Setting up a new help desk gives you the opportunity to organize your support process and rid your team of bad habits that block up your sales pipeline. Although providing consistent support is your primary goal, you also want to find ways to improve your level of service gradually.
However, help desk software isn’t made equally, as this alternative to the ManageEngine post will tell you. Even when you’ve decided on your help desk software, you’ll still need to set it up.
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How to Start Setting Up Your Help Desk
Create a list of issues you’re trying to solve. Take a look at your current IT support channels and processes to learn its pain points. Then, use our questions below to form your thoughts:
- What can be added or removed from your current support channels?
- Is my support team big enough to handle the new software’s functions?
- What is the average waiting time between phone calls or tickets?
- Do you receive a lot of repetitive questions? Could an FAQ section solve this?
- Do you need to provide support over multiple channels, products, or languages?
- Will your business need a separate channel for internal communications?
- Can your current tools be integrated with your new software?
- How and where do you measure customer satisfaction?
When you start your setup process on the right foot, you’ll increase your IT staff’s productivity.
Plan for Deployment
You’ll need to have a few things in place before deploying your IT help desk software.
Communication Channels
Before going down your help desk deployment checklist, you’ll need to as each channel needs to be connected to your system. Whether you use social media or email to communicate, make sure it can be integrated before launch. This includes contact form widgets, API, and apps.
Self-Service Options
Organize your self-service options, like a knowledge base, FAQ, or chatbot on your website. Community portals are also helpful for users who want to ask other users questions. Putting your self-service options in place before launch will eliminate the number of questions asked.
User Roles
Your IT help desk will include Admins, Support Agents, and Users, but most software will allow you to create custom roles. Place your agents into teams based on their department, responsibilities, supported products, and regions to automate who receives tickets or requests.
Training and Development
Create a training and development schedule that outlines how to use the new software. Advise how to prioritize tickets based on status or urgency. Suggest ways to speed up the process by using email templates or delegating specific topics to other experts.
IT Help Desk Deployment Check-List
Follow our 5 step process to help you and your team set up your IT help desk software.
Step 1: Communication Channels
- Cover all aspects of the customer journey on your website;
- Connect your mailbox and set it up to create tickets and send notifications;
- Make a page that customers can fill out and send to staff;
- Connect social media channels you want to receive tickets from;
- Integrate chatbots/chat support that delivers instant support.
Step 2: Setting Up Workflow
- Make a contact form;
- Customize or upload email templates;
- Create status for ticket approval and verification;
- Set up where notifications will be sent;
- Establish service level agreement rules;
- Determine customer service business hours.
Step 3: Ticket and Team Management
- Manage ticket distribution process;
- Separate report distribution based on team members;
- Organize departments based on teams;
- Add IT, support agents ;
- Import your old client list.
Step 4: Automation and Advanced Settings
- Set up auto-reply emails based on events (i.e., subscriptions);
- Write canned responses and templates for the team to use;
- Configure the chatbot to respond to common scenarios;
- Enable single sign-on and customer satisfaction rating;
- Integrate with other third-party apps.
Step 5: Launch Day
- Create an internal knowledge base for employees;
- Train and onboard team members;
- Extensively test your system;
- Test third-party integrations;
- Launch successfully.
Your IT help desk software setup process may vary, but this list should apply to most.
