Best help desk software in 2024

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Help desk software for customer support

Are you using a shared email inbox to communicate with your customers? Have you missed responding to certain emails? Do you find it difficult to make customers happy? If you’ve been searching for a solution for these problems, you will have come across the term help desk software and probably wondered what it means.

If you want to know how a software for help desk can help you communicate better and improve your relationships with your customers, you are in the right place.

What is help desk software?

In the digital age, customers seek instant answers. Imagine a bustling hub where every customer query, complaint, and feedback converges, waiting to be addressed. Help desk software is this digital epicenter. Acting as a centralized platform for IT support, a help desk system meticulously organizes, tracks, and resolves customer issues. The mission? Ensuring that every customer concern is addressed, leaving none lost or overlooked.

What is help desk software used for?

Software for help desk isn't just a digital tool—it's the bridge between brands and their patrons. It streamlines customer interactions, whether they're complaints, queries, or kudos. It efficiently catalogs and prioritizes these interactions, ensuring quick response times. It also captures invaluable insights about customers' concerns, helping businesses refine their offerings and create excellent customer experiences.

Who can use help desk tools?

Here's the surprise: it's not just for the tech giants or sprawling enterprises. From buzzing startups and passionate solopreneurs to global conglomerates, if there's a customer to be served, there's a role for help desk tools. If you want to enhance your customer support, keep track of interactions, ticket volume, and gain insights from customer feedback trends, then a help desk tool might be just what you need.

What are the different types of help desk software?

Cloud-based help desk software

Imagine accessing your workspace without being tethered to a specific location. That’s the liberty a cloud-based help desk software grants. Delivered over the Internet, this SaaS-based model offers unmatched flexibility for your service teams and customer base. No downloads, no hardware investments—just log in from anywhere, anytime. The cherry on top? Swift setups, reduced lags, minimal maintenance, and a palette of customization options without diving deep into the technicalities.

On-premise help desk software

For those who like to keep things close to the vest, on-premise help desk software is the pick. Stored on company servers, it offers unparalleled data control, ensuring no external prying eyes breach security. However, this control comes with a caveat. While modern cloud-based systems adhere to stringent international security norms, on-premise variants often entail prolonged update cycles and possible downtimes.

Open-source help desk software

Molding software to one's exact needs sounds enticing, right? Open-source help desk software offers just that— a canvas waiting to be painted as per an enterprise's unique requirements. However, this masterpiece demands a cadre of technical maestros to orchestrate. If that sounds daunting, cloud-based solutions stand ready as worthy alternatives, marrying flexibility with customization.

Examples and use cases for help desk software

Help desk support software allows companies to stay organized as they accept, track, and respond to support requests. Bridgestone Corporation, the Japanese tire-manufacturing juggernaut, is one of the most recognizable brands on the planet. Headquartered in Tokyo, and boasting of a global presence across six continents and over 150 countries, Bridgestone’s acclaim as the world’s second-largest tire manufacturer is well deserved. A lesser-known fact is that the firm strives to infuse technology into all its operations, from manufacturing to post-sales service.

Bridgestone went on to implement Freshdesk for most of its products, and across all of the geographies, it operated in. Over 50 agents who were spread across the USA, Europe, and Japan were on-boarded onto Freshdesk. The team was able to use the platform, along with its knowledge base and forum functionalities, to incredible effect, greatly expanding the scope and quality of their support operations.

“Freshdesk greatly helped in scaling and supporting our digital products!” - Luke Gaspar, Field Engineer, Bridgestone

HSS Hire had three main priorities when coming to Freshdesk. Automate as much as possible, make everything as easy as possible for the end customer and be that customer’s one-stop shop. Freshwork’s automation features have streamlined their ticketing process, eliminating the need for time-consuming manual tasks and allowing their team to do what they do best—connect with customers.

How to choose the right help desk software

Every software for helpdesk or ticketing system is different. Some provide a basic platform that requires you to set up a lot of integrations and plugins before it is support-capable. Others need you to log in to talk to your customers. Some require you to integrate with reporting suites to analyze your performance, while others have AI crunching your numbers. Whatever the individual capabilities may be, you will need these essential features in your help desk.

Essential features of a great help desk software

Omnichannel support

An omnichannel software can streamline tickets from multiple communication channels into one place. This way, support agents can communicate across channels like email, social media, chat, phone, web, and messaging apps from a single inbox. Unlike multi-channel support, where agents have to juggle logins and passwords, an omnichannel help desk improves visibility and transparency by providing a single, unified view for all agents.

Collaboration

A good help desk support software will help teams collaborate better by increasing visibility between them. By keeping agents proactively informed of ticket owners, responses and priorities, a good help desk software can keep your global team on the same page with no extra effort so they can just focus on supporting customers.

Automations

A powerful online help desk software is one that reduces the agent effort required in making a customer happy. With powerful automations, support software can automatically handle day-to-day tasks based on time-based and event-based triggers. You can create custom workflows to adapt these automations into your business workflow so that tickets are routed to the right agent for the fastest response.

Knowledge management

Customers today prefer to find answers on their own, so a help desk support software that helps you document FAQs in a self-service portal is a must-have. Access to advanced features like customer portal customization can also help you extend your branding to your knowledge base. Plus, a good knowledge management module will also enable you to build an internal knowledge base for your teams to refer to and use.

Reporting and analytics

You cannot progress if you do not know where you are. Every good customer support software suite will have robust in-built reporting features that let you analyze your performance metrics and let you know where you and your team need to improve. These analytics can also help you understand how and where your team needs to improve.

Questions to ask on a demo about the software and company

  • What differentiates your software from competitors?

  • How does the implementation process look?

  • Are there training resources available?

  • How do you handle data security and compliance?

  • Can the software be customized to our specific needs?

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The best help desk software tools of 2024

If you're seeking a help desk software for your business, you might be baffled by the number of options available. To simplify things, we've put together this list with key features so you can compare help desks and pick the best help desk software for your business.  

Freshdesk

Freshdesk is a help desk software trusted by 60,000+ businesses of all sizes. In addition to offering top-class help desk ticketing management capabilities, Freshdesk’s intuitive UI, flexible pricing, and always-on support will gear your business up for success.

Key features:

  • Omnichannel view: Manage customer conversations across email, Facebook, WhatsApp, and your website from a single, unified view.

  • Self-service: Launch self-service options and help customers find answers on their own.

  • Workflow automations: Automate routine, time-consuming tasks to improve team efficiency.

  • SLA management: Ensure customers get responses and resolutions on time by setting up SLA reminders and escalations.

  • Agent productivity features: Enable agents to perform at their level best with canned responses, custom ticket views, scenario automations, and in-app notifications.

  • CSAT: Track and manage customer satisfaction with feedback forms.

  • Collaboration: Enable your team to collaborate with each other and resolve customer issues faster.

  • Reporting: Get insights on customer service performance and KPIs with reports and live dashboards.

  • Marketplace: Leverage flexible APIs and integrate with over 650+ apps on the Freshdesk Marketplace.

  • Mobile app: Support on the go with the Freshdesk mobile app available on Android and Apple

Freshdesk features

Pricing

Pricing starts from: $0

Free trial period: 14 days

Freshdesk pricing

Why customers rave about Freshdesk

Freshdesk offers a modern and intuitive user-friendly interface that makes it easier for agents to navigate and manage tickets.

“The product maintains a record of customer interactions so you can respond efficiently to new requests and manage the resolution of issues. It allows you to effectively track a large number of customer interactions and easily manage them. We manage about 49 interactions per week, and this product makes it easy to keep track of all these conversations.” Verified user review, Trust Radius


Zendesk

Zendesk is a help desk software that competes with legacy softwares like Salesforce and Oracle.

Key features

  • Email, Twitter and Facebook tickets

  • Automations

  • Reporting

  • Apps and integrations

  • SLAs

  • Customisable agent workspaces

  • Third-party data storage

Pros and cons of Zendesk

Pros:

  • It is customizable. IT integrates with over 1000 other applications and is built with an open source API.

  • It helps to track service desk performance with insightful reports

Cons:

  • Using this tool could come with a learning curve

  • Zendesk pricing could be considered very high.


Help Scout

Help Scout is a help desk solution that could be an ideal choice for businesses offering customer support solely through email and chat. 

Key features

  • Shared inbox

  • Knowledge base

  • Reporting

  • Live chat and proactive support

  • Workflows

  • Integrations

Pros and cons of Help Scout

Pros:

  • The tool has a simple, user-friendly interface that resembles email

  • Support agents can utilize the knowledge base feature within this system

Cons:

  • The templates available with the knowledge base are limited

  • The tool doesn’t allow you to create reports with custom fields


Hiver

Hiver is a Gmail-based help desk solution that’s great for businesses that don’t want to let go of the comfort of using a shared inbox. You can sort your inbox, assign work, and collaborate with your team. 

Key features

  • Email delegation

  • Email tasks

  • Notes

  • Collision detection

  • Templates

  • Automations

  • Analytics

  • SLAs

Pros and cons of Hiver

Pros:

  • Seamless integration with Gmail to manage customer support directly from the email inboxes

  • The shared inboxes makes it easy for multiple team members to collaborate on customer queries.

Cons:

  • Feature sets are more focused on email management and collaboration,

  • Lacks agent-side automation and chatbots.


Kayako

If you need an on-premise help desk management system, then you can give Kayako a shot. 

Key features

  • Ticketing

  • Live chat

  • Social media

  • Collaboration

  • Self-service

  • Integrations

Pros and cons of Kayako

Pros:

  • Kayako has a flexible pricing system

  • Whether a small business or a large enterprise, Kayako is scalable and adaptable

  • It is accessible, and requires minimal effort to use

Cons:

  • To access some of the advanced features, you have to upgrade beyond the basic plan

  • The conversational live chat feature is not as efficient as it should be.

  • Updates on Kayako are infrequent

Learn how Freshdesk stacks up against other help desk solutions

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HappyFox

HappyFox is a help desk tool that can also be used by multiple teams including HR, Marketing, Sales, and Facilities teams too. 

Key Features

  • Ticketing

  • Knowledge base

  • Canned actions

  • Automation

  • Reporting

Pros and cons of HappyFox

Pros:

  • Knowledge base available for internal use

  • Multiple languages for knowledge base articles

Cons:

  • The performance metrics that are present are limited

  • Interface is considered outdated in comparison to competitors


Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk is an ideal help desk software for small and medium businesses who want to offer support on multiple channels, provide self-service, and generate reports. If you're already using many products from the Zoho ecosystem, then Zoho Desk might be a great fit for your business.

Key features

  • Ticket management

  • Chatbot powered by Zia

  • Self-service

  • Automation

  • Reporting

  • Integrations

Pros and cons of Zoho Desk

Pros:

  • It can be seamlessly connected to the CRM and thus, all customer data can be accessed from one place.

  • The chat feature helps to share knowledge base articles with end-users.

Cons:

  • The tool may be relatively slower to load

  • Multi-department ticketing with the standard plan of Zoho Desk.


Gorgias

Gorgias is a help desk platform that might come in handy for eCommerce businesses that receive small volumes of support tickets. 

Key Features

  • Email, social media, and live chat

  • Voice and SMS

  • Automations

  • Self-service

  • Intent and sentiment detection

  • Reporting 

Pros and cons of Gorgias

Pros:

  • Efficient customer support automation with AI and machine learning capabilities.

  • Seamless integration with popular e-commerce platforms for personalized support.

Cons:

  • Limited integration options with third-party apps or services

  • The learning curve for complex configurations and advanced features.


Salesforce service cloud

Salesforce is a popular brand in the CRM and customer service space. Their help desk solution, Salesforce Service Cloud is a legacy solution that is a go-to for enterprises with complex workflows.

Key features

  • Ticketing

  • Self-service

  • AI for customer service

  • Automations

  • Call center management

  • Reporting

Pros and cons of Service Cloud

Pros:

  • Integrates smoothly with other Salesforce products and third-party applications

  • Enables real-time collaboration among customer service agents

Cons:

  • Steep learning curve, requiring dedicated training and time for agents and administrators

  • Offers more features than necessary, leading to underutilization and higher costs for functionalities that are not required.


Freshservice

Freshservice is a modern help desk solution or IT service desk that can help you streamline your internal support requests. While this list has been majorly catering to customer support, we’re including IT help desk software depending on how expansive your support needs are.

Key features

  • IT ticketing

  • IT service management or ITSM (indecent, service request, problem, change management) 

  • Asset management

  • Automation

  • Reporting

Pros and cons of Freshservice

Pros: 

  • Freshservice is big on automation — right from automating tasks related to sorting and assigning to tasks involving collaborating with multiple teams, Freshservice can help you improve agent efficiency.

Cons:

  • Higher pricing than some alternatives

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Best practices for implementing help desk software

Embarking on the journey to implement help desk software is akin to setting a firm foundation for exceptional customer service. However, ensuring smooth sailing requires a blend of preparation, strategy, and collaboration. Here's a roadmap to guide you:

  • Secure stakeholder buy-in: Before all else, communicate the benefits of the software to decision-makers. Highlight potential ROI, improved customer satisfaction, and streamlined operations.

  • Understand your needs: One size doesn't fit all. Analyze your business's unique requirements, anticipate future growth, and choose a software that scales with you.

  • Meticulous training: Equip your team with comprehensive training sessions. Ensure they're comfortable with the software's functionalities and can handle queries confidently.

  • Test, test, test: Before a full-scale rollout, run pilot tests to identify potential hiccups. Use this feedback to fine-tune the implementation process.

  • Data migration with care: If transitioning from another system, ensure data migration is smooth. Back up critical information and verify the integrity post-migration.

  • Regular feedback loops: Engage with your team routinely. Their on-ground feedback can offer insights for further refinement.

  • Stay updated: Technology evolves. Make sure you're leveraging the latest features and updates provided by the software vendor.

Workflow automation is a game-changer. It trims down mundane tasks, supercharges agent productivity, and sharpens service desk precision. The result? A 20.72% drop in Average Resolution Time, allowing teams to zero in on core business objectives.” - Freshworks Benchmark Report

FAQs

Can you use a help desk software for free?

Absolutely! Several help desk software providers offer free versions, usually with basic features. These are perfect for startups or businesses with limited requirements. However, as needs grow, upgrading to a paid version might be beneficial.

Do small businesses need help desk software?

Certainly! Every business, irrespective of size, benefits from organized and efficient customer support. For small businesses, help desk solutions can offer a competitive edge, ensuring customers receive timely and effective assistance.

How easy is it to integrate help desk software with other tools?

Most modern help desk software is designed with integration in mind. Whether it's CRMs, email platforms, or social media channels, seamless integrations can usually be achieved without substantial technical effort.

How does help desk software measure customer satisfaction?

Help desk software typically utilizes various tools and metrics to gauge customer satisfaction. Some of the common methods include:

Surveys and feedback forms: After a support ticket is resolved, customers might receive a quick survey asking them to rate their experience. This provides immediate feedback on the quality of support received.

Net promoter score (NPS): This metric assesses a customer's likelihood to recommend the business to others. An NPS can provide insights into overall satisfaction with the support service.

Response and Resolution Time: Monitoring how quickly issues are addressed and resolved can be a key indicator of customer satisfaction. Faster resolution times often correlate with happier customers.

Ticket backlog and volume: A decreasing number of backlogged tickets can suggest improved customer satisfaction, as issues are being addressed in a timely manner.

Customer comments and reviews: Beyond metrics, open-ended feedback and reviews can provide deeper insights into areas of success or needed improvement.

What is help desk software primarily used for?

Help desk software is a centralized platform designed to streamline the process of receiving, tracking, managing, and resolving customer queries and issues. Its primary uses include: ticket management, knowledge base creation, automations and workflows, multi-channel support, and reporting and analytics.