Polar Help Desk 5

You can download Polar Help Desk 5 with one free license and buy additional licenses for your supporters at our shop. Each license costs $250. Upgrade tool is included, we have tested it extensively on our own databases and databases of our customers, but we advise you to backup your existing database before you try upgrading help desk you use.

Upgrading to Polar Help Desk 5

Please upgrade to last version 4.1.23.0 of Polar Help Desk 4 before trying to upgrade to Polar Help Desk 5. Full support for Polar Help Desk 5 is available at support@polarsoftware.com.

Polar Help Desk 5 Free

You can download and use Polar Help Desk 5 for free as fully functional help desk software with 1 named license. Free version contains non-obtrusive textual Google Ads which will be removed as soon as you buy at least one license.

• unavailability to track and manage support resources
• lack of relevant metrics for planning activities
• constant repetitions of same problems
• undefined procedures for managing incident or service requests
• unidentified support staff expenses
• reduced productivity and increased costs
• declining sales due to lower customer trust

they start considering automation of customer support services through a help desk software solution and adoption of ITIL best practices.  For a successful implementation, when we talk about spending business dollars, acquiring a software solution is among last steps. Running a customer support in effective manner usually needs more than just a piece of software, and focus should be on ITIL implementation since that will increase the business value of IT and influence the result.

As we all known, ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) provides a cohesive set of best practice, drawn from the public and private sectors internationally. It is the most widely accepted approach to IT service management in the world. (source: official ITIL website).

What does it mean in terms of the successful help desk implementation and ITIL adoption? It means that ITIL defines all elements and processes of a perfect help desk (such as incident management, service level management..), but it does not tell you how to do it inside organization. It is quite understandable since there is no one-fits-all ITIL workbook plan as well as one-fits-all business strategy.

How to successfully implement help desk solution and adopt ITIL

To manage IT infrastructure in line with business expectations, a company should develop process-driven IT organization – a process that requires a high level of organizational effort. Besides a good read about organizational changes, this small guide may assist to accelerate ITIL implementation and help to successfully deliver benefits.

Get Support; involve management and end-users

An ITIL implementation leads to changes in an IT organization that usually affect all core factors; people, technology, information, and processes. Therefore, decision to implement help desk software on ITIL should be treated as a strategic business decision supported by the management, stakeholders and IT staff.  Everyone must understand why ITIL, what are business objectives, and have a clear picture of risks and critical success factors as well as of benefits.

Since process improvements can be costly and timely, management support is often the critical one. They can secure you the right budget and they have the authority to accept and promote changes vital for success.

Begin at the end of your mind

To reduce effort, cost, and risk, start from defining your vision and goals. They should be the initiatives an ITIL environment is built on. When defining goals, make sure that they are measurable through exact periods. For example, a goal like; “to resolve incidents as soon is possible, at minimum operational cost, and at the best possible level” is hard to measure. Try rather with; “reduced operational costs by XY% at the end of the first year, reduced resolving time per incident, increased cross-selling and repeated purchases” etc. Those goals provide you with opportunities for evaluations and corrections.

In clarifying your goals, further analysis are necessary:

• analyze your current situation
• analyze help desk users and their benefits
• analyze customers and their behavior/expectations

The last one could be critical since the good ITIL help desk implementation and excellent support has focus on customers expectations.

Make a plan on a phase-based approach

Getting the best of the ITIL is a timely process. Start simple, make overall plan and than develop annual or quarter goals to avoid complexity and break your plan down through phases. For every phase:

• set priorities
• point critical success factors in terms of people, processes, and technology
• define a proper set of metrics that measure quality as well as performance
• identify responsible people and decision rights
• define clear procedures and map out help desk processes
• include communication plan to communicate quick wins to all users

Between phases, it would be good to give users some time so they can get used to the change and explore benefits.

Don’t avoid training and education

A training and education can be the triggers that will provoke the right attitudes towards ITIL among staff and make a fear of change disappear. All users especially support and IT staff must understand that they provide customer service (is as good as the weakest factor) and a piece of software will not make their job right easier. Teach them how to be proactive, to listen customers and learn from them on everyday basis.

Do not forget educating customers. Let them know how and when they can get help and encourage them to use a knowledge base. They will appreciate when they see you are making efforts to assist them with straightforward resolutions and serve them better.

Measure, Correct & Improve Constantly

There is a saying; What gets measured, gets attention. I can’t tell you how much truth is in it. People want to do a good job, but when they don’t have benchmarks and feedbacks about their job, they start asking if anybody cares about what they do.

In order to drive positive behaviors, define a few key customer-oriented metrics that will help you measure both, staff and procedures.

Advertise and ‘sell’ your changes

As I said, a ITIL help desk solution can extend your service-based competitive advantage. As soon as it start delivering benefits, you should “sell” it.  Express it in words your clients and customer understand and include it in your advertising copies.

Even ask customers to advocate it for you. Remember, your future success depends on marketing your competitive advantage.

In today’s changing and competitive environment, new products and services arrive on the market daily. Acquiring new clients is harder than ever and losing existing customers is easier than ever. They just go somewhere else. They keep you awake at night.

Advertising space you pay, you invest a lot of money to make some money and you are still not sure if your ad is one of the many others that people are confused by.

Instead of advertising, have you ever considered improving services and tools that you already have – the real ways that will get you into your customer’s hearts and make them spread a good word about you?

It is not so easy to sell, and it even harder to repeat sale and sell more. Some people and businesses can, are they luckier? No, it is not about luck, it is about customer service. Customer service is vital to every part of the business but real customer service, that will give you degree of competitive advantage and get you deserved loyal customers, starts right after sale.

Speaking of customer service, we all know that great means surviving, excellence means future. Great is not good enough any more. Excellent customer service is what a help desk software solution is all about – respond quicker, get it done quicker, put a smile on your customer’s face.

What a Help Desk Software Is

If you type ‘define: help desk’ into Google search field and hit search button, you will get various answers and descriptions. Mostly, they will rather explain technological and functional aspects then its real purpose. Why can’t be simple? Why can’t definition state Help desk software is your tool to stop fighting for customers and start having loyal customers. It is a tool that can make difference between profitable vs. surviving business.

What a Help Desk Software Can Do

Whether your business is a small IT equipment shop or a large department store, help desk software can help you to:

• provide customers with better care
• serve and retain your customers
• maintain in healthy after-sale relationship
• exceed your customers’ expectation
• increase loyalty and new sales
• get many positive referrals
• make your employees and management more satisfied
• save a lot of time
• give the best possible value
• make your business more profitable
• reduce your costs

How a help desk software does things, what are its core features, and much more we are going to discuss in the coming posts.

Until then, we give you the chance to learn the priceless difference between buying advertising space and word-of-the-mouth marketing that excellent customer service can brought to you. Take a look at our fully featured web-based Polar Help Desk software , free of charge for commercial use, 1 technician, unlimited end users, and full customer support through our help desk.

Remember, it is not a trial, it is a free fully featured help desk software without limitations in functionality that enables you to provide online customer support.

Or you can try our demo version .

Should you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.