A help desk is a software tool or team of human agents that enable a company to support its customers in real time.
The help desk serves two primary functions:
A help desk system streamlines support requests within a single interface. It includes automation and categorization features to organize customer issues and prevent escalation. This enables help desk agents to cross-reference multiple engagements to quickly provide the best possible solutions to end users.
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A help desk significantly enhances the user experience (UX) for support teams and the users they serve. Specifically, it boosts IT support productivity to improve solutions and customer satisfaction. Here are five aspects of a help desk that benefit support agents as well as their customers:
As digital transformation continues to rise, help desks are becoming critical to large and small business operations. Therefore, a service desk ecosystem must be both agile and adaptable. Here are three scenarios in which the modern help desk is most useful¹:
As a help desk evolves, support agents and teams must expand their capabilities to remain efficient. This may require enhancing internal collaboration as well as expanding the scope of external communications. Here are two ways to round out your customer support team for departmental and organizational growth²:
As help desks continue to grow in prominence within today’s business ecosystems, many misconceptions have emerged. Here are four help desk myths that you should dismiss before beginning your customer support journey:
Chatbots, with their advanced language capabilities like native natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU) are driving the future of help desk systems. In fact, a recent survey revealed that 58% of IT decision-makers (ITDMs) have adopted chatbots or are in the process of doing so.³
Emerging tools like virtual agents, chatbot toolboxes, automation aggregators and platform-specific chatbots provide perpetual service desk coverage and faster issue resolution. As a matter of fact, chatbots reduce Average Handle Time (AHT) by 10%, which reduces costs associated with IT service management (ITSM).¹
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¹ IBM, Independent study finds IBM watsonx Assistant customers can accrue USD 23.9 million in benefits, Mar 2020
² IDC, Effective Practices for Leading a Multilocation and Multicultural IT Help Desk Function (link resides outside ibm.com), Sep 2019
³ Forrester, Best Practices For Help Desk Chatbot Success (link resides outside ibm.com), 29 Mar 2021