How to Customize Helpdesk Software for External Support

Written by zhangyuan January 23, 2008 11:14

Introduction

These two are related applications with overlapping functionalities. I cannot provide a detailed instruction but I'm trying to highlight the main features to be included in and excluded out of the internal helpdesk software to make it suitable for external support .

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You'll Need

  • basic understanding of CRM technology

Steps

1

Step One

Complete a requirement analysis (GAP analysis) to identify the requirements typical of your organization. 2

Step Two

Get it approved from all concerned BPOs(Business Process Owners) 3

Step Three

Here are some main features to be included. Keep in mind that an external helpdesk is not quite complete unless you include something for Sales and Marketing Automation. Although you can function without these.

1) If you have an Employee Portal convert it to Customer Portal. Basic features to be retained in Customer Portal are as following.

a) Ticket submission and status update
b) Product Information, literature
c) Payment History
d) Download section
e) Search Knowledge Articles (if any)
f) Notifications, News

2) Service Level Agreement

3) Customer Survey

4) Time and Cost Tracker

5) Inventory Management

6) Interface with Accounting Systems

7) Lead/Enquiry management -Optional

8) Sales Force Automation (Contact Management, Opportunity Management, Territory Management etc.)-Optional

9) Order Processing -Optional

10) Marketing Automation-Optional 4

Step Four

Remove these features from the Internal helpdesk

1) Asset Management
2) IT Asset Auditing and Management