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Hero Help Desk Overview
What is Hero Help Desk and why should your support team use it?
Hero Help Desk is a fully hosted, on-demand version of our latest HelpConnection Customer Support system - designed for both internal and external customer support.
This hosted solution saves money for your company, right now... because you can get started supporting your customers almost immediately.
The advantages of a SaaS help desk solution vs. hosting it yourself are:
- Faster and easier to get started.
- Inexpensive, without a big investment at once.
- No future version upgrading work. We'll do it all, it's included.
- Friendly heroic level support! It's included too. :)
- One stop support.
(No more bouncing between your software vendor and host to get support.)
It all comes down to saving money and getting quicker results, with a solution that is flexible enough for the long-term, and
actually supports your support staff in doing their job.
A great support system, that's affordable, flexible, brandable, and easy to use? Yes! It's all that - plus a fast, free trial that you can keep using later. So your team can become Help Desk Heros right away.
They're going to love you for this!
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What can Hero Help Desk do?
All components listed in the left menu are included in our low cost support system, and all these items work together. (Issue records can relate to client records, other issues, KB articles, assets, etc. And these other areas can be searched to find related issues etc. Information can be found from almost any starting point.) You don't have to purchase extra modules or add-ons.
Yes, it's a ticketing manager, knowledge base management, issue tracking, news management, change management, asset management, client data management, email management, tech support communications management, tasks management, and contacts management system! (WheW. Try to say that in one breath!)
If you don't need all this at once, don't worry. You can Simplify the Environment so you don't see the extra stuff that you don't need yet. No need for things to be overly complex. :)
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Trouble Ticket Management
Since trouble tickets are a major focus for your IT help desk team...
... trouble ticket management is a large component of the Hero Help Desk system!
If you're a Hands-on person, click this link to get started on your own private installation. You can start submitting tickets to your own private help desk system within about a minute. Test & customize for 45 days before you buy, with no commitment.
If you love information... then read on! Major trouble ticket functions are outlined below.
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 Pre-ticket Submission Suggestions
Before a ticket is submitted, the ticket title is searched against existing knowledge base articles. These suggested articles are offered as an alternative to submitting the ticket, which reduces the number of tickets submitted.
Self-Submitted Trouble Tickets
Your users can submit a ticket to you from the online form, linked from your website. If they ask a question, the Knowledge Base will be searched for similar phrases based on the ticket title. Any related KB articles will be shown to the client before the ticket is submitted. Any Alerts assigned to the issue category will also be shown, so your customer can be up to date on current information and may not actually need to submit a ticket after all.
Custom issue fields will be provided to the customer on the ticket submission form. These fields can be either required or not. So you can get the information you need to resolve the ticket as quickly as possible.
Emailed Trouble Tickets
Automatically convert your emails into tickets! Have you emails organized, keep track of what needs to be done easily and all in one place. Email replies goes to the right ticket. Easy.
Agent Added Trouble Tickets
If your customers phone your support line, a Customer Support Representative can enter a ticket on their behalf. The Client Overview On Demand will provide that agent information about your client, their previous issues, any scheduled tasks, and their supported equipment/software.
Trouble Tickets from Tweets
Support agents can track Twitter for tweets about your company and products. Or follow your customers and staff on Twitter. Any Tweet can be made into an issue. And Tweets can be responded to, online, via your Hero Support solution.
Trouble Ticket Escalations
No more needle in a haystack support. When an issue has remained unresolved longer than it should, it will be escalated. The correct person (often the supervisor) will be notified via email, and the issue will be reassigned to them.
Customize Ticket Fields
No business is the same, so you can define your own custom ticket fields such as product ID's or checkboxes. Save everyone's time by getting the data that you need from the start.
Customize Ticket Statuses
You are not confined to pre-defined status names for your tickets. You can create new or even rename statuses as you need.
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Pre-ticket Alerts
Alerts are notices for visitors and clients, showing important current information that is related to a specific category of issue. When a client submits a ticket they select the most appropriate category for that ticket. If there is an alert, it will be shown dynamically before the other ticket fields have been completed. (Again reducing tickets.)
Emailed Ticket Notifications
Support agents and clients are notified by email when their issue has been updated. Agents are also notified when a new issue has been received that was submitted in one of their categories.
Optionally, a client can have a dedicated agent assigned. In that case, only this agent will receive emails when the client sends in an issue.
If either the client or the agent responds to an email sent from your support system, the issue will be updated with the new content, and the appropriate client or agent will be notified.
Reporting Trouble Tickets
Hero Help Desk has over 25 built-in reports, which include graphs and links so you can drill down to detailed information.
For custom reporting, you can export pre-filtered and sorted data into CSV or XML files. (For Excel, Access...)
Smart Phone Access
Are you often on the go? Use any smartphone to be notified of new issues and simply reply by email to claim your issues and resolve it on the go.
Finding Trouble Tickets
Besides email notifications, tickets / issues can be filtered in a number of different ways on the admin side. They can also be sorted by any column. Agents can even decide which fields are shown in the columns.
An advanced Smart Search will search all issues whether in the public side KB or not, filtering out common words (that you can refine), in a number of different ways. Or, go to a specific ticket number to view or edit it.
You can even find previous tickets that based on an individual client, based on an individual agent, based on an individual asset, or within a certain category.
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What is a trouble ticket?
In Hero Help Desk, we use the term issue. That's because an issue can be any incident, ticket, question, project, or problem that requires an answer, change, or fix (resolution). Issues track entire topical conversations, so they're also perfect for identifying potential sales prospects and handling
the logical sequencing of sales communications. Any of these can be submitted by either internal or external customers or even support staff.
A ticket or issue may start a chain of tasks including changes to various assets before that issue is fully completed. An issue can be as simple as a knowledge base article for the convenience of your users and support staff, or it can be a project with multiple tasks that need tracking and scheduling separately. Sounds complicated? It's not! Everything can be tracked by issue, and there are all kinds of searches, sorts and filters to help you find your data. Doesn't get simpler.
Once identified, the correct members of your support team need to be notified of the ticket. They need access to communications with the end-user and other members of your support team, and they need ways of ensuring that the issue is resolved in a timely manner. Cue the Hero! :)
Why use Hero Help Desk for your Trouble Ticket System?
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Issue Tracking
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Email Notifications
Email notifications go out to the client or agent whenever an issue is submitted, updated, reassigned or escalated.
Online Information
New and unassigned issues are highly visible in both the agent's home page, and in the client's existing issues page...online. Even when email isn't available, everyone can keep up to date.
Agent issue lists can be sorted, filtered and viewed in grids. Limit the list to only unresolved issues that belong to that agent. Unresolved issues that are in your court are further highlighted with bright text colors.
Issue Views
In addition to a clear view of the issue communication parts (Q/A/Q/A), the issue view will show any related assets, additional tasks assigned based on this issue, related issues, and more.
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Escalations
Based on your escalation settings, issues that have been unresolved for too long will be reassigned and an email notification will go out to the new agent. You define how long this period is, which issue statuses are to be escalated, and to whom the escalations should be made.
Issue History / Log
An uneditable audit trail per ticket. This history shows all events related to this issue including date and who performed the event. Examples are issue submission, updates, emails sent, an issue being made public, etc.
Reports
Track issues by client, agent, category of issue, asset, and even track tasks assigned to the issue. The issue view and the client overview are particularly useful, but there are dozens of built-in reports that tie the various functions of Hero together. Each report has built-in links to further drill down into the data.
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Hero Help Desk solution can be used for all the functions below too...
External Client Issue Tracking
Internal Issue Tracking
Bug Tracking
Asset Issue Tracking
Category (Geographic Area / Product Line...) Issue Tracking
Specific Agent's Issues
Tasks Tracking, per Issue
Potential Sales Tracking & Communication Center
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Change Management
Issues (tickets, problems and projects) can all result in additional change requests or tasks. And these tasks can affect not only certain clients but also certain equipment or software. Information tracking is especially important to avoid downtime.
Using Hero Help Desk, you can assign tasks to other agents based on an issue. Each task can have a scheduled time and due date, be related to a specific asset and issue, and be tracked via all these mediums.
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Tasks per Issue / Client
There can be any number of tasks for any issue. Each can be assigned to different members of your support team, along with due date and time. Since issues are often related to specific clients, there is a lot of data per client as well.
Tasks per Asset
What tasks/changes have been assigned related to a certain peice of equipment or software? Tasks can be listed for specific assets too.
Avoid downtime, by recording and tracking what equipment will be affected by specific jobs.
Tasks Management
The detailed Tasks Manager page shows a complete index of tasks that can be filtered by Task Categories, and sorted by various fields. Tasks that are past-due have dates shown with red text.
This area has the most functionality and information since each agent sees not only issues assigned to themselves, but also tasks assigned to others by them.
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Tasks per Agent
One of the first things a support agent sees when logging into the Hero Help Desk admin area, is a list of tasks for the day, and a calendar dashboard. Tasks and issues are listed for them with the ability to view details in different ways.
Tasks Control
Only some agents can assign tasks to others. If you have assigned a task to someone else, it will appear in your own task list in lighter text, for your information. Since it's now assigned to someone else, you can view the task details, but not edit it or delete it.
If a task has been assigned to you by someone else, you can view and update the task, but not delete it.
Tasks Popup
For support agent convenience, a simple popup Tasks List is available via the admin footer. That way agents can keep the list open while actually working on issues and tasks.
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Customizations
It's important for your customers and site visitors to feel comfortable. It's equally important for your site to look professional. So naturally moving to your support site should be as seamless as possible.
Even though Hero Help Desk is an on-demand solution, you can still make it look just like your site. So, when customers click on your support link or your knowledge base link, they probably won't even notice they've left your domain.
Plus you get custom fields and a ton of custom setting options.
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Site Header
From your Hero Help Desk control panel, you can add your site design. You'll have access to the header file for the site top and any left columns. (You're not limited to just a logo and basic color splash!) You can add your own images, backgrounds, colors, etc. because you have full access to the actual HTML.
Add meta tags, link to your own favicon, include Google Analytics code... if you can do it in html head or body sections, you can do it in your Hero header.
Stylesheets
You can change the actual stylesheet (.css) too. That means it's pretty simple to change default text colors and more.
Client Custom Fields
Need a hundred special fields for each client? OK! You can create your own fields for clients, and like issue fields they can be text fields, drop-down fields, checkboxes, etc.
If certain fields are very important such as service level information or purchase information, you can force content in these fields by marking it as Required.
Need to enter client information that the customer should not see? Easy. Beside the built-in private memo, and agent-to-agent messaging, there is also an Admin Only setting for custom fields.
Control Panel Settings
Change 32 hidden system wide settings from your Hero Help Desk control panel. Some examples are whether you want to allow agents to update issues via email, how searches should be handled, how many issues are shown in the Important KB articles lists, and more.
The control panel is separate from the admin area and requires a separate login from within our HeroHelpDesk site. It also contains site design change features, billing information for Hero, etc.
Application Settings
From within your own Hero admin area, there are other application settings. Decide whether to allow issue submissions via email, and which email address(es), what file types can be uploaded, whether customers can self-register or not...
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Site Footer
Just like the header, you can add any right side columns and footer to your Hero installation.
Issue Custom Fields
Your company probably has unique information that is useful to support your customers. No problem. You can add custom fields that will appear in every issue.
(And remember, an issue can be the parent of all sorts of separately dispatched tasks/changes. So, an issue can be a project, question, problem, ticket, sales prospect, etc.) All sorts of great information to collect.
Asset Custom Fields
We needed a whole page to describe the Asset Mangement function. But in addition to all the great built-in drop-down fields that you can customize, there are custom fields for assets.
Same as the Issues and Clients custom fields, there are no practical limits to the number of custom fields, and there are different field type options as well as settings for Admin Only and Required fields.
Support Agent Control
Create your own custom Security Levels, which can be assigned to individual support agents. You have ultimiate control of which agents can do perform functions, including whether they can change the security levels themselves! ;)
For example, you may allow certain agents to view issues, and even add them, but perhaps they can't edit them or delete them. Similar rights can be assigned for all areas of Hero Help Desk. More advanced settings are also included... you really need to check it out for yourself.
Language
Need a Spanish Help Desk? Czech CRM? German Knowledge Base? You can select from 4 different languages for your client side implementation. Our customers have provided language translations for Spanish, Deutch and Czech... in addition to the default of English.
Just change a Control Panel setting to switch the user interface language. It's that simple.
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Sample Site Customizations
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Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Tracking all customer related information and correspondence, in one place, so that the customer can have the best experience possible with your company. That's really what CRM is all about.
Hero Help Desk is designed for this very purpose. All client correspondences are captured as issues, issue drafts provide response templates that can be numbered for potential sales contacts to be sent in a consistent and logical manner, and there is no limit to the number of client data fields you can add!
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Customer Communications Tracking
Customer emails will be received by the Hero Help Desk, attached to the clients information and history, and stored as an issue. The appropriate Hero agent(s) will be notified via email and the new issue will appear in their admin home page.
Your most valuable information is at your fingertips. Follow customer communications and record important information. Retrieve it anytime via built-in reports or download data for ad-hoc reporting.
All client information is in one place, and won't get lost. With escalation settings, your customers' communications need never slip through the cracks either.
Customer Related Tickets & Tasks
Tickets (Issues) and the Tasks related to those issues, are all tracked on a per customer basis. For example, you can start a convenient customer overview report while working on the client's ticket. Now you have information on customer fields for this client, previous issues, related assets... all at your fingertips.
Customer Assets
Client assets can be hardware or software. Anything of value that you will support can be recorded. Sort and filter assets by client, agent specialities, location, condition of asset and more. Custom asset fields make the information even more useful.
Customer Groups & Roles
Track data by client groups, which can be organized in anyway you like. (Customers are often grouped by company, geographic region, both... since clients can belong to multiple groups the use is almost endless.) Track issues per client group, report on stats per client group, email all clients in a group, and more.
Client roles are used to disallow specific clients from submitting tickets or asking questions of certain issue categories. (Perhaps due to a lower SLA agreement.)
Related Clients
Clients can be also be marked as related to each other, so lists of related clients and their stats can be shown.
Set subordinate relations to allow clients from the same company or group to view and/or edit the another's issues. (Great when you support multiple clients who all report to the same manager.)
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Unique Customer Data
Track customer information that is specific to your own company's support and sales needs. You can add as many custom client fields as you like and they can be text, dropdown, checkbox etc. Your data, your way.
Customer Analytics
Reports and statistics sometimes justify the support team! There are several ways of reporting client information in Hero Help Desk. Most built-in reports contain clickable links to drill down to the detail, and many have graphs for visual imporession.
Some of the client reports are:- Client Time Tracking - Time spent serving the client based on a specified time frame.
- Client Overview - Synopsis and just about all information available in one convenient spot, per client.
- Client Group Overview - Same report, but showing data for all customers from the same group/company.
Other information available are average issues per client, average responses for clients, average number of clients relative to agents, busiest client, busiest client group/company...
Not enough? You can also export client data for manipulating in a spread sheet or PC/Apple based database.
Social Customers
Your customers' needs have changed. Are they social? Do they Tweet? Track what is being said by your customers and potential customers. Hero Help Desk is a social reputation tracker that offers the chance to capture important Tweets, and respond to them via Twitter!
Are your customers using a different social media? No worries. There are many different RSS feeds coming out of your knowledge base that can be used with tools like Hootsuite, so your news gets out there in various social mediums. Or your clients can follow specific RSS feeds themselves using their Google toolbars, etc. Don't want RSS feeds? You can also turn them off per category or system wide.
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Benefits of Customer Relations Management
Some of the benefits of using a CRM are:- Quality and efficiency
- Decreased Costs
- Decision Support
- Enterprise Agility
Sales Activities and Marketing
Of course you need your CRM to help identify and track potential sales prospects! Information about potential customers, stages of the sale process need to be identified, and the next step in the process needs to be clear.
So, how does Hero Help Desk fascilitate this? It's quite simple really. Through client issues and issue drafts! An internal only issue category should be named Sales & Marketing. Sub-categories should include items such as Request for Information, Initial Contact, Additional Information, etc.
An issue draft category should also be named for Sales & Marketing, and all sales correspondences for the customer should be sent through the system. In that way, there will be records of all emails that have been sent to the customer (via the issue histories), and it should be clear what the next sales step should be.
Continuing Customer Service
Your customers' first experiences with your company typically begin before they make a purchase. Sales force automatation is a great way to begin gathering client data that's not only useful for current marketing activities, but will later be useful for customer service and/or technical support too.
In essence, you want all customer information recorded and made available, to all departments that will be dealing with the customer, and for management's analytic purposes as well.
Customer data can be further filtered, sorted and searched in various ways... depending on the client company, any groups that client belongs to, any roles the client has been assigned to, client assets, etc. Clients can even be assigned to dedicated sales or support agents, so they can always deal with the same individuals in your company. (Customer satisfaction is job one.)
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Asset Management
An asset can be any item of value; usually items that may require maintenance, repair or support. For this reason, this area is most commonly used for internal support and system maintenance.
Keeping everything running smoothly is key. So your Asset Manager needs to track not only specific asset data, but it should also show
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Issues per Asset
Review issues reported for each peice of equipment or software that you support.
Tasks per Asset
Any current or previous change requests? Tasks can be associated with specific assets for your asset information pleasure.
Clients per Asset
Who owns/uses a specific asset? Or maybe who is the contact? View assets per client, and clients per asset.
Asset Category
Asset categories are a very useful means of organizing your assets. For example, you may want to add categories named:- Hardware - Computer
- Hardware - Monitor
- Software - Operating Systems
- Software - Spreadsheets
- etc.
Add as many asset categories as you need.
Asset Condition
Perfect for Just in Time repair or replacement. (Search for assets in poor condition.) Or, maybe someone needs to borrow an asset in excellent condition, temporarily.
Determine your own asset conditions for selection.
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Custom Asset Fields
Unlimited custom fields can be added for tracking your asset details. Some optional field types are text, drop-down, list box, and check-box. And of course, these fields can be marked for a specific order of appearance in the assets screens, mark them active/inactive, required content... or not.
Sample uses may be Warrantee, Warrantee Details, serial number, etc.
Dedicated Agents
Is there a technician who specializes in this equipment or whose job it is to maintain it? Track who that is or view a list of all assets per technician.
Asset Location
Where is this asset? Set up asset locations by geographic area, department, company, floor number...
Asset Index
Sort and filter tasks by agent, condition, location and category. View associated client, issues, tasks, attachments and more.
Asset Attachments
Upload and attach files related to a specific asset. For example, warrantee information or instruction manuals may be handy.
Asset Value / Dates
How old is the asset, when was it acquired, how much did it cost, and what's it worth now?
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Email Management
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Public.Side.Knowledgebase
Why spend time on installation and setup when you can have it all done and ready in less then a minute. All you have to do is dive in and start using it. With the hosted HC CMR, there is no hassle installing and setting it up. You are set in under a minute.
Email.to.ticket.Conversion
Automatically convert your emails into tickets! Have you emails organized, keep track of what needs to be done easily and all in one place. Email replies goes to the right ticket. Easy.
SmartPhone.Admin.Access
Are you often on the go? Use any smartphone to be notified of new issues and simply reply by email to claim your issues and resolve it on the go.
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Your.Custom.Forms
No business is the same, our CRM can easily accomodate your needs. Define your custom form fields such as product ID's or checkboxes to really get and use the data that you need.
Your.Custom.Statuses
You are not confined to pre-defined status names for your tickets. You can create new or even rename statuses as you need.
Build-in.Easy.Reports
Overview is important, that's why there are over 25 build-in reports ready for you right out of the box. In case you need to run some custom reporting, the ability to export data into CSV or XML files is also avialable and ready.
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Select the number of agents and issues that you think you might need in total. Since we don't charge per issue, we suggest you keep the number of issues set to the maximum, while changing the number of agents according to your needs.
Once done, click the calculate button and the monthly price for your hosted help desk solution will be shown below the button.
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Customizations
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Public.Side.Knowledgebase
Why spend time on installation and setup when you can have it all done and ready in less then a minute. All you have to do is dive in and start using it. With the hosted HC CMR, there is no hassle installing and setting it up. You are set in under a minute.
Email.to.ticket.Conversion
Automatically convert your emails into tickets! Have you emails organized, keep track of what needs to be done easily and all in one place. Email replies goes to the right ticket. Easy.
SmartPhone.Admin.Access
Are you often on the go? Use any smartphone to be notified of new issues and simply reply by email to claim your issues and resolve it on the go.
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Your.Custom.Forms
No business is the same, our CRM can easily accomodate your needs. Define your custom form fields such as product ID's or checkboxes to really get and use the data that you need.
Your.Custom.Statuses
You are not confined to pre-defined status names for your tickets. You can create new or even rename statuses as you need.
Build-in.Easy.Reports
Overview is important, that's why there are over 25 build-in reports ready for you right out of the box. In case you need to run some custom reporting, the ability to export data into CSV or XML files is also avialable and ready.
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Select the number of agents and issues that you think you might need in total. Since we don't charge per issue, we suggest you keep the number of issues set to the maximum, while changing the number of agents according to your needs.
Once done, click the calculate button and the monthly price for your hosted help desk solution will be shown below the button.
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