
• There should be an automated ticket assignment system so that only the online agents receive the trouble ticket requests, depending on the level of workloads in their queue. In short, this software must have an efficient and effective ticket distribution algorithm in order to serve the customers in minimum time.
• A strong admin module is needed in order to control access privileges of your agents. Make sure if there is any default security settings that you can assign to your agents based on their roles of support-this will make your administration much easier.
• Service desk software should have a strong and comprehensive reporting system to check the ticket handling performance of your agents. Also, it should generate a graphical representation of the types of issues in a sequential order so as you can identify the commonly occurred errors and can provide useful information in your knowledge base to help the customers to solve their problems by their own.

Finally, before purchasing any help desk software, you can think about use its trial version. You make the final purchase only when you are satisfied with the features that satisfy your requirements of the functionality and your business goals.