web hosting

The Benefits of Help Desk Software

In today’s fast paced business environment, would-be straightforward tasks like maintaining customer relations have become more complex.  With some companies, the support center consists of one or two people who answer the phones and handle all incoming problems.  As you would imagine, call volumes and customer expectations often exceed what the staff is able to deal with it.  In the typical scenario, a customer sends a support inquiry via email, never knowing what to expect or if they will be acknowledged at all.  Perhaps they try to get help by phone, only to end up being put on hold and shuffled through different agents.  This wastes the time of both parties, the company and the customer.  When this process is disrupted, customers are left frustrated while the image of the business suffers a crucial blow.

Whether you are running a small company or large corporate network, your business can’t survive without delivering quality support to your customers.  Help desk software can be a powerful tool that allows you to effectively manage relationships with existing customers as well as potential clients.  This type of program gives you a centralized platform to handle email inquiries, live chat and issues received via a support ticket among other methods.  This article will explain some of the benefits help desk software can offer your business.

Help Desk Features

Help desk software acts as your web-based support center, streamlining the facilitation of inquiry management and other vital support processes.  A good program contorts to the novice, reducing the amount of training time while allowing junior level support members to become experts in no time.  With the ability to solve problems quicker, staff can boost productivity by assisting more customers.

Some of the features commonly found in help desk software include:

- Efficient ticket system that lets customers track their open issues.  Sometimes people just don’t feel like talking on the phone or communicating through email.

- Built-in knowledge base for storing helpful tips and articles.  Not only does this act as a great self-help resource for customers, but also a nice reference for employees as well.

- Ability to prioritize inquiries and route requests across the network to appropriate personnel departments.

- Flexible reporting, tracking and problem resolution tools.

- Web-based interface accessible from any computer with an internet or intranet connection.

- Seamless integration into your existing network environment.  When incorporating a help desk solution, there should be no need to reorganize your infrastructure.

- Scalable platform capable of meting your current needs with functionality that supports the natural growth of customer demands.

- Quality technical support provided by resources within the application as well as prompt support from live representatives.

Conclusion

Help desk applications have quickly become one of the most widely deployed types of software available.  When considering all the benefits, it is a must have for any company doing business online.  Increasing revenues is key but nothing is more important than keeping your customers satisfied.  Help desk software helps to ensure that the clients are happy and the support team is content.  This is a win-win situation for everyone involved.

Shared Hosting: The Ideal Small Business Solution

Shared hosting is the most popular web hosting solution today, ideal for individuals and small business owners as well.  So, what exactly is shared hosting?  Well, as the name implies, it refers to an arrangement where you share space on a web server and resources such as bandwidth and RAM with other hosting customers.  Though shared hosting providers are abundant, the key is finding a company that will set you up for success.  This article will provide a checklist to help you use the shared hosting platform as a vehicle to establishing your small business.

Finding a Reliable Shared Host

In order to give yourself the best chance of succeeding with a small business, you need a shared hosting provider that takes hosting serious.  First and foremost, they should be dedicated to making sure your site is always up and running, ensuring that visitors enjoy a smooth performance.  If your site is frequently down due to technical difficulties or performs sluggishly, converting visitors into customers will be nearly impossible.  You can better assure accessibility and performance by looking for these technical specifics:

Uptime - This refers to the amount of time your site will be available on the web.  Right now, the industry standard is 99.9% so anything less than that can be considered unacceptable.  Don’t simply take the provider’s word on its advertised guarantee.  Do a little investigating and find out how the percentage is calculated and what is actually covered in the guarantee.

Disk Space – If you are planning to start an online business, a shared hosting plan must provide an adequate amount of disk space to store your content.  You probably won’t require a tremendous amount of storage space so look for something that suits your needs rather than falling for the glamorous “unlimited” offering.

Bandwidth – Equally important is bandwidth, often referred to as data transfer.  Bandwidth is another resource that is often advertised as an unlimited offering, but just as with disk space, that simply isn’t true.  We suggest selecting a shared host that offers an accurate amount of bandwidth to support your web traffic.  Without enough, your site will lag.  If you exceed the allotted amount, you could be taxed hefty overage fees despite the unlimited offering.

E-commerce Tools – Shared hosting is your ticket into online business and essentially the world of e-commerce.  Depending on the nature of your business, some of the e-commerce features you may want to look out for are shopping cart programs, multiple email accounts, SSL support, and database access among other features.   These tools will give you the ability to open up an online storefront, keep in touch with customers and facilitate secure transactions on your site.

Support - A small business hosting solution just wouldn’t be complete without solid support.  A reliable shared host should offer support 24/7 to step in and make the save when you have questions or concerns.  If they can’t provide quality customer support, the overall quality of their hosting service is questionable as well.

The most attractive benefit of shared hosting is cost efficiency.  By referring to this checklist, you should be able to find a small business solution that is both reliable and affordable.