The Little Black Book of Online Business: 1001 Insider Resources Every Business Owner Needs

Chapter 36. Help Desk Software

If you're going to have any significant sales volume, you can plan on having an equally significant volume of customer support requests. And unless you have full-time support staff manning the phones, you need to provide other ways for people to contact you online.

There was a time when a "support" e-mail (e.g., [e-mail]) that would be directed to your support staff was sufficient and even preferred—but not anymore.

The problem now is that e-mail is just too unreliable to be used for something as important as customer support—too great a chance that you'll not receive customers' help requests or that they won't receive your reply.

I now recommend the use of help desk "ticket system" software. Personally, I'd rather just send an e-mail and be done with it. But I have resigned myself to the reality that my help request is more likely to be seen and responded to if I'm submitting it through help desk software.

http://www.omnihelpdesk.com/index.html

http://www.osticket.com/

http://www.perldesk.com/

http://www.readydesk.com/

http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/

http://www.deskpro.com/

http://www.cerberusweb.com/

http://www.kayako.com/