Over time, the methods college students, mother and father, alumni, and different stakeholders work together with faculties has modified. One of many greatest shifts is the channels they convey by means of.
Instruments like e-mail and chat supply a degree of comfort that the majority have turn out to be accustomed to, and in an effort to sustain with the expectations of the trendy world, most colleges must spend money on new applied sciences.
One of many instruments each college ought to contemplate investing in is a assist desk, so we have put collectively this listing of the very best assist desk software program for faculties that will help you make the fitting alternative in your division’s wants.
What’s assist desk software program?
Assist desk software program is a instrument used to arrange, handle, and reply to questions and help requests. Assist desks can be utilized for each exterior requests from college students and fogeys and inside requests from coworkers. They sometimes embody quite a lot of instruments like shared e-mail, a information base, and stay chat.
Why faculties ought to spend money on a assist desk
Navigating the training panorama isn’t at all times a straightforward activity. College students, mother and father, alumni, and others have numerous questions, and answering these questions rapidly and effectively is a activity made a lot less complicated when your college’s help employees has a devoted instrument to take action.
A assist desk helps you to arrange, handle, and reply to any variety of requests coming your manner. Additional, most offer you entry to extra instruments like analytics to higher perceive traits and group efficiency — each of which may also help you additional enhance.
The 9 finest assist desk software program for faculties
Under is a listing of the 9 finest assist desk software program for faculties. You’ll discover there’s some characteristic overlap, however we’ve tried to give attention to a number of key options for every possibility that make it distinctive within the market and thus higher suited to sure wants.
1. Assist Scout
Greatest college assist desk for throughout pupil communication.
Assist Scout is a whole buyer communication platform that helps you ship an excellent expertise for everybody you work together with. Whenever you enroll, you get entry to a curated set of easy-to-use instruments that empower your group to speak throughout quite a lot of channels.
The shared inbox consists of options like non-public notes and @mentions to make group collaboration a breeze, and collision detection reduces duplicate work by displaying when an agent is already actively engaged on a case.
With workflows, you’re capable of automate routine duties like sorting and assigning incoming requests primarily based on parameters you set.
If you wish to empower college students, mother and father, alumni, and others to search out solutions on their very own, you’ll be able to create highly effective self-service assets like FAQ pages or a information base with Docs. The WYSIWYG editor makes content material creation easy, and Docs-specific stories present what articles are excelling, which of them may use some assist, and which areas it’s best to contemplate protecting sooner or later.
Assist Scout additionally comes loaded with pre-built efficiency dashboards. Studies enable you higher perceive particular person and group efficiency, and you can even create customized views to give attention to the metrics most essential to you.
Should you ever have any questions you want answered, our world-class help group is able to help you 24 hours a day, six days per week.
Instruments for alumni providers departments
Graduates nonetheless want help sometimes. Alumni are primarily unpaid model ambassadors, and they’re essential to any college’s ecosystem.
Buyer profiles in Assist Scout enable you keep knowledgeable about precisely who you’re speaking to. You may add customized fields to incorporate issues just like the yr they graduated, organizations they belonged to, and even what they’re as much as post-graduation to ship a customized expertise.
Satisfaction surveys could be a good instrument for latest grads to higher perceive their expertise along with your college. With insights from that info, you’ll be able to frequently enhance and higher serve your alumni inhabitants for years to come back.
Instruments for admissions departments
Since admissions departments are typically one of many first factors of contact for college students, they have an inclination to finish up fielding a whole lot of questions — some associated to admissions and others not a lot.
Assist Scout’s @mentions characteristic lets admissions employees get enter from others with out including extra pressure for college students. If there’s something that should go to a distinct division completely, inside notes allow you to add extra context to make issues go easily. You’re additionally capable of assign conversations on to different groups, making e-mail forwarding a factor of the previous.
Instruments for IT departments
Whenever you work in IT help, some points are too pressing to attend. For these instances you’ll be able to make the most of Assist Scout’s stay chat characteristic to supply help in actual time.
tIf somebody reaches out when your IT group is not on-line, you’ll be able to allow them to search by means of assist documentation straight from the stay chat widget. In the event that they don’t discover the solutions they want, they’ll submit an e-mail request from the identical window.
Instruments for housing and residential life
Although no two days are alike when working in housing and residential life, a whole lot of the questions you reply are typically. With Assist Scout’s saved replies, you’re capable of create pre-written responses to subject routine requests rapidly and simply, saving time and vitality for everybody concerned.
If you wish to go a step additional, you could possibly even create a housing FAQ web page utilizing Docs. With that useful resource, college students, mother and father, and others are capable of finding solutions on their very own time. Typically the very best expertise somebody can have shouldn’t be needing to achieve out for assist in the primary place.
Instruments for registrars
The registrar’s workplace is form of the middle of the universe for lots of pupil life. Because it’s such a multifaceted division, preserving issues organized can get a bit chaotic. Utilizing workflows, you’re capable of automate a whole lot of duties like sorting and assigning tickets.
If there’s a very advanced case, you’re capable of see your complete dialog as one easy-to-read thread. In a manner, it acts as an unofficial document of your interactions with a sure pupil, making it simple to return and retrieve particulars if crucial.
Instruments for college students
Assist Scout doesn’t simply make it simpler in your help employees to help college students; it additionally helps you to streamline help entry in your college’s group.
Use our cellular SDKs to create native entry to e-mail and stay chat help and supply entry to your information base from inside your college’s cellular apps. Ship push notifications on to college students’ telephones whenever you’ve responded to their requests, immediately giving them the knowledge they want.
Value: Beginning at $20/person per 30 days.
2. HappyFox
Greatest college assist desk for IT help departments.
HappyFox is a buyer help instrument that gives a number of totally different options for offering help. Their major providing is their assist desk product that lets groups handle incoming requests from e-mail, cellphone, and social channels. It additionally features a information base builder to create self-service assets like FAQ pages.
Whenever you enroll, you get entry to a whole lot of commonplace options like ticket task capabilities and group reporting. Nonetheless, additionally they have some extra superior options like buyer portals and multilingual help choices – although the latter is restricted to their larger value plans.
The enterprise plans additionally supply options which are significantly useful for IT help departments, corresponding to IT asset administration capabilities which are absolutely built-in with their service desk software program.
One draw back for HappyFox is that they don’t at present supply a stay help instrument like chat with their assist desk plan. They do supply the software program, but it surely’s one thing it’s a must to purchase individually. Should you don’t want entry to their IT asset administration performance, there could also be different choices available on the market that provide barely extra worth.
Value: Beginning at $29/agent per 30 days.