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March 10, 2006

Could A Help Desk System Save Your Business?

Could A Help Desk System Save Your Business?Copyright 2006 by Willie Crawford

When I recently downloaded my email, and there were 13,000+
messages that had made it past my filters, I knew that I had to
do something. It's simply impossible to work through that
many messages in less than a few days... which is what my
team and I did. In the process, I'm sure that we deleted
more than a few that we didn't really intend to.

Before working through that PILE, I realized that I needed a
better solution immediately! After discussions with many
advisors and close friends, I settled upon using a help desk.
Now I force many contacts to go through that system rather
than emailing me. I has reduced the sheer volume by about
90%.

In researching help desk options, I asked a lot of friends
what they used. I also posted to several popular discussion
boards. What I discovered was that there are many different
excellent options. They range in price from free to very
expensive. I delayed the decision on a final option, but
implemented a temporary one that may turn into a permanent
one. I simply had to give myself and my assistants some
breathing room :-)

The advantages of setting up a help desk, and encouraging
your customers to contact you through it, are countless.
Let me share with you just a few:

1) It can completely eliminate the barrage of spam sent to
random email addresses. Depending upon how you configure
your help desk, you can allow customers to file a help
ticket via email. However, it has to be sent to a very
specific email address. So you could theoretically shut
down all other email addresses on that domain.

Many web hosts allow you to delete or "black hole" all
email not sent to legitimate addresses. This is a life
saver. The host that I've set up numerous accounts with,
and have my help ticket system set up on, allows this. Not
only that, but this host is so gracious that I'm using 1000 meg
of disk space and 120gig of monthly bandwidth and it's free.
Actually it's not totally free. It's part of a monthly
membership site that I belong to where members get unlimited
free hosting.

I'm getting slightly sidetracked here, so if you want to
know more about how I get unlimited free web hosting, check
out: http://MassiveCashFromArticles.com

2) A help ticket system can organize those numerous email
dialogues that many of us have going at the same time. Often,
I'll respond to 30 different people about consulting or various
projects/ proposals that we are contemplating. A few hours or
days later, some of them might respond. In the past, the
problem was that the response was often something like "Yes,
let's do option 2"... and they would have not included the
body of the original message.

That use to drive me crazy - because I had to try to reconstruct
what specific conversations they were responding to. Please
don't YOU do that. If you're replying to someone, be sure
to include at least enough of the original message to confirm
what the conversation is about.

With the help desk, the system allow you to keep a running
record of the conversation, all in one window on your
computer screen. It's wonderful!

3) It allows enhanced teamwork. You can set it up so that
"trouble tickets" are broken down into various categories.
Then you can allow assistants access to certain assigned
categories. That way, anyone on your team with the proper
authority can take care of problems, questions, etc.

This also allows team members to see what transpired on a
particular issue or help ticket. It provides a running
record.

4) There is no hazard of communications being totally blocked
by filters. Certain ISP's are notorious for blocking email.
This is especially a problem if you send out email in any
quantity... as in... if you publish an ezine.

I've had customers send me 8-10 emails on a problem or
concern - and NONE of them get through. I've also received
emails from certain customers and responded half a dozen
times, but not have them receive any of the responses. I've
sometimes had to phone to resolve such issues.

My trouble ticket system does send an email notice telling
me and/or customers when a response has been posted to a
given ticket number. So, there is still the danger of
that notice not getting through. However, if it's a pressing
issue, the person is more likely simply to log back in and
check on a given ticket number.

5) I've found it at-least three times faster to log
in and respond to trouble tickets than it is to deal with the
same issue via email. It depends upon how cumbersome your
trouble ticket system is, and what email client you use,
but to me it just take a fraction of the time to coordinate
issues. That makes a trouble ticket system a MAJOR
productivity booster.

Those are just a few of the reasons that I absolutely LOVE
my new trouble ticket system. I'm sure that once you start
using one, you'll probably feel the same. If you’re drowning
in a sea of email, it may very well save your business.

The system I'm using temporarily... and may turn into a
permanent solution, is one that was pre-loaded into the
Fantastico control panel on my hosting account. Installing
it was just a matter of selecting that option, following
on-screen prompts through a few steps ,and the basic trouble
ticket system was ready. Then you can log in to your admin
panel and customize things for your preferred options,
look and feel, etc.

Your web hosting account probably comes with one or two
trouble ticket systems already available to you as free
options. If not, check out my host and save yourself some
dough. They're called Content Desk, and they're at:
http://MassiveCashFromArticles.com This is a membership site
designed to teach you how to grow your business through
building high quality content sites. It's a great site, and
the free hosting is just icing on the cake. Tell them Willie
sent you ;-)

By the way if you need to contact me for any reason, the easiest
way to do it is via my trouble ticket system at:
http://WeddingFireSale.com/helpdesk/

-------------------------
Willie Crawford serves as a consultant, mentor, and
confidant to some of Internet marketing's top income
earners. You can tap into his 9 years of online
experience and million-dollar, success-creating advice
at http://BlueprintToInternetMarketingSuccess.com

Posted by Willie Crawford at March 10, 2006 12:26 PM

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