IT Help Desk staff to benefit from mobile with the all-powerful SMS - thanks to Clickatell and Zendesk

SMS experts Clickatell and help desk support firm Zendesk are joining forces to “mobilize” IT help desks and customer support centres. The new service supplements the job queues of the help desk, and generates SMS updates and notifications for incoming jobs or important jobs that require attention. In this way, IT professionals can sort jobs and keep abreast of schedules without being chained to their cubicles.

From the release:

“Despite being run ragged everyday with inadequate service tracking and scheduling tools, IT and customer support workers everywhere are the real un-sung heroes of the enterprise,” says Pieter de Villiers, Clickatell’s CEO. “They are responsible for solving the problems that if gone unchecked halt productivity and impact employees and customers which ultimately affects the bottom line. Given today’s economic situation, Clickatell SMS Service Alerts are just the answer that these hardworking professionals are looking for to maximize their already vital role within the enterprise. SMS is the most immediate, reliable and broadly available communication means ever invented because there is no need to download anything, no requirement to access software ­just simply read the text message when it arrives on the phone.”

“Our customers and support staff are located across the globe. It is imperative that our distributed teams are kept a breast of the latest information about new and active support incidents, wherever they happen to be and at anytime. Using the combination of Zendesk and mobile notifications enables us to offer our customers the highest levels of service,” explains Dr. Wolfgang Rencken, Definiens COO. “With Zendesk and Clickatell, mobile help desk implementation was easy, operation is simple and the results are impeccable. We have implemented a truly mobile, global help desk to serve our customers ­ anytime and anywhere.”

“Our software is even more valuable when customers can implement mobility to their IT Service operations so they can count on it no matter the time or location,” comments Mikkel Svane, Zendesk CEO. “Able to be implemented in less than a day, Clickatell is the only mobile messaging provider who offers an easy to deploy and use Software-as-a-Service messaging service and they are truly global.”

What we think?

Bulk SMS really has become cheap and quick enough that it is superior to voice for jobs like this - maybe even better than email. Clickatell has been busy the last few months, bringing SMS service to businesses and government bodies. For IT help desks, which operate on ticket system, I really can’t imagine a better system than SMS. You might get a different response if you asked the “un-sung heroes” in IT though - this means you can get them even when they’re away from the desk. What happened to break time?