Best Service Desk Software

What is Service Desk Software?

What are the Common Features of Service Desk Software?

What are the Benefits of Service Desk Software?

Who Uses Service Desk Software?

IT teams: Service desk software is traditionally used by the internal IT service teams of enterprises, small businesses, and medium businesses as a ticketing system to provide better assistance to employees using IT equipment. These tickets can track the progress of IT requests, offering users transparency into issue resolution. Service desk products centralize the tickets and allocate them to the proper IT support staff. This can lead to quicker resolutions and prevent any issues from being lost in the shuffle. By increasing support efficiency with these methods, IT support teams can better meet SLAs and keep employees satisfied and productive.

Software Related to Service Desk Software

Related solutions that can be used together with service desk software include:

Help desk software: IT help desk software is a one-stop point of contact where customers can send their queries or problems. It organizes ticket requests from customers outside the company and provides them with information and support regarding its products or services. If a team is handling customer issues, they’ll likely want to investigate help desk solutions providing features for external-facing resources and communication. Some product suites support both internal service and external assistance if an organization requires both. Usually, service desks have a help desk component incorporated to improve IT processes and enhance efficiency.

Knowledge management software: A knowledge management system is crucial for managing resources and ensuring organizational knowledge is available to those who need it. Knowledge management solutions can speed up issue resolution time by providing guidance and answers to often seen issues. Knowledge management software has both internal and external use cases. Some companies use knowledge management software as an internal database for employees to reference, while others use it as an external reference for customers.

Customer self-service software: Often, issues and requests that generate user calls into the IT service desk are matters that the user could address on their own if they had the right set of tools and access to information. One of the best ways to maximize service desk efficiency is to provide self-service options. A self-service portal helps users resolve their issues faster, without the delays of waiting for an agent. They also help the company save funds by reducing the need for additional agent capacity in the IT service desk to address simple requests. 

Remote support software: Internal support analysts can provide greater support to employees by being able to assist remotely whenever possible. Remote support solutions allow analysts to work with internal users on issue resolution via virtual access established through a cloud gateway. Remote support solutions enable analysts to work with internal users on issue resolution without physically accessing the user’s device.

Challenges with Service Desk Software

Working in the IT service desk business is quite hectic. Every customer wants to receive fast and professional support, which puts a considerable amount of pressure on staff members. Here are some challenges that agents working in an IT service desk encounter:

Numerous requests from different departments and interruptions: IT teams at high technology companies can get swamped by technical issues at a near-constant rate. At the same time, more niche businesses will only see a few requests per day. As technology becomes more vital in business operations, the need for instant troubleshooting increases significantly. This can quickly become a problem when the service desk receives too many requests and lacks the necessary communication tools. The cost of IT service failures can be substantial, and downtime can have an adverse impact on the organization's business. Therefore, it’s crucial to have an IT service desk and efficient processes in place to deal with issues promptly while maintaining quality standards.

Up-to-date knowledge: Within service desk solutions, knowledge bases are effective only if they’re maintained. This may demand extra time on the part of the IT team in case they find that a previous piece of knowledge is outdated and needs to be updated. While the task shouldn’t necessarily have to fall on one person to maintain the effectiveness of a knowledge base, companies should consider having an analyst on the service desk who would be responsible for maintaining the knowledge base, should their size necessitate this consideration.

Wasting time on recurring issues: Without a tool for collecting, recording, and analyzing support data, organizations can easily fall into the trap of solving the same problems all over again. If the IT service desk doesn’t keep track of the most common issues, the IT team will waste time trying to identify and fix the issues that have already been worked on. However, it is impossible to remove every problem, so it’s essential to invest in reliable software and create a database of all the issues together with solutions. Such a database will enable the IT service desk to quickly address recurring issues and prevent some common operational bottlenecks in the future.

Lack of useful self-service tools: Technology is instrumental to providing efficient and effective IT support, yet many service desks suffer from a technology gap between what they have and what is needed. Unavailability of sufficient time and resources to upgrade to the most recent version of the service desk tool and constrained business budgets for getting a new solution make it difficult for the IT team to resolve issues smoothly. It is essential for the IT team to future-proof their purchase decision by creating an improvement roadmap and deciding on the supporting features they would require.

How to Buy Service Desk Software

Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Service Desk Software

Wherever a business is in its buying process, G2 can help select the best service desk software for their needs.

The buyer might find that the IT team in the organization spends too much time manually tracking tickets in email chains and filling out spreadsheets. Instead, they can switch over to software to manage all of that in an organized location. Users should think about the pain points and jot them down; these should help create a checklist of criteria. Additionally, the buyer must determine the number of employees who will need to use this software, which drives the number of licenses they are likely to buy.

The checklist serves as a detailed guide that includes both essential and nice-to-have features, including budget features, number of users, integrations, security requirements, cloud or on-premises solutions, and more.

Depending on the scope of the deployment, it might be helpful to produce an RFI, a one-page list with a few bullet points describing what is needed from a service desk software.

Compare Service Desk Products

Create a long list

From meeting the business functionality needs to implementation, service desk software vendor evaluations are an essential part of the software buying process. For ease of comparison, after all demos and trials are complete, it helps prepare a consistent list of questions regarding specific requirements and concerns to ask each vendor. 

Create a short list

From the long list of vendors, it is helpful to narrow down the list of vendors and come up with a shorter list of contenders after excluding from consideration any products that don’t cover all of the required features. With this list in hand, businesses can produce a matrix to compare the pros and cons as well as the pricing of the various products.

Conduct demos

Demos provide an opportunity to buyers to see how a service desk software can address IT-related issues effectively. It is lucrative to request the vendor for a live demo of the software to have an in-depth understanding of the features it offers. This will allow the business to evaluate how each vendor stacks up against the competition. Also, It's typical for vendors to offer a free trial of their software, and buyers should sign up for that option. Companies can use dummy data to see how ticket creation, status tracking, and other features will work in the system to make sure it's what they are looking for.

Selection of Service Desk Software

Choose an evaluation team

Before getting started, it's crucial to create a team that will work together throughout the entire process, from identification of pain points to implementation. The software selection team should consist of members of the organization who have the right interest, skills, and time to participate in this process. A good starting point is to aim for a group of three to five people, including a junior-level customer service person, a couple of service desk users, and a manager or senior leader. Combining their different needs and backgrounds will provide the buyer with a more efficient way to tell if the service desk will be a good fit for the whole organization. It is necessary for the whole evaluation team to look at the same tool simultaneously rather than working in silos.

Consider scalability

Functionality matters a great deal while choosing an IT service management solution, but scale is also an incredibly important consideration. The cost of having to refresh the service desk can be significant. Correctly projecting scale based on the organization’s staffing requirements can lead to significant cost savings over time, as the organization is able to continue expanding without having to invest in a new solution to meet the new challenges created by a large-scale operation. The solution should be scalable to provide room for future business growth. It should be able to adjust for more technicians, end-users, modules, and other IT management tools.

Prioritize reliability and support

The buying organization should be aware of the support channels available when a service desk system has an outage or when a process needs reworking. Every software product experiences issues, but some companies do much better than others in handling those situations. The organization should always take into consideration the quality of support provided by the vendor while evaluating alternatives. Within this, timeliness and available support channels can be two major factors to consider.

What does Service Desk Software Cost?

Pricing is a major consideration when finding a solution that meets the organization’s needs for issues relating to the size of operations in the service desk. Sometimes, purchasing a solution that meets current requirements and replacing it over time may make sense, but only if an organization anticipates making major technological changes that make an entirely new platform necessary regardless of scale concerns. Finding the right price point depends on weighing functionality, features, and capacity issues besides one another to find the right fit for the organization’s operational needs.

ITSM solutions usually come with different licenses at different prices. When choosing a service desk software, it is important to strike a balance between features and license price based on the company’s budget. The organization must look into the cost of scaling up, receiving support, and annual maintenance.

Service Desk Software Trends

Internet of things (IoT)

As more devices become network-connected, service desk analysts and support staff will require the ability to manage and troubleshoot a variety of devices. Pairing service desk solutions with IoT management platforms may help a company’s analysts stay on top of growing IoT needs.

Automation 

Chatbots, Machine Learning, and other AI technologies will likely be integrated into day-to-day service desk functions sooner rather than later. These options can help mediate some of the simpler issues service desks face, allowing the IT team to spend more time addressing larger issues.

Focus on consumer experience

The role of IT support is to make sure that IT services help employees with their work. Increased expectations of IT employees have shifted the focus of IT towards providing a better end-user experience. Providing a better end-user experience improves the IT department's reputation and creates a work environment free of frustration for both end users and IT technicians.