When you want to provide exceptional customer service, organization and speed are your secret weapons. Gone are the days when customers would wait around for days for you to revert with answers to their questions. Today, the business landscape is competitive, and customers expect very fast responses to their requests.
Consider this – 90% of customers expect an immediate response (according to Helpscout), which could be well within 10 minutes of their request. What happens if your customer service is slow? Suffice it to say slow responses are not good customer service, in which case, 65% of those customers could switch to another brand with (what they’d call) better customer service.
To prevent losing out, you can invest in a SaaS help desk software to provide better and faster customer support. Not sure which is good for your business? Let’s guide you on how to choose one, the best options, and also how to use Zight to improve your customer service!
What Is a SaaS Help Desk Software?
A SaaS help desk software is a cloud-based application you can use to manage and respond to customer service requests. The term “SaaS” stands for Software-as-a-Service, which means the software is hosted in the cloud and accessed via the internet, rather than being installed on individual computers.
How Zight Can Plug Into Your Selected Help Desk Software To Help Your Team Visually Communicate For Faster Resolutions
Even with your SaaS help desk solution, it’s also a good idea to improve your communication to make the most of the software.
Today, it makes the most sense to use visual communication in customer support. You can leverage the power of screenshots and videos to help your customers better through multiple communication channels, whether through live chat, email threads, or a self-knowledge base.
So, we recommend using a reliable screen recording software like Zight. Here’s what you can do with it:
1. Send and receive screenshots:
Screenshots make communication easy because they capture what’s happening on your screen. So, if you need to help your customer troubleshoot some issues on their end, you can take screenshots on your laptop and annotate them to detail the steps a user can follow to solve a problem. You can also ask your customer to take a screenshot of their problem using Zight’s screen capture tool, and you’ll have better information to diagnose and solve it for them.
2. Use videos and GIFs to provide support:
Zight lets you record and annotate long videos and GIFs when providing customer support. With them, you can explain your resolution steps so your customer can replicate them from their end. Want to make it better? You can even record with a webcam overlay, so your customers are sure they are getting help from a real person!
It’s important to note, that once you take a screenshot or video, you can share with your customer using a simple link – removing the hassle of uploading extra attachments in your messages.
Zight’s benefits for any customer support team:
Using Zight’s visual communication with your SaaS help desk solution for customer support has many benefits, including:
- Quicker issue resolution: You can respond to customer queries with clarity and speed using personalized video messages, screen recordings, and annotated screenshots
- Enhanced communication: Zight lets you communicate complex ideas quickly without lengthy chat and email threads
- Elevated customer experience: By providing customers with the help they need through easy-to-understand visual aids, Zight enhances their overall experience and satisfaction
- Faster ticket closure: With Zight’s visual communication, you will close tickets three times faster to boost customer satisfaction rates
- Annotations for clarity: The ability to add annotations, such as quick drawings, arrows, and emojis, helps highlight important details you want your customers to notice
- Analytics for insights: Zight offers analytics to track views and viewer engagement with weekly productivity reports that, coupled with those from your SaaS help desk software, will help you understand your entire customer support approach so you can make improvements where necessary
- Easy sharing: Zight allows for effortless content embedding without writing any code. As such, you can share files with customers through any communication channel like Slack, email, and even social media by using a simple link.
Incorporating Zight with your SaaS help desk software streamlines your customer support process and significantly enhances the quality and effectiveness of your customer interactions.
Do You Need a SaaS Help Desk Solution for Your Business?
Before choosing your best SaaS help desk solutions, you want to answer the following vital questions;
I. What Kind Of Support Do You Want?
Do you want to handle your customer support or outsource it? If you outsource, will you focus on one-off requests or ongoing support? You can hire an individual or set up a shared team with another company.
II. What is your budget for tools and tech?
How much are you willing to spend on your help desk software and its implementation?
The more expensive options are likely worth the investment if they save time and money in the long run. However, this is a more complex decision that should be based on future growth plans and past spending history.
For example, if your company has been growing at 15% month over month for the past six months with no sign of slowing down, it’s probably worth investing in something more expensive to be ready when things pick up again (and they will).
III. How many users do you have?
Help desk software needs users as well as customers. This means that if there isn’t enough staff using it regularly (or any at all), then it won’t be advantageous. In most cases, there is a minimum number of users required before implementing help desk software so that it makes sense from a financial standpoint.
How to Choose SaaS Help Desk Software
Choosing a Help Desk Software can be difficult, so we put together a list of features to consider when making this decision.
I. Ease of Ticketing
Most importantly, you’ll want to determine whether creating, routing, adjusting, and approving your ad is easy or difficult and why.
Take time to understand your experience with the software. What surprised you? What did you learn? Was the onboarding process frustrating and how? Is there anything missing from the process that would make it easier?
You should also be able to modify the ticket as you gain more information on the issue and save a copy of the ticket after making changes to it.
II. Variety of Channels
You could adopt a separate help desk for each support channel you use, but that would be incredibly inefficient. In reality, you’d probably have a single help desk that supports all your channels.
There are three types of help desks:
- Virtual support desk or Customer Relationship Management (CRM): This self-service system allows customers to submit issues and track their status online. It’s not uncommon for virtual help desks to include a FAQ section, knowledge base, web chat, and even email support. The idea is to keep costs low by eliminating human resources in favor of automated systems that can be monitored remotely by real people
- Email-based help desk: An email-based solution usually includes an email address you can forward issues to (e.g., [email protected]). You might receive automatic responses with links to FAQs or the ability to create a new ticket online through a web form submission process
- Call center-based: This solution uses a call center where agents log into a computer system using audio equipment and headsets to speak directly with customers over phone lines without ever having to meet them face-to-face
III. Self-Service Portal
There will be some simple questions that can be addressed with quick answers, which is where a Self-Service Portal comes in handy. A Self-Service portal provides your users with quick answers to questions without wasting your customer support team’s time.
A self-service portal doesn’t just help your customers. It can also be used as an internal tool to help you find out things like customers’ service needs and give your customer support team a way to get hold of them.
By knowing what your customers want and helping them get it, you’re establishing a strong customer relationship so they’ll come back to you again and again for those products and services. A self-service portal is really an essential tool for doing that.
IV. App Integrations
Help desk software that can integrate with other apps like scheduling, project management, and more allows you to gather more data and information on what your customers are asking about. Centralizing this information makes it easier to access and share it with the support team as well as other departments in your company.
Integrations also allow employees to work together and extend the activity that happens at the help desk into other platforms in the business. Whether you’re in your CRM, need the data in marketing automation, or other systems, your help desk data is accessible quickly and easily.
Best SaaS Help Desk Software
Here are our top 15 picks for reliable SaaS help desk solutions:
1. HelpScout
HelpScout intentionally doesn’t use the term “help desk” because they “believe that customer support interactions are conversations between real people.” They want to focus on the customer, precisely what you want to see in a service that aims to deliver a great experience.
HelpScout gives you access to everything you need in a help desk, including inbox management, a knowledge base, support-based chat, reporting, and many integrations. By offering the full suite of features you need to deliver exceptional customer service, you’ll ensure that any issues your customers experience are taken care of and don’t distract them from getting the most out of your product.
You can enjoy all the help desk features with plans starting from $20 per month. Luckily, HelpScout also offers a free trial, and you also get a 30-day money-back guarantee in case the software doesn’t meet your needs.
2. HubSpot
HubSpot’s Service Hub is a help desk that helps you record, organize, and track customer tickets, and it integrates with HubSpot’s CRM to keep track of the status of each ticket.
Using your data in your marketing automation tool can also help you generate more revenue from your customers. For example, if you notice that certain customers haven’t purchased in a while or have been looking at a particular product for a long time without purchasing, you might want to email them via email with an offer.
Through HubSpot’s Conversation tool, you can receive all types of support tickets. And with HubSpot’s knowledge base, you can create support articles and documents that are not only accessible to your customers but also to the public.
HubSpot may be the best help desk software for most businesses and is also quite affordable. You can use it on a free plan with limited features, while unlocking more features will cost you $18/month for the Starter plan. Other plans come at $450/month and $1,200/month for larger enterprises.
3. ManageEngine
ManageEngine’s self-service portal allows customers to manage and track their tickets while accessing a knowledge base for quick answers to their questions.
The SupportCenter Plus integrates with a variety of common applications such as JIRA, Twitter, CRM platforms, and more. It also provides options for customizing, automating, and organizing tickets for a smoother workflow. Through its omnichannel support, which accepts tickets through email, social media, and a special customer portal, it allows employees and customers to access the platform at any time and from anywhere with internet access.
Manage Engine’s products are also available in 16 different languages so that customers and businesses around the world can access the platform and manage their customer support tasks. The service portal’s plans start at $275 on the Professional Edition.
4. Glassix
Glassix completely redefines the help desk space and considered by many as the ultimate solution for small businesses and startups looking to stay on top of their customer support game. By utilizing its advanced conversational AI algorithms and the advanced GPT-4 technology, Glassix redefines the customer service experience, providing small businesses with an arsenal of smart tools and features to ensure every customer interaction is both efficient and meaningful.
Glassix distinguishes itself by offering a comprehensive AI-powered suite that automates responses, intelligently routes inquiries to the right agents, and ensures seamless integration across a multitude of channels, including email, chat, Apple Business Messages, WhatsApp, and social media. This omnichannel approach guarantees that businesses can engage with their customers through their preferred platforms, offering a unified and cohesive service experience.
Designed with the user in mind, Glassix boasts an intuitive interface that simplifies the management of customer inquiries, making it accessible for teams with limited technical expertise.The platform’s AI-driven insights provide deep understanding into customer needs, enabling personalized and effective support. Its scalability ensures it can accommodate growing interaction volumes without sacrificing quality or user experience.
Moreover, Glassix stands out for its cost-efficiency, significantly reducing the necessity for a large support team by automating routine tasks, and uniquely offering free AI chatbot ticket resolution, making it an exceptionally cost-effective solution for small businesses and startups.
Glassix offers a tiered pricing model to fit various business sizes and needs, starting at $49 per user per month, with a growth plan at $65 (minimum two users), and custom pricing for enterprise solutions. A 30-day free trial allows businesses to explore the full range of features without commitment.
5. HappyFox
HappyFox’s help desk software supports ticket templates, canned responses, and adding custom fields and notes. The software is fully customizable with a drag-and-drop interface and allows users to customize each ticket field, including which fields appear on each ticket screen.
HappyFox integrates with leading cloud services such as Google Apps for Work, Salesforce, and Zendesk; it also integrates with many popular third-party apps such as Office 365, Box, Dropbox, Slack, and more.
The reporting tools in HappyFox are extensive – they allow you to filter tickets by status (open or closed), priority (high/medium/low), customer type, or department. You can even export your data into a CSV file for further analysis in Excel or other spreadsheet programs and view your customer satisfaction statistics through the user portal that comes included in the package.
This gives you valuable insight into how customers interact with your organization via email correspondence within HappyFox Help Desk Software’s customer support platform. Their affordable plans start at $29 Per agent/mo on the mighty edition, while Fantastic, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus plans charge $49, $69, and $89 per user/mo.
6. Solar Winds Service Desk
Solar Winds has an award-winning service desk software that automates ticket routing and accepts customer inquiries from multiple channels such as email, phone, service portal, and face-to-face. Their help desk software features incident management that tackles the ticket management process through a simple, easy-to-use interface.
The platform also has knowledge base and self-service capabilities, which are primarily reserved for internal use, rather than customers and employees. Samanage can be integrated with over 200 platforms like Google Analytics, Slack, JIRA, and more. This allows their customers to access their software and its features through almost any other platform already in use.
The Solar Winds cloud help desk is available with plans starting at $39 per technician/mo.
7. Freshdesk
Freshdesk uses a shared inbox that lets agents easily access, assign, prioritize, and merge tickets. Their ticketing system enables users to create and track tickets, set up email notifications for themselves or their team members, and integrate with Google Apps, Office 365, MailChimp, and Salesforce.
The Freshdesk self-service portal is great for both employees and customers. Customers can partake in the rewards program and employees can track their points, upload images of receipts, check their balance, and more.
The app allows employees to log in anywhere and manage the rewards program, while customers can redeem digital coupons anytime. This is optimal for smaller businesses who don’t want a large printer sitting on their countertop or for shoppers who want to save some money while out shopping!
In addition, customers can access the knowledge base and forums, while employees can receive feedback through the same mobile platform. You cna get the software on a free plan, while pro plans start at $15 per agent/mo, billed annually.
8. Cayzu
With a well-rounded ticket process, you can use Cayzu to create custom rules for ticket assignment and automate the process of assigning and reassigning tickets.
Cayzu allows you to manage staff levels and assign them to specific projects or departments so they don’t have access to other projects or departments. This makes it easy to keep track of what each person is working on at any given time.
With reporting in place, it is easy for your entire team (or even external users) to see who’s working on which ticket(s), how long those tickets are taking, how many tickets are open, etc. And with the ability to export reports into CSV format for easy sharing via email or upload onto your website, everyone will be able to get an accurate picture of what’s going on with the company by looking at a few simple charts and graphs.
Cayzu is available on a free trial, after which you can subscribe to a premium plan from as low as $4 per agent/month.
9. Kayako
Kayako supports a wide variety of communication channels such as email, phone, Twitter, live chat, Facebook, etc., so that you’ll never miss a support ticket.
The Kayako self-service portal includes articles that customers can review, allowing you to ensure that your website is up to date – and contains the information customers need. The FAQs area on the self-service portal allows you to provide commonly asked questions and answers for your business with a short description of what they are used for. This can help reduce phone calls or emails when customers are trying to find out how something works or what they need to do to use a feature of your product.
The knowledge base is available on the self-service portal, which allows customers to search for answers to their questions. It also includes articles you can review and a place where you can ask questions and have them answered by other users or experts. The software is available in three plans: the Kayako Cloud, the Classic On-Prem, and the Kayako + Engine Yard.
10. Zendesk
Zendesk is another tool you can use to manage customer interactions seamlessly. With its intuitive ticketing system, you can set up custom rules to automate ticket assignments. It’s perfect for keeping your team focused, as you can assign them to specific projects or departments so they don’t get sidetracked.
The reporting feature is a real game-changer. You and your team, even external users, can easily keep tabs on who’s handling which tickets, the progress being made, and the overall workload. Plus, you can also export reports into CSV format easily.
Zendesk plans start at just $19 per agent/month for the Support Team plan. Other options include the Suite Team plan at $55, Suite Growth at $89, and Suite Professional at $115 per agent/month.
11. Zoho Desk
Zoho desk stands out with its efficient ticketing system, which effortlessly organizes customer queries from various channels. This means you can manage, track, and resolve customer issues more effectively, ensuring timely responses and increased customer satisfaction.
You can rely on automated ticketing to manage customer inquiries. Zoho also offers omnichannel support with email, social media, and live chat options. Plus, Zia, Zoho’s AI assistant, offers smart suggestions for ticket responses and automating routine tasks.
You can also tailor your dashboard to meet your team’s specific needs and use the advanced reporting tools to gain valuable insights into team performance and customer satisfaction. Zoho Desk comes as a free plan, and you can also get the premium offers that start at $12 per user/mo, charged annually.
12. Jira Service Management
Jira Service Management is a standout choice for businesses seeking a comprehensive IT service management (ITSM) solution. The platform will help you manage and track incidents and service requests to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction and operational continuity.
The platform is also highly customizable. You can tailor the dashboards and user interface to your needs and workflows. Another notable feature is integration capabilities, especially with software development processes which make the software an ideal choice for organizations that combine IT support with ongoing software development projects.
You can get the software on a free plan, or upgrade to premium plans starting at $$22.05 per agent/mo.
13. LiveAgent
LiveAgent is a versatile help desk software for businesses seeking real-time customer engagement. It combines email, live chat, social media, and phone support into one unified interface, making customer communication much more efficient.
The platform’s robust ticketing system ensures effective tracking and resolution of customer queries. With automation features and a customizable interface, LiveAgent streamlines workflows to save time and enhance productivity.
Pricing starts at $9 per agent per month for essential features suitable for small teams. LiveAgent also offers a free trial, so you can test its capabilities before committing financially.
14. TalkDesk
TalkDesk lets you manage customer interactions across phone, email, live chat, and social media from one platform. In addition, your customers can help themselves with the self-service portal and knowledge base to ease your team’s workload.
The software also allows team collaboration to speed up resolutions, and you can customize TalkDesk easily with low-code options. You also get analytics to provide insights into team performance and service improvement areas so you can improve your customer service. Pricing plans start at $75 per user per month.
15. Customerly
Customerly helps with managing customer interactions thanks to its integrated live chat, email support, and CRM functionalities. The platform offers real-time communication capabilities to guarantee customer queries are addressed promptly and effectively.
It also includes a suite of automation tools that streamline workflows to save valuable time, plus analytics features that provide insightful data to help you understand customer needs and improve service quality.
Customerly offers a range of plans to suit different business needs. You can get a free trial and a Basic free plan at $0 per month or upgrade to premium plans that start at $7 per month.
16. ProProfs Desk
ProProfs Desk is a versatile SaaS help desk software designed for ease of use, with a setup as simple as email. it is scalable to adapt to your business’s growth and offers 24×7 accessibility so you never miss a customer query.
This software offers shared inboxes for team collaboration to allow you to manage all customer-facing inboxes from a single platform. This streamlines tracking, prioritizing, and assigning tickets. ProProfs Desk also automates workflows, with features like automated ticket routing and canned responses, which speed up resolution times.
The software ensures security and reliability with automated updates, backups, and a high uptime rate. You can use it on a free single-user plan, or get the premium two-user plan that charges $19.99 per operator/month.
