28 Must-Try Gladly Alternatives for Efficient Help Desk Solutions

Discover 28 must-try Gladly alternatives for efficient help desk solutions. Enhance your customer support with these powerful and effective tools.

Aug 22, 2024

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28 Must-Try Gladly Alternatives for Efficient Help Desk Solutions

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Customer service is a challenging task. The pressure to deliver fast, effective support and keep customers happy increases as your business scales. It’s no surprise that customers expect quick responses to their inquiries. They'll likely take their business elsewhere if they don’t hear back within a few hours. Fortunately, AI customer service tools can help lighten the load by automating repetitive tasks and providing customers with instant answers to their questions. One popular solution is Gladly. Gladly alternatives offer similar or better features and pricing that can help optimize your customer support operations and improve customer service KPIs. This article will help you find the best Gladly alternative for your business.

One such Gladly alternative is ChatBee.ai. Its AI customer support service solution helps businesses optimize operations, reduce costs, and enhance customer experience.

What Is the Gladly Help Desk Software & What Does It Do?

Gladly is a customer service portal that aims to improve agent productivity and personalize customer interactions. It is built for eCommerce businesses that want to maintain consistency in customer service across different channels and scale their customer support without compromising quality.

Gladly promises to turn customer service into a revenue engine by increasing profits and efficiency while driving down costs needed to maintain and scale the functions. It has an adaptable interface and many functionalities you would want in your customer service software.

Why Brands Choose Gladly

Our complete customer service solution has the power to transform the support experience for your customers and agents.

Customer at the Center

Because all communication is tied to a customer — not a case or ticket number — every conversation starts with a real-time understanding of who the customer is.

Customer Service AI

AI that knows where to find answers, when and how to take action, and when to ask for help results in faster, more personal support and efficient customer service teams.

Best of AI and People

With the right mix of AI and human support, customers are empowered to resolve their inquiries, and agents can prioritize high-value work that drives loyalty and revenue.

All in a Single Lifelong Conversation

Every channel — from voice and SMS to email and chat — is natively built-in and shows up in one conversation stream, meaning each customer contact is unified in a single view.

Easier Implementation

Onboarding is simple and 3 to 5 times faster, making the switch to Gladly pain-free.

Reduce Tech Costs

Consolidate multiple software platforms into our single, cost-effective platform with all channels:

Voice

Chat

Self-service

Knowledge base and more

6 Reasons to Consider Gladly Alternatives

1. Cost: Do Smaller Businesses Have The Budget for Gladly?

Gladly’s advanced features come with a price tag that may not suit all businesses. Smaller companies often operate under tight budgets and seek more affordable customer service options. While Gladly’s lowest-tier plan starts at $1,500 annually, some smaller businesses may not even have this much to spend on customer service.

2. Learning Curve: Will My Team Need More Training Time?

Implementing a complex platform like Gladly could mean a long transition period for your customer service team. Even after training, it may take time for employees to get fully accustomed to the platform and its features before they can perform at optimal levels. During this time, operations may suffer, and customers could be impacted.

3. Integration: Will Gladly Work with My Existing Tools?

Gladly offers a variety of third-party integrations to help businesses customize the platform to their needs. Some users report that the platform doesn’t work well with specific tools or systems, which could challenge businesses relying on those applications for operations. This could increase costs, as organizations may need to switch to different software or find workarounds to avoid disrupting operations.

4. Limited Industry Coverage: Can Gladly Meet My Industry’s Unique Needs?

Gladly serves a range of industries, from retail to healthcare, but it may only be able to meet the unique needs of some sectors. Some businesses have specialized requirements that demand industry-specific features to accommodate:

Regulatory compliance

Streamline operations

Enhance the customer experience

If Gladly can’t provide these capabilities, organizations may face increased risks or customer dissatisfaction, prompting a search for alternatives.

5. Dependence on Internet Connectivity: What Happens If My Internet Goes Down?

As a cloud-based platform, Gladly requires a stable internet connection to function properly. If the internet goes down or experiences disruptions, it could impact customer service operations and the quality of support customers receive. Even temporary outages can hurt customer satisfaction and sales.

6. Platform Evolution: How Recent Changes Could Impact Your Business?

Before choosing a customer service platform like Gladly, it’s essential to consider any recent updates or changes to the software. Platforms constantly evolve, and Gladly may or may not be the right fit for your business, depending on what has changed. Staying current with the platform’s features is crucial for making an informed choice.

Revolutionize Your Internal Operations with ChatBees AI

ChatBees enhances internal operations with AI:

Optimized RAG: Enhances internal operations like customer support and employee support.

Accurate Responses: Provides precise answers through advanced AI customer support software.

Easy Integration: Integrates smoothly into existing workflows with low-code or no-code setup.

Agentic Framework: Automatically selects the best strategy to improve response quality.

Increased Efficiency: Boosts predictability and accuracy, enabling teams to handle more queries.

No DevOps Needed: Simple deployment and maintenance without requiring DevOps expertise.

Try our AI customer support software today to 10x your customer support operations. Get started for free; no credit card is required. Sign in with Google and get started on your journey with us today!

Ticket Resolution

Automated Ticketing System

Customer Service Knowledge Base

Slack for Customer Support

Ticket Triage

AI For IT Support

Ticket Handling Best Practices

Automated Email Response Customer Service

AI Ticketing System

14 Must-Have Help Desk Features in a Gladly Alternative

1. Unified Inbox: Your Helpdesk’s Command Center

A unified inbox is an important helpdesk software feature for businesses that provide seamless customer support across multiple channels. This feature offers a centralized platform where numerous agents can efficiently access and manage incoming tickets from various communication channels. By consolidating all customer inquiries into a single location, a unified inbox facilitates collaboration among support teams and ensures a cohesive approach to addressing customer needs.

The primary advantage of a unified inbox lies in its ability to prevent any customer inquiry from slipping through the cracks. By gathering communications from:

Chat

Web forms

Other channels

In one place, businesses can guarantee that every customer inquiry is answered. This streamlined approach improves response times and customer satisfaction by providing timely and consistent support across all channels.

2. Centralized User-Friendly Interface: A Smooth Operation

A helpdesk software with a centralized and user-friendly interface brings numerous benefits to businesses and their support teams. It offers agents a comprehensive view of all support tickets, enabling them to prioritize and manage tasks efficiently and precisely. By consolidating ticket management into one platform, agents can seamlessly navigate through tickets, ensuring no inquiry goes unnoticed or unresolved.

The user-friendly interface enhances the overall user experience by helping users quickly familiarize themselves with the helpdesk software features. This fosters productivity and confidence among agents, enabling them to focus more on providing excellent customer support rather than struggling with complex interfaces.

3. Omnichannel Support: The Key to Seamless Customer Experiences

Omnichannel support centralizes various support channels within the helpdesk software, enabling businesses to interact with customers seamlessly across multiple platforms. Whether:

Phone

Chat

Web forms

Web widgets

Businesses must be accessible through channels that customers prefer. By consolidating communication channels, companies gain visibility into the entire customer journey, regardless of the channel used. This holistic view allows agents to understand customers' interactions across different platforms, providing valuable insights into their preferences and behaviors.

4. Security: Protecting Your Customers’ Sensitive Data

Data security is of utmost importance for businesses entrusted with sensitive customer information. Prioritizing security features within helpdesk software is essential to instill customer trust and confidence while mitigating potential risks associated with data breaches or unauthorized access. Helpdesk software should encompass basic security features to protect customer data. This includes:

Encryption protocols

Access controls

Secure authentication methods

5. Customization Options: Brand Your Helpdesk

The key customization aspect is adding your company’s logo and branding elements to the helpdesk interface. By incorporating your logo and brand colors, you can create a cohesive and branded environment that reinforces your company’s identity and strengthens brand recognition among customers.

Customization options extend to contact forms and ticket submission pages, allowing businesses to tailor these components to collect specific information relevant to their support process. This could include custom fields for capturing additional details about customer inquiries or specific requirements, enabling businesses to gather valuable insights and provide more personalized support.

6. Multi-Language Support: Ensure Everyone Feels Welcome

One key feature and crucial requirement for a helpdesk ticketing system is the ability to effectively support multiple languages. Multi-language support ensures that businesses can provide customer support in their preferred language, enhancing accessibility and inclusivity. By offering support in multiple languages, businesses can effectively communicate with customers from different regions and cultures, providing good customer service and fostering better understanding and rapport.

When choosing the right help desk system, it is imperative to ensure compatibility with multiple languages to meet the diverse needs of customers. This includes:

Multilingual interfaces

Translation capabilities

Support for language-specific content

Ensuring seamless communication

Support interactions across language barriers

7. Self-Service Portal: Empower Your Customers

A self-service portal is an asset for businesses aiming to enhance customer support efficiency and satisfaction. This feature empowers customers by providing them the tools and resources to find information and resolve issues independently.

A self-service portal typically offers:

Interactive FAQ Section

Customers can find answers to commonly asked questions in this section, which is accessible both within the helpdesk platform and to customers directly.

Knowledge Base Articles

Customers can access a repository of knowledge base articles aimed at educating and guiding them on various topics. These articles cover a wide range of subjects and are designed to provide comprehensive information to users.

Information Classification

The self-service portal organizes and categorizes information according to subjects, making it easier for customers to locate relevant resources quickly.

8. SLAs: Keep Your Team on Track

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are another critical component of help desk software. They enable companies to establish clear standards and deadlines for ticket resolution based on priority levels. SLAs ensure that support teams prioritize and address customer inquiries promptly and effectively, enhancing overall customer satisfaction.

With help desk software, businesses can define their own SLA policies, specifying response and resolution times for different types of tickets based on their urgency and importance. By setting these standards, companies can ensure that support requests are handled promptly, meeting or exceeding customer expectations.

9. Automation: Speed Up Everyday Tasks

By leveraging automation capabilities, businesses can:

Optimize efficiency

Reduce agents' manual workloads

Simplify ticket handling

Deliver faster

Seamless customer support experiences

One key benefit of automation is its ability to streamline repetitive tasks such as ticket routing and categorization.

The helpdesk system can automatically assign incoming tickets to the appropriate agents or departments based on predefined criteria, ensuring that inquiries are routed to the most qualified individuals for resolution. By harnessing the power of automation, businesses can streamline their operations, save time, and minimize the risk of tickets being overlooked or mismanaged.

10. Notifications: Keep Everyone in the Loop

The help desk features notifications that are crucial in keeping agents and end-users informed of new tickets, changes in ticket status, and other relevant updates. Notifications ensure timely responses and facilitate seamless communication between all parties involved. Notifications provide agents with:

Real-time updates about new tickets assigned to them

Changes in ticket status

Other relevant information that requires their attention

This allows agents to prioritize tasks effectively and respond promptly to customer inquiries, enhancing overall support efficiency. End-users receive notifications about the progress of their tickets, ensuring transparency and keeping them informed about any updates or resolutions. This proactive communication fosters trust and confidence in the support process, ultimately improving customer satisfaction.

11. Canned Responses: Save Time Responding to Support Tickets

Canned responses are a valuable tool to help agents manage this workload more efficiently. These pre-written messages allow agents to quickly respond to common or repetitive queries without crafting each response manually.

They are handy for addressing frequently asked questions or handling standardized inquiries. By saving commonly used responses in a centralized database, agents can easily access and deploy them whenever needed, saving valuable time and effort.

12. Third-Party Integration: Customize Your Helpdesk

This feature allows seamless integration with various external tools and applications, enabling businesses to streamline workflows and optimize efficiency. By integrating with third-party tools, companies can unlock additional functionalities and features that may not be available natively within the helpdesk software. This flexibility allows organizations to tailor their support processes to meet specific requirements and adapt to evolving business needs.

A Knowledge Base is an essential feature of any quality helpdesk. It serves as a centralized repository of information, enabling businesses to effectively manage and share knowledge internally with agents and externally with customers for self-service.

The knowledge base provides support agents with easy access to information, including user guides, troubleshooting tips, best practices, and more. It is also a valuable self-service tool for customers, allowing them to find answers to their questions and resolve issues independently. A well-maintained Knowledge Base improves support efficiency, enhances customer satisfaction, and promotes self-service.

14. Reporting: Analyze Your Helpdesk Performance

The reporting feature offers a wealth of insights into various aspects of support performance, empowering businesses to make data-driven decisions. One of the primary benefits of reporting features is their ability to analyze agent performance. By tracking metrics such as:

Response times

Resolution rates

Customer satisfaction scores

Businesses can identify top-performing agents

Areas where improvement is needed

This insight enables managers to provide targeted training and support, ultimately enhancing team performance.

Reporting features allow businesses to monitor ticket volume and trends over time. By analyzing ticket influxes, companies can anticipate peak periods and allocate resources accordingly, ensuring timely responses to customer inquiries. Identifying trends in support requests enables companies to proactively address common issues and implement preventive measures to minimize future occurrences.

28 Best Gladly Alternatives To Try

1. ChatBees: AI Software Built for Internal Customer Support Operations

ChatBees optimizes RAG with our AI customer support software for internal operations like customer support, employee support, etc. It provides the most accurate response and easily integrates into workflows in a low-code, no-code manner.

Smart Solutions for Enhanced Support

Agentic Framework: Automatically selects the optimal strategy to improve response quality.

Improved Predictability and Accuracy: Enhances the ability of teams to manage a higher volume of queries.

No DevOps Required: Simple to deploy and maintain without needing DevOps expertise.

Start for free—no credit card required. Sign in with Google and begin your journey with our AI customer support today!

2. Intercom: A Robust Alternative for Gladly

If you’re evaluating Gladly because you like its CRM-like nature, consider Intercom. Intercom is much more robust software to help you better track customer information across the end-to-end customer experience. It is the most like a CRM out of any tool on this list, including Gladly.

It gives you detailed insights into your website's visitors, including on-site behavior (like recent pages viewed) and detailed contact information. You can use these capabilities to identify leads, current customers, churn risks, and more. Intercom’s chatbot is also very powerful, with functionality to aid customer support, sales, and marketing.

3. Help Scout: A Simple, Easy-to-Use Help Desk

Help Scout is another help desk built for small and mid-sized businesses. Help Scout doesn’t have as many features as larger help desks, like Zendesk, or industry-specific help desks like Gorgias.

Help Scout has one of the best scores for ease of use in the helpdesk category, making it a great choice for small teams that need a simple, easy-to-use solution. It’s more affordable than Gladly. If you’re looking for the traditional method of customer support, where you resolve incoming tickets from your customers, then Help Scout is what you’re looking for—gladly’s system groups conversations by the customer instead.

4. Zendesk: The Most Robust Help Desk Software

If you’re looking for the most robust service desk, consider Zendesk. It’s built to handle enterprise-level support programs, like airlines and hotel chains. Many of Zendesk’s premium features and services are hidden behind large pricing plans and surprise fees. You'll have a robust and customized solution if your company can go all in on one of Zendesk’s more extensive plans.

5. Salesforce Service Cloud

Salesforce Service Cloud offers voice calls over Internet Protocol (VOIP) networks that leverage several contact center technologies such as:

Automated workflows

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Low-code / no-code

Customer service chatbots

To help organizations decrease repetitive tasks and streamline contact center operations.

Salesforce Service Cloud can utilize:

Case classification: review previous months’ occurrences and optimizing data entry for new instances by categorizing them.

Multilingual chatbots: Interact with customers in their language and use natural language understanding (NLU).

Next best actions: Leverage historical user data to optimize recommendations and categorize them into groups with distinguishing features.

6. Talkdesk

Talkdesk is a contact center as a service (CCaaS) platform with AI capabilities. Contact center teams can use Talkdesk’s automation, customer intelligence insights, and analytics features to foster personalized customer experiences based on customer input, segmentation, and chatbot sentiment.

Talkdesk claims its product leveraged automation in its customer’s CIA (a global technology services firm with over 500,000 customers globally) by increasing agent time savings by 8 minutes.

7. NICE CXone

NICE CXone is an AI-powered self-service customer portal and agent-assisted customer service software equipped with a cloud-native contact center with advanced features, CXone. NICE collaborates with over 25,000 organizations, including over 85 of the Fortune 100.

8. Genesys Cloud CX

Genesys Cloud CX is another Gladly alternative with a customer service portal offering cloud contact center solutions. The software offers over 350 AI-assisted capabilities, including:

Interactive voice response (IVR)

Low-code / no-code

Customer service chatbots

Workforce analytics

9. Enchant

Enchant has been designed from the ground up with ease of use in mind. The product is similar to Gladly in many ways and offers a range of features to help you take care of your customers. Enchant is a great Gladly Alternative if you want something more robust yet flexible and affordable.

Enchant boasts an intuitive interface that will seem familiar if you’ve used standard business tools like Gmail. That means a shallow learning curve, so your team can start immediately. Enchant is suited to teams from 3 - 300, so there’s plenty of room to grow.

10. Reamaze

Reamaze was designed for businesses with online stores. It could be the one for you if you’re an online retail business looking for a customer support solution. It integrates well with popular e-commerce solutions such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce to bring in relevant information, such as order details.

Reamaze also offers multi-channel support, including social media and live chat. Reamaze is one of the best Gladly competitors for ecommerce businesses. Its deep ecommerce integration features, such as giving refunds for a Shopify store, make it a powerful tool. But if you need more robust email handling, such as adding BCC recipients or classic email forward support, you should look at some of our other options.

11. Gorgias

Gorgias is an excellent customer service tool for businesses that run online retail stores. It offers deep integration with popular e-commerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce, making it easy for teams to handle tasks like refunds and orders quickly.

Another benefit of Gorgias is the ability to provide customer service across various messaging channels, including:

Social

Voice

Its automation add-on includes sentiment analysis, auto-responders, and self-service options to make your support team more efficient.

Built-in satisfaction surveys allow you to keep customers in the feedback loop. If ecommerce integration is your primary pain point, Gorgias might be the right Gladly alternative for you. But if you've got a team that deals with a higher volume of customer inquiries, their ticket-based pricing might not fit your business.

12. Front

The Front makes things easy by keeping its app familiar and intuitive. That means the learning curve isn’t too steep, so that you can get set up quickly.

Front users can manage their personal and shared inboxes in the same place. The Front also supports social channels and SMS so customers can use their favorite contact method.

Customers are looking for fast responses to queries across all channels, so social media integration is vital. Front offers robust collaboration features to enable teams to work together efficiently.

If your team relies heavily on cross-collaboration for most requests, Front could be a great Gladly alternative for you. But it might need to be more flexible if your team has a certain way it likes to work, or you need something beyond basic workflow customization.

13. Kayako

Kayako offers a more traditional approach to managing customer support. It gathers all communications with each customer across channels and pulls them into a single long thread. By combining events from external systems, Kayako helps you provide a personalized customer support experience.

Along with the messages across multiple channels, Kayako can show events like customers making a purchase or viewing an article on a knowledge base. Although the commitment to keeping all communications in one place is fantastic, Kayako’s features aren’t up to par with Gladly’s. They revamped their solution in 2016, but it still doesn’t feel modern or user-friendly.

14. Richpanel: A Customer Support Software Aiming to Improve the Agent and Customer Experience

Richpanel is a customer support software aiming to improve the agent and customer experience equally. It has a great live chat feature, an extensive knowledge base that enhances the customer experience, and an intuitive backend that helps the agents perform all their day-to-day functions without switching tabs. Here are some of the most notable features of Richpanel:

Richpanel’s self-service portal is a robust example of a great knowledge management system.

It gives customers power by allowing them to take order actions, such as editing or canceling an order and initiating a refund.

It has a highly customizable portal that features articles answering FAQs.

It improves the customer experience and reduces tickets by up to 50-70%, reducing the workload on support teams.

The highly customizable portal features articles that answer FAQs. It improves the customer experience and reduces tickets by up to 50-70%, reducing the workload on support teams.

15. tawk.to

If you’re investigating Gladly simply for the live chat but don’t need to communicate with customers on all the other channels like:

Skip the cost and use a free live chat tool like tawk.to. tawk.to enable your team to speak with customers on your website and deploy some simple self-service chat options, like shortcuts to a built-in knowledge base that tawk.to also offers. tawk.to is completely free, the only potential charge is the $19/month it takes to remove the Powered by tawk.to at the bottom of your chat widget.

16. Saufter: A Help Desk for eCommerce Businesses

Saufter is an exceptional option for Gladly, particularly for e-commerce businesses. This particular helpdesk solution is designed to simplify customer service operations by allowing you to manage them all in one place.

What sets it apart is that it offers essential eCommerce automation and workflow management features. Other notable features of Saufter include a centralized inbox, an automated returns center, automated agent training, and UGC collection.

17. Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk developers claim it can minimize operational disruptions by deploying 50% faster than its competitors. They help you retain your customers through cost-effective solutions.

The software has won various awards and recognitions from:

Gartner

Crozdesk

It has also earned the trust of more than 100,000 businesses across the globe to enhance their customer service.

18. HelpDesk

HelpDesk is customer service software that enables businesses to provide personalized customer support. It offers features such as:

Ticket management

Automation

Reporting

Integrations with other tools like LiveChat or ChatBot

HelpDesk aims to streamline customer communications and improve satisfaction through its user-friendly interface and customizable workflows. The platform is designed to help companies promptly manage and resolve customer inquiries and issues.

19. Vision Helpdesk

Vision Helpdesk is customer service software that provides best-in-class customer support tools to small and mid-sized companies and big enterprises. The software offers help desk ticketing and service desk management modules for managing all customer requests in a single place.

The customer support system is a centralized platform for tracking staff replies and handling customer requests. Integration with CRM, project management, chat tools, and SLAs ensures that no customer query goes unresolved. The customer service management system supports static code analysis and dynamic vulnerability scanning to secure customer and helpdesk data.

20. HappyFox Help Desk

HappyFox is a cloud-based customer relationship management solution that provides help desk and ticketing solutions to businesses across various industries, including:

Computer and software

Education

Travel and leisure

Media and publishing

Energy

Retail and more

HappyFox sorts tickets based on priority and then organizes them based on pre-determined criteria so that each queue is relevant and managed logically. Email templates help manage repetitive queries, and these templates can be customized to ensure an appropriate response from support team members to customers.

21. eDesk

eDesk is an essential tool for ecommerce businesses looking to provide exceptional customer service across all their sales channels. With its advanced AI-powered automation tools, eDesk simplifies customer support processes and generates insightful reports for eCommerce professionals.

This enables users to efficiently manage customer queries and dedicate more time to driving sales growth. By utilizing eDesk, online retailers can focus on enhancing their customers' shopping experience, ultimately boosting their sales and revenue.

22. Aircall

Aircall is a cloud-based business phone and call center system that helps manage and streamline customer support and sales engagement operations. Designed for offices and teams in remote areas, it enables users to integrate the software with client relationship management (CRM) and helpdesk systems and manage calls directly from it. Features of Aircall include:

Voicemail

Queueing

Recording

shared call inbox

contact management

Assign

Tag and add comments

It allows businesses to form employee groups based on location, responsibilities, skill set, and other attributes and create business strategies to facilitate team performance. It also provides phone numbers that can be used to make calls from anywhere and get live feeds on processes.

23. Zoiper

Zoiper is an on-premise and cloud-based softphone solution that caters to service providers, call centers, VoIP integrators, mobile operators, and businesses that require softphones independent of their service provider. It aggregates contacts from various sources, such as:

Outlook

Windows

Android

All incoming calls

Text, voice, and video communications are encrypted to prevent eavesdropping when creating an address book.

Zoiper can integrate customer relationship management (CRM) solutions and Outlook and Thunderbird plugins. The system also incorporates number recognition. Users can combine Zoiper’s dialer with other VoIP service providers or have multiple providers for different destinations to get a price bargain for each region.

24. Groove

Groove is one of the Gladly alternatives built for enterprise and mid-market companies. Groove, one of the Gladly competitors, is a sales engagement tool with functionalities like:

Customization

Email management

Knowledge base software

Groove enables sales managers and leaders to execute their strategic plans smartly. Teams can collaborate on accounts in connected workspaces, and admins can configure views and workflows by role or team.

25. Hiver

This Gladly alternative solution is for customer support teams who use Gmail but require assistance handling customer inquiries. Hiver is one of the Gladly alternatives that integrates with Google Workspace to help teams collaborate on generic email IDs like operations@ and support@.

Rather than introducing a completely new system, Hiver improves a company’s existing Google Office tools by incorporating customer service functionalities like:

Shared inboxes

Analytics

SLAs

26. ServiceNow

ServiceNow is among the alternatives to Gladly suitable for IT teams. It is a cloud-based workflow automation platform that combines all customers’ IT needs into one platform. Its purpose is to facilitate rapid development and automation. It enables the streamlining of operations and connecting data and organizational divisions.

27. Helpjuice

Helpjuice is one of the ideal Gladly alternatives for a cloud-based knowledge base software. Helpjuice is user-friendly and efficient at helping enterprises build and maintain their knowledge bases.

28. Tidio

Tidio is a live chat software integrated with chatbots designed to help businesses connect with their customers in real time on their website or via messaging platforms. Features:

Live chat

Customizable chat widgets

Automated messaging

Conversation history

Real-time visitor monitoring

Chat transcripts

Disable the widget for specific subpages

AI Customer Service Software

Ticketing System Workflow

Help Desk Process

Hubspot Ticketing System

AI Customer Service Agent

Real-Time Agent Assistance

Ticket Management System

Digital Customer Service Tools

Slack Ticketing System

Service Desk Automation

Customer Service Automation Software

Help Desk Analysis

Automated Customer Support

Help Desk Automation

How to Choose the Best Help Desk Software in Simple Steps

Define What ‘Great Customer Service’ Means For Your Business

Exceptional customer service starts with creating a customer service strategy. Your customer service strategy is the foundation for an exceptional service culture. Understand what excellent customer service means to your business and make such standards consistent across all departments.

For some businesses, excellent customer service means a customer who has given a 5-star rating to a customer service agent or interaction. Others might adopt an in-depth approach and consider repeat buyers or loyal brand advocates signs of superior customer service. Understanding your business objectives and priorities will help you find a tool that meets them.

2. Understand Customer & Employee Expectations

Next, you need to understand what customers expect from your brand. Research shows that around 54% of all consumers globally say they have higher customer service expectations than just one year ago. While some customers might expect a swift response over live chat, others might demand a mobile-friendly knowledge base.

You can understand their expectations by monitoring brand mentions on social media, keeping an eye on your competitors, and directly asking your customers via surveys. When we talk about employees, you must reduce their efforts and make their lives stress-free. Your agents' productivity and operational efficiency depend on the tools they use. Before finalizing a help desk, you must consider taking suggestions from those who directly deal with customers- your service managers and service representatives.

3. Raise Important Questions About Your Help Desk Vendor

Now, once you have clearly understood customer needs and expectations, it’s time to raise important questions about various help desk vendors:

How many paying users do they have?

What is their average rating on popular software review platforms?

How easy is it to contact them for technical or non-technical assistance?

How many communication channels are they available on? (email, phone, chat, etc.)

What other perks/benefits do they offer?

How secure is your business data with them?

Do they provide a free trial of their tool?

What help desk metrics does the tool allow you to measure?

The answers to these questions will provide a strong base for your research and help you realize every tool's pros and cons. After discussing them with your team or CS experts, you can frame more questions.

4. Consider Key Help Desk Features

Your search for the best help desk software, with features factored in, is complete. Let’s look at some of the core features that your tool should have:

Issue Tracking: Issue tracking is one of the primary features of free help desk software. You can convert every customer issue/request into a ticket and track the entire ticket lifecycle.

Internal Collaboration: As a business, you may need more than an individual or department to resolve a ticket completely. Internal collaboration features such as private notes, parent-child ticketing, etc., allow your agents to work in sync and resolve tickets faster.

Knowledge Base: All great help desk tools have one thing in common: they allow users to create a knowledge base from scratch. You can enable customers to find relevant help using FAQs, articles, video tutorials, etc., and reduce your ticket volume by up to 80%.

Live Chat: Live chat enables you to provide real-time support from within your help desk. Besides engaging users, you can also use a live chat plugin to maximize your sales opportunities. Chatbots can assist customers with their basic queries.

Reports & Analytics: The best help desk ticketing system must offer your team the necessary data. You can track key customer service metrics such as first response time, customer satisfaction, ticket backlog, etc. Managers can also monitor team performance from time to time.

5. Scalability Is Key

Overlooking the scalability factor while purchasing help desk software can harm your business growth. Check with sales and customer service teams to see if the solution you are considering can support a large volume of customers. Go for a help desk that can match your growing business requirements.

Scalable Help Desk Solutions for Business Growth

You have a small team, but the business could expand at some point in the future. With business expansion, you need a powerful help desk ticketing system to handle the rising volume of customer issues and requests.

A scalable and future-proof software helps you better manage customer communications and collaborate with teams efficiently without losing customer queries. Help desk managers can rest assured that even in rapid business expansion, their help desk tool will be more than ready to grow.

6. Focus on Your Budget

Whether you have a customer service team of a hundred or ten members, budget is always an essential factor. Without a sound knowledge of your budget, you are just taking a shot with both your eyes closed. Here are some points to consider to ensure the help desk system fits your budget:

Don’t get distracted by steep discounts or low prices.

A low price does not guarantee quality features.

Go for a tool that offers all the features your team needs without burning a hole in your pocket.

Get the upper management's approval before finalizing any help desk tool.

Keep things transparent and let your leadership know where and how the money will be spent.

Instead of investing heavily in an open-source tool, buy a cloud-based help desk software that offers flexible pay-per-agent plans.

Go for annual plans, as most companies offer heavy discounts (anywhere from 10 to 50%) on them. Also, ask if there are any hidden costs or charges.

7. A Free Trial Can Work Wonders

Some help desk vendors offer a free trial for their product, usually limited to 15 or 30 days. A free trial can give you a glimpse into a help desk system and help you make a more confident purchase decision. With a free trial, you can get to use the tool that you are going to purchase without spending a dollar.

Maximizing Your Trial Period for Effective Tool Evaluation

A trial version is a great way to check if all the advertised features and options are included and how well they function. Most trials offer premium features, so your team knows exactly what they are getting into.

A 15 —to 30-day window is enough to gauge a tool's efficacy and explore all its features in greater detail. During this period, ask your agents to jot down everything they love and highlight areas where the tool falls flat.

8. See How Well Your Team Responds

Selecting the right help desk software is only half the battle won. You must consistently see how your team responds to the tool and whether they face any challenges. Before you get all hands on deck, ensure your team is trained on basic help desk skills. They must have a fair idea about the following:

Ticket prioritization

Escalations

Canned responses

Ticket resolution time and more

Contact your help desk vendor for support whenever your team encounters any challenges. Visit their help center and look for relevant:

FAQs

Help articles

Video tutorials, etc.

To overcome any hurdles.

Hold regular team discussions and meetings to understand how comfortable your agents are with the tool. If they face challenges even after weeks of use, the tool might not fit you best.

With the right tool, you must witness enhanced productivity and fewer efforts from your agents. Create an internal knowledge base and allow agents to share best practices, tips, or hacks on making the most of the tool. An agent can share how he discovered a fantastic feature and how it can solve a significant problem.

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