17 Best Help Desk Software of 2025
If you have been in business for a long time or you are just planning to start a business after visiting this blog, welcome to where you will know how to make your business thrive and successful.
What's the secret to a successful business? The answer is simple; Happy customers that patronize every time.
Customers are the most important stakeholders of a business. They are what keep your business going. We can rightly refer to them as the blood of the business that keeps a business alive.
But, here are the big questions? How do you keep your customers happy, especially in this time of covid-19 pandemic that we are? What will make them positive about your business? How will you stand out among your competitors?
The answers are not far. Using a help desk software is the only way to keep your customers happy and delighted about your business. But here is another headache.
How will you identify the best help desk software for your needs? Which one can your customer support representatives set up easily without feeling spent and angry?
Which help desk software will maintain your hard-earned business reputation?
This review will answer all those troubling questions. In this review, we will go through 17 help desk softwares available for your use. I will comprehensively discuss their working systems, distinctive features and pricing.
You will find the most ideal one to provide excellent customer service to your customers. And you won't have to go through any headache of searching for the best help desk software for your business needs.
Without further ado, let's begin at once.
What is the Best Help Desk Software?
1. LiveAgent
Best customer service software for large businesses
LiveAgent is the first on our help desk software list because of the many features it offers, making it the ideal help desk software for small and large businesses.
It has about two hundred features that you can use to increase your customer support service. Let's check them out.
What You Can Do With LiveAgent
With the live chat feature, you can engage your customers in real-time conversations. There's a chat box where your customer support agents can chat with your customers as if they are chatting on facebook messenger.
This software also provides an interface known as the universal inbox where you can easily receive every message. You don't have to lose your customers' messages anymore. LiveAgent allows you to track every customer's requests, queries and suggestions and create a single record of your customers' messages.
There is also a ticketing system where you easily solve, track and monitor every ticket you receive from your customers. This allows you to deal with customer-related issues fast, without wasting your time and resources.
Using the contact features, keep essential customers details such as their profiles and categorise them into classes based on your preferences. With LiveAgent, allow your customers to search for the information they like on your website like order date, delivery amount, and delivery date, etc,.
Other features to improve your customer support structure include hybrid ticket streaming, automated ticket distribution, service level agreement, merge tickets, email templates, contact groups, and many others.
Pricing
LiveAgent allows you to take a 14-day trial period which provides access to the all-inclusive version. However, we will recommend you buy an all-inclusive version if you have a large enterprise.
While individuals and medium businesses can buy the other versions.
Free Version: Available
2. Freshdesk
Best help desk software for small businesses
Freshdesk software is a good help desk software for small businesses with customer support teams composed of 2-10 agents.
This means if you're just getting your feet wet in business and you have a limited number of customers, Freshdesk will be the best help desk software for you.
What You Can Do With Freshdesk
Freshdesk software offers a single platform where you can categorise the tickets you receive from your customers and prioritise them according to order of importance. You can route your tickets and check their status which is whether they have been solved or not.
You can use the ticketing system of Freshdesk for your help or service desk. This means you can arrange your tickets and manage them from a central tracking system present in your help or service desk. Catalog every ticket, queries and requests you receive allow your help desk or IT service agents to work on them easily.
Also use the agent collision detection feature to keep every member of your customer support team on the same page. This ensures no two agents do not attend to a single query. For example, queries which have been attended to will be marked and grouped together to identify them from the unattended ones.
Freshdesk allows you to automate recurring tasks easily. As an illustration, you might find about ten customers requesting for the price of your products or services.
Instead of repeating the same answers for the same question, the freshdesk software will allow you to provide similar responses to your customers automatically.
Security of your data, and privacy is, therefore, assured with Freshdesk. Every single Freshdesk software account comes with a secure sockets layer certification which is automatically enabled.
You can also whitelist potentially harmful IP addresses without restricting your customer support agents from accessing your business account in the software.
You can also integrate other customer relationship management tools, bug identification and tracking softwares, billing and payment systems with the software.
This encourages collaboration and increases your productivity.
The shared inbox will also allow agents to receive messages in a single box across various communication channels. No matter the channel which your customers use, you can receive their messages together. All in a single shared inbox which all your customer support agents can attend to, easily.
This software also comes with a remote support system for your customer support agents to work from home or public spaces. They can work together easily on a mutual basis. There is also the multilingual customer support which provides access to more than one language.
Pricing
Freshdesk software starts with a free version known as the Sprout which allows you to access some basic features such as email and social ticketing, knowledge base, ticket dispatch and data center location.
Other paid versions begin from Blossom, Garden, Estate and the Forest version which has the highest price.
Free Version: Available
3. EngageBay
Best ticketing software for small businesses
The EngageBay help desk software tagged as the best software for best in-class customer support also allows you to align your sales, marketing and service structure on the same interface.
This means you can use it for support, sales, and marketing. The support version is what we are going to be looking at here.
What You Can Do With EngageBay
EngageBay allows you to streamline your communication channels and to choose whether to use a classic ticketing system or a modern livechat ticketing system. You can arrange your support tickets sequentially to reflect your chosen tags.
For example, you can classify tickets into categories like pending tickets, unresolved tickets, recently updated tickets, new group tickets, unassigned tickets, and unsolved tickets.
This promotes orderliness and efficiency. Let's assume you have a particular ticket group meant for those who have placed their orders on your goods/services.
The ticket group which will follow your desired group name, say “order ticket” will contain the basic information of those customers, such as their names, source of contacts, e.g emails, and ticket status.
The status depends mainly on whether the ticket has been solved or not. With the EngageBay software, you can also create as many personalised tickets as you want, to meet your targeted business needs.
What's more? EngageBay is a modern automation tool that allows you to automate common routine tasks leaving more free time and space for your customer reps.
To do this, gather similar queries or requests from customers and provide veritable answers to those enquiries after tagging them with specific titles.
You can then activate the automation feature which provides automatic answers to these common questions. The reporting and analysis features allow you to view detailed graphical reports and status updates on your dashboard.
Know the satisfaction level of your customers about your customer support services.
You are also free to create your own custom widgets which you can simultaneously use together on the software platform. And if you like, you can also integrate other widget's for telephony, support, social media and e-commerce.
Another important feature of this software is that it allows you to engage in effective digital marketing strategies which increases your business leads. Carry out effective email marketing campaigns whichever way you want it.
The email broadcast, auto responder email, and double opt-in features of the software all work together to ensure you have a cakewalk email marketing campaign.
You can create your own email templates, subscribers' lists and target them accordingly.
Pricing
EngageBay has four versions which begins from the free version that allows you to enjoy features like email marketing, email broadcast, auto responder, landing pages, etc.
The Basic version allows 15,000 contacts and 10,000 branded emails while the Growth type covers 50, 000 contacts and 25000 branded emails.
If you operate a medium sized business, we actively recommend the Pro version which allows unlimited contacts and about 50,000 branded emails.
Free Version: Available
4. Zendesk
Best customer service software for medium and large enterprises
Zendesk help desk software is the no-brainer CRM tool to use if you want to integrate the support, sales, and customer service units of your business, efficiently.
Built for extensive use in different sectors like government, education, financial services, manufacturing and healthcare, Zendesk contains many features that will ensure optimum customer support.
What You Can Do With Zendesk
The customer service software has two different versions which are the support suite and the sales suite. Let's check them out one after the other.
The Support Suite.
- Zendesk Support :This feature lets you access the ticketing system of the software to track and resolve each customer support ticket in a single place. Likewise, it has the integrated voice feature which will allow you to speak directly with clients and provide specific solutions to their problems and requests.
- Zendesk Guide: Customers can navigate to the guide base and be guided. You can also deploy the WYSIWYG editor and a Google Docs importer made available in the guide platform to provide helpful contents for your uses. This guide contains the help center for your customers. If you need more than one help center for different products, then you can create them as you wish. This feature is important because by providing particular pieces of information, know-hows and tips for your clients, the number of queries your agents would have to answer in a day would likely decrease.
- Zendesk Chat: The Zendesk chat feature of Zendesk support suite makes live chat and messaging with your customers easier and faster. It offers chat support where you can take customers' questions directly, and provide detailed answers to them via live chat. Your customer support agents can chat real-time with your clients and provide automated responses to customers enquiries with the flow builder.
- Zendesk Talk: Zendesk talk ensures all your communication channels are in a single place and your customer support agents can therefore act on your customers' requests from a discrete base.
Then, comes the sales suite. The sales suite contains three major features which are sell, explore and gather.
You can utilize these features for sales CRM, analytic and reporting, and in the community forum of your help center. Use the Zendesk software today and gain more customer success.
Pricing
Zendesk allows you to trial freely every version for 30 days. As an enterprise or large business, go for the support and sales suites of the software.
Free Version: Not available
5. ProProfs Help Desk
Easy-to-use help desk software, ideal for both small and large businesses.
ProProfs Help Desk is a multi-functional help desk software suitable for small startups to large enterprises. One big aspect that separates this tool from others is that users can avail a complete customer support package.
In addition to a robust ticketing system, you get the combined power of complementary tools such as Live Chat, Knowledge Base, Survey Maker, Training Maker, and more.
What You Can Do With ProProfs
Ticket management: Enable a complete ticketing feature where you can easily manage and track every customer support ticket. Give your agents the ideal platform to collaborate, communicate better, prioritize issues, and resolve tickets in a jiffy.
Shared Inbox: Get all your support inboxes under the same roof and allow multiple agents to respond to customer emails in a fast and efficient manner.
Help Desk Automation: Leverage an automated workflow that helps your team rise above mundane tasks and become more productive. With the round-robin ticket assignment feature, tickets can be automatically routed to available and skilled agents. You can even share automated alerts and notifications to customers to keep them updated about the progress of their issue.
Capture customer feedback: Create and share interesting surveys with customers at key touchpoints to better understand their pain points. Share CSAT or NPS surveys in seconds to capture customer satisfaction as well as loyalty.
Encourage Self-Service: With ProProfs Help Desk, you can create both- an internal knowledge base for your employees and an external knowledge base for your customers. This is a great way to encourage self-help and empower your people to find relevant help in the form of FAQs, help articles, videos, guides, etc.
Pricing
You can use the ProProfs software free of charge for 15 days after which you can then upgrade to a paid version starting at $10/user/month. ProProfs Help Desk is comparatively more affordable than other help desk software in the market.
6. Happyfox
Best help desk software suitable for IT and Multi-Brand Help Desks
Happyfox is an important help desk software for telecom and large enterprises' IT service teams. The features of this software include email ticketing and knowledge base.
What You Can Do With Happyfox
With the email ticketing system, you manage your customers' emails in a single centralized system.
It works just like your email where you can look for any contact you like and interact with them accordingly.
On Happyfox, you can know the status of each ticket received from your users.
Use the ticketing system to know the name of the assignee, ticket priority, ticket category, and the due date. You can also create a custom knowledge base to centralise the information your customers need to know about your products/services.
The articles on the knowledge base will cover guides and technical know-hows like FAQ and help pages to engage the attention of your customers.
This means that customers can know more about your products/services in an organized form than your typical traditional FAQ page.
Use the community forum to connect your customers in active open discussions.
This promotes customer loyalty and your customer service becomes simpler as your clients find support from each other in time of need.
They can also post on the forum and alternate between viewing their own posts or others' posts. Promote your business more when customers share forums responses on their social media handles. Is there any way to increase your customer engagement?
Then, the help desk reporting feature is all you need for this function. You can use the reporting feature of happyfox software for monitoring your ticket inflow and optimizing your customer support strategies.
Two ways by which you can view your ticket inflow report involve graphical and pie chart arrangements which embed the various channels used by different customers at a particular time.
Apart from increasing your positive customer experience, the agent activity report feature allows you to track your agents' performance and identify customer support areas where they need additional training experience.
The survey report feature allows you to identify your agents' CSAT score and know your customers' satisfaction level.
There is also the ticket autoresponder where you can send automated response messages to customers' queries.
The in-built chat box feature which is ITIL adherence will allow your customer support agents to live chat with customers. Happyfox's chat box is Al-powered leading to improved performance.
Among other features you will enjoy with the Happyfox help desk software are self service portal, multilingual support, email notification, task management, satisfaction survey, and Happyfox sms.
Pricing
Sign up to get a 14 day-free trial and later upgrade to a paid version. For small and medium sized businesses, we recommend going for the Mighty, Fantastic, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus versions.
Large teams can choose Starter, Growth, Scale or the Scale Plus version.
Free Version: Not available
7. Vivantio Pro
Great CRM software for ITIL-based service desks of small businesses
Vivantio Pro is a strict ITIL adherence service management software built specifically as a CRM tool for small businesses and startups to manage their customer support processes like ticket configuration.
Vivantio Pro has a simple, easy-to-use, and straightforward interface which service desks and customer support reps can easily configure to suit their specific customer-service related needs.
What You Can Do With Vivantio Pro
Vivantio Pro is a service solution tool which you can use to manage, route and track your tickets addressees to IT service desks.
Support agents can use the charts and data which are on the dashboards to monitor customers and agents performance.
The software also comes with an ITIL-based basic layout that allows customer support agents to answer service requests and manage incidents.
You can use Vivantio Pro to manage your assets and measure your reports. There is a self service user interface which allows agents to automatically route basic functions.
It does this by helping them to track tickets arrangements, order tickets assignments, and manage ticket routing and prioritization.
Vivantio Pro is suitable for problem management, change management, problem management, configurable ticketing and workflow tracking.
You can manage incoming customer emails in a centralised platform, create and record contracts and monitor early service tickets.
The call center and knowledge management features allow your service desk agents to interact conveniently with customers through speaking directly with them.
Provide active guidance to your customers with the online knowledge base. You can deploy the Vivantio Pro software in the cloud or on-premise and you can also use it remotely from mobile devices.
Pricing
Vivantio Pro versions are for teams and enterprises starting from £42 and £62 monthly.
Free Version: Not available
8. Freshchat
Most suitable help desk software for lead generation and CRM for large organizations
Freshchat is a help desk software that offers a comprehensive solution for large enterprises' customer support agents to engage more with customers and attend to their needs.
What You Can Do With Freshchat
As a customer service software, it has an AI powered chatbot where your customer support reps can community actively with your customers. Irrespective of contact channels such as web, mobile and social messaging, engage with your customers easily.
Freshchat also enables campaigns, integrations, messaging and online knowledge base.
Let's check out each feature and the function.
Automations: With the automation feature, you can assign conversations to agents or teams, and use the assignment rules hallmark to create concrete specifications each assignment is to follow.
Drive conversations with campaigns and enable automated triggered messages to provide automatic responses to customers.
You can also perform email campaigns to generate more leads for your business.
Self Service: Self service features like the FAQ page allows you to prepare ready-made answers to possible customers' questions but using great articles.
The prechat feature allows your agents to gather necessary information from customers even before they chat with customers.
Add and enable multiple languages with multilingual freddy answers.
Build, design, and launch custom bot conversations to ask questions, qualify leads and schedule meetings. The multilingual customer flow also allows you to engage a DIY bot builder in about 35 global languages.
Other features which promote customer support self service are instant answers, hallway lead bot, freddy custom flow, freddy answers.
Access and Security: With the roles and performances feature, you can customize the amount of access you will give to each agent according to their various roles.
Is your data prone to virus, spam, and malwares from some particular IPs? Let's your customer support agents handle this easily by blocking selected IPs. Note that you can unblock later.
Productivity and Performance: Track your team performance, monitor your customer engagement and use the dashboard to view summary of all activities. Auto resolve conversations, enable canned responses and promote co-browsing to increase your help desk productivity.
Smart Plugs: Freshchat allows you to integrate smart plugs such as the Calendly smart plug, Woocommerce smart plug and the Stickeriod smart plug. To add smart plug, navigate to the admin, click smart plug, then click add smart plug.
Note that you can also edit or delete a smart plug.
Pricing
Freshchat has the messaging version for small, medium and enterprises and the omnichannel version.
Free Version: Available
9. DoneDone
Best issue management cloud-based software for small businesses' team
DoneDone is a simple no-brainer management software which is easily affordable for small businesses. It offers a cloud-based solution for team tracking of issues, workflows, projects, tasks and bugs.
What You Can Do With DoneDone
A go-to management software for marketing and customer support teams, DoneDone will allow you to organise various tasks within a single platform.
You can customize your task workflows, monitor your progress and crush bugs which might hinder team productivity.
Make your customers delighted with the customer support team of your business by utilizing the ticket management system to assign and resolve your customer support tickets.
DoneDone also provides a single mailbox where you can manage all customers' messages, organize and attend to them promptly without any disorderliness.
Save and provide canned responses to common questions. You can view your assigned and unassigned tasks, and know the due dates of your assigned tickets.
Create custom workflows and fresh tasks, designate them with new tags and add your choice titles.
What's more? Use the customer service metric tracking to measure the number of active conversations you have with your customers and the performance ratings. With DoneDone, you can also track and squash annoying bugs.
Pricing
If you operate a charity or educational institution, then you are eligible for a 30% lifetime discount. Asides, the two paid versions are collaborative and outreach.
Free version: Not available.
10. Freshservice
Most suitable ITLl-adherence software for IT administrators of large enterprises
Freshservice is a cloud-based IT service desk software for IT teams. It is a sister service desk software to Freshdesk help desk software, and Freshsales. They all got their origin from the parent company, Freshwork Inc.
These softwares, however, differ in that freshservice is an ideal IT management tool while a fresh desk is most suitable for customer support help desk of large enterprises.
What You Can Do With Freshservice
With the ticketing system, self service and knowledge base features, Freshservice can also be deployed as a customer support management tool. Freshservice hallmarks include IT service desk, ITSM, IT project management, IT asset management and reporting. Let's discuss each of them below.
IT Service Desk: Your IT service management team can build an efficient drag and drop IT system customized to your business requirements.
Using the incident management feature, your customer support agents can handle tickets from multiple contact channels with automated resolution processes.
You can prioritize, categorize and manage tickets with simple built-in functions. Categorize similar questions and provide canned responses to them with knowledge management.
You can also create guides and helpful articles for customers through knowledge base articles.
Integrate with third-party apps using the orchestration center and encourage interactions among your customer agents with the team huddle feature.
ITSM: Freshservice allows you to isolate and track existing issues, and reduce future risks when you implement any change in your system structure. Update your IT team of new test plans, and schedule announcements to keep everyone informed.
IT Project Management: Proactively plan your projects within core ITIL modules with the integrated ITSM feature and view your real time project data to make informed future decisions.
You can also categorise each project using your desired specifications from tags to priorities, form fields and workflows.
Create personalised reporting dashboards to gain a cut edge view of your project analysis.
IT Asset Management: Automatically identify all your assets with the asset auto discovery and track them with asset lifecycle management.
You can then keep a detailed record of hardwares, softwares, and all your other IT and Non IT assets with the inventory management feature.
Reporting: Carry out comprehensive analytics, get organized custom cross-module and interactive visualizations.
Pricing
The first version begins from Starter and there is a free 22-day trial period which gives you access to all features.
Free Version: Not available.
11. Userlike
Best customer service software for medium and large enterprises
When it comes to getting the best live chat software to increase communication and engagement with your customers, don't take Userlike lightly.
Userlike is an efficient, easy-to-use, and user-friendly customer engagement tool that provides better customer interaction and positive customer experience.
What You Can Do With Userlike
It allows you to combine website chat with mobile messaging leading to an improved customer support service.
Using the online chats, your customers can easily make demands and inquiries from your customer support representatives. Increase your communication rate and experience with this chat feature.
But how will your customers know the right teams/agents to engage? Then, the operator groups and skills' features provide a complete solution for this issue.
Operator groups are systemically arrangements of customer support teams according to particular needs.
The operators' skills involve grouping your customer support agents according to their skills. This will make your customers know the right person to contact for their needs. Likewise, an agent can transfer an already-commenced chat to another agent, by forwarding the chat transcripts.
Automatically create smart customer profiles using the information gathered pre and post-chat survey.
Increase customer satisfaction and customer success by using a chat rating system to know your customer support standing and how best you can improve your customer service.
With Userlike, you can also generate comfortable leads through proactive chat, which ensures steady interactions with your customers.
Use the widget router to organise intelligent chat behaviours and convert from chatting to audio conversations. Explain critical issues and win your customers more by speaking with them using the audio conversation mode.
Each customer support agent can chat with many customers at the same time. Track your customer support success when chatting customers' addresses reach specified URLs. Integrate with your preferred CRM tools like Hubspot, Zendesk, Slack and Salesforce.
Pricing
Userlike offers a free trial and a forever free version with access to all core features.
Free Version: Available
12. TOPdesk
Best ITMS and Cloud-based CSAT Software for IT Service and Help Desk Teams
TOPdesk is a good ITSM, CAFM and ESM software used by help desk teams of medium and large organizations for basic ITSM services such as evaluation, integrations, service and support.
What You Can Do With TOPdesk
IT service desk teams can use TOPdesk as a good management tool to manage workflows, schedules, assets, and tickets.
With the use of the incident management feature, TOPdesk can register, process and resolve all sorts of incidents such as requests and tickets. You can also assign these tickets to respective IT teams.
Conserve time with the self service portal where users submit and track their own tickets without necessarily disturbing your customer support teams and representatives.
The knowledge base, as with most help desk softwares provides a platform where agents can share experience, knowledge and solutions with one another, to increase their productivity.
Build your desired FAQs and boost your self-service system.
How about assigning, sharing, prioritising, tracking and monitoring customers' tickets?
The project management tool, Kankan board will allow your IT service teams to perform these functions. You can also record concluded agreements with clients to ensure a neat record of projects.
TOPdesk offers multichannel support for service desk function, thereby allowing your customer reps to chat with many customers simultaneously and to save chat messages for future references.
Use the mail import feature to import your customers emails for resolution on a single platform. What about getting your customers to fill your request forms?
The solution is not far. Use the form designer to create forms which will capture needed information from your customers. With the survey model, track customers' feedback and know your customer service ratings.
Pricing
Before you place your order for any version, ensure you request for a quote first. You can also take a free trial.
Free version: Not available
13. FrontApp
Best email management tool for customer support teams
As the name implies, FrontApp is a 21st century app which allows you to access basic digital functionalities across your various digital devices.
Really? Oh no. Don't take the name for it.
FrontApp is rather a CRM tool that you can use to manage emails you receive from your customers and not a digital app as you might have presumed.
What You Can Do With FrontApp
It allows you to integrate your favourite CRM, project management tools, and customize with open ALS and apps.
FrontApp is the most ideal tool for your customer support agents to convert customers' emails into a powerful help desk.
It helps to keep various customers' emails organised, well arranged and neat.
With a collaborative team inbox, your customer support teams can work together on the same page with chats and customers' emails wrapped up in a single conversational inbox.
Boost your customer success by routing messages and using built-in email templates that will allow you to create smart flows.
No matter the number of your customers, apply the email analytics feature to have enough insights about all activities, and share key results with your customers.
Your customer support agents can easily take on messages, attend to them and resolve customers' issues quickly without any hitch or breakdown.
FrontApp allows you to also manage multiple communication channels easily which you can integrate into a single shared inbox accessible to every support team member.
Allow your customer support agents to comment on emails and share emails drafts seamlessly across the team.
For example, assuming there is a need for an agent to share a particular message with another agent, he/she can just @mention the concerned rep instead of forwarding the said message which can get crowded and messy.
FrontApp allows your customer support agents to work from home and sync across different apps.
Pricing
Take a 7-day free trial with FrontApp, and then upgrade to any paid version of your choice. FrontApp doesn't have any free version.
Free Version: Not available.
14. Hubspot Service Hub
Most suitable customer service software for small and large enterprises
Hubspot is definitely not new to building useful software tools for enterprises to perform important business operations.
Some of their various softwares are sales, marketing, content management, and of course, customer service softwares.
For example, their entirely free software, Hubspot CMS allows you to store up to a million contacts in your Hubspot database.
However, integratingthis software with all other tools like the customer service software makes the job easier and yielding. Here, we'll be talking about the Hubspot customer service software which is the Hubspot Service Hub.
What You Can Do With Hubspot Service Hub
This software comes with a smart user interface that can increase your customer support service and customer success.
Implementing this software for use is very easy as you don't need any Silicon Valley engineers or programmers to help you set it up. And once you arrive at successful installation of this tool, deal with your customer support issues fast and smarter.
Increase your conversion rate with live chat which allows you to interact with customers through real-time chatting.
You can centralise your communication channels- be it emails, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc.
Deal with customers' issues fast from a conversational feature identified as the universal inbox.
What else? Get live time access to ongoing activities in your customer support unit with the reporting dashboard.
You can also view various reports and statistics related to every assigned ticket.
Access and track tickets based on status, source and volume at a particular period and utilize these available stats to get more conversant with your customers.
Provide helpful information, guides and articles for your customers on the knowledge base.
Receive updates about views and activities on the knowledge base.
Know whether customer service being rendered by your customer support agents and teams are productive or not with the customer feedback hallmark.
Other features to streamline your customer support functions are team email, automation and routing, email tracking, email templates, meeting scheduling, and what have you.
Note that you can perform about more than 500 custom integrations with Hubspot Service Hub.
Pricing
Hubspot Service Hub offers a free version and paid versions which are Starter, Professional and Enterprise.
Free Version: Available
15. Jira Service Desk
Best ITIL tool for IT service and help desks of medium-size organizations
Jira service desk is an ideal service management software for documenting your projects and ensuring an effective customer support base.
What You Can Do With Jira Service Desk
Scale up your IT service department with this software, exceed your customers' expectations, and make them happier.
IT support agents can utilize Jira Service Desk to manage project overflow and tickets.
Create and design your choice customers-suited dashboards, filter and classify received tickets according to order of importance.
Jira Service Desk functions as an advanced ticketing tool which is essential for ITSM processes and customising ticket workflows with a fresh workflow editor.
You can assign tickets to suitable employees, control bugs and manage various incidents with a simple user interface platform.
To manage and track your tickets, generate reports with XML, HTML and PDF.
Build SLA metrics to increase your reputation among your customers and to increase your work outputs.
To enable SLA in the Jira Service Desk, navigate to the project setting, search for the SLA section, and click on ‘create SLA'.
Type in your metrics to activate SLA timer movement, identify your time goals and finally click on ‘add a new SLA metric to the list'.
Note that you can now deploy the Jira Service Management software which contains Jira Service Desk and other important custom features to increase your customer success.
Pricing
Jira Service Desk offers a free trial and a free version. Academic institutions and United States government entities are also eligible for special discounts.
Free Version: Available
16. Trengo
Most suitable customer service software for customer engagement and team collaboration
Have you been troubled lately about communicating with multiple customers at the same time? How about engaging in internal discussions within your service desk team?
If your answer was ‘yes' to the aforementioned questions, then Trengo might be the best solution for you. It is a simple CRM software that comes with customer engagement features like chat box and shared inbox.
What You Can Do With Trengo
The shared inbox allows you to consolidate your customers' messages from different channels encompassing WhatsApp, email and telegram
Thus, you can have a clear and smart arrangement of your customers' messages.
This makes communicating with your customers easier and faster.
Trengo also encourages effective team collaboration in which your customer support teams can discuss trending subjects and interact together with the simple interface multi channel team inbox.
Let's take an illustration. Assuming a customer reaches out i.e asks a question, Agent A can easily request for help from Agent B by mentioning the former agent's name using ‘at sign' at the front of the agent's name.
The customer can therefore be served better and be happier with your business.
Engage with your website visitors using the chat box and generate more leads that can finally lead to more customers.
Let customers self service by using the knowledge base to get enough direction when having issues that would have required raising tickets.
Instead of switching tools every second which could be tiring and demanding, your customer agents can know more about customers assigned to them by building profile templates.
Allow your customer support agents to work independent of location using the remote work feature.
Pricing
Even though Trengo doesn't offer a free version, you can take a free trial and if it meets your needs, upgrade to a paid version. Cash versions begin from Start which is at £5 per agent monthly.
Free Version: Available
17. Zoho Desk
Best customer support software for large organizations
If your company's customer support involves large teams which handle many requests and voluminous tickets from customers every passing day, we recommend you give Zoho Desk software a serious thought.
What You Can Do With Zoho Desk Software
It has a multichannel support feature where you can receive all sorts of messages from your customers, and likewise streamline your presence across all your social media applications.
Notably, emails are important customer support communication tools, hence Zoho Desk software enables you to use emails as an active communication channel.
You can turn emails received from your customers into tickets and deal with their issues fast.
Build and customize a multi-brand help center where you will allow your customers to have access to different service channels. Customers can also raise and submit their tickets from the help center.
There is a knowledge base in the help center where customers can get answers to disturbing issues related to your company products/services.
Customize your portal with HTML and CSS, and either allow your customers a public access or ask them to create personalised accounts.
Zoho desk softwares allows you to integrate with Google Analytics and know your customer support ratings by collecting feedback from your customers.
Enjoy the best out of your Zoho Desk software by using an inbuilt AL feature known as ZIA which increases your customer engagement success.
ZIA speaks with your customers directly in the help center, shares important information from the knowledge base with them and also identifies key ticket aspects and tags.
Monitor crucial ZIA statistics on ZIA dashboards and use the sentiment analysis to know your customers feelings.
Pricing
There is a free version of Zoho desk software and a free trial of 15 days. You don't have to install anything, and you can upgrade to a paid version which includes Standard, Pro and Enterprise.
Free Version: Available
What is Help Desk Software?
Think of it this way. Every business must have a customer support unit which receives challenging issues from customers about the company and its product or services.
The customer support unit consists of multiple support teams made up of agents who will handle each customer's request.
Back in the earlier centuries before technology advanced this much, customers who have any queries or requests would have to take their complaints physically to the support department of the company.
However, this changed with recent advancements in technology.
Customers do not have to meet customer support agents in person nor do they have to mail their complaints to the company.
This positive change took place because of the development of help desk softwares.
Typical help desk software is a computer program which allows customer support agents to troubleshoot customers' problems and resolve them easily.
Help desk software can also be used to provide more information to customers.
Most help desk software have multi-channel support which allows customer support agents to receive messages from customers from different channels.
Messages are orderly and arranged in a common multi-channel inbox from customers.
This promotes orderliness and easy resolution of customers' requests.
Other customizable features of help desk software which companies can use to increase their customer service are the ticketing system, knowledge base, live chat and the help center.
Specifically, live chat allows customer support agents to chat real-time with customers as if they are present with each other.
Modern help desk softwares also allows asset management, reporting and analysis, and multilingual support.
Benefits of Using Help Desk Software
A help desk software is very beneficial to customer support teams.
Not only for addressing customer requests, companies can also use internal help desk softwares to track down, discuss and address internal issues among employees.
For more clarity, here are five major benefits of using an help desk software.
1. Communicate easily with your customers
Almost all help desk softwares comes with a live chat, chat box, and multichannel shared inbox.
If you've been a customer support rep before (like me), you'd agree with me that getting lots of customers' messages everyday can be sometimes frustrating and annoying.
There are some days you'd just feel overwhelmed, cloudy and yet unproductive. So, what's the way out? An help desk software will easily do.
With the multichannel shared inbox that accompanies most help desk softwares, you can receive many customers messages (and yes, bulky) from various points of contacts- say emails, WhatsApp, telegram, Sms-you name it in a single centralised inbox.
Stop losing your customers' messages, get all of them together, neatly arranged in an help desk software inbox. That's not all the communication benefits of help desk software.
Use live chat to communicate with your customers real-time while they are going through your website and convert them into leads.
This will make you have more customers. The Freshchat help desk software is ahead of others in ensuring you communicate with your customers easily .
2. Stop performing repetitive tasks manually
There are just so many repetitive tasks associated with customer service.
Whether yours is having your customers ask the same sets of questions or collecting information from customers before chat, welcome productivity and reject work stress by taking advantage of help desk software automation to perform repeated tasks mechanically.
For example, if you notice your customers cannot do without asking some specific questions, you can use the canned responses feature to give answers for your customers.
All you need to do is to save your would-be answers to common questions, and deploy the autoresponder feature to automatically provide these responses to your customers.
Save your time and focus more on subjects that truly matter. Still with the automated system, gather enough information from your customers before chat begins, and even after chat, build custom bot conversations to provide instant answers to your clients.
Examples of help desk softwares that allow you to perform some tasks automatically are Happyfox, Userlike, EngageBay and LiveAgent.
3. Attend to tickets from your customers easily
A help desk software without a good ticketing system is bad. You can use the ticketing feature to collect and solve tickets from your customers. Assign each ticket that each customer support agent will solve automatically depending on the skill of the agent.
You can categorize each ticket into multiple categories, priority level, and status such as resolved or pending.
Many help desk softwares has a complete ticketing system that your customer support teams can use.
4. Unite with your favourite third-party apps
Modern and advanced help desk softwares allows you to integrate your help desk software with other third-party softwares, apps and add-ons thereby improving your customers' experience and optimising your customer service.
Examples of commonly integrated third-party apps are Slack, Google analytics, Shopify, Salesforce, Help scout, and Facebook messenger.
For example, you can join with a CRM tool that has great features for comprehensive customer relationship management like access to customer details so you can build more meaningful customer interactions.
Hubspot service hub, in particular, allows about 500 custom integrations with other third-party tools.
Another bonus?
You can also integrate other help desk software like Zendesk, Hubspot. However, Happyfox doesn't allow much integration.
5. See current reports of your activities
How do you know whether your customers are satisfied with your customer service?
What will help you to know how productive your customer support agents are? Help desk softwares allows to measure customer satisfaction with the customer feedback feature. You can even know your customer agents' performance.
For example, Proprofs has Qualaroo insights which will help you to know the visitors on your website.
Track important reports on dashboards using labelled pie charts and graphical analysis, and use these reports to make important future decisions.
Know important metrics like call volume, CSAT, FCR and content volume.Excellent help desk softwares that you can use to see reports are Freshservice, Happyfox and Freshdesk.
What Features Should You Look for in a Help Desk Software?
Now you probably know getting help desk software is very important.
But before paying with your hard-earned company money for a help desk software, you'd want to look out for important features that you need to watch out for.
What are the features that must come with a good help desk software so you don't have to regret buying one later? This is where we will check them all out. Here are ten features you should watch out for in a good help desk software.
1. Easy to use
As the first feature you must consider, a good help desk software should be easy to use and implement by your customer support agents.
The questions here are: does it come with good customisable tools? Do you have to go through many stresses before using them?
How long will it take during implementation? Answers to these questions based on different help desks vary.
While you'd find that some softwares is very easy to use with simple drag and drop features, others might require some technical knowledge which your customer support agents might not have.
Likewise, there are also some help desk software that requires you to download before use, while some doesn't need any download. You can use most help desk softwares on your own server or cloud.
However, note that choosing a simple help desk software does not mean you should not train your customer support and agents on some basic help desk functions.
For example, some help desks come with basic guides that provide enough instructions for usage. Yet, customer support reps might still need to get familiar with major help desk software features and tools.
2. Good Ticketing System
One of the most crucial help desk software features is a ticketing system.
A good help desk software should allow you to track, arrange and effectively manage your customer support tickets without any stress.
Beginning from receiving customers' tickets, you should be able to turn customers' messages to tickets, receive them from well- streamlined channels and have them well arranged in a multichannel team inbox.
After passing these features, check out if you can keep track of users requests, organise issues for faster resolution, and aggregate common similar queries.
Can you automate some tasks like ticket categorization and prioritization? How about handling your ticket status management? A good ticketing feature of an help desk software should allow you to do all those aforementioned functions.
3. Manage Your Emails Easily
It's possible you have the largest percentage of your customers' messages coming in through emails as a contact channel.
If you do, then one of the most important features you've got to evaluate when choosing a perfect help desk software for your business is an email management support tool. If you'd be going for this, then FrontApp might be the best option for you as it's a great email management software.
Build vital email templates, receive all messages in a shared inbox, and integrate other helpful CRM tools with this software.
You should be able to handle large email requests, categorise email messages, encourage team chats and make agents interact mutually with each other within a common inbox.
Needless to say, there are other help desk software you might want to consider such as Zendesk and Freshdesk which likewise support email management.
4. Excellent Security and Privacy
Many companies, especially large enterprises, do not take security lightly.
This covers physical security of employees and company's assets to virtual security of confidential company data and IT tools from malware, spyware, and virus.
Such businesses value privacy intensely even among employees and do not mind spending on high security tools that might cost an arm and leg.
But even if your company is not a security fan, you should be able to rest assured of a good help desk and IT software which encourages security of your company's data and customer details.
Fortunately, you don't have to spend an arm or leg for a good help desk software that gives top-notch security and privacy.
Also, public and free-range access from outside agents should be considerately limited.
Notably, the freshchat help desk software has efficient security features which enable you to customize permissions based on agents' roles so that high confidential data can only be accessible by top customer support officials.
You can also block dangerous IP addresses and likewise transfer IPs. DoneDone also allows you to track bugs and squash them accordingly. Other suitable help desks are Vivantio Pro, Zoho Desk, Happyfox and Freshdesk.
5. Integration Feature
One of the most beautiful benefits of an help desk software is the integration feature which allows you to integrate with other internal and third-party apps for more productivity and increased efficiency.
You might want to integrate your help desk software with your billing and payment system, email marketing software, customer particulars and CRM tools, especially if you're managing a B2B company. As such, watch out for the integration feature too.
6. Work from Home Support
The covid-19 pandemic has further stressed the importance of having an alternative to office working. The alternative is remote work which allows employees to work from home.
Thankfully, there are many remote desktop softwares that you can utilize for your business, importantly in this pandemic period.
And this extends to help desk software.
Recently advanced help desk software comes with remote work features that will allow support agents to provide assistance to end users without geographical location barriers.
Thus, consider taking the remote feature into consideration when making your call for a help desk software.
Examples of help desk software that contain great remote work tools for both customer support and IT service desks are Zendesk, and Happyfox.
Albeit, implementation of remote help desk software doesn't come without important considerations.
If you'll opt for a remote help desk software, consider vital factors like comprehensive functionality such as ticket routing and analysis tools, and additional implementation costs, and web-based operating systems.
Ensure there is a central team that manages, disseminates and oversees remote support softwares. Once you get all that in place, you can then go for a remote support software.
7. Easy Communication with Customers
At the core of your customer support operations is communication. How do your customers submit tickets? And how do your customer support agents answer tickets?
Through communication and engagement, of course. While buying an help desk software, you've got to watch out for a remarkable communication feature.
Which allows you to receive every customer messages from various channels used by your customers.
Then, you can provide resolutions to them promptly. Ensure your chosen help desk software has a chatbox and livechat features for real-time interactions with your customers.
You should likewise be able to provide canned responses, activate the autoresponder feature and in some cases, engage in telephone conversations with your customers.
A good example of customer service software that you can easily use as an effective communication software is Freshchat.
It allows you to engage in constant conversations with your customers, assign each conversation to your desired agents, and likewise provide the multilingual freddy answers.
You can even add or enable your desired languages, and sign up freddy answers in other languages.
Build and design custom bot conversations, quality leads and make your customers happy about your business.
8. Migration Option
The question here is; What if you want to switch to another help desk software?
Probably your customer support team has been using a help desk software initially. But after you have read this review, you want to make a change. That's not bad.
How do you achieve this? This is why the migration option is an important feature you should consider before you cashing in an help desk software.
For example, as your support team grows, there might be need to enlarge your service and therefore utilize a more comprehensive help desk software.
Some help desk softwares like EngageBay comes with a migration feature and a walk-through guide for migration.
You should be able to safely migrate your tickets, contacts, customers details, contact channels, knowledge base and other data associated with your customer support service through custom migration or fully automated data transfer.
Migrate your data from and to CSV files. Other go-to help desk software that will allow you to have a cakewalk migration are freshdesk and hubspot softwares.
9. Trial Use
Here is another big question: How do you know a help desk software has all of the above characteristics?
The answer is not far. Almost all help desk software allows you to trial them for a particular period.
This means you can use each help desk software without spending a penny. Especially if you are a small or start-up company, and you have a limited budget, then trialing the available software is very important so you can get the best for your limited financial resources.
Likewise, some help desk softwares such as Freshchat, LiveAgent, EngageBay, and Freshdesk offer entirely free versions, though with limited features.
If you have a limited budget, you can firstly use the free version of your chosen help desk software, and if there is a vital need to expand your customer support service, upgrade to a paid cost-effective version.
This is the golden rule: Try your chosen software before deciding for any help desk software.
10. Happy Customer Support
Since you will be using the help desk software majorly for customer support and service, the customer support of your preferred help desk software should be considered.
After all, they should be able to lead by example. The thing is, during your use of the help desk software, you might have one or two issues and therefore might need to contact their customer support.
If engaging their customer support now is difficult, how about when they actually need their help after your purchase? Are the customer support agents nice and responsive? Or are they only out to get your money? Do they seem to offer readily help and assistance?
These are some of the questions you will have to consider here.
Help Desk Software FAQ
Pinpointing an exact best help desk ticketing software is almost impossible. Why? This is because one of the primary features of most help desk softwares is the ticketing system.
However, as a fulfillment of one of our goals which is to provide a comprehensive and detailed guide to our precious readers like you, we have been able to pick out the best five help desk ticketing software. They are Freshdesk, Zendesk, Jira Service Desk, Zoho Desk and Hubspot Service Hub.
These help desks have complete and excellent ticketing features that help you to manage every single ticket received from your customers.
Receive your customers and employees' enquiries with automated support processes, ensure everything is orderly arranged and make your tickets assignment and routing easier and faster.
Every modern organization whether large enterprise or a beginning startup needs help desk software to carry out business operations successfully.
For example, an help desk software will allow you to keep in touch with major business stakeholders – your customers, and to attend to their needs promptly and satisfactory. A help desk software keeps you closer to your customers.
Not only about your customers, having help desk software in your customer support department can also increase the performance and productivity of your customer support agents and IT service desk.
Working with a help desk software will allow them to save time and resources while automating multiple tasks, live chatting with customers and keeping all customers' issues tracked and organized.
An help desk software also tends to increase team collaboration and mutual interaction within your customer support or IT teams. They can work together on the same page with a shared inbox and further collaborate with each other.
The knowledge base of a help desk software can likewise increase the knowledge of your customers and employees alike. Simply put, a help desk software is one of the most invaluable tools of a successful business.
Our choice for the best help desk software for small businesses is Freshdesk.
To start with budget, many small businesses mostly lack enough financial resources and might therefore not be able to afford high-cost helpdesk software.
No worries, Freshdesk offers a free plan which does not require payment of any dollar whatsoever.
And there is also a free trial period of 21 days in which the free plan and trail prove to be vitally useful for businesses who are just getting their feet wet with marketing.
Apart from the budget advantage, Freshdesk is also easy to use and does not require any technical knowledge. You can set it up easily and continue to enjoy its many features.
Among such features is the email and social ticketing which allows you to receive your customers messages from your social media tools and emails in the form of tickets.
Make your customers know more about your business by using the knowledge base which consists of necessary information that your customers might need to know.
Streamline your communication channels with a common inbox, increase your agent productivity, track and measure your activities with built-in reports. There is also a remote support feature and secure access to the software with a custom SSL certificate which activates automatically.
Ready to Make Your Customers Happy with Your Customer Service Center?
Are you just setting up your business, starting your blog, hosting your website or building a B2B business? And you're troubled about getting enough patronage. You want to make your customers find comfort with your business.
You want them to keep coming back for more. Then, using a help desk software makes all these things happen. It's the only solution to keeping your customer support department alive, and making all the unique differences that you need to stand out.
Here is quick analysis for the best help desk softwares for various functions.
- Small Businesses: Freshdesk, EngageBay, DoneDone, FrontApp, and Hubspot Service Hub
- Medium and Large Enterprises: LiveAgent, Zendesk, Userlike, Trengo, and Zoho Desk.
- IT Service Desk: Happyfox, ProProfs, Freshservice, Topdesk, and Jira Service Desk
- CRM Support: Vivantio Pro.
Avoid taking a quick look at these available software, instead comprehensively analyze each of them, consider their functions and pricing before you make your purchase.
Choose the best help desk software that is best suited for your business and take your company to your dream level.
Increase productivity, improve your support team performance, promote collaboration, make your customers happy, and keep your business going.