The Best Helpdesk Software Compared

Helpdesk Software Definition: What is a ticketing system?

Helpdesk software is a tool that enables companies to organize incoming customer service requests. A central component of such solutions is a so-called ticketing system, which organizes all contacts in individual containers (tickets). Since ticketing systems are essential to helpdesk software, such solutions are often referred to entirely as ticket tools or ticketing tools.

Within the helpdesk system, other important information for typical queries can also be stored. With the help of these facts and the clear structures of the ticketing system, support staff can respond more quickly and effectively to inquiries.

Depending on its features, helpdesk software can serve as a central point of contact for all possible direct customer support processes. It provides insight into customer experiences, allows the creation of extensive self-service platforms, and/or enables improvement of customer service processes with specific analytics.

The use of such a tool not only brings greater efficiency, but also enables greater chances of successful transactions or repeat purchases and generally long-term business relationships. The (potential) customers tend to feel better advised and are more satisfied.

Why is helpdesk software needed?

Goods and services of various application focal points are becoming increasingly complex and leading to more possibilities. As a result, the need for support is also growing. In addition, buyers increasingly want to be served directly and personally. The general speed of today's times and the constant availability of information, purchasing options, and simple online communication channels contribute significantly to increasing support demands.

Furthermore, a consistently growing number of products are offered – especially in online retail. Online stores with thousands or even tens of thousands of items are no longer rare. With this immense selection, the need for support grows exponentially.

For employees in customer support, these developments pose a tremendous challenge. The enormous influx of daily inquiries must be organized, while providing each contact with speedy, personal, and product-specific support. This is hardly feasible with traditional support structures.

A support ticket system tailored to the respective needs makes it possible to serve such challenging conditions much more efficiently.

How does helpdesk software work?

How a support ticket system works in detail, of course, always depends on the available features. Some software provides little more than a simple management tool for inquiries. With other programs or larger suites, however, many additional tasks around the management of contacts can be accomplished.

The following steps, however, are typical and are handled similarly by many helpdesk softwares.

• A helpdesk ticket system converts all inquiries from (potential) customers from different sources into tickets. The program records the status of each ticket while the support staff are working on a problem. A ticket summarizes all interactions with the inquirers. It also includes internal conversations on the respective topic.
• With the help of the ticket software, these can be categorized differently. There is the possibility to create special tickets for general questions, problems, incidents, tasks and/or other issues. Individual problems are often the cause of larger incidents. For example, if an important component of a machine fails or there are difficulties with the resolution of a digital camera, these difficulties can certainly be associated with numerous incidents. Once a solution to the main problem is found, this is marked in the system. Subsequently, the incident ticket of all inquirers can be updated easily and reliably according to the new status.
• Tickets are automatically assigned to the support staff who can best handle them. This often happens over different levels. This means in detail that customer support with different levels of expertise and competence takes care of the concerns. First-level staff deal with more general questions. In second-level support, things go much deeper, and so on. This ensures a very differentiated and efficient customer service. A comprehensive knowledge database is often available to all support staff. This can be fed from past inquiries, among other things.
• The system closes resolved tickets. However, they do not simply disappear. Because the containers contain valuable data. With these, those responsible can gain useful insights into their customers, products, brand perception, and many other business-critical factors. Ticketing software is sometimes even able to decipher the relevant information independently, show central performance metrics and generate reports.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of helpdesk software?

Companies of all sizes can benefit from the use of helpdesk software. Even with smaller product ranges, customer service can be considerably more efficient. The central arguments for using ticketing software are as follows.

• Ticket Management: Client advisors can delegate inquiries to specific employees at their own discretion. In addition, ticketing systems are often automatable. Inquiries are thus automatically forwarded to the appropriate agents. All tickets land in a central place. This can be viewed by all team members. Managers here have the opportunity to manually manage tickets on a wide front. For example, rerouting can be set up, depending on the availability of the agents. As a result of this centralization, there is generally less susceptibility to errors and a reduced risk of duplicate processing. A graded (and partly automated) ticket assignment makes it possible to prioritize certain inquiries over others.
• Tracking customer inquiries: The main goal of every customer service team is to satisfy the customer. If customers have the opportunity to track the progress of their request, this contributes to their satisfaction. Tracking also helps customer service teams. The progress of a ticket provides transparency, so management can hold employees accountable for timely resolution of an issue or a request. In addition, tracking is an important factor for internal liability. Those responsible have the opportunity to view old tickets and check how each request was processed.
• Assignment of customer inquiries: Companies that do not have a support ticketing system often use a special email inbox for their customer inquiries. This process quickly becomes confusing and makes collaboration difficult. A major problem with such an email solution is that team members do not know when inquiries have been processed by colleagues. Helpdesk software helps improve all these processes. It enables tickets to be assigned to specific customer service employees. Tickets can be assigned automatically or by another team member. Their processing is clearly traceable. The assignment process usually involves sending tickets to employees who have a special qualification or handle a certain type of problem. Ultimately, assignment improves the productivity of all team members, as they can focus more on customers and pay less attention to the organizational process. In addition, customers get the desired answers in a timely manner. The risk of inquiries getting lost is virtually zero.
• Reports: With the help of reports, companies can get an overview of the number of incoming inquiries, processing time, solution rate per support employee, and other important insights. Corresponding analytics provide those responsible with information on the performance of the customer service team. Any problems can be addressed specifically and the service can be improved in general.
• Support for integrations: Ticket management systems can be integrated into the existing IT infrastructure. There, especially due to the data they record, they make a significant contribution to the comprehensive increase in efficiency of typical business processes in sales, marketing, etc.

Are there any disadvantages with all these advantages? Certainly - as with any software, there can also be problems with helpdesk ticketing systems. The following challenges come up more often.

• Slow response and resolution times: Not every ticket support system can handle every volume of inquiries. If an unsuitable solution has been chosen, it can still be difficult to keep track of all customer inquiries and forward them to the responsible team members, despite software support.
• Data protection: A service ticket system can collect both directly personal data and other information related to it. Such a large volume of data inevitably brings data protection into play. Centrally important here are the questions of how and where the corresponding information is stored? In this context, those interested should definitely ensure that the chosen solution complies with GDPR. Those who want to be on the safe side choose helpdesk software from Germany or at least from Europe.

Find the best ticket system: How do you select a suitable helpdesk software?

The following summarizes what interested parties should pay particular attention to when looking for the best helpdesk software for their purposes. The factors listed here should be at least considered in every ticket system comparison.

Test the customer experience with the helpdesk solution

How will your own customers interact with the chosen helpdesk tool? Answering this question as comprehensively as possible is extremely important. Because only a service ticket system that really fits the expectations of your own target group will bring sufficient success.

Interested parties should use typical customer questions as examples and check how the solution deals with them. It is also important to clarify what customers expect visually when using the software, how easy the process is for them, and what kind of experiences they will most likely associate with the helpdesk system.

For such insights, it is of course inevitable to take advantage of a ticket system demo or a trial version. Most providers have such user helpdesk freeware in their program.

Test the user experience with the support ticket software

The customer service team will use the helpdesk tool every day. Therefore, it is very important to clarify how easy it is for members to use it. It must also be clarified whether the solution really makes support more efficient and effective?

The helpdesk software you choose should be as smooth as possible for the team. This will enable the employees to use their resources for customer support. As many (recurring) organizational processes as possible should be implemented by the software.

Here too, a practical test is essential.

Take scalability into account

Will the solution still work when the company grows? Interested parties should ask sales representatives of the solutions they are considering for an estimate of the support volume of their larger customers.

Numbers on the website are one thing, concrete practical references are another. It is better to inquire a bit more than to notice later that the selected software does not fit the company's long-term growth. In such a case, those responsible might have to look for a new ticket helpdesk soon after a purchase.

Check the report options

Testing reports is difficult when no real data is available. Demonstration accounts, however, can provide a good first impression of what is possible.

Preparation is key here! Before a test, those responsible should clearly define which customer service metrics they want to look at and why. Direct communication with the helpdesk provider or their customer service is then the safest approach. They should specifically ask how the software can help serve exactly the desired metrics.

Support is also important for support desk software

Who will support the support team and to what extent? In the event of a helpdesk system failure, uncertainties with important functions, or when a process needs to be revised, users of helpdesk software need quick and reliable help. Because if a system is not fully functional, hundreds of inquiries that can only be answered inadequately can quickly pile up.

Interested parties should therefore pay close attention to the support conditions when choosing a ticketing software. It is not only important that fast support channels are available, but they also need to be reachable around the clock by competent staff.

Pay attention to integration possibilities

The integration of third-party software is one of the most important factors in choosing a helpdesk system. Help softwares are huge repositories for all kinds of data: from technical information about product problems to demographic facts of the inquirers. These facts cannot only be important in support, but also for the rest of the company. They should therefore be able to be processed elsewhere or in other business programs as easily as possible.

Many helpdesk providers already offer pre-configured integrations with other software that is also a typical customer contact point. It's a give and take: E-commerce suites, CRMs or even Point-of-Sales (POS) collect data that could be useful for a helpdesk software and vice versa.

Due to the great reach of an all-round useful data usage, those responsible should check precisely which third-party integrations the helpdesk ticket software in focus enables!

Here is a selection of helpdesk ticketing systems:

• Intercom
• SAP CRM
• Freshdesk
• Zoho Desk
• Salesforce Service Cloud

Ticket system costs: How much does helpdesk software cost?

The price of helpdesk software mainly depends on two factors:

• The number of customer service employees who use it.
• The number of features it includes.

A simple ticketing system is sometimes even completely free. However, it often is very simple helpdesk software. Complex automations, differentiated analytics or similar advanced features should not be expected from users here.

There are also free options for many larger helpdesk solutions. Often, even for one to three support staff, some advanced functions are actually available without payment. This means that smaller teams do not pay the same as larger teams but can still get a feature-rich application. Small companies, therefore, do not necessarily have to spend a lot of money on a suitable ticketing software.

Interested parties can orient themselves in terms of costs using the following schema:

• One to three agents: Free (with some restrictions)
• Three to ten agents: Around two to 200 Euros per agent per month (depending on the required functions).
• Ten plus agents: More than 200 Euros per month per agent (depending on the required functions).

For a good solution with a larger range of functions, SMEs must budget an average of 100 euros per month and agent.