Hi guys,
On this week we are launching help desk system on Aurigma website. In fact it is already available, and you can start submitting support cases. But before we start using it into full force, we would like to test it and see how people take it. Also, some bugs still may encounter (for example, today one of our customer reported about problems with Mac which we have successfully fixed). So we do not like an idea to shut down our existing support system.
Currently we are using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0. It has a service module which we use to track all issues submitted by our customers. When we have implemented this module about one year ago, it solved certain problems, but now we face new challenges. In particular:
- Email-based system is not reliable enough. From time to time we suffer from problems with spam filters, blocked attachments, corrupted emails (during conversion from email to CRM record).
- Microsoft did a great job, but this system is overcomplicated for such small company as Aurigma. Too much IT expenses and other headaches.
- It is not integrated with our website. It was not a problem at the first time, but we want to move forward. Of course, we could customize it, but, firstly, it would require a bunch of coding, secondly, there are some licensing issues.
- Microsoft CRM is not the best thing from usability point of view. On one hand this is a matter of habit, but on another hand bad usability = more time to spend to carry out some operation.
So we analyzed how we could overcome these problems, and found out that we need to implement some web-based help desk system instead of CRM.
Our first idea was to find some out-of-the-box solution, implement it on our website and integrate with it. But surprisingly we did not find anything which would work fine for us. All these system would require too much customization (time expenses comparable with creating it from a scratch). So we thought - we are software company after all! 
Couple weeks of development, the same amount time of testing and the new Aurigma help desk system is ready to go.
Let me outline concepts of this help desk system briefly:
- Single access point to customer's issues. We will shut down support@aurigma.com, and all support requests should be submitted into help desk system. It will make life easier both for customers and for us.
- Self-service system. It will try to suggest useful information whenever possible. Customers will be able to find solutions for most wide-spread issues without waiting for Aurigma support representative response.
- User-friendliness. On one hand the system gives the user hints what information we need to be able to help to overcome the problem, on the other hand, it does not require to fill in huge counter-intuitive questionaries.
- Satisfaction rating. We always tried to provide premium-quality support to everyone. That's why we need your feedback so that we could improve our support service if something is wrong at your opinion.
So we finished this system and to tell the truth, I like it. It looks capable to solve all goals we determined for it: decrease time necessary to solve issues and improve support quality. So let's see it in action, and I sincerely hope you will love it as strong as I do.