Service Desk to gather information from a customer user

Question

I work in the freight invoice industry and every year, for every carrier that a customer has a contract with, we need to get updated contracts.  Traditionally this has been handled via email.  This is inefficient and siloed with an individual.

It has been asked if we can create an issue with the customer user as the reporter requesting this information.  Has anyone used service desk in this manner?  Are there any drawbacks/pitfalls to look out for?

Todd Winton · Answer

Danny,

I believe you misunderstood my question.  We would like to use the service desk to initiate communication with a customer user.  It is assumed that these users will have an account.

What we have come up with is the user needing information of a specific type will create a request in service desk on behalf of the customer user.  Requests created in this manner will have an issue created notification that directs the customer to provide us specific information

unknown · Answer

Hi @Todd Winton,

I have had some experience with setting up a service desk for multiple industry types to support customers. I think you need to think about what information the issue's creation form would need to capture and build out in service desk (a trial perhaps), and map your process to issue's workflow.

The main pitfall I have had is visibility for new customers; if you can, either allow new customers to sign up to your service desk or have a method for existing customers to request new users to be added then it will alleviate the lack unofficial emails for contracts.

Hope this helps