What is the Difference Between an IT Service Desk and a Help Desk or Call Center?

Businesses often use the terms "call center," "helpdesk," and "customer service" interchangeably, which can be confusing. ITIL considers call centers and support services as limited types of services, offering only part of what a support service offers. With ITIL taking a service-centric perspective and focusing on IT, it makes sense. For many companies, the definition of ITIL does not correspond to operational practices, which makes the distinction much more complicated. Here are explanations of the helpdesk and contact center features to help you create a contrast to an IT service center.

Help desk

A help desk is a resource intended to provide the client or the internal user with information and assistance related to the processes, products and services of a company. The purpose of a help desk is to provide a centralized resource for answering questions, help desk problems and solutions. Common examples of help desk services include: technical support centers, product / warranty support functions, benefits offices, and facility service centers. Technical support can be provided through a variety of channels, including physical locations, toll-free numbers, websites, instant messaging, and email.

Call center

A call center or contact center is a central point to manage contacts and interactions with customers. office responsible for handling a large number of requests, usually by phone (but may also include letters, faxes, social media, instant messages, or emails). Inbound call centers are often used for things like product support, customer service, order processing, and 24/7 phone service. Outgoing call centers are used for things like telemarketing, debt collection, and market research. A company may have multiple call centers that support different parts of business operations (including IT) and can be managed internally or through an external agency.

As you can see, there are many overlaps between the definitions of helpdesks, call centers and IT departments. The distinction between them really centers on the scope of what the function covers and the way they are structured:

A helpdesk is focused on providing "help" and "fix" assistance. Help desks do not need to be IT-centric and can be used to handle exceptions to normal operations that take place across the enterprise. These can be physical locations that interact directly with applicants in person or remote / virtual locations using technologies such as phone, email, chat, and other technologies to facilitate virtual interaction.

Call centers are the largest in the scope of the problems they cover, including technical and non-technical issues. Call centers do not interact with applicants in person and always involve some form of intermediate technology to facilitate participation.

IT service centers only focus on taking care of IT services, but they handle both responsive "help" services and routine tasks like resource provisioning, access management, etc. . IT service desktops can be physical locations that users can visit in person, or they can be remote operations, such as a call center. Those familiar with ITIL may say that the help desk is tactical while the help desk is strategic; This may vary from one organization to another.

How to Set Up a Help Desk Knowledge Base the Right Way

An information base (KB) sorts out data with the goal that it is effectively accessible and accessible. It resembles an across the board library and card list, with the availability of an online asset and the opportunity of a facilitated arrangement rather than the inward server cerebral pain. In Zendesk and other cloud-based assist work an area with ticketing the board programming, information bases are frequently used to: 

• Show clients fast self-administration alternatives, for example, answers to habitually posed inquiries, manuals, item support directions, refreshes, and fixes 
• Train set up or teach end clients with reasonable articles, investigating guides, white papers, instructional recordings, and so forth. 
• Give a delegate database of known issues and fixes to help representatives
• Give code pieces, models, macros and different devices to designers and bolster laborers 
• It pulls in site traffic by offering novel and important substance in a particular region of ​​expertise that is hard to discover somewhere else 

Advertising divisions, outsider merchants, accomplices, and web-based life bolster specialists depend intensely on the assistance work area information bases to address their clients' issues, thus these partners ought to be engaged with the basic leadership process in regards to appearance, usefulness, ease of use, structure and substance. from any KB bolster focus. 

Despite the fact that making and keeping up them frequently requires a great deal of work, the online assistance work area information bases assist organizations with setting aside a ton of cash after some time, as clients can rapidly discover replies rather than '' open tickets for basic issues. Client assistance fulfillment is additionally on the ascent, particularly since help operators are never again compelled to respond to a similar inquiry on different occasions; rather, they can concentrate on novel issues that really need Help Desk Resources. 

In any case, the investment funds potential is decreased if an information base isn't made effectively from the earliest starting point. A confused KB can be hard for end clients to explore and locate the ideal query items, provoking them to utilize progressively costly call, email or texting administrations for help. Simultaneously, assisting the work area with staffing may think that it's hard to discover answers for issues that have just been reported. 

This article gives counsel on the best way to manufacture a well-assembled information base from the beginning.

How online information bases work 

The information bases are available utilizing a standard characterization conspire - a level of classifications and subclassifications - be that as it may, search apparatuses are commonly significantly more effective in discovering explicit data. In contrast to the Dewey decimal framework, information bases use watchwords and labels to characterize and sort data. They can be dissected via web index insects, for example, Google and Bing, just as by the hunt instrument that is a piece of the information base itself. In this way, they are powerful in arriving at end clients who don't have the foggiest idea about the accessibility of the asset, pulling in web traffic. 

This sort of information base can be substantially more productive than chronicling Office records on a mutual drive, dealing with an intranet or utilizing server-based information base programming that can be costly, expound and tedious. Zendesk specifically is especially valuable for helping workplaces as it consolidates information bases, gatherings, ticket the executives and interpersonal organization apparatuses in a solitary application. 

Utilization of labels in information bases 

Labels are watchwords, which can be related to a ticket or article, which helps distinguish one of a kind substance, characterize and find the area of explicit data. They can likewise be utilized to track and quantify business data. For instance, assisting work areas with staffing can utilize label perspectives to get a thought of ​​the number of individuals reaching the assistance work area for account issues and the number of individuals who have shut their records. So they could utilize two labels - "account_issues" and "close_account", channel by account issue and perceive what number of these tickets additionally have "close_account" 

Clients can scan for labels as catchphrases, while in the Zendesk head it is conceivable to make sees with the goal that specialists and the executives can see gatherings of things and tickets are dependent on their labels. Labels can likewise be utilized in robotizations, triggers, and macros.

Eight Tips for Help Desk and Tech Support Success

IDENTIFY AND EVALUATE THE LEVEL OF PROBLEM

Customer problems of a more technical nature can cover the entire range in terms of complexity and ease of resolution, so it is important to immediately identify the problem and quickly assess if it is something that can be solved with a simple solution. At one end of the spectrum, a customer may simply need instructions on how to recover a lost password or instructions to return a defective product for replacement. At the top, it may be necessary to resolve an unexpected device failure or report a technical failure that stops the software they found and has never been seen before.

Addressing customers to useful resources, such as video tutorials, detailed instructions, and user forums, which provide immediate answers to common technical problems can be an excellent way to speed things up. However, it is also useful to identify the most complex problems from the beginning so that they can be sent to the team members with the appropriate experience to solve them.

Measure the customer's technical level.

Using intuition and clues from the conversation or correspondence, it is useful to try to identify the level of technical knowledge of the client to determine the best way to help him. For some customers, something that might seem like a simple solution could be much more complicated if they are not technically inclined. On the contrary, a customer with a higher level of technical knowledge can interact more smoothly and get the solution he needs when talking to an agent who has more specialized experience in the field.

The problems of cable and Wi-Fi connectivity are a common example. A tech-savvy customer could quickly find a solution with access to your company's knowledge base, while other casual users might be nervous about looking for the restore button.

Determining the level of the technical competence of a client makes it easier to direct the response of your team in the right direction.

CHECK THE PREVIOUS SUPPORT TICKETS

It is not unusual for many customers with technical problems to find some of the same problems, or even related problems, more than once. Searching for previous support tickets registered for a particular customer can provide useful clues that can help speed up the process, which is a good thing for everyone involved. The aforementioned tickets may contain notes that allow you to direct customers towards a better solution or to accelerate them to the appropriate department to better solve their problems.

Take detailed and useful notes on each interaction

Agents do not have to write a book about each client, but keeping detailed notes that illuminate the problem, its unique situation, the proposed solution, and the final result can be valuable, both to keep track of common problems and to help customers arrive repeatedly With similar problems. Customer support software solutions such as Zendesk, Salesforce, and Desk can facilitate the ticket tracking process and keep customer data organized.

Get ready to scale down the most difficult support requests

Agents acting as the first point of contact for technology-centric customer service questions should become experts to assess the difficulty level of an application, so that they can be ready to resize the support ticket to the appropriate Team members with the right experience and expertise to solve the problems of the most involved customers.

The success of the Help Desk Company and technical support consists of facing the challenges that arise and finding ways to make life easier for customers, quickly solving their high technology problems. Along with various support options and the right approach for your team, these tips will help alleviate some of the tensions that could arise from juggling technological problems and other challenges that may arise.

Target customers towards self-service solutions such as questions and answers, forums and videos

Cultivating a variety of self-service options that provide solutions to common problems can be an effective way to reduce the time spent on individual support tickets. Because many customers prefer to find an answer independently, directing them to the right resources can save them time and energy.

The value here is to create the best possible resources for the most common problems posed by customers and therefore offer different formats to solve self-service problems on request. Some clients may respond better to a guided video tutorial. Others may respond better to the question and respond to the text or customer search forum. Provide them with options to explore and leave the door open for further direct assistance if needed.

Get ready to scale down the most difficult support requests

 Agents acting as the first point of contact for technology-centric customer service questions should become experts to assess the difficulty level of an application, so that they can be ready to resize the support ticket to the appropriate Team members with the right experience and expertise to solve the problems of the most involved customers.

The success of the Managed Help Desk and technical support consists of facing the challenges that arise and finding ways to make life easier for customers, quickly solving their high technology problems. Along with various support options and the right approach for your team, these tips will help alleviate some of the tensions that could arise from juggling technological problems and other challenges that may arise.