Help Desk Software Migration Tips

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Between your ticketing system, contact information, knowledge base, notes, attachments, and your pool of data, there’s a lot that goes into conducting a help desk migration.

A help desk migration is the process of moving all of your data from one help desk platform to another. Most customer service teams perform help desk migrations to improve their efficiency, scaling, or performance capabilities.

If you’re looking to perform a help desk migration, there are a few things to consider and best practices to follow to ensure that your process is as effortless as possible.

Below are some key tips and best practices to follow if you plan on migrating to a new help desk system.

Help Desk Migration Questions

While it might seem like a daunting task to completely switch your help desk software, you can still make a smooth and seamless transition with the right preparation.

Below are some key help desk migration questions to ask before you make the switch.

• Do you have a sandbox or test environment for the new help desk software? It might be a good idea to set up a sandbox or trial account before you fully buy in to a new help desk software.
• Have you gathered the objects that you want to transfer into a list? Different databases will allow you to export and import different database objects. Understanding what your source database and transfer database can import and export will allow you to get a handle on what tools you’ll need to transfer everything.
• Can you still access your source database? If you can still access your source database, it’s important to plan diligently. The last thing you want to do is migrate to a new system and run into several issues. Having your source database available will make it easier to maintain operations should any unforeseen errors arise.
• Where are you in terms of data testing and comfort level mapping? You want to know where your source database fields will map into your destination database.
• What kind of training resources do you have prepared for the new help desk software? This is an important part of finalizing your migration process in order to start utilizing your functions immediately after completing the migration. Your team should be thoroughly trained on the new system to ensure they’re as efficient as possible from the get-go.

Help Desk Migration Tips and Best Practices

Even after you’ve asked the right questions, there are still a number of best practices you need to follow to ensure for a smooth migration.

The tips below will help you prepare for a successful help desk migration.

• While difficult, finding a help desk software vendor with the similar data structures, or experience migrating other customers from your existing platform will be essential. The more commonalities or experience your vendor has, the better.
• Optimize your data on transfer. When migrating from one system to the next, you have the opportunity to streamline and optimize your datasets. This is an opportunity to improve data hygiene and usability.
• Double check the proper usage of fields for data objects. You don’t want to assign emails for phone numbers or mix up addresses between customers.
• Before the transfer, you may need to update your applications and systems so that they’re compatible with the new technology. If your initial data sources are exceedingly outdated, it may not be possible to automate where certain objects need to be moved to in your target source

Help Desk Migration Timeline

You’ve answered some important questions and evaluated key best practices to ensure a smooth migration process; now you just have to bring it all together. Putting together a checklist and timeline will help you organize your migration and limit any mistakes along the way.

Before Migration:

• If necessary, create agent profiles in your new help desk software.
• Disable or reassign agents that won’t be needed in your new source.
• Verify your admin rights for your new help desk and source software.
• Where necessary, establish new custom fields in your target help desk.
• Perform a demo migration finalizing the actual move.
• Set aside a significant amount of time to start your migration process.

During Migration:

• Don’t make any last-minute changes, including adding or deleting objects, so as to avoid any errors in the migration process

After Migration:

• Verify that all your records migrated properly.
• Link all of your support channels and systems with the new software.
• Turn on your notification and automation features.
• Look for any hiccups or deficiencies in the few days following the migration.
• Ensure staff is trained and ready for the new help desk software.

While we believe that customer service should be all about the human interactions, Gladly also recognizes that it takes innovative and state-of-the-art technologies to help teams reach their goals.

The above tips, guide, outlines, and questions will give any customer service team an excellent head start on their help desk migration, getting them one step closer to helping the people matter.

With Gladly, you’re not only getting a comprehensive and easy-to-use customer service platform, you’re getting a system that helps you place your customers at the heart of the customer service process. Try Gladly today and see what it means to have a radically personal customer service platform.