The 11 Best Help Desk Software: Tested & Compared
Whether you’re an online business or a brick and mortar store, keeping up with customer requests is an important part of delivering a great customer experience (CX). As CX continues to be a key differentiator for brands — just as Gartner predicted years ago — they need a dedicated tool to help them keep in touch with customers.
The tool of choice for many businesses is a help desk.
This is a chapter in our Ultimate Guide to Setting Up a Help Desk System. When you're ready, check out the other chapters:
Chapter 1 – Setting Up a Help Desk: A Step-By-Step Guide and Checklist
Chapter 2 – Track Requests to Keep Customers Coming Back
Chapter 3 – 9-Step Guide to Switching Help Desks
Chapter 4 – Take It or Leave It: What Help Desk Data Should You Migrate?
Chapter 5 – 19 Actionable Help Desk Metrics for Customer Support Teams
Chapter 6 – Best Practices and Tips for Implementing a Help Desk
Chapter 7 – The 15 Best Help Desk Software for 2024 - Buyer's Guide
Chapter 8 – Help Desk Software: What To Look For and Must-Have Features
Chapter 9 – The Top 9 Help Desk Software for Small Businesses in 2024
Chapter 10 – Why Investing in Help Desk Software Increases Your ROI
Chapter 11 – The HIPAA-Compliant Help Desk Software You Can Trust
What is help desk software?
Help desk software is a dedicated tool that your company can use to answer inquiries for your customers or prospects. While support and customer success teams typically use help desks, there are opportunities for other customer-facing groups, like product marketing or sales, to use a help desk as well.
Not only do the features of help desk software often include the ability for multiple users to write and receive emails from a single inbox, but it often has excellent reporting and automation functionality.
Why should companies invest in help desk software?
Investing in help desk software allows companies to differentiate themselves from their competitors and create better customer experiences. While it's meaningful to respond to customers, the features of help desk software enable companies to customize and make significant changes to how the customer journey unfolds.
Modern help desks can also help you become more adept at managing your inbox by prioritizing customers. You can prioritize by options like who has been waiting longest, who has the highest chance of converting to a paid account, or other settings.
No matter what types of prioritization or automation you decide on, investing in a help desk that offers better queue management features can help your customer support team be more effective.
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What are the different types of help desk software?
Even though many help desk software will boast similar suites of features, there are a few different types to pick from. Depending on your business, the level of security, and the specific needs you have for your team, one kind of help desk software may suit you better than others.
Cloud-based help desk
Cloud-based help desks are one of the most common types. Built with a SaaS model, these help desks are hosted in the cloud and are entirely web-based.
Your team will log in using a web portal and individual usernames and logins. The help desk software's team is responsible for all the updates, maintenance and upkeep of the product, bug triage, and problem-solving.
On-premise help desk
An on-premise help desk is a self-hosted version of help desk software. This can be a good option for companies with high security needs, such as hospitals or banks. If you need to lock down your functionality and have ultimate control over what gets in or out, an on-premise help desk may be your best bet.
On-premise help desks also put the maintenance and updates in the buyer's hands rather than in the company itself. While the company will often release patches to customers or notify them of upcoming changes, the customers themselves are responsible for ensuring that the software is up to date and running effectively.
Open-source help desk
Open-source help desks usually have the outstanding feature of being entirely free. Because the software itself is pulled from an open-source codebase and then implemented by a company, it is also highly configurable.
If you have a strong internal development team, they can take an open-source help desk with basic functionality and fully build out the features or functions that your team needs. However, if you don’t think your team can perform regular updates and maintenance to a help desk, open-source software may not be the route to go.
Unlike on-premise help desks, there is no seller company to inform you if significant changes or patches are made to the product. Given that, you leave yourself a bit more at risk for outages or bugs with open-source help desks than you do with the other options.
Enterprise help desk
Enterprise help desks are typically used by larger companies due to the ample amount of functionality and connectivity they offer. While the features of help desk software are often reasonably similar across the board, enterprise help desks offer the best integrations, reporting, and AI functionality.
That said, just because there's more advanced functionality doesn't necessarily mean that it's what your team needs. The level of complexity with enterprise help desks can often be overwhelming or "too much" for smaller companies or teams just getting started.
Suppose there's more functionality than your team can readily use or the documentation around a product includes acronyms or phrases that you've never heard before. In that case, enterprise help desk software is probably more than you need at this point in your journey.
The 11 best help desk software for 2024
Help Scout
Hiver
Zendesk
Front
Gorgias
Kustomer
Google Collaborative Inbox
Freshdesk
Zoho Desk
SysAid
Jira Service Management
1. Help Scout - Best for teams who prioritize customer satisfaction
Help Scout is a complete customer service platform with everything you need to deliver an outstanding customer experience. Beyond support, Help Scout is also a great communication tool for other departments, such as human resources, IT services, and accounting. It’s also suitable for use across many industries like education and real estate and can be configured to be HIPAA compliant, making it a solid choice for those in the healthcare industry.
This section will take a deep dive into Help Scout’s core tools as well as a couple of other things that make Help Scout special:
Inbox
Beacon
Docs
AI
Reporting
Integrations
Best-in-class customer support
Inbox
One of the trickiest things about managing customer and client communications as a team is keeping those communications organized. Help Scout’s Inbox is designed to bring all of your customer conversations into one place, making it easier for you to collaborate, stay organized, and increase your team or organization’s efficiency.
Channels
It’s important to meet customers, clients, and patients where they are, which is why Help Scout supports popular channels like email, live chat, and social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook Messenger. Have other channels you’d like to manage? Check out our integrations page to bring other contact types like text messages and voice into your Help Scout inbox.
Saved replies
While some messages may be one of a kind, most help desk queues see a lot of repeats. Saved replies allow you to create templated responses for all of your FAQs, getting both agents and customers back on track more quickly.
Internal notes and @mentions
Multiple emails and long forwarded threads can get unwieldy fast, so Help Scout allows you to tag teammates in internal notes right in the conversation window. This keeps all communications about the case organized, documented, and easy to reference.
Collision detection
Multiple agent replies can make for a confused customer, which is why Help Scout’s collision detection is so important. The feature makes it easy to tell whether someone is viewing or responding to a message with just a glance, keeping everyone on track and off each other’s toes.
Snooze and send later
If you aren’t ready to respond to a customer or need to remind yourself to follow up, you can snooze a conversation to temporarily remove it from the queue. In cases where you want to reply to a customer now but have it delivered at another time, you can also choose to have the message send later.
Keyboard shortcuts
When you’re in the queue, every second counts. While the time spent moving from keyboard to mouse may not seem like a lot, it adds up! Help Scout’s keyboard shortcuts allow agents to handle many tasks like assigning conversations, inserting images into replies, adding internal notes, and more, all without taking your hands off the keyboard.
Tags and custom fields
Finding conversations on a specific topic can be like searching for a needle in a haystack, which is why tags and custom fields can be a game changer for many teams. Tags are labels that you can add to conversations to help you track specific groups of messages. Use tags for things like tracking VIP cases, customer feedback, and more. Custom fields are similar but are for more general things that you might want to track across all of your conversations, like type of request (bug report, billing issue, etc.).
Views
Need to group conversations by a specific topic? Inbox views let you focus on a specific segment of messages. Views can be created using several different criteria like tags, assignments, wait time, and more.
Workflows
Another Help Scout feature that can save you time is workflows. Workflows are a way for you to automate repetitive tasks to help decrease busy work and increase productivity. Workflows rely on if/then statements and can automate tasks like conversation assignments, tagging, or setting up autoresponders.
Customer management
Customer profiles display helpful information like a customer’s company, email address, location, and previous support interactions right from the conversation sidebar. Use customer profiles to give you all of the details you need to provide contextual, personalized support experiences that improve customer satisfaction.
Mobile apps
In addition to its desktop app, Help Scout offers both iOS and Android apps, allowing busy teams to stay connected whether in the office or on the go.
Customer satisfaction ratings
If you’re wondering if your support made the grade or missed the mark, Help Scout’s customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys can help you find out. Email and chat customers are asked to rate the service they received as Great, Okay, or Not Good, and they are also offered a chance to leave a comment to provide more context for their response.
Docs
Help Scout’s knowledge base tool is called Docs. It's a self-service solution that allows your team to build and publish internal or external help documentation for employees or customers in minutes.
A new (and improved) editor
Easily create media-rich documentation using Help Scout’s updated Docs editor. Use the shortcut menu to quickly add formatting to your text, such as headings or bulleted lists. You can also add callouts, quotes, tables, videos, images, code blocks, and more. For those who prefer to create documentation using markdown or HTML, you can do that, too.
Article drafts are automatically saved while you compose, ensuring that you never lose your work. Want to revert back to an earlier version of your article? No problem! A full history of each article is always available for review.
Finally, add keywords to each article to improve search quality and smooth your customers’ path to information.
Collections and categories
Sort articles into collections and categories to keep your help center organized and easy to navigate. Each collection covers a separate topic, like a specific product or department, while categories break down those collections into sections that house individual articles. Having this type of structure helps your audience find what they’re looking for more quickly.
Customization
Docs sites are customizable. Add your logo, change the colors to match your brand, and use a custom domain to better match your company’s web experience. Want to get a little fancier? Use CSS to further customize the look and feel of your help center.
Restricted docs
Have certain docs that you only want to display to specific customers or clients? Restricted Docs is a feature that allows you to use Help Scout’s APIs to control access to your knowledge base with your own visitor authentication.
Beacon
Beacon is Help Scout’s multi-purpose web widget. Beacons can be embedded on any webpage or within your app, providing your customers with easy access to live chat and self-service features. In addition, your team can also use Beacons to proactively reach out to customers, increasing engagement.
Live chat
While email is great for issues that aren’t time sensitive, some situations require real-time assistance. Customers can access live chat from any Beacon, and those conversations are managed from within your Inbox.
The live chat option is only shown when your team is signed in and available to receive a chat. When your team is offline, customers are able to send an email request, ensuring that they will still have access to the help they need.
Self-service
Since one of the best ways to empower your audience is to offer self-serve options, Help Scout allows your customers to access all of your help documentation from any Beacon. No more switching tabs or leaving your site to find answers; now, customers can get help when and where they need it.
Proactive messaging
It’s not only important for customers to be able to contact you for help; it’s also useful for you to be able to reach out to them. Beacons allow you to send targeted messages to your audience based on the customer properties that you set and triggered by criteria like time spent on page, scroll behavior, or page views.
There are five types of messages including modals, banners, and NPS surveys. You can also create more personalized feedback opportunities with microsurveys.
AI features
Help Scout believes that AI customer service technology should help customer service teams, not replace them. The platform’s AI features are designed to help your team work smarter, not harder, so you have more time to focus on tasks of greater complexity and value.
AI summarize
AI summarize breaks down long conversation threads into a few bullet points, helping surface the key aspects of the interaction. Use summarize when escalating conversations, transferring them to other teams, or as part of your quality assurance (QA) process.
AI assist
Available in Inbox, Docs, and Messages, AI assist helps support reps polish their copy before hitting send or publish. Use it to make replies longer or shorter, friendlier or more professional, or to check for spelling and grammar issues. Assist can also translate text to languages like Spanish, French, Japanese, and more, helping you provide support to your customers in their preferred language.
AI drafts
Get over the fear of the blank page with AI drafts, a tool that automatically writes draft replies to customer conversations with a click of a button. Drafts uses generative AI, content from your help center, and past customer conversations to create accurate responses that can be quickly reviewed, edited, and sent, increasing your teams’ productivity and efficiency.
AI answers
Coming soon: AI answers is a smart search assistant that can provide a specific answer to your customer’s questions in a matter of seconds — it’s like magic! Much like drafts, answers relies on generative AI and your help documentation to provide responses faster and more accurately than keyword-based searches.
Reporting insights
One of the main benefits of using a help desk is the ability to track your support efforts. Help Scout comes with prebuilt reporting dashboards to help you monitor things like conversation volume, response time, channel usage, agent performance, and customer happiness. You can also build your own report filters using tags, customer fields, or views to help keep track of the metrics most important to your organization.
Integrations
Keep everyone in the loop by integrating Help Scout with other tools in your tech stack including ecommerce platforms like Shopify, CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot, communication tools like Slack, and project tracking software like Jira.
Don’t see the integration you need? Use the Help Scout API to create your own!
Best-in-class support
In addition to Help Scout’s intuitive and powerful platform, one of the things that sets the company apart is its dedication to providing best-in-class customer service. The support team provides 24/6 support, weekly live classes, and helpful documentation and content to ensure you have everything you need to provide your customers with a quality customer service experience.
Price: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $50 per month.
2. Hiver - Best for small businesses
The best way to think about Hiver is as an extension to your Gmail account. With it, you can handle a lot of the same items that you can with a stand-alone customer service software. These are things like internal notes on conversations, assigning messages to other agents, and providing support via live chat.
Other Hiver features to look out for include a reporting dashboard, a knowledge base builder, integrations, customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys, automation tools, and some basic AI functionality. However, some of these features are only included in their higher-cost plans.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $19/user per month. Learn about other tools similar to Hiver.
3. Zendesk - Best for enterprise teams
Almost anyone working in customer support has heard of Zendesk. They make a multichannel support solution that includes features like a shared inbox and knowledge base tools. For those who provide their customers and clients with phone support, you can buy a number right in the tool without having to independently seek out a voice provider. In addition, they offer some more advanced AI-based solutions like virtual agents.
You also get access to a range of productivity and automation features, reporting to track resolution metrics, and 1,000+ integrations to connect with other applications in your technology stack. To be honest, there’s not a lot Zendesk doesn’t do or many communication channels it doesn't cover, which can make it seem like a good value.
However, the flip side is that it’s a very complex product that requires a lot of time, energy, and resources to get up and running. That can add additional costs on top of the monthly subscription rate, which is something to think about before making a decision.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $19/agent per month.
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4. Front - Best for group email collaboration
When communicating with customers, most teams opt to use a group email address (e.g., support@yourdomain.com) to accept reports of customer issues. However, some staff prefer to communicate from personal email addresses but still want the functionality of help desk software. Front lets you do just that.
With Front, you can connect email (personal and group addresses), SMS, and social media accounts to a shared inbox. The platform includes collaboration features like internal notes and reply drafts as well as automation and AI features to reduce manual work. It also offers a knowledge base builder, reporting features, and the ability to create chatbots.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $19/seat per month. Learn about other tools similar to Front.
5. Gorgias - Best for teams that require TikTok shop support
Gorgias is a help desk solution mainly focused on ecommerce. Gorgias offers access to standard features like a shared inbox tool, knowledge base tool, and live chat tool.
The main differentiator from other options on the list are its Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce integrations that let you partner your support and ecommerce platforms to improve support efficiency. Through those integrations, you’re able to see order details, edit orders, and even do refunds directly from your help desk, which can save a lot of time and hassle for your team.
Another interesting feature of Gorgias is its ability to integrate with TikTok, allowing your support team to manage TikTok shop inquiries right from your help desk. Very few customer service tools offer the integration, so it can be a great feature for folks that do a lot of business on the video platform.
When it comes to pricing, Gorgias uses a type of payment structure known as contact based pricing vs. the more standard approach of charging by user. There can be benefits and drawbacks to each system, so it’s more an item to be aware of rather than a pro or con.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $10 per month for 50 tickets. Learn about other tools similar to Gorgias.
6. Kustomer - Best for sentiment tracking
Kustomer offers multi-channel support for email, chat, phone, and social accounts, which can all be viewed in a single conversation. This formatting allows your team to not miss a beat when customers move between channels during a support interaction. The platform also has all of the support software features you’d expect to find like collaboration tools, knowledge base software, and reporting functionality.
One interesting feature is the platform’s sentiment analysis function, allowing you to monitor incoming customer interactions and determine how customers are feeling. The software also has an AI feature dubbed KIQ, which allows you to deflect contacts using chatbots. This feature, however, is only offered as an add-on.
Price: Plans start at $89/user per month (eight seat minimum). Learn about other tools similar to Kustomer.
7. Google Collaborative Inbox - Best for teams already using Google Workspace
If you’re already using Gmail and want to add some structure to your support efforts, Google Collaborative Inbox could be a good option.
Setting up Collaborative Inbox is relatively simple. You create a Google Group, add people to that group, turn on the collaborative inbox option, and configure the appropriate settings. Now everyone in the group can respond to emails in the group mailbox without sharing login information (which is huge in terms of security).
Beyond that, you’re able to assign conversations to different group members and set conversation statuses (closed, on-hold, etc). You can also set permission levels for collaborators, though it is somewhat limited in capability.
While there is a big difference between Collaborative Inbox and the other tools on this list, it can be a good place to start.
Price: Free with Google Workspace. Learn about other tools similar to Google Collaborative Inbox.
8. Freshdesk - Best for businesses looking to scale
When you sign up for a free Freshdesk account, you get access to a shared inbox tool where you can manage incoming email and Facebook requests. In addition, the free plan also includes access to a knowledge base builder and some basic reporting dashboards.
While the free plan is pretty bare bones, Freshdesk’s paid plans are much more powerful. The inbox and knowledge base have additional functionality like additional contact channels, custom ticket views, and article versioning. There are features for the management of service level agreements (SLAs), automation and AI tools to make your work easier, and more analytics options for tracking it all.
The platform gives your team a lot of room to grow, which makes it a great option for small businesses looking to save money now and scale in the future.
Price: Free trial and plan available. Paid plans start at $15/agent per month.
Recommended Reading
9. Zoho Desk - Best for small, sales-focused teams
You may be familiar with Zoho as a customer relationship management tool, but they also make a support solution for customer support interactions. Zoho Desk is another software option that can grow with you. Their free plan isn’t quite as robust as Freshdesk’s. It restricts you to three agents, a private (internal) knowledge base, and only offers one report (agent performance).
However, when you’re ready to expand your operations, Zoho Desk has all of the usual suspects when it comes to functionality, including AI-assisted responses and advanced automations for tasks like conversation sorting and tagging. If you’re currently using other Zoho products, like the CRM tool, Zoho Desk integrates seamlessly with them, making it a great choice for an initial help desk tool.
Price: Free trial and plan available. Paid plans start at $7/user per month. Learn about other tools similar to Zoho Desk.
10. SysAid - Best for IT support
SysAid is a help desk software designed for managing internal requests for IT services. They offer a number of SLA management features like ticket and workflow automation to help your team meet SLAs. You can also build a self-service portal for knowledge management so employees can handle basic requests like password resets on their own.
You’re able to get things going quickly with a host of templates and default forms, or you can create your own custom ones to best serve the needs of your organization and your team. Since most IT tools are used in conjunction with one another, you also get access to a number of third-party integrations.
Finally, SysAid has powerful asset management features that make it easy to manage all of the assets in your network and store information about the hardware used by your end users.
Price: Free trial available. Contact SysAid directly for pricing.
11. Jira Service Management - Best for technical teams
Jira Service Management is generally associated with engineering and technical teams due to its relation to the more widely known Atlassian productivity tool, Jira.
The cloud based platform is a great ITSM solution that lets your team manage request, change, incident, problem, asset, configuration, and knowledge management all in one place. It allows you to build out self-service portals for end-users and has collaboration features like a shared inbox for managing email and chat requests. Combined with custom workflows, AI tools, and reporting capabilities, the platform makes responding to user requests a simple and efficient process.
Price: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $17.65/agent per month.
Key features of help desk software to look for
Choosing help desk software can be overwhelming: Hundreds of tools and thousands of potential features exist to consider. It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of imagining how all of those features might help your team deliver ever-better support.
But the reality is that more features often lead to more complexity and overhead. In the end, it's usually better to find help desk software with the exact parts you need rather than every feature any support team in the world has ever needed.
The best way to determine exactly what features you need is to sit down with your support team and discuss it. Brainstorm a list of every possible feature you can imagine, then prioritize each into lists of must-haves and nice-to-haves.
Must-have features of help desk software include:
Features you can't live without, such as a shared inbox if you primarily provide email support.
Features that will make your team's work easier, such as an intuitive interface.
Features that will delight your customers, like easy-to-use customer surveys.
If you need a place to start, consider this list of 10 essential features of help desk software to help you narrow down your choices to those that might best fit your company’s needs.
A great customer experience
If you're going to deliver excellent support, you need a tool that enables you to do so.
Unfortunately, not all help desks are built to delight your customers. Many refer to customers as ticket numbers or force them to create separate logins for support portals to view your responses or make updates to their requests.
These systems may be fine from the support side of the table. However, if using them creates an experience that makes your customers feel uncared for — or creates additional work for them during an already frustrating time — it won't matter how great your support is.
An intuitive interface
Before committing to any help desk, it's essential to ensure it'll be easy for your team to use. A brand new tool always requires an adjustment — and transitioning the entire team isn't a simple decision — but some will serve your team better than others.
As you look at each option, consider the overall usability as well as the ways your team successfully works now:
Is the interface intuitive and simple to use?
Does the system load and make changes quickly?
Is it easy to find the options your team will use most?
Can you make workflow changes easily without contacting an administrator?
Before making a final decision on a new help desk, check out a demo or trial for your top few options. The ideal choice will remove as much friction as possible, leaving more energy for helping customers instead of fighting tools.
Security and compliance features
With all the private customer information stored in your help desk — along with an entire team of people accessing it — security is essential. Look for a tool with role-based permissions to limit access to specific areas to only those who need it.
For extra protection when logging in — in addition to encouraging strong passwords for every team member — a help desk with two-factor authentication will prevent unauthorized access.
Depending on the type of data you store and your geographic location, you may also need a help desk that is HIPAA compliant or one that complies with GDPR requirements.
Great customer support
While it's easy to imagine that any company selling help desk software would care very deeply about providing excellent customer support, that's unfortunately not always the case.
Before choosing a tool, send in a couple of support requests and see what types of responses you get and how long it takes to get a reply. If you're not able to do that, read some online reviews of the product; if a company provides poor support, customers often mention it in product reviews.
Some tool providers also offer different levels of support based on the plan you sign up for — or charge an extra fee for premium support — so be sure to dig into the details and factor any additional costs into your overall budget.
Scalability
If you expect your team, support volume, or company to grow in the next few years, it's also essential to consider the scalability of the help desk software you choose:
Does the tool offer features like workflows, AI assistance, and API access that will help you automate repetitive tasks as support volume grows?
Does the plan you're considering offer these features, or will you need to upgrade to a higher-cost plan to get access to those features?
If you'll need to upgrade, do you anticipate that future costs will be higher than what your budget will support?
It's also important to review how the options you're considering price their tools. If they charge by individual user, it's easy to predict what adding a new support team member will add to your costs. But if they charge by the amount of support volume you receive, your costs can fluctuate wildly and unpredictably.
Switching to a new help desk takes a lot of time and effort, so doing a little upfront thinking about the future can save you from the headache of switching tools again in a year or two if you discover too late that your help desk won't scale with your needs.
Options for your preferred support channels
This one's probably obvious, but the help desk you choose should offer tools that enable your team to provide support on your preferred channels.
If you primarily provide email support, look for a tool with a shared inbox. If you mainly offer live chat, look for software with a live chat tool.
In addition to thinking about the types of support you offer now, it's also good to consider what kinds of support you should be offering — and what kinds of help you may want to provide in the future.
If you don't have one now, do you anticipate creating a knowledge base in the future? If so, look for a tool that offers a knowledge base in addition to email and/or chat support.
Do you expect more support requests over social media as your company grows? If so, look for a tool that can help you manage customer conversations on your customers' preferred social networks (Messenger, Instagram, etc.).
Third-party integrations
Many help desks integrate with other third-party tools to expand the number of features available to your team. If your favorite help desk doesn't offer one specific feature you need, it's worth looking to see if there's an integration available that can provide that functionality.
It's also worth checking to see if the tools you're considering offer integrations for third-party tools you know you'll need, such as your billing system or your CRM.
While it might be possible for a developer at your company to create custom integrations for your help desk, it's a lot simpler to get up and running if the software you choose integrates with other tools you need right out of the box.
Collaboration features
Whether your support team is two people or 200, your help desk must enable successful collaboration between them all. After all, a conversation with a customer may span multiple shifts or days or may need input from several different specialists on your team.
Look for a tool that will keep everyone on the same page and prevent any customer conversations from getting lost in the queue with collaboration features like:
Collision detection to ensure team members can see when other people are viewing and responding to conversations, preventing duplicate replies.
Notes and @mentions to make it easy for team members to communicate about issues privately, solve problems, and keep each other in the know.
Saved replies to enable team members to get a jump start on answering customer questions by using high-quality, pre-written responses created previously by other members of your team.
Features designed to foster teamwork and communication make it easy to bring the right team members into any conversation, keep everyone informed, and better serve your customers.
Reporting and metrics
Anyone trying to track the output and success of a support team knows metrics and reports are essential. Your new help desk software must make it possible to deeply understand the quality of your support.
The right tool will provide you with the metrics you need to determine things like your team's busiest hours, average first response times and resolution times, how many customers access your knowledge base articles, team members' CSAT ratings, and more. The best tools will also make these metrics easy to access and understand.
But help desks don't stop at simply collecting and tracking metrics. Next, you'll need those metrics turned into reports. Look for software that creates reports you can work with and share with those around you.
Check for reporting features like advanced filtering, the ability to save custom views for repeated use, and export options if you need to access your data outside of the software in a spreadsheet.
Migration options
It's not technically essential, but if you're moving from one help desk to another, migration options are very nice to have.
Some tools offer APIs to help you migrate all of your data from your old tool into the new one. Some may provide automated tools that do the work for you. Some may not offer migration themselves, but there may be specialized third-party providers you can use to migrate your data.
Options to help you migrate all of your old data to the new system will save you a lot of time after making the switch and reduce the likelihood of making an error along the way and losing data you'd like to keep.
Evaluating options
After reading all the tool descriptions on this list, you might have noticed that a lot of the options in the market have fairly similar features. With a lot of similarities, it might seem difficult to choose the best solution for your business. That said, there are a few things we suggest to make the selection process simpler.
Have a list of “must haves”
Come up with a list of non-negotiable features. Maybe you need automatic routing because both support and sales will be using the help desk. Maybe you need features specific to your industry or field. Perhaps you need an integration for a shipping tool you already have. Having non-negotiable requirements makes it easier to trim down the list of options.
Put an evaluation team together
If you’re just starting out or at a very small company, the evaluation team may be just you. If you have a larger team, we recommend the following mix:
One junior level customer service person.
A couple of help desk power users.
A manager or senior leader.
Combining their different needs and backgrounds will give you a more effective way to research options for your organization since they’re each experts in their given areas. We also recommend you get the whole evaluation team looking at the same tool at the same time, rather than each person reviewing a different option.
Get hands on
When it comes down to it, a sales demo and online reviews can only show you so much. Actually trying out tools will help you discover the different nuances of the ticketing systems and see whether or not it will work for your use case. Those small details are often what end up making one tool the clear winner for a team.
Choosing the right help desk for your team
Moving to a new help desk is a huge investment in your customer service team, your customers, and — ultimately — your company. A long feature list is nice to have, but you should make your choice with a broader framework in mind.
Remember, the cost of picking a tool that works for your team (and your customers) is high, so use this guide and take the time to make an informed decision.
If you’re looking for a customer-first approach to help desk software, consider giving Help Scout a try.
Jesse Short
After spending a few years working as a support agent, Jesse made the switch to writing full-time. He is a Help Scout alum, where he worked to help improve the agent and customer experience.
