Illustrated service bell ringing

Using Microsoft Teams as a help desk allows employees to get support without leaving the app they already use to collaborate, chat, and make video calls. This makes the entire ticketing process much more efficient, from the initial report through the issue’s resolution.

How using Microsoft Teams as a help desk can benefit your business

If employees in your company use Microsoft Teams to communicate, asking them to switch to different software whenever an issue arises can be inconvenient. It requires spending time changing from one app to another, and often having to train the staff on how to use an additional piece of software. 

Why all that hassle when your help desk can live right within Microsoft Teams? If employees already use it to talk to each other, it makes sense to use it to raise issues there as well. And IT and Operations teams will get a queue of tickets they can organize, prioritize, and resolve, instead of a chaotic flow of requests coming in from different sources.

It’s ideal for organizations of any size

Microsoft Teams is used by small companies as well as organizations with tens of thousands of employees. Since Microsoft Teams is included in Office 365, millions of organizations have access to the tool, and tens of millions of users engage with it every day.

Companies of every size need a help desk to quickly resolve issues. If you’re a small company, setting up a help desk in Teams takes only a few minutes, and is a huge improvement over having employees ask questions in Teams with no tracking at all. If you’re a large organization, implementation still takes only a few days or weeks at most, and the resulting productivity improvements across the company are significant. 

It just works – no training required

If your organization already uses Teams, employees will intuitively understand the idea of opening a ticket there. If you’re just rolling out Teams, including a baked-in help desk means your employees will only have to learn one system instead of two. 

The same holds true for your IT and Operations teams; help desk admins using Microsoft Teams will feel right at home. They’ll also be able to resolve issues quickly, thanks to the context and knowledge accessible in Teams. 

It’s conversational and human

Internal help desk tickets are essentially conversations between coworkers. Unlike traditional customer support, in an internal help desk, there’s a much closer relationship between the end user and the support agent. Coworkers spend eight-plus hours a day working together for many years, often in the same office; a robotic help desk experience feels unnatural. 

That’s why Microsoft Teams is such a natural place to create and respond to a help desk ticket. It’s a free-flowing, conversational experience that highlights human communication. Messages include faces, emojis, and gifs, enabling a more personalized experience. Interacting with a help desk ticket in Teams ensures that employees feel like they’re talking to a coworker, rather than a nameless service agent. 

How Microsoft Teams can be used as a help desk

Halp brings help desk resolution directly into Microsoft Teams

Setting up a help desk in Microsoft Teams is simple – here are a few key steps you’ll need to take. 

Make it easy to create tickets from public channels and direct messages with a bot 

The most important piece of this puzzle is making it easy to create a ticket in Microsoft Teams. There are two primary places where this should happen.

  • From a public channel, ideally named “#help-it,” “#help-security,” “#help-finance,” or something similar 
  • In a direct message, using a bot 

If you want to get up and running quickly, Halp makes it easy to create tickets from channels as well as in direct messages. Alternatively, you could build your own custom bot. 

Quickly triage and assign tickets to the right person

Once you’ve made it easy to create a ticket in Teams, you’ll need a way to manage and delegate those requests. One elegant solution is to create a separate Team specifically for the agents in IT or Operations who are in charge of answering tickets.

Imagine a coworker contacts you via DM asking for help with the password reset for the CRM software. Then, someone else requests a new battery for her mouse in the #help-it channel. Each of these requests would route to one triage team, which can review and claim incoming tickets directly in Microsoft Teams. Also, once the ticket has been assigned, the responsible agent can ask for clarification without having to leave Teams.

Streamline your help desk workflow 

When the connection between your laptop and the screen isn’t working and you need to give an important presentation, you need help – fast. With Microsoft Teams, you can streamline theticketing system at both ends. Both the requester and the help desk agent will benefit from using Microsoft Teams and resolving the ticket where they’re already working.

‍Help desks in Microsoft Teams are efficient help desks

Being able to quickly deal with and resolve incoming issues is a hallmark trait of productive offices. Many times, however, help desk users have to switch back and forth between systems, which can cause delays.

Using Microsoft Teams as a help desk is a win-win because it improves the experience for both ticket requesters and agents. Requesters can open tickets where they are already working, and Agents have a simple queue that can be organized, ranked, resolved, and reported on.

No matter the size of your company, using Microsoft Teams as a help desk is a smart solution.  Use it to cut response time, better organize incoming requests, and answer common questions automatically.

Click below for more about using Microsoft Teams as a help desk with Halp.

How and why to use Microsoft Teams as a help desk