Want to deliver outstanding customer support for your business? Or do you need clarification on multiple helpdesk tools available in the market❓
Well, we got you, now you can easily automate and scale customer support for a successful business with varieties of tools. Simply by eliminating manual processes and overwhelming ticket volumes that can hinder efficiency and customer dissatisfaction with the help of different helpdesk software.
In the blog post, you can explore the 9 best helpdesk tools that are categorized under three different types along with ideas on how to streamline the customer support process for your business.
🚀 Key Highlights
- The Helpdesk tool is a software developed to manage customer support systems that has been highly used in almost every business in recent days.
- The Helpdesk tool works according to different processes such as creation & submission of tickets, routing & assignment of the ticket, agent workflow & management, communication and collaboration, and reporting & analytics.
- 9 Best Helpdesk tools to automate & scale customer support are Freshdesk, Zendesk, Zoho Desk, KrispCall, AirCall, Five9, Jira Service Management, Hiver, and Zoho Assist.
- Before choosing helpdesk software for your business you need to consider core things such as defining your needs & goals, understanding your budget, ease of use & scalability, security & compliance, and finally better integration options.
What is a Helpdesk Tool?
A helpdesk tool also known as service desk software or ticketing system software, is a software solution designed to assist businesses in managing customer support interactions. It serves as a centralized platform for monitoring and addressing customer queries originating from diverse channels such as email, phone, chat, and social media.
Helpdesk tools have become an essential element for businesses of all sizes to manage and deliver efficient customer support. A 2023 Help Desk Institute study found that 90% of businesses with more than 100 employees leverage a helpdesk solution.
How does a helpdesk tool work?
A helpdesk tool works as a central hub for handling all customer support interactions, intending to optimize operations and boost effectiveness.
To understand in detail here are five different points that will help you clarify how helpdesk software actually works:
- Ticket Creation and Submission: A helpdesk tool relies on ticket creation, where customers seek support via email, chat, or phone. The tool captures and digitizes these requests, creating detailed tickets for agents to resolve efficiently.
- Ticket Routing and Assignment: Efficient helpdesk operation depends on routing and assigning tickets. This includes automatically distributing tickets based on set criteria, such as directing them to specialized agents, evenly distributing workload, or escalating unresolved tickets within a specific timeframe.
- Agent Workflow and Management: You can prioritize agent workflow and management with effective helpdesk tools. They offer a centralized dashboard to manage your assigned tickets, track their progress, collaborate with colleagues, and access resources like knowledge articles or pre-written responses for quicker issue resolution. This enhances your efficiency and empowers you to deliver outstanding customer service.
- Communication and Collaboration: Communication and collaboration play vital roles in a helpdesk tool, allowing agents and customers to interact smoothly via email replies, live chat, and internal messaging. This encourages transparent communication, rapid problem-solving, and stronger teamwork among agents, ultimately enhancing the quality of customer support.
- Reporting and Analytics: Reporting and Analytics serve as the analytical core of a helpdesk tool, offering insights into customer support performance via metrics such as resolution time, agent effectiveness, and common issues. This data enables you to pinpoint improvement areas, streamline workflows, and make informed decisions for exceptional customer service.
What are the key functions of Helpdesk Tools?
- Centralizes Ticket Management: A helpdesk tool acts as a centralized hub for managing customer inquiries and support tickets. It ensures that all requests are tracked, organized, and addressed promptly.
- Organizes Support Tickets: When support requests arrive, the helpdesk software converts them into tickets. These tickets contain relevant information about the issue, priority level, and customer details. This organization streamlines the resolution process.
- Facilitates Communication: Helpdesk platforms enable direct communication between support agents and customers or employees. Whether through live chat, email, or phone, efficient communication ensures timely responses and effective problem-solving1.
- Promotes Self-Service: Helpdesk tools often include self-service portals where users can find answers to common queries without agent intervention. Self-help resources, FAQs, and knowledge bases empower users to resolve issues independently.
- Tracks Key Metrics: Monitoring performance metrics is essential for continuous improvement. Helpdesk tools track response times, resolution rates, customer satisfaction, and other relevant KPIs. This data informs decision-making and process enhancements.
9 Best Helpdesk Tools to Automate & Scale Customer Support
There is a wide range of helpdesk tools available that promise to automate and scale customer support for your business. In that case, it’s hard to choose the right one, and it’s more confusing to choose the right one that fits your business needs.
So to simplify it, here are the 9 best helpdesk tools based on three different categories:
Top 3 Inbound helpdesk tools
1. Freshdesk
Freshdesk stands out for its user-friendly interface and feature-rich functionality, making it a great choice for businesses of all sizes. If you’re seeking a helpdesk solution that grows alongside your requirements, Freshdesk provides a comprehensive package. Beyond basic ticket management, it offers automation tools, a self-service portal, and detailed reporting capabilities.
Moreover, Freshdesk ensures seamless customer interactions across multiple channels—email, phone, live chat, and social media—all within a unified platform. It has a wide range and well-defined features when it comes to helpdesk tools.
✅ Key Features Of Freshdesk
- Ticket Field Suggester: Reduce manual tasks with AI-powered ticket organization.
- Chatbot powered by Freddy AI: Bridge the gap between customer questions and accurate solutions instantly.
- Link Forum topic to ticket: Address and Process critical issues and convert them into tickets.
- Freddy Copilot: Empowers agents to tailor support to individual customer needs.
💰 Pricing
| Plans | Pricing |
| Growth | $29/agent/month |
| Pro | $69/agent/month |
| Enterprise | $109/agent/month |
2. Zendesk
Zendesk is one of the well-known helpdesk tools available for better customer support, offering an all-in-one platform that manages interactions across various channels. From phone calls and emails to social media inquiries and self-service options, Zendesk equips you with the tools to handle them all effectively.
Ticketing remains the foundation, ensuring organized and trackable communication with your customers. Knowledge base creation empowers you to build a library of helpful resources, allowing customers to find solutions independently and reducing support ticket volume.
✅ Key Features Of Zendesk:
- Help desk Software: Manage all your customer interactions in one centralized location
- Answer Bot: Empower customers to find answers to frequently asked questions on their own.
- Ticketing system: Resolve issues faster organize and track customer inquiries efficiently
- Reporting & analytics: Make data-driven decisions
💰 Pricing
| Plan | Pricing |
| Suite Professional | $149/agent/month |
| Suite Growth | $115/agent/month |
| Suite Team | $69/agent/month |
| Suite Enterprise | Reach to zendesk |
3. Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk offers a compelling solution for businesses seeking to automate and scale their inbound customer support operations. At its core, Zoho Desk provides a robust ticketing system, allowing you to organize and track customer inquiries from various channels like email, phone calls, and social media. You can automate repetitive tasks like ticket routing, sending initial acknowledgment emails, or triggering specific workflows based on predefined criteria.
Zoho Desk also empowers you to build a self-service portal, a valuable resource for customers seeking solutions independently. This knowledge base can house helpful articles, FAQs, and troubleshooting guides, deflecting a significant portion of common inquiries from reaching your agents directly.
✅ Key Features Of Zoho Desk
- Multi-brand Help Center: Manage multiple brands and their customer inquiries efficiently from a single, unified platform.
- Auto tag tickets: Automate ticket categorization with AI-powered tags
- Sentiment Analysis: Prioritize urgent issues and personalize your support approach.
- SLAs & Escalations: Set up Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to define response and resolution timeframes.
💰 Pricing
| Plan | Pricing |
| Standard | $20/user/month |
| Professional | $35/user/month |
| Enterprise | $50/user/month |
Top 3 Outbound helpdesk tools
1. KrispCall
For businesses that prioritize exceptional call quality in their outbound customer interactions, Krispcall stands out as a powerful helpdesk tool. This focus on pristine call quality fosters professionalism and improves the overall customer experience during outbound calls.
Integration with various CRM systems further streamlines your workflow by allowing you to log call data and access customer information directly within your CRM platform. It is easy to integrate this software with your existing communication platforms and is available for multiple platforms like mobile apps, web, and browser extensions.
✅ Key Features Of KrispCall
- Unified Callbox: Manage all outbound calls from a central hub
- Call Routing: Intelligently route outbound calls to the most qualified agent based on skills and availability.
- Voicemail Transcription: Save time and improve follow-up by automatically transcribing voicemails into text.
- Call monitoring: Coach and improve agent performance by discreetly monitoring outbound calls.
- In-app call analytics: Gain valuable insights into your outbound call performance with detailed analytics
- Integration: Seamlessly integrate KrispCall with your existing system
- Call tag: Flag important outbound calls for easy reference and future analysis
- Reporting: Generate comprehensive reports on your outbound call activity
💰 Pricing
| Plan | Pricing |
| Essential | $15/user/month |
| Standard | $40/user/month |
| Enterprise | Customize your plan |
2. Aircall
AirCall caters to the needs of modern, distributed teams by offering a cloud-based solution for managing outbound calls. This eliminates the need for traditional desk phones and empowers your team members to make and receive calls using any internet-connected device.
With its cloud-based infrastructure, user-friendly features, and focus on call efficiency, AirCall empowers your sales and outreach teams to make a significant impact through high-volume outbound calls.
✅ Key Features Of Aircall
- Call Queuing: ensuring no missed opportunities while maintaining a positive customer experience.
- Parallel Calls: reaching more customers and closing more deals.
- Call Recording: Empower coaching and quality assurance with crystal-clear call recording
- Call Whispering: provide real-time guidance to your sales team during live calls
💰 Pricing
| Plan | Pricing |
| Essentials | $40/license/month |
| Professional | $70/license/month |
| Custom | Contact to Aircall |
3. Five9
Five9 caters to businesses seeking a comprehensive cloud contact center solution for managing outbound customer support interactions. This feature-rich platform goes beyond basic call management, offering functionalities designed to streamline workflows, improve agent productivity, and elevate the overall customer experience during outbound calls.
Five9’s core strength lies in its intelligent call routing capabilities. The system can automatically route outbound calls to the most qualified agent based on factors like customer needs, agent expertise, and real-time availability. This ensures customers connect with the right agent for faster resolution of their issues.
✅ Key Features Of Five9
- Progressive dialer: Reach out to more live conversations and minimize agent idle time.
- Predictive dialer: Focuses on increased call volume and improved customer experience.
- Reputation management: Emphasizes proactive approach to customer satisfaction and brand reputation
💰 Pricing
| Plan | Pricing |
| Digital | $175/month |
| Core | $175/month |
| Premium | $235/month |
| Optimum | $290/month |
| Ultimate | $325/month |
Top 3 Internal helpdesk tools
1. Jira Service Management
Jira Service Management (formerly Jira Service Desk) can be a powerful internal helpdesk solution, particularly for organizations with development teams already invested in the Atlassian ecosystem. It offers functionalities specifically suited for managing internal IT support requests, employee onboarding issues, or any internal process that requires tracking and resolving requests.
Jira Service Management excels in streamlining workflows for development teams. Technicians and developers can leverage familiar functionalities to create tickets, track issue progress, and collaborate efficiently on resolving internal support requests.
✅ Key Features Of Jira Service Management
- Request management: Streamline internal workflows by efficiently capturing, prioritizing, and tracking all your team’s requests
- Configuration management: Maintain consistency and control over your IT infrastructure
- Asset management: Gain complete visibility and control over your IT assets, from hardware and software to licenses.
- Knowledge management: Empower your team with a collaborative knowledge base to access and share solutions
💰 Pricing
| Plan | Pricing |
| Free | $0/3 agents |
| Standard | $17.65/agent/month |
| Premium | $44.27/agent/month |
| Enterprise | Contact sales |
2. Hiver
Hiver is a central hub where agents can submit support requests on behalf of customers, collaborate with colleagues on complex issues, and access a knowledge base of internal resources. Hiver facilitates this by offering features like threaded conversations, task assignments, internal knowledge base creation, and integrations with popular collaboration tools.
This centralized communication approach reduces back-and-forth emails, eliminates information silos, and empowers your team to resolve customer issues faster and more efficiently. Hiver empowers your support team to function as a cohesive unit, ultimately leading to improved customer service and faster resolution times.
✅ Key Features Of Hiver
- Email automation: Hiver’s email automation, frees your team to focus on complex issues.
- AI in customer support: Leverage AI’s role to prioritize tickets, suggest replies, and expedite internal resolutions.
- Reporting analytics: Focuses on data-driven decision-making
- Collaborative inbox: Highlights improved collaboration and faster issue solving.
💰 Pricing
| Plan | Pricing |
| Lite | $19/user/month |
| Pro | $59/user/month |
| Elite | $99/user/month |
3. Zoho Assist
Zoho Assist simplifies remote desktop support for internal helpdesks, empowering IT teams to diagnose and resolve issues faced by colleagues across locations. This web-based solution offers a user-friendly interface and robust features designed to streamline the remote support process and improve overall IT service delivery.
Zoho Assist goes beyond basic screen sharing. Technicians can initiate unattended access to remote desktops, allowing them to troubleshoot issues even when the end-user isn’t readily available. This eliminates the need for lengthy back-and-forth communication and expedites the resolution process.
✅ Key Features Of Zoho Assist
- Report Support
- Annotation
- Session recording
- Reboot reconnect
💰 Pricing
| Plan | Pricing |
| Standard | $12 |
| Professional | $18 |
| Enterprise | $28 |
| Standard | $12 |
| Professional | $18 |
Things to consider before choosing helpdesk software for your business
It doesn’t matter if your business is small or large scale, you need to consider certain things to implement helpdesk software in your business.
Here are the important things you need to consider before choosing a helpdesk solution for your business are listed below:
- Define Your Needs and Goals: Make sure to properly estimate your customer support volume on a daily/weekly basis and in the future. Understand what channels customers contact you and the number of agents that will use the helpdesk tool.
- Understand Your Budget: You cannot look for expensive software if your budget is limited. As it’s not good to spend unnecessarily more than required. You can consider upfront costs, monthly subscriptions, and per-agent fees and try out different tools.
- Ease of Use and Scalability: Choose helpdesk tools that rather have a user-friendly interface that agents and customers can easily understand and a self-service option for the customers. Look for tools that can be scalable to fit in according to your business growth in the future.
- Security and Compliance: Go for the software that is secure and reliable as it can help you to secure your customer’s sensitive details. Search for more industry-specific compliance tools according to your business.
- Better Integrations: Beter integration can streamline business processes and overall workflow efficiency. Look for tools that have better integration options with other business applications (CRM, Project Management).
Conclusion
It’s clear that there are multiple helpdesk solutions available according to your business requirements. Among multiple helpdesk solutions, you can go for the option that fits in every category possible from its features, user interface, and integration to affordable pricing.
For most users, KrispCall stands out as a helpdesk solution from both business and client perspectives. It assures tailor-made subscription plans for every business model to serve customer interactions across channels. KrispCall offers advanced functions like phone tree(IVR), call monitoring, call queuing, call analytics, wide range integration with auto-reply missed calls, voicemails, power dialer, and more making it an ideal customer support solution.
You can automate & scale customer support for your business by simply signing up to KrispCall Today!
FAQ
How to Choose Helpdesk Software?
You can choose helpdesk software based on your business goals, available budget, user-friendly & scalability software, security & compliance along better integration options.
Are helpdesk tools suitable for small businesses?
Absolutely! Many helpdesk solutions offer scalable pricing plans and customizable features tailored to the needs of small and medium-sized businesses.
Can helpdesk tools integrate with other business systems?
Yes, many helpdesk tools offer seamless integration with CRM systems, eCommerce platforms, communication tools, and other business software to streamline workflows and enhance efficiency.
