Helpdesk systems are a great way to take customer service in your online store or software company to the next level. With a service desk solution, you can manage all your customer service activities and always keep an overview.
But it’s not easy to find the right helpdesk system for your needs. On the one hand, it should fit your company, but on the other hand, it should also be used by your customer service employees.
That’s why I tested the best service desk providers on the market for you. In this article, I would like to introduce you to the best providers on the market. Surely you will find the right one for your area of application.
The best helpdesk software in comparison
- Freshdesk – Best helpdesk system in comparison
- LiveAgent – Comprehensive solution for customer support
- Zoho Desk – Good small business
- Zendesk – Professional helpdesk for larger companies
- HubSpot Service Hub – Best for small and medium businesses
1. Freshdesk
Freshdesk is the best helpdesk solution in this comparison. It offers a very easy to use interface so that you can provide your customers with the best customer support possible. Freshdesk allows you to create a team inbox. This makes it easier to collaborate on different customer requests.
With the ticketing system, you can assign tickets to individual customer support employees. This way, you can ensure that the employees who have expertise in this area handle the ticket.
With the response templates, you can respond to customer inquiries as quickly as possible. You can use these templates if you regularly receive the same or similar customer requests. With these templates, you can work efficiently and get satisfied customers.
Besides the actual ticketing system, Freshdesk also offers a variety of features so your customers can help themselves. You can create chatbots that are answered by Freshdesk’s AI called Freddy. With this AI-powered chatbot, you can answer simple customer queries without any personal interaction.
In addition, you can create knowledge bases in which you explain the most important questions of your customers in an understandable way with articles or videos. The content for the knowledge base can be easily created from the email requests of your customers.
Your customer support staff can easily turn email into knowledge base articles. This prevents you from having to create each text from scratch.
Freshdesk offers you fair pricing starting at 15 euros a month for the paid version. There is also a free version of Freshdesk that you can use.
Freshdesk prices
Freshdesk offers 5 different price packages:
Free: 0 euros per month (per user).
Growth: 15 euros per month (per agent, automation, an app marketplace, own email server)
Pro: 49 Euro per month (per agent, multiple SLA, and business hours)
Enterprise: 79 Euro per month (per agent, ticket routing by skills)
Key Features
Ticketing – Freshdesk’s ticketing system lets you turn email inquiries or social media marketing requests into tickets.
Knowledge Base – Through the Knowledge Base feature, you have the ability to explain frequently asked questions of your customers with articles and videos.
Analytics – The Analytics feature gives you the ability to analyze how quickly tickets are processed.
Automation – With automation, you can automate recurring processes in customer support.
Marketplace – The Freshdesk Marketplace gives you the ability to interface Freshdesk with other business software.
Pros:
- Many functions and yet easy to use
- Tracking of customer inquiries
- Mobile App
Disadvantages:
- Reporting
- Good customer service
2. LiveAgent
LiveAgent takes second place in the comparison. It is not only known for its live chat system but also offers an extensive ticketing system.
LiveAgent’s ticketing system is visually very nicely designed, so it’s fun to use. It gives you a good overview of the different tickets and their status.
You can filter the tickets in the overview to see who is currently processing the ticket. LiveAgent’s ticketing system can bundle customer requests from different communication channels. This way, you can always keep track of when a customer contacts you via email, social media, live chat, etc.
With the customer portal and forum feature, you can provide information to customers who want to help themselves. In your customer portal, you can write articles and videos that you create on frequently asked questions.
All of this is designed to free up your customer support staff and help your customer with different support options.
With features like automatic ticker forwarding, you can ensure that you meet the service level agreement (SLA) with your customers. This is especially important if you want to offer different levels of support to your customers with their contracts.
LiveAgent Prices
LiveAgent offers 4 different price packages:
Free 0 Euro/month per agent (1 chat button, 1 phone number, 1 email address)
Ticket: 13 Euro/ month per agent (Unlimited ticket history, unlimited email addresses)
Ticket + Chat: 25 Euro/ month per agent (Unlimited chat buttons)
All-inclusive: 39 Euro/ month per agent (Unlimited call recordings, call center support)
Key Features
Multi-channel inbox – LiveAgent’s universal inbox centralizes all customer inquiries from email, chats, calls and social media. So you can always stay on top of things.
Automations – LiveAgent can create automation that sorts customer requests by specific events, time priority, or SLA agreement. This allows you to provide the highest level of customer service to your customers.
Reporting – With reporting, you can always see how many customer inquiries have been generated and which communication channels have been used the most. This allows you to optimize your resources for customer support.
Live Chat – LiveAgent offers a live chat feature that allows you to communicate with customers or website visitors in real-time. This offers your customers a quick and easy way to get help.
Mobile App – LiveAgent provides you with a mobile app that allows you to access the LiveAgent system on the go to answer customer inquiries while on the road.
Pros:
- Personalization of existing workflows
- Simple setup
- Visual user interface
Disadvantages:
- No telephone support
- No integrations with WhatsApp and Telegram
3. Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk achieves a podium finish. Zoho is a good and affordable solution that is very easy to use. Especially for users who already use other solutions from Zoho, Zoho Desk is a useful extension.
Zoho integrates easily with Zoho CRM, allowing you to use customer communication and customer management with one solution.
Zoho Desk offers a multi-channel approach, so you have one central place where all customer queries are registered. Apart from the normal email query, you can also take phone calls on Zoho Desk and answer them from Zoho Desk.
Zoho, similar to Freshdesk, offers an AI called Zia to help you with customer service. This way, Zia can be used to conduct simple customer conversations.
Plus, Zia can chat with your customer in your live chat. So your support staff is relieved and only has to answer the difficult requests. Recurring tasks can be taken over by Zia.
For recurring customer inquiries, you can also set up a knowledge base where customers can find frequently asked questions.
Zoho Desk offers a completely free version, with a limited feature set. Otherwise, the free version is limited to 3 users. The paid version with a larger range of functions starts at 14 euros per month.
Zoho Desk Prices
Zoho Desk offers 4 different pricing packages:
Free: Free of charge (per user)
Standard: 14 Euro per month (1 user)
Professional: 23 Euro per month (1 user)
Enterprise: 40 Euro per month (1 user)
Key Features
Ticketing – With the ticketing function, support tickets can be created for customer inquiries from various communication channels.
Mobile App – Zoho Desk provides you with a mobile app that allows you to see which tickets have been accrued through the ticketing system.
Automations – Zoho Desk lets you create specific automation so that tickets are escalated to specific people.
Reports and Dashboards – Zoho Desk provides you with various ways to analyze your customer support activities and keep track of them with dashboards.
Pros:
- Pricing
- Very good customer support
- Intuitive and simple user interface
Disadvantages:
- Personalization of the user interface
- Teach-in process
4. Zendesk
Zendesk is a platform that helps companies deliver better customer service. More than 200,000 customers already use Zendesk as their help desk solution.
The Zendesk solution offers both the customer and the employee an easy-to-use customer service software. With Zendesk, you can constantly track what support tickets are out there and how they are being handled.
Zendesk Prices
Zendesk offers 5 different pricing packages:
Support Team: 19 Euro/ month per support employee (business rules, apps and integrations)
Support Professional: 49 Euro/ month per support employee (business hours, customer satisfaction surveys)
Support Enterprise: 99 Euro/ month per support employee (routing of customer requests according to skills)
Key Features
Omnichannel Support – Zendesk gives you the ability to get an overview of all the conversations you’ve had with your customer. Zendesk supports phone, live chat, email, social media messenger communication, and more.
Help Center – Zendesk gives you the ability to build a knowledge base for your products or services. This way, your customers can access the information for frequently asked questions.
Zendesk Marketplace – Through the Zendesk Marketplace, you can interface with hundreds of different solutions using Zendesk
Analytics – Through the Analytics functions you can determine, for example, how quickly and how many service requests have been processed.
Pros:
- Simple ticket management
- Easy to use interface for customers and users
- Simple setup
Disadvantages:
- Reporting options are limited
5. HubSpot
HubSpot offers a customer service solution as part of their portfolio alongside their well-known marketing and sales solutions.
The Service Hub solution is a cloud-based customer service platform that specializes in managing customers and support requests for businesses of all sizes. The main features are phone, live chat and email support.
HubSpot Service Hub Prices
HubSpot Service Hub offers 3 different pricing packages:
Start: 41 Euro/ month (2 user licenses)
Professional: 414 Euro/ month (5 user licenses)
Enterprise: 1.104 Euro/ month (10 user licenses)
Key Features
Customer Support Communication – Hubspot offers phone, live chat, email support, and a ticketing system.
Email templates – HubSpot Service hab offers email templates that you can save for recurring customer requests.
Mobile App – Hubspot offers a mobile app that you can use to get an overview of current service requests.
Automations – Automations to forward certain requests to experts is offered in the paid versions.
Knowledge Base – The Professional and Enterprise versions offer you a knowledge base feature where you can store articles, videos, so your customers can learn about your product themselves.
Pros:
- Integration with HubSpot CRM
- Many functions
- Easy to use
Disadvantages:
- High price
- Limited knowledge base
In summary, the best help desk systems for 2022 are:
If you want to offer very good customer service, you can’t get around a helpdesk system. Freshdesk is a good solution for small but also large providers with a wide range of functions.
That’s why Freshdesk is my favorite help desk software. LiveAgent is on a similar level as Freshdesk. It stands out, especially with its excellent multichannel inbox, where all customer requests from different channels are bundled.
I hope you were able to find the right software for your company in this comparison. If you are not quite sure which solution is the right one, you can use the free trial periods of the providers to convince yourself.