If you're a business owner who sells Products or Services then you know how Important it is to provide excellent Customer support managing customer Inquiries and support requests can be a Challenge if you do it via email or Social media but with a help desk Solution you can streamline your process And provide top-notch service I'm ADI For Enviro Test Plus and in this video I'll show you the step-by-step process Of installing a help desk solution for Your website so you can provide your Customers with the support they deserve For that I'll be using a free software Called hesk which is also the sponsor of Today's video hesk is a simple User-friendly and free help desk Software with integrated knowledge base It's easily installable on any web Server that supports PHP and MySQL and While there is a paid cloud-based Solution of Hask the self-hosted version Is free even for commercial websites so Let me show you how easy it is to Install the free version and create a Help desk for your website [Music] To get started let's go to hesk.com and We're going to click the download button Right here we go to hesk free and we Download from here so currently at the Time of this recording uh we are Downloading version three four three
Once the download is complete you're Gonna get a zip file like this extract It And then go in the folder And copy all the files Then you need to upload these files to Your site's public directory the way you Do that is usually with an FTP program And you know it really depends on what Kind of Hosting you're using uh some Hosts will offer you the option to Upload files directly via the browser Others will simply provide you with an FTP account so in order to do this next Step correctly you would need to get in Touch with your hosting company in case You don't know how to do this yourself Now to demonstrate this on my local Computer here I have a local website uh that's running PHP in MySQL and I called it my local Website so I'm just gonna navigate to The public directory of it And I'm gonna create a new folder you Can call this whatever you want you can Call it support uh you can call it help Desk the name really doesn't matter I'm Going to call it support Okay so once you create this new folder You're gonna paste in All of those files In your case you'll just upload them Basically uh to the um to the server Okay so once you've finished copying the
Files you're going to open that website Mine currently looks like this because It it just has a default WordPress Installation And you're gonna go to The folder that you created and then Slash install now a quick note here Before installing hesk you will need to Obtain information about your mySQL Database uh you will need the database Name user and password right so if you Don't know that information again you Would need to get in touch with your Hosting company uh hesk cannot help you Find it so please don't send support Requests to ask asking them about uh the Information that I just told you uh in My case uh this is pretty simple I'm Using an app called local here so if I Go to database I can see that my Database name is called local and the Username and password are both root all Right so it's pretty simple for me but For you you'll probably need to get in Touch with with your hosting company So let's uh click to install hesk I can Just hit accept here all right in here Where it says database name right I'm gonna Say local user is Root Root again this Is just for my case yours will Definitely be different table prefix you Can leave this at the at the default and Then it's going to ask you to create
Some login and details Let's say admin hesk Admin email you can put your email Address in here username let's just call It admin husk and we're going to choose Like a very secure password there and You're gonna select your uh your time Zone and let's continue to step four So The database setup is complete now let's Delete the installation folder from your Server right so for that we're gonna Open the support folder again and we're Just gonna delete The install folder Great let's go back and we can skip Directly the settings here And we're done we're now inside the Administration area of hesk now hesk is Installed let's see how your customers Will see the help desk and we can go to Our website address slash support Remember support is the name of the Folder that we created and here is the Help desk interface that the customer Sees right so from here there are two Possible options right if there is a Knowledge base present Then the customer can search that in our Case it's a default installation so we Don't have a knowledge base just yet or Option number two for the customer is to Submit a ticket or view existing tickets So let's submit a ticket
Right we're going to give it our name How we can select the priority subject Hey I'm having a problem and then a Longer description of the issue here you Can add attachments if you want Uh there's also a Spam prevention field Here so we'll do eight nine zero zero Four and we'll submit it So the ticket was successfully submitted We have a ticket ID we can actually see Our ticket and then Back in the administration area right we Can go to tickets We can see that we have one open ticket We can say the ticket number the date Uh the name subject status priority Right and we can open that ticket we can See Exactly what's going on A timer has already started for us for The admin and here we can type our Message Right and we can submit reply so now the Customer can actually see that ticket of Course uh he will get email Notifications on this and the Communication can keep happening until The issue is solved once the issue is Sold you know it can be marked as a Result by by the customer or it can be Marked as resolved by the Admin Now the administrator or staff area is Used by the support team like you just Saw but the staff can do a lot more than
Just reply to tickets so let me show you A few of the options you have as a staff Member as you can see we have another Ticket that's assigned to us so when we Open that we have the option to change The category of the ticket so here we Have a general category but Under the categories menu we can add as Many categories as we want Right so now if we go back to the ticket We can change that to a different Category and we can also change the Priority of the ticket Like so and it's automatically saved or We can also assign it to someone else Currently we are the only uh support Member on this website but if we go to The team Right we can add a new team member so Then we can assign a ticket To that new team member apart from that In hesk an admin can Manage the following things You can change the ticket categories Right I just showed you this you can Create new categories in here you can Create new user accounts under team he Can manage email templates so if we go To tools email templates here you can See Templates for all the emails that are Used in the communication between hesk And the customer right so for example Here is a template for when a customer
Forgets the ticket tracking ID right so You can click the edit button and you Can see the exact structure of that Email and you can use these special tags To customize this to your liking you can Also change the font Font size and the the text style here On top of that an admin can also Add and manage the knowledge base right So if you go to knowledge base Currently we have none because it's a It's a default installation but we can Go to manage And we can create categories let's say We call this category General articles Right we're gonna publish it directly And then we're gonna go back and we're Going to create an article let's call This start here This is where you need to start right so Uh we're gonna publish it of course Category we're going to put it under General articles save So now if we go back to the front end on Our help desk we can see that now we Have access to the knowledge base right We can see the articles All right we can go to the category And we can also search for a specific Article here and all of this is uh is Customizable And if you're wondering about this text Here on the bottom where it says powered
By help desk software hesk if you don't Want this text here it can be removed But you do need to purchase a hesk License right so you need to go here and You need to go to buy now And you need to purchase this one right Hesk website license or you know this One that also removes it but it's for Multiple installations As I said previously the self-hosted Version of hesk is free But there is also a paid version called Hesk Cloud this is remotely hosted And there are a few benefits of using it So let me show you so we have a demo Help desk set up here at Testplus.hesk.com and you know the Interface looks exactly the same as the Local installation except we no longer Have the uh the powered by Links right At the bottom and on top of that there Are a few benefits Of using Hess Cloud so first of all the Team At hesk will actually take care of all The technical aspects for you right so Installing has updating the help desk uh You know creating backups running the Server all that good stuff so uh if You're not really interested in the Technical part and you don't want to do It yourself then this is definitely the Right way to go for you Um on top of that has Cloud
Comes with some exclusive Cloud only Modules right so if we go to the modules Here we can see three of them We can see statistics escalate and Satisfaction we also have these In the self-hosted version the free Version in the sense that we have them In the menu but they will actually not Work here but they do work In the hesk cloud so statistics This module will basically give you an Insight into your help desk usage and The staff performance The escalate module will help you all Escalate tickets that are that are not Attended to on time And finally the satisfaction or as it's Also called the survey uh module will Allow you to send your customers Um like a follow-up Survey a satisfaction survey to gather Feedback about their experience and how It's been with your help desk so again These three modules are exclusive to Hesk Cloud also if you're using has Cloud You'll have access to one-on-one Priority support which is actually a Really big deal because if you're using The free version uh the support for this Is limited to a public forum but if you Get has Cloud then you're gonna have One-on-one Support with the husk team which is
Great and if you want to grab yourself Hesk Cloud then the start at 29.99 per month plus vat for the basic Version you also get a hes Cloud plus so You know you can choose from one of These options no need to worry about Software installs backups anything like That it's all handled by uh by the hesk Team Now you might think that a help desk is Only necessary if you're selling Products or services but that's not true Let me give you two examples the first Is a large organization that has a Dedicated team for maintaining all the It equipment in this case you might want To set up an IT help desk for your Employees that will allow them to submit A support ticket if they have problems With their I.T equipment with their Computer their printer their Router whatever it is right so by Sending a ticket the IT personnel will Be informed and they'll be able to fix The problem another example is a help Desk ran by a maintenance team of a Large building complex think about Issues like a broken door or a toilet That's not working or some kind of Electrical issue right with a health Desk in place the building users can you Know submit a support ticket whenever They have a problem Uh therefore notifying the appropriate
Maintenance personnel which can uh you Know come and solve that problem and the Examples can go on and on regardless of Um what the help desk will be used Eventually the installation is exactly The same just like I showed you in this Video or you know if you prefer to use Has Cloud then you don't really have to Worry about all the technical stuff it's All going to be done for you so I hope You found this video useful thank you Very much for watching and as always Don't forget to check out the envato Test plus YouTube channel for more Content like this but also to learn About web design web development and a Lot more it's all free so make sure to Also hit that subscribe button I'm ADI And until next time thanks for watching Take care [Music] Thank you [Music]
