Many small businesses rely on email to keep track of their customer help desk functions, rather than using a dedicated help desk ticket tracking system. Although email might seem simpler, ticket tracking actually allows businesses to do many things that they couldn’t do with email. A dedicated help desk software can outdo email in many different ways; here are seven areas where specific software tends to work better.

1. Centralization

If you have a number of people working on the same issue, then trying to keep track of a single problem can be difficult. With email, you have to ensure that the correct person is always copied on the message, and in some cases you might have to hunt through multiple inboxes to find everything you need. A ticket tracking system, however, ensures that all the relevant information is centered in one place so that it’s available when you need it. This also means that if you need to access the information months or even years later, you know exactly where to find it.

2. Makes Businesses Look Bigger

Many small businesses use email for help desk services, but dedicated ticket tracking isn’t just for the big guys any more. With the right program, a small business can get every feature that a big company offers at a fraction of the cost, making the business look more professional and larger than it really is. Even better, a small business can usually move faster than a large company, increasing customer satisfaction.

3. Enables Self-Service

Your customer support staff might not be able to help customers around the clock, but problems can occur at any time during the night or day. Some software offers customers the ability to find solutions themselves through accessing a knowledge base than can help them work through the issue. This helps reduce strain on your staff and ensures that customers can get the assistance they need.

4. Provides Reporting Metrics

A customer help software system doesn’t just allow you to track individual tickets; it lets you track information about them. It is easier to determine whether an employee is working efficiently, whether customers are being adequately assisted, and how much each person is doing. Real-time reporting allows you to streamline your services.

5. Prioritization

With email, you are forced to take problems as they come, but with ticket tracking you can easily prioritize issues. This allows you to customize a workflow and rank issues by their urgency, ensuring the biggest problems are solved first.

6. Collaboration

Email can make teamwork tricky, since employees must either share inboxes or constantly send information to reach other. A good software system, though, lets everyone view and edit tickets at once, so that multiple people can work on one issue while keeping their progress in one place.

7. Improves Continuity

If a team member leaves or must be reassigned, then ticket tracking offers an easy way to delegate tasks. Simply switching a ticket to another employee allows them to pick up where the previous worker left off, preventing the complications of switching through email. This ability to delegate also makes ticket tracking software a good fit for those who start their own business or work in management.