An effective Help Desk system is essential to addressing and satisfying your customers’ needs, but some help desk software are better suited for specific industries. That’s because companies are always looking for ways to optimize their service and support. So, they’re constantly on the lookout for new technologies that can help them do just that.
For example, if you operate an ecommerce business, you probably want something like Zendesk, which offers a set of tools designed specifically for businesses that sell products online. Or if your company is in the foodservice industry, Freshdesk can be a good fit. It has tools that are specifically designed to help restaurants and bars manage customer feedback and complaints.
Businesses in 2021 need Help Desk systems that are optimized for their needs and their customers’ needs in order to stand out from the competition. That’s the reason why it’s so important to find the Help Desk software that works best for your business.
When you’re picking a help desk software, you’ll need to consider three factors:
What kind of support do you want?
Do you want to handle your customer support or outsource it? If you choose to 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.
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, then it’s probably worth investing in something more expensive so that it’s ready when things pick up again (and they will).
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 very useful. 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.
1. Ease of Ticketing
Most importantly, you’ll want to determine whether the process of 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? What was frustrating about the process? Is there anything missing from the process that would make it easier?
You should also be able to make modifications to the ticket as you gain more information on the issue as well as save a copy of the ticket after making changes to it.
2. 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 is a self-service system that 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 so they can speak directly with customers over phone lines without ever having to meet with them face-to-face.
3. 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 having to waste 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 what they want, 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.
4. 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 allow for employees to work together and extend the activity that happens in the help desk into other platforms in the business. Whether you’re in your CRM, need the data in marketing automation, or other systems, all of your help desk data is accessible quickly and easily.
Best SaaS Help Desk Software 2021
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 keep the focus on the customer which is exactly 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 plenty of integrations. By offering the full suite of features you need to deliver exceptional customer service, you’ll make sure that any issues your customers experience are taken care don’t distract them from getting the most out of your product.
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 certain product for a long time without purchasing, you might want to reach out to 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.
3. ManageEngine
Manage Engine’s self-service portal allows customer to manage and track their tickets while also 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 for employees and customers to access the platform 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.
4. HappyFox
HappyFox’s help desk software supports ticket templates and canned responses, as well as the ability to add 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 are interacting with your organization via email correspondence within HappyFox Help Desk Software’s customer support platform.
5. 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, but these are primarily reserved for internal use, rather than both customers and employees. Samanage can be integrated with over 200 platforms such as Google Analytics, Slack, JIRA, and more. This allows their customers to be able to access their software and its features through almost any other platform already in use.
6. 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, as well as set up email notifications for themselves or their team members, and integrates 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.
With the app, employees can log in anywhere, and manage the rewards program, while customers can redeem digital coupons at any time. 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! Customers can also access the knowledge base and forums, while employees can receive feedback through the same mobile platform.
7. Cayzu
With a well-rounded ticket process, you can use Cayzu to create custom rules for ticket assignment, as well as to automate the process of assigning and reassigning tickets.
Cayzu allows you to manage staff levels and assign them to specific projects or departments so that 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.
8. 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 can be reviewed by customers, 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 that can be reviewed by you, as well as a place where you can ask questions and have them answered by other users or by experts.
How do support teams use Zight (formerly CloudApp) in their Service desks?
Customer success software company, Gainsight, used Zight (formerly CloudApp) to save $10K per year while providing a better customer experience. Read more about how Gainsight’s support team utilizes Zight (formerly CloudApp) here.