Need Help Understanding Help-Desk Software? Read This.Bringing order to the chaos with help-desk software.

Online help-desk programs log, manage and track customer issues or tickets, as they're known, in a single window, streamlining your service process. For a rundown on what else these systems can do and why you should consider one, we called Jill Soley, vice president of marketing at San Francisco-based Freshdesk, a cloud-based help-desk solution provider, and asked her to, well, help.

Q:How can help-desk software benefit my business?

A:Business owners wear a lot of hats, and as a business grows, customer requests can fall between the cracks. Online help-desk systems bring order to the chaos. When properly configured, they consolidate all customer interactions—from multiple emails, website queries and chats, even social media mentions—into a single place where they can be logged, assigned to the appropriate personnel to fix and tracked throughout the resolution process. They're ideal for small businesses that don't have the luxury of establishing a customer-service department.