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What is Help Desk Software?
Help Desk Software is the common name for systems and applications used to respond to customers’ questions and technical inquiries. Help desk software helps support team track and address issues in reasonable time, but also record customer conversations, messages, transactions, and other information that could be relevant in future. Show moreThe best help desk systems act as centralized portals for inquiries coming from all communication channels, including your email addresses, phone numbers, live chat programs, and social networks. Some of them even include metrics and insights that help you evaluate customers’ and agents’ performance. We suggest you to check our current help desk leader Freshdesk, but also other popular solutions listed in this category.Show less
How was this ranking made?
To devise this list of best Help Desk Software we have evaluated 760 trending applications currently available on the market, studying their features, ease of implementation, client support, offered integrations and mobile support using our exclusive SmartScoreTM rating system. This list has been created by Nestor Gilbert, our software authority responsible for the Help Desk Software category.
List of Top 20 Help Desk Software
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1. Freshdesk
Our score: 9.8 User satisfaction: 100%An efficient and reliable help desk solution and winner of our Expert's Choice Award. The software offers multi-channel support, automation tools, gamification, and self-service portals to help businesses deliver high-quality customer support. The software helps improve organization and ease collaboration within support teams.
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2. Zendesk
Our score: 9.7 User satisfaction: 98%Winner of our Supreme Software Award, Zendesk is a customer support solution that helps boost customer service and improve customer retention. The platform's modules include chat support, call center solutions, help desk applications, and knowledge base, so you'll cover all the bases of efficient customer services.
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3. Salesforce Service Cloud
Our score: 9.6 User satisfaction: 97%A cloud-hosted customer service platform designed to allow faster, smarter case resolution. By providing a 360-degree view of each customer, this IT asset management solution enables businesses to quickly resolve issues, thereby driving better user experience and higher customer satisfaction.
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4. SysAid
Our score: 9.2 User satisfaction: 98%Combining the functionalities of help desk and management tools, SysAid won our Expert's Choice Award. It is a feature-rich, easily configurable, and highly scalable help desk solution targeted at large businesses. It supports iOS and Android-based mobile devices, making the platform accessible to users anytime, anywhere.
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5. Freshservice
Our score: 9.3 User satisfaction: 97%Freshservice allows IT admins to effectively track and manage the assets owned by their organizations. The platform offers a powerful ticketing system and knowledge base, as well as features for vendor management and incident management. A built-in self-service portal also lets end users submit tickets and browse knowledge base articles.
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6. Zoho Desk
Our score: 9.0 User satisfaction: 100%Zoho Desk is a support desk platform that helps you deliver top quality customer support with tools that increase agent productivity and improve analytic operations. Equipped with robust reporting tools and analytics, managers can keep track of their agents’ KPIs and address performance issues and make data-driven decisions.
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7. HubSpot Service Hub
Our score: 9.0 User satisfaction: 98%Online customer service, support, and help desk solution native to the HubSpot suite. The software has a built-in conversations feature that helps boost customer engagement by adding context to customer communication. A universal inbox also collects messages from multiple channels, helping teams collaborate and provide better customer support.
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8. NICE inContact CXone
Our score: 8.8 User satisfaction: 91%Industry-leading contact center software that offers a full suite of tools for transforming the customer experience. This platform offers omnichannel routing capabilities, analytics workforce optimization, automation, and AI-powered tools. It also delivers 99.99% uptime to prevent prolonged interruptions and downtime.
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9. Hiver
Our score: 8.8 User satisfaction: 96%A unique helpdesk tool that gives teams a streamlined way to manage email communications from one Gmail inbox. Hiver offers comprehensive tools, ranging from query assignments, email notes, custom automation, and in-depth analytics that allow to teams collaborate more closely.
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10. InvGate Service Desk
Our score: 8.7 User satisfaction: 100%InvGate Service Desk is an award-winning, Intuitive web-based software to manage, analyze, and automate your IT service support. Any type of business can easily manage, control, analyze, and automate support right in one place. Its collaborative functionalities ensure efficient workflow even with large teams.
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11. Vivantio
Our score: 8.4 User satisfaction: 93%A powerful yet easy-to-use, flexible service management tool to help you provide great customer service. It offers extensive automation, customization, self-service portals, and comprehensive reporting tools at prices that are right for your needs.
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12. Service Creatio
Our score: 8.6 User satisfaction: 100%A help-desk software that helps you achieve customer care excellence with inventive and automated features based on industry best practices.
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13. VCC Live
Our score: 8.4 User satisfaction: 98%A cloud-based comprehensive call center software that aims to help boost agent productivity. It comes with simple yet intuitive outbound and inbound tools as well as robust features for telecommunication services, agent activity monitoring, real-time statistics, project management, and database management.
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14. Cayzu
Our score: 8.2 User satisfaction: 100%Cayzu is a cloud-based help desk platform with a smart ticket system and robust customer support tools. The platform helps you track tickets and conversations, allowing you to manage support inquiries from one cloud-based portal. Automated rules and workflows also organize your support ticket queue, so you can provide faster, more efficient customer service.
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15. JitBit HelpDesk
Our score: 9.2 User satisfaction: 100%A robust help desk application designed to help users track support tickets and emails in the most efficient way possible. The platform uses machine learning technology to streamline support request monitoring and automate repetitive back-office tasks. A simple, clutter-free interface ensures easier navigation and improved productivity for customer support agents.
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16. ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Our score: 8.7 User satisfaction: 100%ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is an integrated help desk solution offering asset and project management built on the ITIL framework. It is packed with robust tools and features to help users achieve total visibility of the entire IT infrastructure, enabling better management and quicker response to address identified issues.
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17. Vision Helpdesk
Our score: 9.2 User satisfaction: 99%Vision Helpdesk is a customer support help desk platform that allows users to manage calls, live chat, and email in a single, convenient platform. Equipped with a help desk, ITIL/ITSM desk, and satellite desk, it is also available on mobile devices so customers can easily access customer support and help desk services.
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18. ConnectWise ScreenConnect
Our score: 9.0 User satisfaction: 100%ConnectWise ScreenConnect is a software app that gives you an enriched remote control experience and helps you resolve customer inquiries efficiently and without delay. Aside from helping reps provide efficient remote support, the software also includes collaboration features that let users exchange files and work simultaneously on one task.
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19. PHC Service FX
Our score: 6.7 User satisfaction: 99%An innovative business software with a unique user experience.
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20. Kapdesk
Our score: 8.0 User satisfaction: 100%Kapdesk is a helpdesk suite that integrates multi-channel support, ticketing, self-service, and support analytics into one intuitive and easy to use platform.
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Table of contents
Industry Report - Help Desk Software for 2022
CloudRank™ system is a unique algorithm that our research team uses to evaluate Help Desk Software solutions in a detailed and accurate way. The Winter 2022 edition of the ranking was prepared by Christopher Robinson, our leading expert in the field of Help Desk Software, who has authored 800+ product reviews in this category. The goal of CloudRank™ is to present an unbiased, multi-layered perspective on Help Desk Software, considering a wide range of metrics and factors, and educating potential customers about both opportunities and challenges associated with each piece of software.
In order to achieve full objectivity the position in our CloudRank™ is based on:
- Expert Score: which involves extensive analysis by our internal team which carefully examined all key elements of each software and testing it in real-life situations
- User Score: which involves an aggregated opinion of actual users of each product whose identity was properly verified
- Market Position: which involves general recognition of a given vendor on the market and reflects its overall popularity and reach
What do the tiers in CloudRank™ mean?
We’ve calculated a score for each product based on the average experience shared by our users in their product reviews and arranged the list in three tiers. You can see the methodology below on how the calculations were made.
- Leaders: those with a User Score of 8.3 or higher; this tier includes products that are currently leaders on the market and are appreciated by both experts and actual users. They always represent the best of what the Help Desk Software market has to offer and are all worth trying out if you’re looking for a reliable solution.
- Contenders: those with a User Score between 8 and 8.3; this tier includes high-quality products that still have some minor drawbacks that prevent them from becoming leaders on the market. They always represent well-designed tools that, over time, will most likely develop into market leaders as the missing features are added.
- Rising Stars: those with a User Score between 7 and 8; this tier includes products that have high-potential but still lack some crucial features or services expected from a leading solution. They are products with solid foundations and a vision that makes us eager to see what they will become as their solution improves in the future.
Regardless of their tier, all products included in our CloudRank™ are popular, quality products considered top-performers by our team of experts. Make sure you read a more detailed review of each solution to find one that will work best for your specific needs and budget.
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MARKET POSITION
A score between 1 and 10 based on popularity and market reach of each product.
TOTAL score
A score between 1 and 10 based on the average of our Expert Score and User Score.
How does CloudRank™ work?
Market Position
A score between 1 and 10 based on popularity and market reach of each product.
Total Score
A score between 1 and 10 based on the average of our Expert Score and User Score.
CloudRank™ tier
Based on product's total score.
Rising Star
Contender
Front Runners
25 Most Popular Help Desk Software
Here is a list of all 25 Help Desk Software solutions evaluated with our CloudRank™ analysis. We have compared their features, user satisfaction, market presence and other key factors in an in-depth analysis you can find below:
Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:9.06
Score:9.06
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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100+
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Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:8.79
Score:8.79
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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51-100
100+
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Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:8.56
Score:8.56
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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51-100
100+
Best features
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4. Salesforce Service Cloud
8.55
Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:8.55
Score:8.55
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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51-100
100+
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Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:8.54
Score:8.54
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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51-100
100+
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Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:8.41
Score:8.41
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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51-100
100+
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7. Freshservice
8.39
Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:8.39
Score:8.39
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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11-50
51-100
100+
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Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:8.37
Score:8.37
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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51-100
100+
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9. HubSpot Service Hub
8.32
Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:8.32
Score:8.32
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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11-50
51-100
100+
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Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:8.17
Score:8.17
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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51-100
100+
Best features
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11. Jira Service Desk
8.10
Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:8.10
Score:8.10
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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11-50
51-100
100+
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Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:8.00
Score:8.00
Customers company size
No. of employees:
1-10
11-50
51-100
100+
Best features
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Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:8.00
Score:8.00
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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11-50
51-100
100+
Best features
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Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:7.85
Score:7.85
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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11-50
51-100
100+
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Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:7.84
Score:7.84
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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100+
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16. JitBit HelpDesk
7.69
Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:7.69
Score:7.69
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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51-100
100+
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Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:7.69
Score:7.69
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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51-100
100+
Best features
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Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:7.69
Score:7.69
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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11-50
51-100
100+
Best features
Worst features
Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:7.52
Score:7.52
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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11-50
51-100
100+
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Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:7.52
Score:7.52
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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51-100
100+
Best features
Worst features
21. ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
7.44
Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:7.44
Score:7.44
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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11-50
51-100
100+
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Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:7.44
Score:7.44
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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11-50
51-100
100+
Best features
Worst features
Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:7.36
Score:7.36
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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11-50
51-100
100+
Best features
Worst features
24. Wix Answers
7.16
Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:7.16
Score:7.16
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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51-100
100+
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Our score and features analysis:
}
CloudRank™
Score:7.14
Score:7.14
Customers company size
No. of employees:
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100+
Best features
Worst features
Our report covered 25 most popular products from the Help Desk Software category. We’ve analyzed their features, performance, integration, customer support, pricing, and several other key buying factors and combined it with feedback from user reviews to come up with the current list of best solutions:
- 2022 Help Desk Software Leaders: Zendesk, Freshdesk, LiveChat, Salesforce Service Cloud, TeamSupport, Zoho Desk, Freshservice, LiveAgent, Intercom, Atera
- 2022 Help Desk Software Contenders: HubSpot Service Hub, Jira Service Desk, Help Scout, JitBit HelpDesk, SysAid, HelpCrunch
- 2022 Help Desk Software Rising Stars: Reamaze, Front, Kayako, Hiver, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, Spiceworks, Helpshift, Wix Answers, Groove
Zendesk is the current leader of the Help Desk CloudRank 2022. Interestingly, Zendesk topped the list not by excelling in any single facet, but by being the most well-rounded. This is reflected in the fact that the provider was not the top scorer when it came to the expert score, or average user satisfaction (tied with one other company), or even market presence—but looking at the breakdown of metrics covered in this report, Zendesk truly offered above average quality in nearly all respects.
Delivering exceptional quality in every aspect of a help desk solution, Zendesk caters to every size of business—from small to mid-sized to enterprise—though two-thirds of Zendesk reviewers worked at companies with over 50 employees, suggesting a skew towards larger organizations with naturally more complex and demanding help desk requirements. There was also not much difference in the breakdown of metrics between Zendesk’s highest rated and lowest rated features, further reinforcing the provider’s commitment to delivering quality services. Yet even this is not unique to Zendesk. Most of the higher ranking companies in this market report had only minimal differences between the scores of their highest rated and lowest rated features.
This is perhaps yet another reason why Zendesk’s position in the market is a reflection of the quality of its help desk solution. Zendesk leads a rather impressive pack alongside peers like Freshdesk, LiveAgent, and TeamSupport. It is undeniable that Zendesk is simply a cut above the rest—even its closest competitors.
Most users of Help Desk Software solutions confirm that in most cases these tools allow them to reach the following business goals:
- It allowed efficient scheduling of help desk employees and technicians to distribute balanced workloads [ 85.4% of users ]
- It allowed for the quick delegation of tasks to the appropriate personnel based on skill levels and availability [ 85.9% of users ]
- It allowed users and help desk agents to monitor and deliver updates for particular queries [ 85.0% of users ]
- It helped businesses efficiently manage user account tickets across various departments and locations [ 86.7% of users ]
- It made identifying common issues fast, enabling businesses to create protocols and solutions to quickly address them [ 86.8% of users ]
- It made prioritizing tasks smooth and quick, depending on the severity or importance of an issue [ 85.7% of users ]
How did we select products for this Help Desk Software report?
The Winter 2022 version of the report includes a total of 25 Help Desk Software products that were compared and analyzed by our team. We selected them based on the following factors:
- Popularity of a given brand in the SaaS market (based on our own market research)
- How popular a given brand is among FinancesOnline users (based on number of mothly readers for each review page)
- Availability of statistical data generated from user reviews of a particular product (we excluded products with not enough data to draw meaningful conclusions)
- The current listing reflects the state of our database and research as of January 2022. An updated version of the report will be released quarterly to keep data fresh and incorporate information about shifts and changing trends in the market.
What are the current Help Desk Software trends?
Service and help desks are becoming increasingly ubiquitous: Service and help desks are becoming standard across modern industries due to the important issue resolution capabilities they offer and the personal preferences of increasingly millennial workforces. By 2025, 75% of the so-called millennial generation will comprise workforces the world over—and 41% of millennials prefer electronic communication over in-person or over-the-phone. This suggests the use of service and help desks will increase simply due to the nature of the workforces that use them. Furthermore, IT staff make around 50 to 60 “mission-critical decisions” every day, so the service and help desks they rely on partially contribute to the efficiency and efficacy of their work.
Datanyze from ZoomInfo
Automation and AI are here to stay: Automation has been around for so long and has proven its role in modern business processes that it’s become a staple feature of many SaaS, help desks included. Meanwhile, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the newest technology trends that is sweeping the business world. Automation can be delivered through various methods and tools, but AI via machine learning and deep learning can only really be harnessed through Big Data. As help desks continue to become more ubiquitous, their data-gathering capabilities will increasingly be geared towards AI-powered self-service capabilities. In fact, they’re already here. With AI-enabled chatbots, predictive analysis platforms capabilities, and much more, the help desk sector will quickly catch up to the machine and deep learning use of other SaaS categories like business intelligence and CRM.
Jira Service Desk by Atlassian
Customer experience is key to help desk efficacy and revenues: And at the heart of it all is the customer service—after all, help desks are meant to resolve issues and enrich the customer experience overall. Unsurprisingly, many of the most valuable help desk statistics relate to customer experience directly or indirectly. For instance, in 2020, the key brand differentiator for help desk providers will be customer experience, and 68% of shoppers are willing to shell out more cash for better customer service. Clearly, as help desks become a staple in modern businesses and technology trends like AI help make them even more useful, users will expect even better customer experiences from providers in the future.
You may think that help desk tools are all the same in the market, but in reality, they are quite different from each other in terms of features, functionalities, and pricing methodologies. Read this buyer’s guide on the best Help Desk software platforms so you will have a better understanding of the list of issues you should consider before buying an online solution for your company, whether it is a big one or a small startup.
Get to know each product with free trial
Consider beginning your search by signing up for several free trial plans or demo offered by popular help desk software providers. It will give you the advantage of testing all the key features of each software before you actually spend any money on it and if there are any problems you’ll know about them right away and you will understand what is help desk software better. The best thing to do is to try tools that currently have the highest SmartScore rankings and Customer Satisfaction Rating in our help desk software reviews: Freshdesk reviews, Zendesk, Samanage, Zoho Support, ClickDesk, CRMdesk, LiveAgent, ManageEngine, Desk.com, Salesforce, Freshservice, and DeskRoll. For details on leading apps, read our comparison article on the top 10 help desk software.
Targeted Businesses
- Small businesses use help desk tools for technical support and customer service.
- IT companies use the software to keep their customer support efficient and organized.
- Call centers make use of help desk systems for customer support.
- Third-party BPOs are also main users of help desk software.
Help Desk Software For Enterprises
Large businesses are in constant need of a smart and elegant help desk solution to improve customer relationships and to make the ‘legit’ status of their brands more reliable. It is thanks to these systems and their amazing features that enterprises connect psychologically with their end users, and get to know how they think and what they expect. In the meantime, they use them to streamline customer relationships, and categorize issues and queries the way every solid organization should. Consequently, they build a better reputation by saving instead of wasting money, and get to know all market sideways that can be used to maximize profit.
What are Examples of Help Desk Software?
- Zendesk: Zendesk is a leading cloud-hosted help desk solution both for small businesses as well as large multinational enterprises such as Zappos and Groupon.
- Freshdesk: Freshdesk is a popular cloud-hosted help desk system with useful features and excellent customer service.
- SysAid: SysAid is a full-featured, configurable help desk and management software for large businesses.
- Salesforce Service Cloud: Salesforce Service Cloud allows companies to engage and interact with their customers using all popular channels including video and social media.
- Freshservice: Freshservice is a prominent cloud-hosted customer support software, which enables businesses to offer excellent customer service.
You can get info on other popular apps in this category and do informed comparisons by perusing our article on the top 15 help desk solutions.
Types of Help Desk Software
Help desk software programs can be used to handle the complaints and issues of your external or internal customers. Some solutions in fact serve both, while other management platforms serve either external or internal customers.
External – This help desk software solution serves the end consumers of your company, whether they are individuals buying products or services from you, or another company that has business transactions with you. These software programs can help you with your general customer service problems as well as information technology-related concerns. Since the businesses, companies, and industries that need external help desk software platforms are very diverse, those buying this type of software program might prefer that the platform solution can perfectly integrate call center software systems, sales force automation, and marketing automation.
Internal – This type of software solution in general provides service to a company’s employees or internal customers. In many cases, the software solution supports the various information technology concerns of customers. But there are some cases when this type of help desk solution is given to human resource management for concerns regarding employee benefits.
Key Features of Help Desk Software
Let us first start with the question: What is a help desk software solution?
Many people get confused by what help desk software actually is and what it’s used for. This is because help desk can be understood either a software management solution for your teams that provides service to employees or internal customers; or a software platform to help your company’s teams provide excellent service to your external customers (in short, those who buy goods or services from your company).
In both instances nevertheless, help desk software solutions help you store customer information (whether they are internal or external) in fully searchable databases that monitor your customer interaction and automate the entire resolution process with the help of a ticketing system. In its basic level, the primary role of help desk software is to improve your capability to organize customer data and increase the effectiveness of your business.
In addition to this main function, help desk software platforms offer a number of these features, if not all:
Self-service – Your customers, whether they are internal or external, can use the solution’s portals themselves to look for solutions. In short, they do not always have to contact a representative every time they encounter a problem or issue with the task they have at hand. For example, a lot of help desk management software solutions these days offer self-service features such as documentation of the services or products your company offers, user-friendly how-to pages, downloadable patches, community forums, and instructional and searchable FAQs, among other helpful resources. If your customers are unable to find the right solutions from these self-service features, the help desk software solution usually allows them to write their concerns and send a ticket.
Knowledge management system – Knowledge management system refers to a hub of information as well as descriptions of the most common problems or issues in your product or service or even the previous concerns that have been resolved. This information hub can be available publicly, such as a self-service site that your customers can visit. Alternatively, the repository can also be intended for internal use only by your technicians or customer service representatives. Many knowledge management systems offered by help desk software solutions have advanced search tools to help the users, whether your employees, team members, or your customers, in finding solutions or the right answers to any question or concern. There are some software platforms that even autosuggest queries or articles as a user types.
Asset management system/IT network management system – A good help desk software system also offers outstanding asset management functionalities that can monitor changes to your software and even hardware configurations. On the other hand, network management solutions can evaluate the health of your computer servers or other network components you are using. These functionalities may be offered by the help desk software vendor through integrations using information technology service management tools.
Reporting – Some help desk software solutions have reporting capacities that can overall monitor your agent productivity and service desk performance. In most cases, performance metrics usually include the overall number of open tickets; average time of resolving complaints; satisfaction of your customers; ticket resolutions that can be sorted out based on shift, date, or agent; among others.
Support with the help of a tablet or a smartphone – In today’s market, a good number of help desk software solutions do come with smartphone, tablet, and web application versions of their platforms. In short, any customer or employee who wishes to access the help desk software’s features can use a smartphone, tablet, or go on the Internet to use the knowledge base, provide or read customer data, send out or receive tickets, check out reports, and utilize other features anytime, anywhere.
Service level agreement (SLA) – Many vendors in the market offer SLAs that can be immediately guaranteed to customers, plus other service guarantees. This feature will enable, for instance, your support desk team employees to conduct immediate and automatic escalations, prioritization triggers, as well as other customized rules to make sure that the tickets your company has been receiving are managed in compliance and given topmost priority with SLAs.
Remote control – This functionality enables your organization’s technicians to manage, access, and control a customer’s computer from a remote point, giving a remote diagnosis, and resolving any issue or complaint with little customer involvement.
Security – Most help desk solutions offer robust security features to ensure that information within the system is adequately protected. Industry-leading help desk platforms often come with enterprise-grade security features, including custom SSL certificates and access restriction at the IP and network level. Some help desk applications will also offer SSO features, allowing users to use one set of credentials for multiple applications. These are all handy security features to have in help desk software.
ITIL adherence – In some cases, you’ll find that some help desk software solutions stand out by adhering to the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework. Used mainly by IT management companies, ITIL outlines best practices for IT service management. Having help desk software that adheres to this framework can be beneficial for businesses that oversee data centers and large corporations that work with SLAs.
Integrations – Integrations between help desk solutions and other business software ensure the seamless sharing of information between these systems. Therefore, many help desk solutions offer built-in integrations with CRM applications, issue-tracking systems, and project management tools. This ensures that everyone in the company is on the same page, which improves collaboration, especially for customer-facing teams.
Benefits of Help Desk Software
The best Help Desk software solutions will enable companies like yours, whether it is big or small, to easily evaluate information technology crises. In addition, businesses can boost their efficiency by managing information technology-related concerns better. So, what does it all mean? It means you will have more savings for your company since you will be using tools such as automation, self-service and other workflow efficiency features.
When implemented correctly, these help desk software platforms can boost the operations of your company or organization in five key ways:
- Reduce manpower costs because of the self-service tools
- Identify and quickly solve issues that keep on happening
- Reduce the work lags of your employees from information technology issues that continue to be unsolved
- Give better transparency and communication into your customers’ service requests starting from creation of tickets all the way to their resolution
- Automate issue escalation, triaging, as well as prioritization
- Enable prompt ticket allocation to a specific agent, ensuring that tickets don’t get lost in cluttered inboxes and that requests are serviced by agents who have the skills to handle the issue
- Improve customer service levels, which boosts your business’ reputation and encourages customer loyalty and retention
- Facilitate more efficient knowledge sharing between teams and across departments, ensuring accurate, up-to-date documentation for queries and issues
Latest Trends
Social media integration is becoming popular
Surveys show that a good number of social media users send customer support requests through Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. Therefore, companies need apps to process issues and requests received through these channels. Vendors such as Zendesk and Desk.com offer solutions that integrate with social channels to prioritize and route customer service requests.
Gamification Motivates Agents
Customer service and IT jobs are taxing and difficult positions. To help keep up the interest and motivation levels of agents, companies are using gamification. A firm named Badgeville offers rewards such as redeemable points to boost the productivity of its ticketing agents. Employees get motivated to perform better when they see their scores improving and they move up higher on leaderboards.
Chatbots Support Efficient Help Desk Functions
More help desk software providers are starting to offer chatbots, which can help in categorizing tickets, providing self-service options, and routing tickets to the right agents automatically. This allows agents to focus on solving complicated issues. In most cases, these chatbots can also simplify workflows by handling process-driven answers and responding to commonly submitted queries. All these capabilities point to help desk software soon being able to boost productivity even further.
Proactive Customer Service
Aside from chatbots, artificial intelligence also has various implications on the future of help desk software. For instance, machine learning algorithms focused on customer data and service tickets can be used to anticipate customers’ needs and improve overall levels of customer service. With AI technology, you’ll be able to resolve issues even before customers become aware of them.
Potential Issues
Lack of business knowledge: If you outsource your help desk to a third-party, make sure the vendor is capable of providing knowledgeable customer support. If the vendor’s agents are lacking in knowledge and expertise, it could seriously dent the customer satisfaction rating of your company. In that case, you are better off using in-house agents for customer support to provide knowledgeable responses to ensure customer satisfaction.
Lack of Agent Training: Employee turnover is high in call centers and help desks as agents may not be serious about the job and may look at it as a temporary vocation. To motivate agents to stay longer, companies should offer comprehensive training that can boost the capability and stability of the workforce. Make your agents more versatile and help them learn a wide range of skills to do their job better.
Ticket Miscommunication: This mostly occurs when a ticket doesn’t provide clear or sufficient information on the issue, resulting in the need for an agent to do a follow-up. In some cases, agents can also misunderstand the information on tickets, which may cause customer dissatisfaction and result in further delays in issue resolution.
Signs You Need Help Desk Software
Is it time for your business to start using help desk software? Here are some signs that you need to put your email-based support system to rest and move to a help desk solution.
You’ve lost track of issues in your email. Email inboxes can get cluttered, especially for support teams that receive close to hundreds of emails a day. Additionally, an email-based support system only causes confusion as agents don’t know who resolved which issues. The ticketing system of help desk software helps prevent these problems by letting agents access tickets easily and using a variety of tags to organize these tickets. This way, all issues get the attention they need and nothing falls through the cracks.
Issues take too long to be resolved. In most cases, the delay in issue resolution results from overworked support agents and inefficient tools. Searching spreadsheets and email inboxes often require too much time and effort. Help desk software cut down the time agents spend on finding relevant information as the software organizes and catalogs information relevant to each ticket. Everything is stored in one central location, helping agents access and resolve tickets more quickly.
You don’t know how efficient your support team is. A shared email inbox can only provide so much help in tracking how many issues your support team resolves in a day. With help desk solutions, tickets can be clearly assigned to individual agents and marked as resolved as needed. This increases accountability within your team and helps you identify potential delays in issue resolution. Many help desk software also have analytics and reporting tools that provide accurate numbers on metrics such as response times.
Common Applications for Help Desk Software
Help desk software solutions are highly versatile applications that can be used by various teams and different types of users. Here are some common applications of help desk solutions today:
IT management. IT professionals comprise a large sector of help desk software users. Through help desk software, IT teams can easily track and monitor issues that users encounter with the technology used by the company. For instance, these applications can support IT professionals in servicing hardware or software requests from other departments.
Software development. Help desk solutions are commonly used in software development settings as well. This is particularly true for bug tracking purposes, as end-users of applications can easily notify developers of issues they encounter. The software also helps developers monitor bug reports and unresolved issues.
Customer service. Help desk software is an indispensable tool for fast, effective customer service. The software provides customers with self-service options for resolving issues. Customers can submit tickets with relevant information on what they need, making it easier for agents to respond to these queries.
HR and recruitment. HR and recruitment teams often receive tons of requests involving interview schedules, training for employees, and additional information on salary and benefits. Help desk software can provide canned responses based on the information provided and route more complicated questions to the right team member for efficient resolution.
List of Help Desk Software Companies
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- Newest
- Score
- User Score
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Things to consider when you invest in a SaaS
Pricing details are an important consideration when you analyze SaaS vendors. Ask the vendor if they offer price protection and contractual flexibility. “Shelfware” has become a major problem in SaaS licensing as buyers end up shelling out for more than they need. Plus, to get pricing predictability, customers are forced to subscribe to long-term agreements. Make certain you don’t get saddled with long-term licensing and get locked in for a long time with a single provider. Ask about easy exit policies that enable you to migrate to another vendor if you are not happy with the services provided by the current one. Select a vendor that offers a convenient standard annual termination facility as well as long-term price protection.
Another important aspect to consider is whether the cloud provider meets compliance and security requirements. Your company is accountable to staff members, customers, business partners, and regulators. Therefore, you should pick a vendor that has deployed a technically sound and comprehensive security system. Map your security control requirements such as availability, integrity, confidentiality, privacy, and accountability to the vendor’s capabilities. Ask the potential vendor about the practices and systems they use to protect your sensitive data. Do they meet general as well as industry-specific compliance and security regulations? Do they offer special measures to meet the unique security needs of your particular industry? Get satisfactory answers to these queries before you make the investment.
Frequently asked questions about Help Desk Software
What is the best help desk software?
The best help desk software is Freshdesk because of its top-of-the-line functionalities designed to cater to the needs of small and large companies. It is equipped with ticketing tools, collaboration systems, automation options, and reporting modules. With this at your disposal, you can optimize your help desk operations from end to end.
The Freshdesk Help Desk system supports both digital and traditional channels allowing you to manage requests from different customer touchpoints. It also leverages artificial intelligence and bots to speed up ticket resolution and allow your agents to focus on attention-demanding customer concerns. In addition, it comes with a team inbox complete with collision detection, smart notifications, ticket merging, and activity logs to help foster a collaborative and streamlined environment for your agents.
These aside, Freshdesk also enables users to automate routine tasks such as ticket assignments, report scheduling, and more. This way, you can make sure your support department runs as smoothly as possible. The platform also supports a multitude of integrations so you can extend its capabilities and let seamlessly connect with your current business software ecosystem.
What are the benefits of help desk software?
Lower manpower costs. The software provides self-service options that customers can use to proactively resolve the issues they encounter. Faster ticket turnover rates also reduce the need to expand support teams.
Easier ticket management. Help desk software allows support teams to categorize and prioritize tickets, which helps improve agent productivity. This is important especially for teams that receive a high volume of tickets and requests.
Improved transparency and accountability. The software improves transparency into service requests from ticket creation to issue resolution. By assigning specific agents to tickets, the software also ensures accountability.
Improved customer service. The faster your support team resolves issues, the better your business’ reputation becomes among customers. This encourages customer retention and promotes loyalty to your business as well.
More efficient knowledge sharing. The software accurately documents solutions to issues and collects the information in a central hub. This way, the information is easily accessible to anyone who needs it.
What are the features of help desk software?
Self-service. Help desk software helps users look for solutions to issues by providing product documentation, how-to articles, and FAQs, among other resources. If these solutions are insufficient, users can also submit a ticket.
Knowledge management system. The software provides users with a hub of valuable information about issues and their corresponding solutions. This hub can be easily accessed by any employee and offers advanced search tools.
Security. Oftentimes, these tools offer robust security features to protect the information stored in the system. Enterprise-grade security features include custom SSL certificates, identity management, and IP and network restriction.
Integrations. Many help desk solutions seamlessly integrate with essential business software to facilitate more efficient information sharing. Some help desk solutions, for instance, can integrate with CRM software and project management tools.
Reporting. Help desk platforms often offer reporting capabilities to help you monitor agent productivity and support team performance. Metrics commonly tracked include open tickets and average times for issue resolution.
What is the easiest help desk software to use?
Help desk software is typically designed for ease of use for both customers and support agents. Here are some help desk solutions that have a user-friendly interface:
- LiveAgent. LiveAgent offers a simple, intuitive interface that boosts adoption rates. The software’s features are easily accessible from a central dashboard, which helps agents resolve more tickets daily and improves overall team productivity.
- Atera. Designed for MSPs and IT professionals, Atera puts all IT management and monitoring functions in one platform. The system also integrates functions for billing and reporting, reducing the need to switch back and forth between software.
- HubSpot Service Hub. The software provides various modules for engaging customers and resolving their issues. Users can also set up an organized knowledge base to provide self-service options such as articles, documentations, guides, and FAQs.
What is a good free help desk software?
There are various help desk software that you can use completely free of charge. Here are some great examples of such help desk solutions:
- Freshdesk. Freshdesk offers a Sprout plan that is completely free to use. This version can accommodate unlimited agents and is inclusive of features for email ticketing, social ticketing, knowledge base creation, and call-to-ticket conversion, among other features.
- Wix Answers. If you have a Wix-based website, you can use Wix Answers for free. The software offers a help desk system, ticket management capabilities, and reporting features, along with built-in call center support.
- Jira Service Desk. Jira Service Desk has a free plan that offers powerful capabilities for workflow configuration, service request management, and SLA management. The freemium version of the software can be used by up to 3 agents.
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