Great podcast on help desk software and customer support. It really gets into the details of how help desk software affects customer service. Honestly I felt like I wrote this script! The problems they talk about, lack of automation, email integration, costs, are all reasons we're building HelpSpot.

Some of the really important topics they touch on include:

• Automating ticket creation by email or web forms ("requests" in HelpSpot) - HelpSpot does both and more.


• Users being able to check their own tickets - In HelpSpot all updates to a request can be optionally marked "public". Ones marked public will be visible to the user(requester) via a simple webform and probably via email update as well.



• Costs to the organization - They really hit on a key one here, lots of companies don't use help desk software because they think it's cheaper not to, but they're missing the intrinsic value created by successfully answering user requests in a timely manner. Check my previous post on this. To put it bluntly, we're going to keep HelpSpot CHEAP and try to lower this barrier to entry. I was on another systems site the other day and they don't even let you purchase the software unless you do several thousand dollars of training first! If it's that complicated that says something about the quality of the software.


• Reporting - What a key issue, categorization and tracking are the heart of most help desk software initiatives. Reporting and tracking are powerful features in HelpSpot including the ability to create spiffy graphs for your boss :-)


• IM - There are some IM bots that produce tickets but most work illegally on the networks. You have to license the IM protocol from MSN/AOL which drives up costs. We are hoping to integrate some of this in v1.5.

                    <br /> Really good stuff guys, keep it up! There just isn't enough user generated content on help desk issues out there.