Guides on help desks and ticketing
Practical knowledge for anyone who wants to handle customer requests properly – from what a help desk actually is, through data protection, to introducing one in a team.
What is a help desk?
Help desk explained: what it is, how it works, which features matter, what it costs and when it is worth moving off a shared mailbox. Plain language, no jargon.
Read onGDPR and your help desk
What GDPR means for a help desk: legal basis, data processing agreement, hosting location, deletion periods and the AI question. A checklist.
Read onIntroducing a help desk
Introducing a help desk without a project: what to decide first, what to leave until later, how to bring the team along and what usually goes wrong.
Read onHelp desk vs ticketing system
Help desk, ticketing system, service desk, shared inbox: what the terms actually mean, where they genuinely differ and which one you should be shopping for.
Read onEmail ticketing explained
How email ticketing works: IMAP and SMTP, how replies find their ticket, what happens to attachments and why the subject line is the wrong thing to match on.
Read onWhat is an SLA?
SLA explained in plain language: what response and resolution times mean, how business hours are counted, and what happens when one is missed.
Read onHelp desk for small businesses
When a small business needs a help desk, what it costs, and the honest answer about when a shared mailbox is still the right call.
Read onFree help desk software
Free help desk software compared honestly: open source, free tiers and ad-funded tools – what each one actually costs and when free is the right answer.
Read onAI in customer service
AI in support: where it genuinely helps, where it fails, what the data protection question is, and why a person should still approve the reply.
Read onBuilding a knowledge base
Most knowledge bases are written once and never read. This is how to build one that the team actually uses – and what to leave out.
Read onShared inbox problems
Why support@ in Outlook stops working with two people: collisions, the read-not-answered trap, absent colleagues and no way to prove anything afterwards.
Read onIT service desk
An IT ticketing system for internal support: what it has to do, how much ITIL you actually need, and where asset management stops being your problem.
Read onSetting up SLAs
Setting up SLAs in practice: which classes to define, how to pick times you can keep, how business hours are counted and what to do when one is missed.
Read onCustomer service KPIs
Which support metrics actually help: first response time, resolution time, clearance rate, SLA rate – and which popular ones mislead.
Read onTicket prioritisation
How to prioritise support tickets: impact against urgency, why everything becomes high priority, and how to keep the scheme honest.
Read onSupport email templates
How to write support email templates people do not notice: which ones you need, what to leave blank on purpose, and the phrases to avoid.
Read onEscalation management
How escalation actually works in support: when to escalate, to whom, what changes as a result, and why most escalation paths are never used.
Read onImproving response times
Practical ways to answer faster: where the time actually goes, what to fix first, and the shortcuts that make things worse.
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