What is a help desk?

A help desk is a centralized department or group that answers employee or customer questions, and helps to troubleshoot issues as they come up. The use of a help desk demonstrates a company's commitment to providing the best customer experience possible. Help desks offer basic technical support or customer service, such as resetting user passwords, and can be used for both internal and external customers. A good help desk system relies on automation for efficiency, accuracy, and reporting, with features like ticketing workflows, issue tracking, and personalized support pages. Ticketing workflows put the emphasis on conversations rather than tickets, enabling teams to route conversations to the right team, get all needed context, and triage issues in a timely manner. Help desks as a service is a process of outsourcing common customer support inquiries to an external team of experts, allowing companies to free up resources for bigger objectives while eliminating the need for onboarding and training an in-house team.