12 Must-Have Features Of Your Philippine Help Desk Ticketing System

The workflow of a help desk technician is unpredictable. There’s no telling what issue they’re going to resolve until they pick up the phone. That’s why help desk ticketing systems quickly gained its popularity in the business world when it was first introduced.

Now the help desk system is considered the backbone of online IT support services. The continuous improvement manufacturers made to its features and functionalities increased its value in the business world. It’s important to know what to look for in a help desk ticketing system.

1. Ticket Automation

Regardless of what type of business it’s for, the ticket automation feature is a must-have for help desk ticketing systems. With this feature, you can automate processes and free agents from task repetition. Many companies nowadays use ticket automation to route the tickets they receive to specific end-users. For some, they use it to remind their agents to send a ticket response.

2. Service Level Agreement (SLA) Status Information

Every ticket has a different level of urgency. When agents know how to prioritize urgent tickets, they can be more efficient and productive at work. If your help desk system has SLA information directly in its ticketing system, it will be easier for your agents to prioritize tickets. Furthermore, this can also help them do away with SLA violations while working.

3. Ticket Tags

While ticket tags enable businesses to organize their tickets more efficiently, it empowers agents to spot common issues immediately. For this reason, this system feature became one of the must-have help desk features at present. Aside from that, these tags can also be set to automatically recommend knowledge base articles when it hits an assigned tag.

4. Customizable Ticket Templates

All tickets are unique. That’s why it’s ideal to choose a help desk ticketing system that can create customized ticket templates. With a system that can load different templates on command, agents will be able to respond to diverse tickets faster and easier. Furthermore, they can also combine these templates to cater to tickets that have multiple questions.

5. Individual Ticket Queues

Employees that are working out of the same ticket queue is one of the common practices in industries that are present until now. With this feature, you will be set apart from the others and you will be able to foster a more productive working environment. Individual ticket queues enable agents to organize their tickets accordingly. Aside from that, it also allows them to see their colleagues that need help with their ticket queues.

ALTHOUGH TRANSPARENCY IS IMPORTANT IN HELP DESK SYSTEMS, NOT ALL TICKET CONVERSATIONS NEED TO BE SEEN BY THE CUSTOMERS.

6. Customizable Ticket Status Options

Ticketing isn’t just as simple as “open and closed” for every business. That’s why most organizations need to have help desk ticketing systems that have customizable ticket status options. More often than not, this feature comes with an automated notification system that sends an email to customers when a ticket status changes.

7. Private and Public Actions on Tickets

Although transparency is important in help desk systems, not all ticket conversations need to be seen by the customers. Because of that, it’s been recommended by professionals to acquire private and public action features on tickets. By using this feature, you will be able to keep ticket conversations private in your system until such time that you’re ready to experience a public customer action.

8. Product and Inventory Association

For companies that deal with physical or virtual products, they must perform product and inventory management. With this help desk system feature, agents will be able to assign ticket pages for every customer. Furthermore, they’ll be able to eliminate the need to dig through external documents to obtain customer information.

9. Personalized Customer Ticket Pages

Personalized ticket pages enable agents to store customer information that they can use later on to improve their services. These pages can include how many tickets the customers opened, how satisfied the customers are, etc. With this information, agents will be able to resolve IT issues more efficiently and effectively.

10. Related Tickets

It’s a common scenario for help desk professionals to encounter simple and repetitive requests from customers daily. For the past years, they had to undergo the long process of answering each one of them individually. But as help desk solutions evolved over the years, the related tickets feature became available to businesses. This feature helps agents to aggregate these requests and respond to them in one go.

11. Ticket Deflection

Sometimes customer requests and queries can just be answered easily with a Knowledge Base article. At the end of the help desk agents, it can be a time-consuming task to look for the link. With a built-in ticket deflection feature in the system, they can skip this process and grab the right link quickly. Hence, increasing their response times on the tickets that they receive.

12. Customizable Ticket Submission Form

Systems with customizable ticket forms can capture necessary customer information conveniently. It can reduce the amount of basic follow-up questions agents need to ask and speed up the ticket resolution time of our business’ help desk.

Things to Consider Before You Choose a Help Desk Software

Without a doubt, the must-have features mentioned above have helped numerous companies to save time and money. They have also increased their productivity and efficiency. But to enjoy these features, you also need to have the right help desk software.

Here are the 9 things you should consider before you pick the software for your company:

1. Budget

There are a lot of help desk software applications you can choose from in the market place today. One consideration you should look into to find the software that’s suited for your business is your budget. Essentially, the help desk software you use should be competent and affordable. For you to do this with ease, it’s ideal that you look for help desk software programs that offer demo versions. This way, you’ll be able to tell which solution works best for your company.

2. Business Needs

Different business needs require different help desk ticketing solutions. When you implement the right one in your organization, you’ll be able to simplify the process of ticket management and workflow tracking effectively. You can also use it to assure customers that their IT concerns are well taken care of. For this reason, it’s important to check your company’s needs first before you choose a solution.

3. Email Compatibility

Although it’s good to get the latest help desk software program for your business, you should see to it that it’s compatible with your email system. Even the most advanced software can still be useless if it’s incompatible with your current system. Hence, it’s a requisite for businesses to check whether the software they’re eyeing is compatible with their email system or not.

4. Database

Ideally, help desk ticketing systems should be database-driven. That way, it will be more reliable and easier to create backup copies of company data.

Experts nowadays consider the database as one of the considerations business owners should ponder upon before deciding what help desk system they should use. Because of this, you should pay close attention to the database of your help desk ticketing solution.

5. Data Security

Data security can make or break a business’ reputation in the industry. That’s why you should be mindful of the help desk solution you use to protect your company data. IT professionals recommend that you ensure your IT environment’s safety and security, especially during data transfer.

6. Email Templates

Undeniably, auto-responses to emails is a convenient feature. However, it tends to make customers feel undervalued. That said, you should see to it that your help desk system can personalize email templates. By doing this, you’ll be able to foster a customer-centric working environment that can urge customer loyalty.

7. Web Interface

Most help desk ticketing solutions today offer email-based and internet-based ticket submission services. These services quickly gained popularity across organizations because of the convenience and accessibility they delivered to their users. With that said, it is a must for businesses to consider their current web interface before choosing their help desk software for their company operations.

8. Ticket Management Features

Not all help desk software programs have the capacity to resend, escalate, assign, cancel, and close tickets. That’s why it’s essential to check out the ticket management features it offers to its end-users before buying a system. By doing this, you’ll be able to ensure that your help desk system gives you the control that your business needs.

9. Usability

While it’s important to have a help desk application that’s user-friendly for customers, it should also be easy to use for employees. That way you’ll be able to ensure a good customer experience alongside smooth business operations. When you put this into consideration, you’ll be able to make the most of the software you purchase. Furthermore, it can also help you build your company's reputation efficiently.