Hi Claire
I would start with a couple of assumptions - firstly as Tony says, email will always, always be the first point of call for most people. Fighting this is almost definitely a losing game.
My personal opinion about helpdesk software per se is that it has a tendency to dehumanise the actual contact. The whole auto email “you’ve been assigned a ticket number” thing may be useful to IT teams but for the recipient it feels like you’ve been added to an anonymous queue of misc requests without any real humans behind it. This is why we’ve never done it at Thirty8, even though the nerd in me would like it.
My advice would be to have a normal, possibly dedicated, inbox that you reply to as normal - but then CC or BCC in one of the many systems that can keep track of requests if you need it. Trello sort of does this a bit in that you can email cards to it - but it’s a bit clumsy and you end up with cards covered with people’s signatures and so on.
Our personal favourite for project management for some time now has been Teamwork (https://www.teamwork.com/) which has among its many options both an “email to task list” option but also a “board view” which is basically a version of Trello. This only really makes sense in a “project” world where you attach requests to projects - but may be useful.
Teamwork also do actual helpdesk software (https://www.teamwork.com/desk/) too which if you have to go that route is really great - we’ve used it with external projects for clients managing massive numbers of email-based work requests. It does all the things you would want like ability to assign people to tasks, etc etc, but also has nice functionality for building FAQs as part of the response - and obviously all via email.
Or - you could go lightweight CRM with something like Capsule (https://capsulecrm.com/) - it’s a little off-piste but the same “keep track of requests from same email address, add notes” thing may be useful.
It obviously depends on numbers of requests, how transparent you want to be with people involved, how many people….. but in general, I’d say stick to email and possibly hook in some other tools if needed - but keep it human as much as possible.
cheers
Mike
_____________
Mike Ellis
Thirty8 Digital: a small but perfectly formed digital agency
http://thirty8.co.uk
** NEW: an easy to use web publishing platform for museums: https://themuseumplatform.com **
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On 22 Jan 2020, 09:26 +0000, Claire Crowley <[log in to unmask]>, wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Does anyone have a really good workflow/system/process for managing web content requests, from people across the organisation, for your institution's website? Do people use tools like Trello, or a helpdesk, or web forms?
>
> Thanks!
> Claire
>
> Claire Crowley
> Digital Media Assistant
> National Gallery of Ireland
> Merrion Square West
> Dublin 2
> Ireland
> T: +353 (0)1 632 5523
> W: nationalgallery.ie
>
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