Equipping Your Helpdes k: 4 Products To The Rescue IVRUs are those decision-tree automated voice systems we all hate--the ones that try to answer your question (or fax you the solution) by leading you through a series of questions and answers mediated by the buttons on your telephone. Customers who might give up in frustration while waiting for a live person on the helpline may be able to get the answers they need through one of these systems. If the function being supported is proprietary, the phone-based expert system may be especially useful and easier to build. By relieving the helpdesk of simple, repetitive calls, IVRUs reduce burnout and enable agents to concentrate on more complex problems. We did not evaluate any of these systems but strongly recommend that they be considered. With advanc es in computer telephony, these technologies are bound to become increasingly affordable for smaller helpdesks. What about e-mail? Or faxes? Or the Web? Most of our interviewees didn't think much of e-mail or faxes as a means of seeking help (though these forms of communication may be useful for distributing fixed types of information). Both require functioning equipment, which the user may not have; and users who can't explain their problems clearly to a person are unlikely to do much better on paper, resulting in long turnaround times as more questions are asked, answered and refined. Furthermore, there's the not-so-simple problem of access by the agent and tracking by the software system. Unless the system provides routing and pop-up notification of an inbound fax or e-mail, some agent must monitor incoming faxes and e-mails. Even if the system will handle them, where do they fit in a queue designed for phone calls? Do they take precedence? Do they get answered every x minutes? More subtly, e-mail tends to encourage people to form a one-on-one relationship with an agent--an arrangement that may benefit the user but not the helpdesk department. If, however, your he lpdesk product (such as TOM or HEAT) can standardize the e-mail format, e-mail can be used to respond to typical or commonly asked questions, or even give the user limited access to the product's knowledge base, just like a voice response unit. The Web, of course, is the latest answer to technical support: Give your users an online helpdesk. However, as with e-mail and faxes, if your problem is you can't get to the network, you probably can't get to the Web; if you can get to the Web, what will you find when you get there? Two kinds of Web sites seem to prevail. The first is a repository of basic answers to basic questions. Check out your local university's Web site and you may find a section dedicated to answering such questions as how to log onto a p articular system, change a password or perform an FTP. On the other hand, take a look at Broderbund Software's Web site (www.broderbund.com) for an example of an interactive, decision-tree-based helpdesk (using Inference Corp.'s technology). It no doubt cuts down on some calls, but interesting as it is, it does, again, require that the user be able to select answers intelligently along the way, often presupposing a degree of computer savvy the user may not have. Where the Web excels is where its predecessors and competitors (bulletin boards and CompuServe) also excel: in providing technical information and support to technical staff. Certainly, if you need hard drive parameters for that new drive you bought by mail, it's much easier and faster to download the information from an online service (or get it from a fax-back service) than to wait in a phone queue for a representative to describe all the jumpers to you. In short, for now, the Web is another solid method for getting information to your user s. However, if you have a good helpdesk, its staff probably can get problems resolved faster. Nothing in the software arsenal for helpdesks has produced so much hope, hype and disappointment as knowledge bases and expert systems. Yet no definitive taxonomy o f these systems seems to exist (see "Problem Resolution: Knowledge Bases, Expert Systems and the Rest," page 58).

Internet Platform: Pick a Winner by Dan Backman Updated January 24, 1997