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Many people are familiar with the customer-facing side of web-based help desk software from dealing with companies that use it. This software is a favorite of web hosts, software companies, and those that provide services on the internet.

What often goes unrealized is that this software does far more than let customers submit support tickets through an online interface. It also provides many behind-the-scenes benefits to the companies that use it. Here are some of these benefits and how they’ll help your business provide excellent customer service both online and off:

Web-Based Software Makes it Easy to Provide Support From Any Location

This is a huge plus for small businesses and those with remote personnel. Since web-based software can be accessed from anywhere, there’s no need for support people to come into the office to do their jobs. Instead, they can log in from home, a coffee shop, or anywhere else with an internet connection. Your company can save plenty of money on overhead this way since there’s no need to keep an office open 24 hours a day. In fact, you may find that you don’t need a separate office at all.

Remote access is also a big plus when it comes time to hire people as all-night service responders.  In some areas, the need to be in an otherwise empty office at 3 AM can make people turn down job offers that they would otherwise snap up. Eliminate this hurdle by letting night shift people work from home using web-based software.

It Integrates Contacts from Multiple Streams

When customers contact your company, they will use whichever channel is convenient for them at the time. With help desk software, all of these contacts can be merged into a single file so that the issue moves smoothly toward a solution. This is far better than the old-fashioned way, which involved separate teams for each channel.

Advanced Versions Can Handle Multiple Products

If your company supports multiple products with different common issues, you can now run them all through the same software backend while presenting customers with product-specific interfaces. This prevents customer confusion and produces a far more professional effect on the customer side. On your end, you’ll be able to have staff handle support issues for your multiple products – or even multiple companies – from a single employee-side interface.

Handle Multiple Countries and Time Zones

Many companies now deal with many countries at once. Even those who do not have to account for several time zones. Modern web-based help desk software makes this easy. You can set up separate customer-facing interfaces for each country, localize time zones, and localize languages without any trouble. This solution, known as satellite help desk software, is made especially to handle the needs of companies that have customers over wide geographic areas – even worldwide.

Allows You to Provide a Knowledgebase to Reduce the Need for Personalized Help

Many businesses have embraced the knowledgebase concept to allow customers to look up answers to questions themselves. When implemented properly, a knowledgebase goes beyond the scope of the simple FAQ page by answering questions that may not be all that common. A modern web-based help desk should always have this option available so that customers who need immediate answers don’t have to wait for tickets to be answered.

For a knowledgebase to be successful, it has to do more than answer questions and provide how-tos. It must do these things in ways that are understandable to those with no experience with your product or even the platform it runs on. For subjects that are too complicated to explain this way, it is usually better to have customers submit tickets. This streamlines the process of resolving problems by ensuring that everyone can get the level of help they need without frustration.

Who Should Use Help Desk Software?

This software is most commonly used by those who produce other kinds of software, web hosts, cloud service providers, and others who have a large percentage of customers who will use the internet to contact the company. That said, any company that needs to provide remote customer service will benefit greatly from this type of solution. Even if no customer comes in direct contact with it, it will still provide your business with the ability to organize and handle help requests far more efficiently. It’ll also let you provide remote help from any location and at any time while ensuring that you have a record of the interactions. This is possible because you and your staff can log in from anywhere regardless of how your customers reach you.

Which is Better: Regular Help Desk Software or Satellite?

The key here is choosing the one that best fits your business needs. For a company that operates under a single brand, and has a product line that can be sensibly handled with a single help desk interface, our regular help desk software offering will be best. If your company has a large amount of product disparity, multiple brands, or operates under multiple business names, then our satellite help desk software is the best bet.

For a demonstration of our help desk, satellite help desk, and service desk offerings, just contact us. We’ll be glad to explain the differences between our solutions and help you choose the perfect one for your company’s needs. We also offer a free trial of either our SaaS or downloadable versions so you can see for yourself exactly how our products work and how they benefit your company. Contact us today to learn more, get a trial, or obtain a full license.