What is one of the most used email service providers out there? The answer is clear: Gmail. Having been around for over 15 years now, they’ve built a reputation for being a reliable email client that offers some productivity features.
This is why smaller businesses make it a habit of using Gmail as a help desk software for customer support. But should I really use Gmail (or any other email client) as a help desk-like system? It depends on a wide range of factors which is exactly what we’ll be discussing in this article.
What Type of Business can use Gmail as a Help Desk?
If your business consists of just a handful of employees, you can continue using Gmail as a help desk. This is because your customer base is probably not so large. Also, most SME’s usually have few members in their customer support team.
With few members in the support team, collaboration won’t be bumpy. Furthermore, assigning tickets as well as supervision of customer complaints will be easier.
When is it Time to Move from Gmail?
Even if your business is still small and your customer base has not grown much, but you still see positive progress, it is time to move. It is a time bomb as the more your business grows, the more new customers are added, the harder it gets.
Relying on Gmail as a help desk can slow down your work processes. It can even kill your customer support if it is handled poorly. Getting proper help desk software can help you avoid all these pitfalls thanks to a wide range of automated features and analytics systems.
Now that your business is expanding, you might be wondering what help desk software to move to. Which system is the perfect alternative to Gmail? Well, there is a plethora of help desk software available, and each is unique in its own way.
I suggest that you keep a close eye on the problems your company faces (or might face) and whether a help desk can help you solve them. You should also consider your budget so you don’t go overboard, as pricing often balloons the more people you add to the platform.
Why Should You Use Help Desk Software?
Unlike Gmail, help desk software is designed to facilitate communication and efficiency. A typical help desk system comes packed with features that help you establish the following:
1. Points of Contact:
Customers have to reach the company one way or another. They can do so via various means such as phone, email, social media, or chat. Some help desk software offers very few options to choose from.
Other’s offer a wide range of options via which customers can reach support teams. A good help desk software usually has multiple points of contact.
2. Ticket Management:
Good help desk software collects, collates, and organizes customers’ queries into tickets. It further keeps track of the progress of customers’ complaints right from receipt up until resolution.
It should also have the capacity to change emails into tickets quickly. A good help desk software should be able to perform ticket routing.
3. Self-Service Portals:
One crucial feature of good help desk software is gathering customer complaints. It then assembles these complaints into FAQs that users can refer to later.
With this feature, similar complaints can be directed to the FAQs section. This helps free agents and give them time to attend to other pressing issues.
4. Automation:
With this feature, customer support becomes more effective and efficient. A good help desk should be able to convert emails to tickets automatically. It should also be able to automate routine tasks such as filling of forms.
5. Dashboards:
The dashboard feature helps your customer support team in many ways. With a good dashboard, agents can see vital complaints when they log in. Dashboards also afford supervisors the chance to monitor an agent’s performance, as well as the number of complaints resolved per day.
6. Analytics:
With a good help desk, a business has access to essential market demographics. It helps the company make use of customers’ complaints to identify what products are preferred by customers.
7. Collaboration Features:
A good help desk software should have built-in solutions that facilitate communication among support teams. Dedicated chat features and delegation functions for managers can help you achieve effective collaboration.
As a business owner or a member of a customer support team, Gmail can be helpful. However, when compared with other help desk software, it becomes apparent that it is less functional.
How to Export Email from Gmail?
When moving to different help desk software, you do not want to leave your customer’s email information because that is precious data. Exporting emails from Gmail is a simple process, but it can be a long one. Follow these simple steps to export Gmail emails:
- First, log in to your Gmail account.
- Go to the “download your data page” menu.
- By default, all the platforms are selected by Gmail. If you wish to start anew, just click on “select none.”
- Go down, find the email box you need, and mark it. You can also specify whether you need to include all your emails and labels or not too. If you select labels, you can pick mails from chats, drafts, inboxes, etc.
- You can either download your archive or save it to the cloud.
- Select your preferred file format. Either .zip or .tgz. Also, select your preferred archive size (between 1GB to 50GB)
- Gmail will send you a link that you can use to download the data to your device.
When the download is complete, you will have a copy of your emails from Gmail, which you can then move to a help desk solution.
