Best Help Desk Software
Buyer's Guide
Whether it’s returning a new dress, booking a vacation or troubleshooting wi-fi issues, we’ve all used customer support services at some point. But, as communication technologies continue to advance, so do customer service needs. People have started asking businesses for help everywhere, from traditional methods like phone calls and emails to modern channels like instant messengers and social media.
With so many channels to manage and monitor, how do you ensure no customer goes unanswered? That’s where help desk software comes in. It automates an organization's external and internal service management, ensuring that your agents have the support they need to resolve issues and your customers are satisfied.
Positive customer experiences lead to brand loyalty and word of mouth marketing, which, in turn, create growth opportunities. Investing in your customer service teams by improving infrastructure with tools like help desk solutions can be the key to unlocking customer service-led growth.
Curious to see how help desk solutions could benefit your business? Let’s dive in!
Executive Summary
- Help desk software is a tool that streamlines day to day operations and improves workflows by minimizing downtime, boosting agent productivity and encouraging customer self-service with tools like knowledge bases.
- Help desk systems can help in boosting customer satisfaction, increasing efficiency and improving customer retention.
- Help desk solutions can also help improve agent productivity by providing agents the right tools to automate repetitive tasks, optimize workflows, track performance and enhance the quality of customer service they provide.
- Omnichannel support and cloud-computing are some major upcoming trends in customer service and help desk systems can help you keep up.
- Before making a final decision on which help desk system to deploy, it’s important to thoroughly compare all of your options, based on how well they match your organizational needs, and talk to vendors to figure out which tool best suits your budget and requirements.
- What Is Help Desk Software?
- Deployment Methods
- Primary Benefits
- Implementation Goals
- Basic Features & Functionality
- Advanced Features to Consider
- Current and Upcoming Trends
- Software Comparison Strategy
- Cost & Pricing Considerations
- Best Help Desk Software
- Questions To Ask Yourself
- Questions To Ask Vendors
- FAQs
- Next Steps
- Product Comparisons
- Additional Resources
What Is Help Desk Software?
Help desk software is a virtual customer support platform and service desk. It enables businesses to receive and resolve customer complaints through various channels, and facilitates immediate responses to customer support requests and other queries.
Help desk solutions allow customers to contact companies in the form of tickets. Tickets can be submitted through a dedicated portal, email, SMS, live chat or a whole host of other channels. These tickets are then routed to a support agent who can address the customers’ concerns.
These tools simplify ticket management and streamline a company’s customer service process, helping ensure a positive customer experience. The quality of customer experience does influence purchasing decisions, possibly even more than advertising or branding do.
For example, for one fourth of consumers surveyed by PWC in 2022, having just one low-quality customer service experience with a company caused them to switch brands. This tells us how important it is to invest in your help desk system and take steps to improve customer service.
Types of Help Desk Software
There are three different kinds of help desk systems that cater to various types of customer queries:
- IT Support: This category addresses problems the internal users from the organization encounter - for instance, workers who need assistance with resetting their password or server maintenance.
- Customer Service: These solutions assist customers with difficult questions and company products or services.
- Other Functions: Employees may have issues and questions throughout the workplace. Help desk solutions can serve departments such as legal, finance, HR and marketing.
Deployment Methods
Help desk vendors offer various deployment methods that cater to the diverse needs of today’s market. Businesses can choose between cloud-based deployment or on-premise installation depending on their specific needs.
Cloud-based
Cloud-based platforms generally follow a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model which is subscription-based and requires a recurring payment. Cloud-based tools have many advantages. They require less maintenance, have fewer upfront costs and can be easily scaled and upgraded.
Mid-sized or small businesses, lacking in-house technical expertise and IT resources, tend to prefer cloud-based help desk systems because they are cost-effective and easy to implement. However, this mode of deployment has also gained popularity among larger companies because of benefits like remote work support, lower cost of installation and more scalability.
On-premise
For on-premise deployment, the system needs to be installed locally on your office computers and internal servers. The benefit of this model is that it doesn't require a connection to third-party servers which makes it easier to fix bugs and provides better data security. It also allows you to customize the system to your company’s specific needs.
Although cloud deployment has become quite popular in recent years, on-premise deployment is still preferred by some companies because of the flexibility and security it offers. Additionally, while the upfront cost of installation is higher, it’s a one-time payment and not a recurring charge which is a disadvantage of subscription-based systems.
Primary Benefits
Let’s look at some of the benefits of help desk software and how it can help your organization.
- AI Chatbots
- Chatbot Platforms
- Chatbot
- Chatbots For Support
- Complaint Management
- Conversational AI
- CRM
- Customer Engagement
- Customer Retention
- Customer Service
- Customer Success
- Email Ticketing
- Help Desk For Schools
- Issue Tracking
- IT Ticketing
- Knowledge Base
- Knowledge Management
- Live Chat For Customer Service & Support
- Live Chat
- Online Help Desk
- Remote Desktop
- Service Request
- Ticketing
Customer Satisfaction
Positive customer experiences lead to brand loyalty. One study by Qualtrics found that 41% of companies with higher customer experience scores reported improvement in customer retention rates compared to just 29% of companies with lower scores. Help desk solutions can help agents respond to customers better and resolve queries faster, improving customer experience.
Help desk solutions allow agents to prioritize customer issues and assign urgency to incoming tickets. The prioritization helps the team to concentrate on the most time-sensitive problems and critical support cases. Help desk software also comes with sentiment analysis tools to allow agents to figure out the customer’s conversational tone and respond appropriately.
Better Service Options
A 2021 report by Gladly found that 60% consumers today prefer to resolve their issues on their own instead of contacting customer support. Keeping a comprehensive knowledge base helps customers easily get answers to common issues through various articles, documentation, how-to guides, blogs, FAQs and troubleshooting instructions. This allows customers to resolve their issues on their own and reduces the load on your agents.
This feature also allows businesses to store crucial expertise in a useful form that both agents and customers can refer to if the need arises. Agents can refer customers to the knowledge base and, if the issue reoccurs, customers can go back to these resources instead of having to go through a live agent again.
Better Performance Management
Managers can analyze their team’s performance and where inefficiencies lie with the help of reporting tools. Help desk systems help generate reports highlighting recurring client issues and performance statistics to address concerns and make the entire day-to-day operations more efficient.
By measuring team productivity through various KPIs, you can design a productivity program to focus your team’s efforts on where they need to improve, helping them deliver world-class customer service.
Accessibility
According to a Gartner study, around 70% of customer service employees would prefer to continue working from home even after the pandemic. Most help desk solutions provide remote work and virtual call center support which allows employers to provide more flexible remote work options.
Ensuring accessibility and flexibility for employees also improves employee satisfaction — and more satisfied employees are usually more productive. The Qualtrics study mentioned above found that 34% of companies with high customer experience scores also note improvements in employee experience over the past year, compared to just 14% of companies with low CX scores.
Expert recommendations and analysis on the top Help Desk solutions
Implementation Goals
|
Goal 1 Boost Customer Satisfaction |
The primary aim of help desk solutions is improving and streamlining a customer’s relationship with the business. From ticket management capabilities that target problems effectively to maintaining customer databases and providing personalized service these systems cover everything. |
|---|---|
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Goal 2 Increase Efficiency |
Help desk software enables agents to do more in less time. They centralize all data and activities, streamline workflows and enable collaboration across teams. Moreover, AI integration and automation significantly reduce manual efforts for data entry, pipeline management and more. |
|
Goal 3 |
Agents can offer support to customers from their mobile phones even when they are not on other workstations. This means there are fewer chances of missed calls. Additionally, tools like customer sentiment analysis, customized customer databases and ticket prioritization are aimed at improving customer experiences and boosting retention. |
|
Goal 4 Drive Profits and Revenue |
Help desk systems drive revenue and profit by improving customer experiences and boosting brand loyalty. Salesforce found that 89% of business buyers and 92% of retail consumers prefer to spend more time with companies that have provided them a positive customer service experience. |
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Goal 5 Stay Ahead of Competition |
With prescriptive and predictive analysis, AI and machine learning influenced techniques, organizations stay ahead of competitors. Reporting and analytics tools also allow companies to understand their shortcomings and work on improving their operations. |
Expert recommendations and analysis on the top Help Desk systems
Basic Features & Functionality
Let’s look at some of the basic functionalities and must-have features of help desk solutions.
| Ticket Management |
Assign tickets automatically or manually based on need, agent skills, availability and timezone. View, sort, categorize and filter tickets. Track open complaints, view ticket histories and monitor trends in requests. |
|---|---|
| Knowledge Base Management |
Enable organizations to create a storehouse of common problems and a record of solutions that can be helpful in the future. By making this information easily accessible and searchable, businesses facilitate DIY and self-service options for customers and cut down on ticket volume. |
| Reporting and Analytics |
According to reports by Zendesk, companies that make use of reports and analytics to measure team metrics can reduce their customer query resolution time by 16%. Organizations can aggregate and track data to analyze a team’s productivity and performance and identify trends. Using tools such as data visualization, managers can export this information to share with others in the form of an easy-to-read report. |
| Automated Workflows | Help desk software is equipped with efficient automated workflow features that automatically direct inquiries to the right channels without manual intervention. They can also use automated responses for common customer queries. |
| Alerts/Escalation | Keep agents updated about ticket progress and accelerate the resolution of specific tickets to a higher priority based on predetermined criteria. This also allows managers to supervise the flow of tasks and monitor service quality and efficiency. |
| Collaboration Tools |
Help desk systems let workers collaborate on three levels. First, between departments and teams so agents can use the company's other resources. Second, among agents to help them work on a complex ticket. And third, between customers and agents and customers to solve end-user queries and attain feedback. |
| Database Capacity |
A robust help desk system can store historical interactions between customers and agents for future reference. They can also host content for the knowledge base, depending on the company’s server capacity. |
| Scalability |
Help desk solutions also allow the use of third-party plugins and offer API access to help organizations expand the platform’s functionality in response to increases in ticket volume. |
| Omnichannel Ticketing Support |
Help desk solutions let agents interact with customers across multiple channels such as messaging, SMS, social media, community, voice calls and video calls to boost customer satisfaction rates and queries faster. It also offers email ticketing support and call center management tools. |
Expert recommendations and analysis on the top Help Desk systems
Advanced Features to Consider
Now that we’ve covered the must-haves, let’s look at some more advanced features that might not be necessary for your help desk system to function but could enhance your operations.
| Communication Channel Integration |
Integrating help desk software with social media and email marketing reduces duplicate data entry and fills out customer profiles. This creates a detailed view of customer interactions with organizations and allows callers to connect through their preferred channels. |
|---|---|
| CRM Integration |
Connecting with a CRM can help organizations maintain and implement customer-centric plans and strategies that boost revenue, profitability and customer satisfaction. CRM software also stores important customer data that informs agents as they deal with customer complaints. |
| Native Mobile App |
A lot of help desk systems come with native mobile apps for Android and iOS. This allows agents to work on the go and resolve issues even when they are away from their workstations. |
| Bug Tracking |
Bug tracking software can help IT teams in prioritizing patches depending on the extent of user impact. It also identifies problems quickly and updates support staff about the known issues. |
Expert recommendations and analysis on the top Help Desk solutions
Current & Upcoming Trends
Keeping up with the trends is necessary if you want to provide the best service for your customers and top-of-the-line training to your agents. Let’s look at some upcoming trends in the realm of customer service and help desk.
Cloud Computing
According to a survey conducted by Statista, cloud computing is forecasted to generate over 440 billion USD in revenue in 2023. Global spending on software-as-a-service (SaaS) products amounted to 249 billion USD in 2021. Cloud computing has been growing in popularity across all sectors, and help desk solutions are no different.
Since cloud-based systems can be deployed online without any physical infrastructure, it can help organizations save effort and money on IT resources and infrastructure. This is a bonus in an era where companies are increasingly moving towards remote work and virtual call centers are becoming more common. In fact, studies have found that the prices of US office buildings might plummet as much as 39% in coming years in response to less demand for office spaces.
Remote and hybrid environments have also led to an improvement in employee productivity. Working remotely gives agents more control over their workflows and allows them to resolve tickets from anywhere through cloud access to features like ticket management, workflow management, training resources and omnichannel ticketing support. It also allows companies to hire workers from around the world and widens the scope for talent hunting and recruitment.
24/7 support
Gone are the days when the help desk was active only between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. These days, customers expect access to world-class support 24/7 via multiple channels, including social media, chat, call, video call, email, live chat and knowledge bases.
Customers today have higher standards and expectations for support. According to the Salesforce report referenced before, 83% of customers expect to engage with someone immediately after contacting customer service.
In 2022, Zendesk also found that 60% of consumers have higher customer service standards as compared to 2021. As such, the ability to provide 24/7 service has become increasingly important to match rising customer expectations.
As we saw in the previous trend, the growth of technologies like cloud computing have also played a role in making 24/7 support possible. Companies are now able to hire people from different time zones and can automatically assign them shifts using help desk software.
Self-Service
The Zendesk report also found that 89% of consumers would spend more time with companies that allow them to find solutions for their problems online. This indicates a rising trend of customers choosing to empower themselves rather than rely on support agents. The popularity of self-service is good news for businesses, because it can increase customer satisfaction while reducing ticket volume and freeing up resources.
Self-service tools allow customers to resolve common or simpler queries on their own without connecting with an agent. This helps boost team productivity as agents can concentrate on more complex issues and resolve queries more quickly. It’s no wonder that, in 2023, Gartner found that self-service adoption and knowledge management were among the top five priorities for customer service leaders.
Tools like tutorials, documents, videos and articles empower customers and reduce agent workloads. Customers can also eliminate the need to wait in the call queue to connect with agents and resolve the problem by exploring knowledge base content. This improves both customer experience and employee experience.
Along with self-service, we’re also seeing a rise in the use of user-led forums for troubleshooting and support. Help desk systems come with specific tools for setting up such user communities and for moderating them.
These communities allow customers to connect with their peers and discuss issues and solutions through integrated discussion forums and user communities. They can also participate in group chats, discussion boards and FAQ forums to get a sense of the pros and cons of the product and gain valuable insights through other customers’ experiences.
Omnichannel Support
Customers today interact with companies on a wide array of different channels, and they expect to receive help and support on the channel of their choice.
Salesforce found that 76% of customers prefer different channels depending on context. Email, phone and in-person support were the top three most preferred channels. 93% of people surveyed by Zendesk also said that they would spend more time with companies that offered support through their preferred communication channel. All this data points to the idea that meeting customers on the platforms they like to use correlates to increased satisfaction.
Outsourcing
An increasing number of companies worldwide are looking to outsource their essential business functions to third-party organizations to streamline their workflow and save on costs. According to a 2022 study by Deloitte, around 76% of IT companies outsource their operations. Additionally, the customer care outsourcing market is expected to reach USD 34.57 billion, globally, by 2028. So why is outsourcing booming at this rate?
Outsourcing is widely seen as a cost-cutting measure, but it’s more than that. It’s a way of expanding the potential talent pool to workers who wouldn’t otherwise be available. Companies are also looking at newer forms of outsourcing, like managed services, which involves outsourcing more complex business functions and management responsibilities for a whole range of processes.
Cloud computing and the popularity of remote work have also contributed to the rise of outsourcing. Hiring employees in different countries and having them work remotely has become much easier in recent years.
AI
Zendesk found that AI had become the top trend in 2023. With the growth of technologies like generative AI and advanced machine learning, AI has not just become better — it has actually improved beyond expectations.
AI improves customer-agent interactions by helping companies understand customer behavior by analyzing and gathering historical, behavioral and social data. This allows companies to increase sales opportunities, provide highly relevant content and enhance customer journeys.
AI can help companies connect with their customers on a more personal level and improve agent productivity through tools like predictive analysis, real-time decisioning and conversational bot assistants. In fact, according to McKinsey, empowering agents through technology and AI could help you create the superhuman agent.
Expert recommendations and analysis on the top Help Desk systems
Software Comparison Strategy
Although there are dozens of lists with best and worst help desk solutions in the market, every company has different requirements and customer support needs. What’s best for others may not be the best for you. It’s important to do your research to figure out the most appropriate system for your organization.
To begin you can use our requirements template to rank and prioritize your most important needs. Analyze and compare systems to find out which platforms most closely meet your requirements.
Next, read the basic and advanced features listed above and analyze what your business needs to stand out among competitors. Once you have the answer, look for a software platform that provides those extra capabilities.
Cost & Pricing Considerations
How you deploy the system will significantly impact how much you pay both as an upfront fee and in the long run. With a cloud product, you generally have to pay an ongoing subscription fee based on the number of users.
On-premise systems usually involves a one-time or recurring license purchase, depending on the provider. However, some require separate licenses for individual users, so the number of users could be a factor in determining cost.
Beyond that, you must also consider expenses incurred in operating a help desk software and the total cost of ownership. Version upgrades, add-on features and plug-ins, maintenance and data migration are some common additional expenses that you may run into.
Best Help Desk Software
The ideal help desk software is one that most closely matches your needs and requirements. To help you narrow down your search, here’s a brief overview of the highest-rated help desk systems according to our analysts.
Freshdesk
Freshdesk is a help desk solution that can increase customer engagement and satisfaction by simplifying ticketing, streamlining operational workflows and automating processes. This cloud-based platform offers various field service modules, including quick query resolution, omnichannel customer engagement and automated ticket routing.
Ticket management with Freshdesk. Source
Zendesk for Service
Zendesk for Service offers streamlined sales and customer support products that allow agents to solve problems efficiently, track issues and prioritize support tickets. Its omnichannel support allows organizations to deliver world-class support by phone, chat, email, social media and more. It also offers built-in routing to reduce resolution time and ensure the appropriate customer-to-agent fit. For more information, see our Ultimate Zendesk Review.
Live chat-based support with Zendesk. Source
Salesforce Service Cloud
Salesforce Service Cloud is a help desk system by Salesforce that provides omnichannel ticketing support, customizable knowledge bases, telephony integration, service analytics and a host of other tools. Salesforce Service cloud helps make your customer service workflows more efficient and productive and enables agents to better, more personalized and faster service.
Salesforce Service Cloud agent dashboard. Source
LiveAgent
LiveAgent is a help desk solution and online communication platform that provides comprehensive, omnichannel and multilingual support tools. Apart from ticket management and call center management tools, it also offers self-service tools, data protection and advanced analytics and reporting. It also supports a host of third-party plugins and integrations with CRM and marketing software.
Ticket management with LiveAgent. Source
HubSpot Service Hub
HubSpot Service Hub is a comprehensive customer service tool from HubSpot. The platform offers flexible service, self-service support, personalized customer service, conversational AI tools, VoIP integration and an array of other features. HubSpot ensures faster issue resolution, enhanced agent productivity and data-driven insights.
Ticket management with HubSpot Service Hub. Source
Expert recommendations and analysis on the top Help Desk systems
Questions To Ask Yourself
These questions can help organizations streamline their selection process:
- Does this tool meet your organization’s needs?
- Do you need to integrate your help desk solution with other software, like an ERP tool?
- What’s the long-term viability of your help desk provider?
- What’s the turnaround time for support of the provider in case there is an emergency in the system?
- Do you have industry-specific requirements and does the system meet them?
- Which is better: cloud or on-premise deployment?
- Who are the consistent users of help desk solutions in the organization (managers, sales reps, marketers, etc.) and what gaps must the system fill?
- What channels does this system support?
- How will this system maximize organization’s productivity?
- Do your agents require remote support?
Questions To Ask Vendors
Use these questions as a starting point for conversations with vendors:
About the Software
- How often are updates offered, and do they occur automatically?
- Do the updates impact the software's accessibility?
- How well does the system integrate with other BI tools?
- What features cost extra?
- Is there training to support user adoption?
- What level of customization is available?
- How much time will onboarding and implementation take?
- How does the ticket workflow work?
- How many contact profiles can be stored?
About the Vendor
- What support options do you offer? What do they cost?
- What do you specialize in? Can you serve organizations of all sizes?
- Do you offer setup and migration services?
- How’s your customer success track record?
- What kind of redundancy and security protocols are followed to protect data?
FAQs
What is help desk software?
Help desk software is a category of tools designed to streamline, simplify and manage the operations of a customer support and service desk. These tools gather customer complaints and queries in the form of tickets, route them to agents for resolution. Help desk systems also makes it easy to view, track, summarize, and audit tickets and ticket histories.
What are the features of help desk systems?
Ticket management, knowledge base management, workflow automation, call center management and bug tracking are some of the features of help desk solutions. Check out our article on the features of help desk software for more detailed insights.
What is a ticketing system?
A ticketing software is a specialized category of help desk solutions that helps with ticket management and tracking. Check out our ticketing systems buyer’s guide for more detailed insights.
What is the best help desk system?
Freshdesk, Salesforce Service Cloud and Zendesk for Service are some of the best help desk solutions, according to SelectHub research and data.
Expert recommendations and analysis on the top Help Desk systems
Next Steps
Help desk software streamlines critical parts of your customer support process, enabling you to service your customers better and create long-term relationships with them. It offers modern and robust tools to improve communication, team workflows and collaboration.
Before making a final decision on which help desk system is best for you, it’s important to conduct an extensive and thorough research and ensure that the platform you choose matches your specific needs and requirements. Our free comparison report can give you a headstart in helping you figure out the right tool for your needs. We wish you luck on your software selection journey!
Product Comparisons
- Freshdesk vs. Salesforce Service Cloud
- LiveAgent vs. HubSpot Service Hub
- Salesforce Service Cloud vs. Zendesk
- Zendesk vs. Freshdesk
- Freshdesk vs. LiveAgent
- HubSpot Service Hub vs. Zendesk
- Zendesk vs. LiveAgent
- Salesforce Service Cloud vs. HubSpot Service Hub
- HubSpot Service Hub vs. Freshdesk
Additional Resources
Top 10 Help Desk Software Leaders by Analyst Rating (of 269 products)
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