How to Provide Customer Support using Web Help Desk?

Businesses have entered the digital world and every new business has an online presence. To be able to sell a product, you will have to do the marketing bit right. When consumers are aware of the product, they will certainly buy it per their needs. However, your work and struggle do not end here. This is but the beginning. Having a good customer support system is essential in today’s world. If a customer is facing an issue or doesn’t know how to properly use the product, the customer support center should be there to help out. This is rather important because a satisfied customer leads to a successful business.

So, how do you make sure of this? The safest way of providing excellent customer support is by implementing a Help Desk software. Back in the days, providing customer support would be quite the task as there were no automated tools and the tech guys had to assist each customer individually and that would consume a lot of time. Thanks to the automated tools now, you can address related issues as one and provide the required solution. This, naturally, speeds up things and consequently, results in much-satisfied customers. For this purpose, we will be using the Web Help Desk software developed by SolarWinds Inc which is an American company that expertise in network and system management.

Installing Web Help Desk

Before we start with the article and show you how to set up a customer support system, you will have to get the software from Solarwind’s website. Head to this link and download the tool by clicking ‘Download Free Trial’ and providing the required information. Once done, follow the instructions down below:

1. Extract the .zip file to any desired location and then navigate to it.
2. Run the .exe file to initiate the Installation Wizard.
3. Once the setup starts, click Next.
4. Choose where you would like to install the software by clicking Choose. Afterward, click Next.

   

5. Choose you would like product icons. Also, if you want to create icons for All Users, tick the box given below. Click Next.
6. Go through the installation summary and then click Install.
7. Wait for Web Help Desk to complete installing.
8. Once the installation process completes, it will start configuring Web Help Desk for your system automatically.
9. Once done, you will be prompted to the web console of WHD.
10. If you have an existing database, choose the ‘Use Custom SQL database’ option and provide the required fields. Then, click Next.

    

11. Afterward, on the Email Accounts page, provide an email account (make sure it is not a personal email account). Once done, click Next.
12. Now, it is time to create an admin account. Click Next.

    

13. On the Request Types page, choose what sort of requests can the clients make while making a ticket. You can add custom Request types by clicking on ‘Add Request Type’.
14. You can also edit the request types by selecting them and then clicking Edit. Here, you can change the priority of the request type along with other options.

    

15. Once done, click Finish.
16. Now, wait for the configuration wizard to complete.

Setting up Web Help Desk

Now that Web Help Desk has been installed on your system successfully, and you have done the basic configuration, it is time we start setting up Web Help Desk. Here, we will be discussing client accounts and tech accounts so that you can start providing ticket support. If you close the web browser by accident, you can easily access the web interface of Web Help Desk by typing http://hostnameOrIPAddress:port.

Client Options

The first thing you need to do is define client options once the Web Help Desk web interface is loaded. This can be done by following the given instructions:

1. On the toolbar, click on Setup and then on the left-hand side, click on Clients > Options.
2. Here you can mess around with client options.

   

3. You can allow clients to make accounts, or only allow if their email matches domain that you take as accepted.
4. You can also choose to email the client once their account has been created. Require email validation once an account is created by a client.
5. Client Permissions are also provided below that you can edit as per your policy.

Note:

Using Web Help Desk, you can also manually create client accounts by going to Clients on the toolbar and then clicking ‘New Client’.

Tech Account and Options

Once you are done client options, it is time you set tech accounts and options. You can create tech accounts and then set permissions for the tech accounts. Here’s how to create a tech account:

1. To create a tech account, go to Setup on the toolbar.
2. Afterward, on the left-hand side, click on Techs and then again click on Techs from the drop-down menu.
3. Click on New.

   

4. Now, provide all the required information like First Name, Last Name, email address, username.
5. Choose the account type in front of the Account Type drop-down menu.
6. You can also assign a Supervisor to the account.
7. To allow the tech to access the Web Help Desk client interface, link the account to a client account.

   

8. To stop Web Help Desk from sending tickets to the tech when he is not scheduled to work, tick the Specify Work Schedule option and provide the details.

   

9. Once you are done with everything, click Save.

Now, to manage tech permissions, just click on Tech Permissions and edit them per your needs.

Creating Tech Groups

You can also create tech groups to assign different tech accounts to. To do this, follow the instructions:

1. On the toolbar, click on Setup and then navigate to Techs > Tech Groups.
2. If you wish to edit an existing tech group, just click on the group.
3. If you want to add a new tech group, click on New.

   

4. Give the Group a name, select the Group Manager.
5. If you wish, you can enable the ‘When a Ticket’s Location belongs to a Location Group, give precedence to the Location Group Manager’ option which is self-explanatory.

   

6. Click Save.

Creating Request Types

Using Web Help Desk, you can create different request types and then assign them to Tech Groups. Here’s how to create a request type:

1. Click on Setup on the toolbar and then go to Tickets > Request Types.
2. Click on New.
3. Give the Request Type a name, choose the Parent Type, select the Tech Group that is supposed to handle such request types.

   

4. You can also choose the priority of the request type.
5. Once you are done with everything, click on Save.

Defining Ticket Options

Finally, you can also define ticket options. These are the default settings that apply to each ticket. You can review ticket options by following the given instructions:

1. Click on Setup in the toolbar and then on the left-hand side, go to Tickets > Options.

   

2. Review all the ticket options and make amendments as you wish. Once you are done, click on Save.