Find the best Help Desk Software

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Salesforce Service Cloud

Service Cloud from Salesforce is a cloud-based customer service management solution that is designed to initiate customer service activities from anywhere. Built on the Salesforce1 Platform, Service Cloud works to centralise and o...Read more about Salesforce Service Cloud

JIRA Service Management

FrontRunners 2024

Formerly known as Jira Service Desk, Jira Service Management is an IT service management solution that unlocks high-velocity teams. IT is in the midst of rapid transformation to build capabilities that enable quick delivery of ...Read more about JIRA Service Management

Vision Helpdesk

Vision Helpdesk is a cloud-based ticket management solution for businesses of all sizes across multiple industry segments. This software allows businesses to automate ticket workflow using rule-based criteria and centralize t...Read more about Vision Helpdesk

Zoho Desk

FrontRunners 2024

Zoho Desk is a cloud-based help desk solution from Zoho Corporation, catering to businesses of all sizes. Key features include management of customer support tickets, a customer support portal, contract management and report creat...Read more about Zoho Desk

OneDesk

OneDesk software combines project management and helpdesk in a single application. OneDesk provides an easy-to-use, yet feature-rich software that helps businesses manage both ticketing and task workflows in one place. OneDesk is ...Read more about OneDesk

Atera

FrontRunners 2024

Atera’s all-in-one platform enables IT professionals to gain access, visibility, and control over their networks and devices from anywhere, so they can work smarter and faster. With Atera, you can manage your entire IT operation ...Read more about Atera

HaloITSM

HaloITSM is a cloud-based platform designed for ITIL-aligned service delivery. This solution can be used by organizations of all sizes in a variety of industries. With features like incident management, a customizable knowledge ba...Read more about HaloITSM

HaloCRM

HaloCRM is intuitive customer service software that can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. The platform is designed to help businesses of all sizes streamline customer support operations. Organizations can track and manage co...Read more about HaloCRM

5.0 (2 reviews)

Bitrix24

Bitrix24 is an online workspace for small, medium, and large businesses. It features over 35 cross-integrated tools, including CRM, tasks, Kanban board, Gantt chart, messenger, video calls, file storage, workflow automation, and m...Read more about Bitrix24

Freshdesk

FrontRunners 2024

Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer service software that helps businesses provide effortless service across every customer touchpoint. Freshdesk empowers businesses to monitor customer conversations across email, phone, chat, soc...Read more about Freshdesk

LinkFacts

LinkFacts has teamwork tools for chatting, brainstorming, and sharing knowledge, ideas, and documentation. It can meet specific user requirements as the platform is fully customizable. The app is suitable for journalists, students...Read more about LinkFacts

5.0 (4 reviews)

Almanac

Almanac is a platform for async work, built around a document editor with powerful version control. ...Read more about Almanac

InvGate Service Desk

FrontRunners 2024

InvGate Service Desk is an IT service management platform that offers help desk request fulfillment, customer service and support and self-service knowledge management. The system is compatible with Mac, Windows, and iPad (or othe...Read more about InvGate Service Desk

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TeamSupport

TeamSupport is a robust customer support solution designed to improve customer satisfaction, simplify workflows, and make agents’ lives easier. We empower teams of all sizes to consolidate channels, shorten time to resolution, col...Read more about TeamSupport

4.5 (844 reviews)

1 recommendations

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Spekit

Spekit is a cloud-based at-work learning tool that combines the capabilities of a knowledge base, sales tool, and digital adoption platform. It helps sales, IT, financial, and HR departments onboard their staff, bring them on the ...Read more about Spekit

NICE CXone

Organizations around the world are striving to deliver the ultimate customer experience, strengthen brand value, and boost efficiency. NICE CXone empowers brands to achieve these objectives on one interaction-centric platform with...Read more about NICE CXone

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Enghouse eKMS

Now part of Enghouse Interactive, SmartSupport Knowledge Management Solutions is a plug-and-play knowledge base solution that caters to businesses of all sizes across various industries. The solution lets users streamline customer...Read more about Enghouse eKMS

HappyFox Help Desk

HappyFox is a cloud-based customer relationship management solution that provides help desk and ticketing solutions to businesses across various industries, including computer and software, education, travel and leisure, media and...Read more about HappyFox Help Desk

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mHelpDesk

mHelpDesk is a field service solution that helps customers automate everything from first customer contact to getting paid. This includes customer management, quoting, dispatching, invoicing, billing and reporting. mHelpDesk ...Read more about mHelpDesk

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Help Scout

Help Scout is a dedicated customer support platform built for growing teams to deliver best-in-class customer service. When you sign up you get access to an entire suite of tools, all optimized specifically for customer support. ...Read more about Help Scout

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Buyers Guide

Last Updated: March 16, 2023

 Service desk agents need to respond to a constant stream of end-user queries regarding IT issues, product information, and installations. And it's just as important to keep track of every issue/incident as it is to solve them.

Manually entering requests in a system, categorizing them, and creating support tickets wastes a lot of time and resources. Help desk software helps automate most of the steps in this process, allowing faster resolution of immediate needs, incidents, and technical issues users.

Help desk tools allows support agents to consolidate tickets from multiple channels (e.g., email, live chat, calls, self-service portals). Managers can access key information such as workload, incident turnaround time, and resolution rate.

Help desk software often integrates with customer service, customer relationship management, contact center, and knowledge base software to facilitate better customer service and support. This buyers guide explains what help desk software is and what to look for to find the best help desk tool for your business.

Here’s what we'll cover:

What is help desk software?

Help desk software helps businesses and support teams accept, manage, organize, automate, respond to, and report on customer questions or issues. These tools centralize information and support management to automate the complaint resolution process. Help desk systems can be used for external customer service or internal IT support within an organization.

Some customer relationship management (CRM) software offers help desk functionality. Help desk software can often integrate with CRM software or other tools to access customer data and facilitate customer service.

Interaction-tracking-in-Zoho-Desk-software

Interaction tracking in Zoho Desk software (Source)

Common features of help desk software

Knowledge base management

Facilitate virtual conferences that connect multiple people remotely over the phonCreate, store and share information, FAQs, and support articles in a central database. Employees or customers can self-navigate through the knowledge base to find answers without waiting for a support agent.

Ticket management

Consolidate and track all end-user issues from different sources (phone, email, chat, request forms, etc.) and convert them into tickets.

Alerts/Escalation

Send notifications to support desk agents about ticket prioritization.

Interaction tracking

Add notes, conversation history, and actions taken to each issue/incident. This helps service desk agents keep track of tickets, reference past issues, identify repeat incidents, and more.

Reporting/analytics

Analyze customer support performance by tracking average response time, ticket volume, request/ticket sources, and more.

Self-service portal

Allow end-users to answer their own questions without support agents by browsing knowledge base articles, using self-service forums, and easily contacting support to follow-up on past requests.

Service-level agreement (SLA) management

Document an agreement between the provider and end-user that identifies services required and expected level of service.

Workflow configuration

Change, adjust, and configure your workflow based on business needs and user-defined rules to help automate repetitive and manual tasks.

Multi-channel communication

Give end-users the option to submit requests via multiple channels such as email, live chat, text, voice, online forms, and social media. This reduces customer wait time and speeds up the issue resolution process.

What type of buyer are you?

Before purchasing a help desk solution, you should assess what kind of a buyer you are. Most buyers fall into two categories:

  • Buyers serving external customers: Buyers in this category directly serve customers and handle customer-generated queries. Help desk software for these buyers allows customer service teams to create support tickets to track customer issues and solutions.

    These buyers should look for help desk tools that offer live chat, social media integration, multi-channel communication, call center management, alerts, and reporting capabilities to provide service desk agents with a holistic view of all tickets, allow them to organize tickets, and improve customer satisfaction by providing faster support.

  • Buyers serving employees: Internal employees often need support regarding IT, HR, and admin-related issues. Buyers in this segment need help desk software that includes internal ticketing, a knowledge base, and the ability to assign/route employee-generated tickets to relevant staff.

    These buyers should invest in a help desk system that provides employee self-service options, live chat, reporting and analytics, automated routing, and email management functionalities. Ideally, these buyers should also look for features such as IT service management and incident management so staff can easily check on ticket status and progress.

Benefits of help desk software

  • Better customer support: Help desk software organizes communication in a central location so businesses can quickly respond to customers. Automated ticket routing and multi-channel communication capabilities can help support staff prioritize tickets and avoid duplicate tickets.

  • Improved productivity: Help desk software automation features reduce the amount of manual administrative and organizational tasks agents need to complete. These tools can automatically route tickets to team members who specialize in specific issues and complaints. The ability to add notes to a conversation and respond to common questions with saved replies can also help boost productivity.

  • Better decision-making: The reporting capabilities of help desk software provide key insights regarding ticket resolution times, customer satisfaction, employee productivity, and customer experience so businesses can understand how things are working overall and make decisions to optimize.

Key considerations

  • Easy-to-use interface: Choose a tool that has a shorter learning curve for employees and an intuitive interface. Look for help desk software that provides a free trial, demo sessions, and training videos so employees can get up-to-speed as quickly as possible.

  • Scalability: As your team continues to grow, so will your needs. Finding a solution that grows with your business is important. Look for a cloud-based solution or web help desk platform that can support a large volume of customers and adapt to different use cases and issues.

  • Customer expectations: Before buying a help desk tool, it is important to know how your customers would prefer to interact with you? Do they prefer self service tools, emails, chat services, or a mobile-friendly knowledge base? Make sure to invest in a help desk platform, after considering your customers’ satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

Market trends to understand

Cognitive automation of help desk software: Advancements in machine learning technology have prompted help desk service providers to add cognitive automation to their tools. This technology can help extract key phrases from employee or customer requests, categorize them, create support tickets, and route them to specific groups. Help desk providers that integrate cognitive automation into their software can help businesses save more time and money as employees have even fewer manual tasks to complete.

Note: The application selected in this article is an example to show a feature in context and is not intended as an endorsement or recommendation. It has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time of publication.