A few weeks ago when I attended an internet marketing seminar, I went to group with some people I knew and some people I did not know.
One of the people I did not know was insistent that I get a help desk to handle customer support.
He told me that the CEOs of big companies like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs hardly did any of the work themselves.
They simply outsourced, and scaled up their business systems, and I needed a help desk to handle support or else I was doomed to failure.
Unfortunately, that statement could not be further from the truth.
I do not need a help desk and neither do you.
Here is why...
The first reason most people get help desks is they do not know how to handle e-mail properly.
You should use an e-mail client that treats e-mails as conversations, instead of individual messages, such as Gmail.
What I like about Gmail is it threads your e-mails, kind of like how discussions are threaded in forums.
You can see what you and the other person said in a single web page.
In addition, I answer e-mails as soon as I can and click the "Archive" button so they are still stored in my e-mail, so I can easily close an issue once I resolved it.
When I open my e-mail, all I see is a short list of pending issues.
Your e-mail inbox should only contain pending issues.
When I see the inbox of many help desk enthusiasts, their inbox contains at least 20,000 messages.
Big mistake.
The next problem with help desks is that they are meant for service-based industries such as web hosting or graphic design.
If something goes wrong on a regular basis, like a web server is down or a customer needs a new domain name added to their account, the best solution is to open up a help desk ticket so that an operator can resolve their issue right away.
But if you are selling training or information products, it is more convenient for someone to e-mail you directly.
Remember that if you run a help desk, you first have to check your e-mail for new messages, then go to the help desk ticket to resolve the issue.
That adds a bunch of unneeded steps.
Then you have the issue of a knowledge base.
In a help desk system, a knowledge base is a searchable database of common issues.
A user can choose to search for a particular issue...
or sometimes, while they are typing the question in the knowledge base, the software will search for them.
If you sell an information product, you can simply work those common issues into the product itself.
Then, when somebody e-mails you with one of those common questions, you can quickly reply with the page number that resolves the issue, or even better, copy and paste that excerpt directly into the e-mail.
That is a not more personable than a help desk, right? Before you jump onboard with a help desk to handle support issues, ask yourself a few questions first.
Are you so bogged down with e-mail support that you really need to move it into a confusing system that requires users to sign up and add additional e-mails? Or do you simply need to learn a few e-mail management techniques? Do you really need to scale up your business at this point, or are you still trying to figure out what works? Think twice before moving your support issues to a help desk system, if the current system is working just fine.