How To Select A Help Desk Solution
With over 100 Support Desk vendors in the market, packages ranging from free to over $4,000 per advanced user (i.e. Technical Support Rep or Customer Support Rep) and an overwhelming list of architectures, web services, and features to evaluate, choosing the right customer support software for your organization can be a time consuming and aggravating process.
The reason for this paper is to attempt to and simplify the procedure for you. This paper will address ordinary issues that everyone in the help desk software market should understand before making the ultimate choice. Considering these issues will help you make a more educated decision.
Customer Support Software – Architecture
The issue that tends to generate the most uncertainty in our industry is server/client web-enabled solutions (C/S) vs. 100% web-based solutions. In general, C/S architected solutions are dying breed. At one point, an excellent improvement over main frame solutions, C/S technology has been phased out due to the availability and advantages of web-based solution structures. The main reason some helpdesk software businesses continue to sell C/S solutions is due to the fact that they do not have the development resources to adapt their elder product to a web-based architecture. Some of the rewards that web-based solutions include over C/S solutions include:
- No client-side software installation, updates, or support
- Log in from anywhere on the web, anytime with any web browser
- Access to all features and functions anytime and from any place
When you begin to try different customer support software solutions please take notice if you are required to load code on your computer to starts the demo. If so, you are not dealing with a vendor that gives a web-based solution. True web-based architectures need only a URL in order to try a demo.
So, if the business emails you a 5 MB exe. file to demo their solution, you are not looking at a 100% web based helpdesk software solution. The file that business is emailing you is either front ending a C/S system or is a complete canned demo on your desktop. Make sure you evaluate the solution you are going to purchase! If you do buya C/S solution, please take note that web-enabled add-on modules wont give you full access to all of the features when you are in a browser on the web.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 4:09 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.