What's The Best Help Desk Software? 13 Top Options

When it comes to managing support interactions, help desk software is an indispensable tool. In this guide, we’ll explore the different types of help desks, explain who they’re best suited for, and provide you with a list of the 13 best help desk software on the market to help you choose the right solution for your needs.

What is help desk software?

Help desk software is a platform that helps teams organize, manage, and respond to support requests. Help desks consolidate requests from multiple channels — such as email, live chat, phone, and social media — creating a centralized repository that contains all open requests.

What are the different types of help desk software?

There are several different types of help desk software. The right type for you will depend on who your customers are, how you want your data to be hosted, and what level of control you want to have in customizing your help desk to your team's specific needs and workflows.

The table below explains the six main types of help desk software and who they're best for.

The 13 best help desk software

Here are the 13 best help desk software for all different types of use cases and businesses, along with what each is best for, what features each comes with, and how much each cost.

1. Help Scout – Best customer service help desk software

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

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. SysAid - Best internal help desk software

SysAid is 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: Contact SysAid directly for pricing.

3. HappyFox – Best IT help desk software

If your IT team is looking for a service desk, HappyFox is a good option. While a solid choice for any team, IT teams benefit from features like HappyFox’s asset management tool and its ability to integrate with remote service applications.

Beyond IT-specific tools, HappyFox offers a shared inbox that you can use to manage email, as well as a knowledge base builder. It is also possible to use other HappyFox products with the platform, such as HappyFox Chat and Chatbot, but they require additional subscriptions.

Key features

• Email management with the ability to manage additional channels via integrations.

• Shared inbox with collaboration tools (ticket assignments, collision detection, etc.)

• Kanban ticket views.

• Knowledge base.

• Asset management.

• Integrations with HappyFox products and other popular platforms.

• Reporting dashboards.

Price: Plans start at $29/agent per month (five agent minimum).

4. Jira Service Management – Best ITSM help desk software

Jira Service Management is designed for engineering and technical teams. The cloud-based platform is a great ITSM solution that lets your team handle 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.

5. Zendesk – Best enterprise help desk software

Zendesk's multichannel support solution 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 makes it a great option for enterprise teams that need deep customization.

Key features

• Multi-channel platform (email, ticket forms, live chat, voice, SMS, social media, self-service, community forums).

• Shared inbox with collaborative features (macros, internal notes, collision detection, custom views, ticket assignments, and light agents).

• Knowledge base.

• Triggers and rule-based automation.

• AI tools.

• Reporting dashboards.

• Library of 1,000+ pre-built apps and integrations.

Price: Plans start at $19/agent per month.

6. Hiver – Best small business help desk software

Hiver is a Gmail-based help desk that can be a good solution for teams accustomed to Google’s web interface. While it’s true that there are ways to share inboxes in Google natively, they offer a clunky experience for both agent and customer. Hiver elevates the Gmail support experience and adds functionality beyond email, such as live chat and self-service support channels.

With Hiver, you can add internal notes on conversations, assign messages to other agents, and provide support via live chat. Other Hiver features include a reporting dashboard, a knowledge base builder, integrations, CSAT surveys, automation tools, and some basic AI functionality.

Key features

• Email assignments, statuses, and tagging.

• Internal notes.

• Email templates and shared drafts.

• Live chat.

• Knowledge base.

• Automated workflows.

• Natural language processing (NLP) based artificial intelligence (AI).

• Integrations with popular software (Salesforce, Jira, Asana, etc.).

• Reporting dashboards.

Price: Plans start at $15/user per month.

7. Freshdesk – Best free help desk software

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 plan available. Paid plans start at $15/agent per month.

8. Zoho Desk – Best help desk CRM software

There are many reasons to consider Zoho Desk, ranging from its artificial intelligence offering, Zia, to its seamless integration with other Zoho products like Zoho CRM.

One feature to consider is ZohoDesk’s community forums, which allow you to create a central place for your customers to discuss your product and company. Forums can be great for enabling customers to crowd-source answers when your team isn’t online and promote camaraderie around your brand. Those forums, combined with integrations across the Zoho Suite, can help increase customer satisfaction.

Zoho Desk has all of the usual suspects when it comes to functionality, including AI-assisted responses and advanced automation for tasks like conversation sorting and tagging.

Key features

• Multi-channel platform (email, social media, voice, live chat, self-service).

• Shared inbox with collaboration features (ticket assignments, collision detection, faster response snippets, etc.).

• Knowledge base.

• Community forums (included in all but the free plan).

• Rule-based automation.

• AI tools.

• Integrations with Zoho products and other popular apps and platforms.

• Reporting dashboards.

Price: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $7/user per month.

9. Google Collaborative Inbox – Best simple help desk software

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.

10. Tidio – Best help desk chat software

Tidio is a chat-based help desk platform. Its free plan lets you chat with up to 50 unique users per month and have chatbot conversations with up to 100.

If you’re a bit further along with your support efforts, Tidio’s paid tiers let you center your plan around live chat, chatbots, or features beyond support, such as email marketing tools.

One interesting aspect of Tidio’s live chat paid plans is a focus on proactive support tools like Live Typing, a feature that allows your team to view what a customer is typing into a chat window before they hit send. Though it might feel a little creepy from the customer side, live typing previews can save your team time, allowing them to get a jump start on the customer’s request.

Key features

• Live chat and chatbot offerings.

• Shared inbox that allows integrations with other channels; includes collaboration features like private notes and teams.

• Live monitoring features like Live Typing and the Live Visitors List.

• Email marketing tools.

• Integrations via Zapier; custom integrations are also possible.

• Reporting dashboards.

Price: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $15.83/operator per month.

11. Cayzu – Best help desk for multi-brand support

The first thing you’ll notice about Cayzu when investigating their product is their competitive pricing — their plans start at only $4 per agent per month! However, organizations managing support for multiple brands might want to check out the Enterprise tier.

Cayzu supports the ability to create multiple branded self-service portals. This lets you present a customized experience to your customers while allowing their requests to flow into a single shared inbox for management and resolution by your team.

Key features

• Email and social media management.

• Knowledge base.

• Self-service portal (multi-brand).

• Web widget.

• Rule-based automation.

• Time tracking and asset management tools.

• Integrations with popular platforms.

• Reporting dashboards.

Price: Plans start at $4/agent per month.

12. Front – Best HR help desk software

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, when you're part of an HR team providing support to other company employees, you may want to be able to reply from your personal email address too. 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: Plans start at $19/seat per month.

13. Gorgias – Best ecommerce help desk

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 who do a lot of business on the video platform.

Price: Plans start at $10 per month for 50 tickets.

What are the benefits of using help desk software?

A help desk strengthens your support system and makes it easier for your team to provide personalized assistance. Help desk software can improve your team’s:

• Organization: Help desks preserve all of your company’s communications in one place and have tools that make it easy to search and filter through them. You can tag conversations by product, view all of the requests from a specific customer, or easily see which team members responded to a message.

• Collaboration: Collaborating in a regular Gmail or Outlook inbox is hard. Help desks offer features like email templates, private notes, ticket assignments, and ticket statuses, providing more visibility across your team.

• Process: Email management can involve a lot of busy work — deleting junk mail, tagging issues, assigning tasks, and escalating cases that need to take priority. Help desks streamline your support process by automating tasks that don’t require a human touch.

• Reporting: There is no real way to track your support efforts accurately if you’re operating out of personal inboxes. Help desks automatically track metrics like ticket volume and time to resolution.

• Security: Unlike a shared email account, where everyone uses the same login credentials, help desks have built-in security measures. Every user has their own username and password, and managers can assign roles, ensuring that staff members only have access to the information needed to do their jobs.

• Accessibility: Help desks open up new opportunities to better serve customers. Omnichannel platforms allow teams to expand beyond email support, rolling out channels like chat, voice, SMS, social media, and self-service.

These types of improvements ensure that your team never misses an email and always has the information, tools, and bandwidth to deliver outstanding support.

What features should you look for in help desk software?

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.

Choosing the right help desk software for your team

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.

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.