As IT departments are usually small, a service desk is a valuable tool for managing internal tickets, incidents, and issues. Service desks are not only cost-effective but facilitate IT processes. For example, workflows are smoothers when all the tickets are in one central location. With the information in one place, triggering processes like ticket allocation and authorizations is easy. Your department can focus on maintaining quality and consistent service while your service desk works for you.

As the IT department’s success impacts the entire organization, more service desks are meant for internal purposes. They are responsible for reducing bottlenecks in business operations and ensuring employees are being as productive as possible. As a result, choosing the right service desk is in an organization’s best interest.

Some important service desk features include:
– compliance with ITIL practices
– integration with the organization’s network environment
– flexible reporting and the ability to prioritize inquiries

However, email integration is often overlooked as a primary feature of a service desk. Email integration in your service desk is particularly more convenient for end-users and improves IT workflows.

How does email integration benefit employees?

Although the easiest way to submit and collect tickets is through the help-desk portal, this process does not work in every scenario. For example, if a computer isn’t working, the employee won’t have access to the portal. However, the option of email integration is more convenient as employees would be able to submit a ticket from their email on their phone. Email integration is also helpful for employees traveling who don’t have access to the portal either. The option of submitting a ticket via email can also be an exclusive option for higher management. In all instances, having email integration in a service desk tool improves the end-user experience and reduces the chances of hold-ups.

How does email integration benefit IT?

With the email integration feature, the technician can send an email directly from the service desk to inform the user of their ticket’s progress or inquire for more information. This avoids using outside email services, like Outlook, and potentially losing track of the conversation and all the information in it. Being able to email directly from a service desk ensures a clear line of communication with the user and creates a log of activity associated with the ticket. Having a log of information also eases the transfer of responsibility from one technician to another. This can happen when someone goes on vacation or leaves the department.

Also, the service desk will give an issue ID to the sent and received emails. This ID tracks and associates the emails with an incident or ticket. Keeping all the information in one central location allows better tracking of each ticket and the ability to create reports.

Doesn’t email integration create extra work for IT?

If email integration is part of your service desk, the tool will be able to identify keywords in the subject line or body paragraph. It will automatically be assigned to the appropriate technician as if it submitted through the portal. As a result, the email integration does not create any extra labor. You can create email templates in the service desk in order to avoid sending the same types of emails manually.

Let us know if you have email integration @vizorcloud