Helpdesk

A helpdesk is a tool, and the team using it, that collects support requests from many channels, such as email, chat, web forms, social media and phone, and turns them into trackable tickets that can be assigned, answered and closed.

Why it matters

Support requests sent to a shared inbox are easily lost or answered twice. A helpdesk gives every request an owner, status, history and priority, and gives managers data on response times, resolution times and satisfaction. Common features include canned replies, automation rules, internal notes, a customer-facing knowledge base and escalation paths. Customer-facing helpdesks serve users, while IT service desks serve employees.

Example

Email arrives: "Checkout page is down"
-> ticket #4821 created, priority High (matches keyword rule)
-> assigned to the on-call agent
-> first reply within 1 hour (SLA target)
-> resolved, CSAT survey sent

Common mistakes

• Treating the helpdesk as a shared inbox and ignoring tags and categories, which makes reporting useless.
• Not linking it to monitoring or a status page, so agents learn of incidents late.
• Measuring only speed and not whether the issue was truly solved.

Related

• Support ticket
• Knowledge base
• SLA
• Status page

This page is general information written by our editorial team and updated when documentation changes. Servers and providers differ, so test changes safely first. See our editorial policy and disclaimer.