We get lots of voicemails and e-mails from potential clients and our website visitors. On top of that, we get messages on Facebook and Twitter.

We have a small team designated to handle the influx of messages. They work together to respond to the inbound messages and turn them around. Some prospects get calls back, some get e-mail responses, and some go straight to the waste bin. It’s a process that starts immediately in the morning (dealing with the overnight messages) and continues right along through the day. The inbox is never empty (thankfully).

Years ago, we simply designated someone to handle the inbound messages from those seeking help, time for an appointment, and/or information. We’d usually have those messages go to the receptionist or our intake person.

But what if the intake person comes in late? What if she’s out sick? What if she forgot to check the messages? What if this and what if that?

It’s all fun and games until you realize that every penny of your revenue comes in via your intake process. Then it gets deadly serious.

What’s a Message Worth?

Over time, our message volume has grown and grown. We’re talking many messages per hour. Each message is worth (do the math, people) a LOT of money. Just for fun, take your annual revenue and divide it by the number of inbound calls. That’s the dollar value of each call. See why I’m paying attention?

What’s it cost you when an inbound e-mail or call gets delayed, deleted, or ignored? I’m talking major dollars here. This is way more than the cost of a chicken pita sandwich for lunch. Are you feeling me?

We need to be able to assign the messages to the right person. We needed a system that accounts for people being out on vacation or illness. We need a system for spreading out the work when one person was on overload and the others had little to do. We also wanted a record of all interactions between our people and the rest of the world. Plus, we needed the supervisor to be able to stay on top of the supervision.

That’s why we investigated help desk applications. These products are specifically designed to handle inbound requests like those we receive. Many of them were developed for technology companies handling hardware and software issues, so they tend to be filled with features to make it easier to provide high-volume support efficiently and effectively.

Think About the Options

Some help desk products have been around for quite a while. Zendesk, for instance, is the grandfather of help desk products. It’s full featured, well developed, and, unfortunately, expensive. The product is well worth the money if you’re going to use the amazing features it contains. If, however, you’re going to keep it simple, then you might want something less sophisticated.

Our use case is pretty simple. We route all inbound e-mails, SMS messages, voicemails, Twitter direct messages, and Facebook messages to one inbound address. We make all of those messages visible to our intake team. They respond by returning calls, sending canned messages, or developing custom responses. Any intake person can respond to any message. They can, when necessary, assign the message to a specific employee.

We don’t offer self-service assistance like some companies do. We don’t specifically analyze the help desk requests in great detail. We don’t integrate inbound chat, etc. We keep it simple. We just want to know that we’re handling all inbound requests in a timely manner.

Because our use case is simple, we want to use a simple product that’s available at a reasonable price.

Originally, we signed on with Desk.com. It was a great product with great support. In fact, we learned so much about running a help desk that we were able to leave Desk and go to something less expensive. We came to understand which features we really required and what was costing us money and going unused. Desk.com is a great place to start.

We then moved on to Help Scout, which was basically a clone of Desk.com at a fraction of the price. That transition went smoothly, and we were very pleased with the product and the support. Help Scout worked well and is priced right.

However, we aren’t ever completely happy (and that’s a problem on multiple levels), so we went searching, after a year or two, for something better.

5 Points to Consider When Investigating Help Desk Services

A couple of notes on help desk products:

1. They all use tier pricing. Somehow, you’ll always end up with the most expensive option. They’re pretty good at finding one seemingly trivial feature that you’ve got to have and that’s included only in the most expensive version. Just scan over to the right side of the pricing chart and assume that you’ll pay that number.
2. They all discount if you buy a year. Go ahead and buy the year. It’ll take you that long to decide whether you’re truly happy, and you might as well take advantage of the discount.
3. Prices are negotiable. If you buy a high-end product (and we aren’t using one now), then you should negotiate on the price. Discounts are easy to come by at the outset. Once they’ve got you locked in, they’ll raise the price, so get your discount while you can.
4. Switch services if you’re troubled by the product, the service, or the price. It’s shockingly easy to leave a help desk product. There’s a dramatic difference between leaving a help desk provider compared to leaving your practice management provider. Generally, when switching help desks, you can archive the data and walk away. For many use cases, you’re unlikely to ever need access to your old data. Make the switch when something better/cheaper comes along. Mostly the migration involves setting up user accounts and pointing e-mail and voicemail accounts to a new address.
5. Get rid of inboxes for your support team. Just let everyone work from the help desk product. There’s no reason for your team to use multiple boxes. Consolidating boxes simplifies their lives and makes your management oversight responsibilities easier. Keep it simple.

We recently made the switch from Help Scout to Front. Migrating was simple and quick, and the Front support team did everything possible to make it easy. We were up and running in hours.

We made the switch to Front for three reasons. First, Front is cheaper. It’s not a dramatic difference, but we’re all about cheaper. Second, Front makes it simple for us to apply different e-mail signatures easily. For instance, a member of our support team can easily insert my signature in an e-mail address rather than her own when it makes sense to do so. Finally, Front offers a better mobile browser experience than Help Scout.

The distinctions that drove our switch aren’t hugely significant. These products are rapidly evolving, and any advantage one product offers over another is quickly replicated by the competition. There’s not that much to be gained by migrating, but we’re restless and we can’t help ourselves. Plus, our e-mail provider makes it really simple for us to switch. We use Google for Business.

Should You Implement a Help Desk Product?

The key driver is having more than one person responding to potential client inquiries. Once you’ve got yourself and one team member doing it, you might as well add a help desk. The price is so low that there’s no reason not to jump on board and make it easier to allocate and monitor the work. Personally, we’d suggest starting with Front.

As you grow, having a help desk product up and running will help make things go smoothly. You’ll find fewer inbound requests falling through the cracks. You’ll have everyone keeping an eye on everyone else, and you’ll know that appointment and information requests are being properly handled. At these prices, given what’s at stake, help desk software is a no-brainer.

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