What Is a Help Desk? A Complete Guide for Customer Support Professionals

Struggling with slow support and overwhelmed IT teams? 

The reality is that outdated help desks cost valuable time and frustrate customers. 

Luckily, help desk software using AI can help you fix tech problems and handle issues quickly.

Here’s what you should know about help desk solutions and how they can make customer help much better.

What Is a Help Desk?

A help desk is a team, a setup, or a mix of both. It is one main place people go when they need help with tech problems, questions about products, or other general help.

Help desk solutions work like a main center where questions are submitted, tracked, and answered. All help desk software or solutions are digital, with a ticketing system. However, these days, there is also the usage of AI that helps improve how quickly and effectively these issues get resolved.

Although it may seem like an unnecessary expense to some, the reality is that an ROI of $3 can be gained for every $1 spent on customer support and help desks.

What Does a Help Desk Do?

Although this answers the question - what is the help desk? The reality there are many different functions and tasks a customer support help desk takes care of to improve your customer experience.

1. Getting and Tracking Customer Requests: Customer support help desks are the main place for all questions, no matter how people ask raise these (this can be by email, phone, chat, or through your website).
   
2. Sorting Problems by Type and Importance: Some help queries are important than others. The help desk team (or the computer setup itself) sorts the incoming queries by what kind of problem it is. Then, it sorts them in order by how serious they are and how much impact it will have.
   
3. Giving Questions to Helpers: After a support request is submitted and assigned, it's given to the best executive for that job. This depends on what the customer support personnel know and if they are free to work on it.
   
4. Finding and Understanding Problems: Customer support uses what they know, special tools to spot issues, and the help desk's collection of answers. They do this to find the main issue behind the person's problem.
   
5. Communicating with People: Letting people know how their support request status is important. This helps them know what to expect and build trust with the support team.
   
6. Moving Complex Issues: When a customer support executive can't fix a problem themselves, they send the query to a team with more skills or to a group that specializes in that specific thing.
   
7. Keeping a Help Guide Updated: A customer support help desk that plans ahead always adds to and improves its collection of answers. This collection includes fixes for usual problems, guides on how to do things.
   
8. Getting Ideas and Making Things Better: Many help desk solutions have ways to get feedback. They ask people what they thought about the support they got. These ideas are useful in finding ways to do things better.
   
9. Making Reports and Checking Data: The information the help desk software setup collects gives useful insight. This includes aspects like how well customer support is working, what problems are common, and what users are doing.

Help Desk vs. Service Desk: Breaking Down the Key Differences

Help Desk vs. Service Desk - What is the difference? Well, these can be boiled down to how they help. Both help desks and service desks exist to solve customer issues, but their approach can be differentiated as below:

1. Functionality and Objectives

Help Desk solutions mostly react to problems. It works on fixing problems that customers have right away – this is like a "break/fix" way of working.

A Service Desk, on the other hand, is more planned and looks ahead. Its goal is to give many different types of IT support and make the whole experience of getting help smoother for people who use it.

• You can think of a help desk as the place to call for "my screen is frozen" or "I can't log in" kinds of problems. It's about helping the customer get working again fast.
  
• A Service Desk does more than just fix things. It might take care of requests for new things, help with who can use what, or even help find the main reasons for problems that keep happening. This is to stop them from affecting other people.
  

2. Processes It Carries Out

The tasks a customer support help desk usually deals with are handling specific problems. This means recording, putting in order of importance, and fixing individual problems that customers raise.

A Service Desk, however, works as part of a bigger plan for IT help, often called ITSM. It includes many more kinds of jobs that help manage a service from its start to its end.

• A Help Desk software is very good at quickly dealing with many problems that come in. It's also good at showing customers how to fix things step-by-step so they can work again quickly.
  
• A Service Desk software also fixes single problems. But it also takes care of requests for services (like helping new people start or giving them access to things). It includes looking at common problems to stop them from happening again, and sometimes managing changes to make services better.

3. Value From Customer Standpoint

What customers find helpful is different depending on whether they are talking to a Help Desk or a Service Desk. A Help Desk solution gives quick help by fixing one problem that is often pressing problem, a problem that they have at that moment.

A Service Desk, however, gives help through a fuller way of helping that might even look ahead, to take care of all their service needs.

• Customers like Help Desks because they are fast and work well when fixing very important problems. These are problems that stop them from using our product or service the right way.
  
• What a customer finds helpful about a Service Desk is that it can help with more of their IT needs. This includes getting new services or tools, and the work it does behind the scenes to make the service dependable over time.

5 Help Desk Benefits for Enterprise Growth

In terms of help desk software, it generally helps your customers and employees solve problems. Here’s a stat that caught our attention - did you know 84% of customers are willing to spend more if they receive better customer service? Well, here’s a detailed list of other help desk benefits:

1. Happier Customers: A central system means faster replies, and problems get fixed better. This leads to good, steady support for everyone who uses it, making them less upset.
   
2. Better Workflows: Having one place to manage help tickets and smoother work steps makes it easier to track things, give out tasks, and cuts down on work done by hand. This also means less waiting time because tech problems are fixed quickly.
   
3. Useful Insight from Data: Keeping track of help requests helps find problems that happen often. It also helps understand what customers need, so you can find solutions and make things better before issues start. Key numbers show how well the support team is doing.
   
4. More Work Done by Employees: Quickly fixing IT problems inside the company and having one main place for questions helps workers get back to their jobs faster. Self-help options also give workers more power and free up IT staff to do more planning work.
   
5. Better Growth Potential: A reliable help desk can handle more help requests as a business gets bigger. Helping through many ways of talking makes sure more customers can reach out.

Types of Help Desks

To help you get a better idea, we’ve listed the different types of help desks based on use case and criteria. These are the main ones used in different types of companies:

1. Internal Help Desk: This help desk software only supports the workers inside a company, handling IT and computer system problems. Its aim is to keep workers doing their jobs and stop problems inside the company. A downside is that it only looks inward and doesn't help outside customers.
   
2. External Help Desk: This type is for helping a company's customers with product questions and tech support. Its main benefit is boosting brand loyalty. It doesn't provide help for problems that workers inside the company have.
   
3. On-Premise Help Desk: This means the company keeps and manages the help desk solutions and computer equipment on its servers. It gives more control over information and makes it fit their needs, but it needs a lot of in-house IT knowledge and costs more to start. A key downside is having to always do upkeep and updates.
   
4. Cloud-Based (SaaS) Help Desk: With this type of help desk solution, another company keeps the help desk programs on the internet (in the cloud), and you pay to use it. It allows for growth, can change as needed, and costs less to start, with automatic updates. A possible downside is having to trust the other company's safety measures and equipment.
   
5. Centralized Help Desk: One team or place handles all help requests from the whole company, so things are done the same way. This means standard help levels and easier reports using one main collection of answers. A drawback can be not having enough specialized knowledge for certain departments or local areas.
   
6. Decentralized Help Desk: Many support teams are in different departments or areas, giving local and specialized help. This means they can understand local needs better and maybe answer specific questions faster. But, it can mean help is not always the same, and it can be hard to share knowledge between teams.
   
7. Virtual Help Desk: This is a help desk management tool where customer support works from different places using digital tools to give support without a main office. It allows for more freedom and a wider choice of helpers. This way of working really depends on good communication tools and safe ways to manage information to work well.

How to Implement a Help Desk System in Your Business

Using a new help desk software is a significant undertaking that requires careful planning and execution. Here's a step-by-step guide to help you navigate the process:  

1. Define Your Needs and Goals

Start by looking at what your current support problems are and deciding what important things your help desk needs to do.

Set clear aims, like getting back to people faster or working better. Also, set a money plan for the programs, for setting it up, and for ongoing costs. This first step makes sure you know what you are looking for.

2. Research and Select the Right Software

Look at different help desk management tools based on what you need and your budget, and check their features and prices.

Ask to see how they work and try them out to check if they are easy to use. Read what other users say to learn from them. Make sure the software can connect with other systems you already use, like your customer information system or email.

3. Plan the Implementation Process

Clearly state who on your team will do what, like data migration and system configuration.

Create a realistic timeline with milestones for the project. Create full learning materials and plan teaching times. This is to make certain both your support staff and the people using the help desk management tool can use the new system well.

Key Features of an Effective IT Help Desk

Effective IT help desks have several features to make work smoother, help support staff do more, and make the general experience better for users. Here are some key parts to look for in a good IT help desk management tool:

1. Ticketing System

This is the core of all help desk management. It allows for the creation, tracking, and management of support requests (tickets) from initiation to resolution. Key aspects include:

• Automatic Ticket Making: Being able to automatically make tickets from different places like email, phone calls, website forms, and social media.
• Ticket Importance and Sorting: Tools to sort tickets by how urgent they are, how much they affect things, and what the problem is about. This makes certain very important problems handled first.
• Giving Tickets and Sending Them: Features to automatically give tickets to the right support helpers or teams based on what they know, if they are free, or by set rules.
• Tracking Ticket Status: Seeing in real time what stage each ticket is in (like Open, Being Worked On, Waiting, Solved, Closed).
• Teamwork Inside: Features that let helpers talk and work together on tickets, share information, and send problems to higher levels easily.
• Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management: Being able to set and check if SLAs (agreements on service quality) are being followed. This makes certain problems are solved on time based on agreed deadlines.

2. Knowledge Base 

A knowledge base is a central place for information like articles, common questions and answers (FAQs), and guides. It helps users find answers themselves and means fewer help tickets.

A good one is easy to search, get around in, and is kept up-to-date with correct information that both users and helpers can get to. Well-ordered information with topics and tags makes it easier to find things. A way for people to give feedback lets users say if the articles were helpful.

3. Self-Service Portal 

This is a webpage that lets users send in and track tickets themselves and look at the knowledge base.

It gives users the power to find answers to common problems without needing to talk directly to a helper. A good self-service portal gives users more freedom.

4. Automation and Workflow Management 

This means having features that make repeat tasks automatic and make support work steps smoother, so things get done better. Examples are sending tickets automatically based on rules and sending automatic messages to keep everyone informed.

Set replies and message outlines save helpers time, while workflow rules can automatically move a ticket to a higher level if it takes too long to resolve or has escalations. These features help make the service steady and reply faster.

5. Reporting and Analytics 

This gives complete data on how well your support team is performing. Key numbers that are tracked include how many tickets there are, how long it takes to fix them, and how well customer support executives are doing.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores show how happy users are, and SLA checks watch if service level agreements are being met. These details are very important for always getting better.

6. Communication Channels 

A reliable help desk supports many ways for users to get in touch, suiting different choices. This includes easy connection with email and phone calls, often with ways to log calls as tickets.

Live chat gives help right away, while connecting with social media allows for watching and replying to requests on those sites. Web forms give a clear way for users to send in detailed questions.

How to Choose the Perfect Help Desk Software

Selecting the right help desk management software is a critical decision that can significantly impact your support operations. With a plethora of options available, it's essential to approach the selection process systematically. Here's a guide to help you choose the perfect fit:

1. Revisit Your Needs and Goals: Before even looking at software, go back to the needs and goals you defined during the implementation planning phase. What are your absolute must-have features? What are your nice-to-haves? What are your budget constraints?
2. Identify Key Stakeholders and Gather Input: Involve your support team, IT department, and other relevant stakeholders in the selection process. Understand their pain points, requirements, and preferences. Their buy-in is crucial for successful adoption.
3. Create a Prioritized Feature List: Based on your needs and stakeholder input, create a comprehensive list of desired features and prioritize them as critical, important, or nice-to-have. This will help you evaluate different software options objectively.
4. Research and Shortlist Potential Vendors: Conduct thorough research online, read reviews, and ask for recommendations from peers in your industry. Identify a shortlist of vendors whose software seems to align with your prioritized feature list and budget.
5. Request Demos and Free Trials: This is a crucial step. Schedule demos with your shortlisted vendors to see the software in action and understand its capabilities. 

Evaluate Software Based on Key Criteria: During the demos and trials, evaluate the software based on the following factors:

1. Get Feedback from Your Team: During the trial period, encourage your support team to use the software and provide feedback. Their hands-on experience will be invaluable in making the final decision.
2. Consider Future Needs: Think beyond your current requirements. Will the software be able to adapt to your future needs and growth plans?
3. Negotiate and Finalize the Contract: Once you've made your decision, carefully review the contract terms and negotiate as needed. Ensure you understand the licensing agreement, support terms, and any potential hidden costs.

6. Plan for Implementation and Training: Even the best software won't be effective without proper implementation and training. Develop a detailed implementation plan and ensure your team receives adequate training on how to use the new system.

Best Practices for Help Desk Operations

In terms of help desk best practices, it typically boils down to how well you communicate your product, its features, and how quickly resolveutions get solved.

1. Set Up Clear Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Define goals you can measure for how fast to reply, how fast to fix problems, and other key ways to check performance.
   
2. Put Tickets in Order of Importance Well: Use a clear and steady way to put tickets in order based on how urgent they are, how much they affect things, and what the SLA says.
   
3. Create a Full Knowledge Base: Always build and keep up a well-ordered and easy-to-search collection of answers with fixes for common problems, FAQs, and how-to guides. Encourage both helpers and users to use it.
   
4. Give Helpers Power with Teaching and Tools: Give your support helpers the teaching, tools, and items they need to find and fix problems well.
   
5. Aim for First-Contact Fixes (FCR): Try to fix as many problems as you can the first time someone contacts for help.
   
6. Keep Communication Clear and Steady: Keep users informed about how their tickets are going. Give regular updates and set real expectations for when problems will be fixed.
   
7. Ask for and Use User Feedback: Set up ways to get ideas from users about their support experience (like surveys or feedback forms). 

Help Desk Metrics to Monitor

Tracking the right metrics is essential for understanding the performance of your help desk, identifying areas for improvement, and demonstrating its value to the organization. Here are some key help desk metrics to monitor:

• Ticket Volume: The total number of support tickets gotten in a certain time.
  
• First Response Time (FRT): The average time it takes for a support helper to give a first reply to a new ticket.
  
• Resolution Time (Average Handle Time - AHT): The average time it takes to fully fix a support ticket from when it's opened until it's closed.
  
• First-Contact Resolution (FCR) Rate: The percentage of tickets that are fixed the first time a user contacts the support team, without needing to send it to someone else or follow up.
  
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score: A measure of how happy users are with the help they got. This is usually collected through surveys after the problem is fixed.
  
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measures how likely users are to suggest your products or services based on their support experience.
  
• Ticket Backlog: The number of unfixed tickets at any time. A large backlog can mean not enough staff or work steps that are not working well.
  
• Agent Utilization Rate: The percentage of time helpers are actively working on tickets compared to when they are not busy.
  
• Escalation Rate: The percentage of tickets that need to be sent to a higher level of support.
  
• Cost Per Ticket: The average cost of fixing one support ticket. This number helps check how well and cost-effectively your support work is.
  
• Knowledge Base Usage: Tracking how often users look at and use your knowledge base can show how good it is at helping people help themselves and cutting down on ticket numbers.
  
• SLA Compliance Rate: The percentage of tickets that are fixed within the agreed-upon service level agreements. This is very important for meeting user expectations and keeping service quality good.
  
• Recurring Issues: Tracking how often certain types of problems happen can help find underlying issues that need to be fixed before they cause more trouble.

Future of Help Desk Operations in 2025

Looking ahead to 2025, how help desks work is set for big changes. These will come from new technology and what users expect. Here are some key trends that will shape the future of help desks:

• More Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI-powered chatbots will get even smarter. They will handle more common questions, give instant support, and let human helpers work on harder problems.
  
• Personalized Support: By using information studies and AI, help desks will move towards giving help that is more specifically suited to each person.
  
• Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) for Remote Help: For tech support, AR and VR tools could let helpers guide users from far away through hard fixing steps by showing them visually. This would make remote help work better.
  
• Connection with the Internet of Things (IoT): As more devices get connected to the internet, help desks will need to link with IoT systems to find and fix problems with these connected devices.
  
• Low-Code/No-Code Tools for Making Changes: Help desk systems will more and more give low-code/no-code options. This will give support teams the power to change work steps and build connections without needing a lot of coding skill.

Try Thunai for an AI-Powered Help Desk Solution

Outdated help desks mean slow answers and frustrated users. Don't let inefficient support hold your team back. An AI-powered help desk resolves problems quickly and frees up valuable time.

Thunai's customer support agent has voice agents that provide 24/7 assistance, understanding requests in 50+ languages. Get immediate support for common issues, reducing the load on your help desk staff. For better efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Want to know how Thunai can transform your customer support experience? Why not try Thunai out for free (no credit card information required)!

Help Desk FAQs

What is the purpose of help desk?

The main purpose of a help desk is to serve as the central point of contact for users needing IT assistance. Its goal is to quickly address technical problems and answer questions. This minimizes disruption and keeps users productive.

What is the job of a help desk?

The job involves receiving and documenting user issues or requests. Help desk staff troubleshoot problems, provide solutions, and escalate unresolved matters to specialized teams. They communicate with users to keep them informed of progress.

What is an example of a help desk?

An example is the IT support department within a company that employees contact for computer or software issues. Another is the customer support center for a software company. Customers reach out for technical help with the product