It is a glorious day today. You’ve read our article, Why do I need a Helpdesk, and decided you tick all the boxes and you require a Helpdesk solution. You’ve pulled out the yellow legal pad and started googling the different solutions that fit your needs. Very quickly however, you realize the market is flooded with different solutions, and you’re not sure what it is that you’re looking for anymore.
You shan’t worry my good fellow, for we are here to help. Today we’re going to look into the main questions you should have on your checklist when you’re shopping for a Helpdesk.
1. How is your business going to be using it?
Part of the reason as to why the Helpdesk market is so vast is because there’s something for everyone. Some Helpdesk solutions are optimized for small companies, others are optimized for rigorous use by thousands of people at any one day. Some Helpdesk’s are created for the purpose of being used within call centers, others are specific for IT departments. You need to understand what your business is, what your particular specifications and requirements are, all before you can proceed: at the end of the day nobody’s going to know your business and its needs better than you can.
2. Who’s going to be using it?
This one’s a biggie. Maybe, the biggie. Are you shopping for a solution that will be used within your internal departments, or are you looking for something that customers/vendors/end-users will be interacting with? This decision will come at a cost; Helpdesk’s optimized for internal use tend to focus on workflows and task management, whereas an external Helpdesk would focus on the customer experience and providing the broadest range of channels that customers can engage and submit tickets to.
3. How is it going to be hosted?
Depending on the best-practice guidelines of your industry, this might be a non-starter discussion for some businesses. Maybe your data needs to be secured locally on your own servers, but in case it isn’t carry on read.
There are multiple different takes on cloud hosting for Helpdesk, you can get a glimpse of one such comparison by reading out article SharePoint hosting vs Provider hosting, but in a nutshell, you need to decide whether or not you want your data hosted on the provider’s server, or a 3rd party server like Microsoft SharePoint.
4. How is it going to be interacted with?
This one ties to question #1, largely because the type of the people creating tickets will dictate with how these tickets are going to be submitted. Are your users power users, comfortable with an internet portal filled to the brim with little gadgets and tools, or are they less tech-savvy and just want to send in an email to a pre-defined email address and call it a day? Are you looking for a solution that also provides the feature of collecting tickets from social media? Because this needs to be a consideration for a B2C businesses, less so for businesses working with other businesses and corporations.
5. How much control do you want over it?
Last but not least, you need to ask yourself the following: Do I want a blank canvas to customize or a ready-made solution that I can plug-and-play? Or are you looking for a highly polished solution with the option for customization?
If you don’t have a team of developers at hand capable of scalping the solution as best fits your needs, then something ready for use out of the box might be more your fit.
This question would also play into your budgetary considerations. Especially if you’re looking at something that is both polished and customizable.
To Summarize
The Helpdesk market is a vast one, and by going through the questions we suggested, it might turn your buying experience into a smooth one.
- How is your business going to be using it?
- Who’s going to be using it?
- How is it going to be hosted?
- How is it going to be interacted with?
- How much control do you want over it?
Have fun shopping and don’t forget to take a look at SteadyPoint Helpdesk!