20 Best SaaS Help Desk Options for Managing High Ticket Volume

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Managing 24/7 Customer Support is a challenging task. For example, it’s common for support teams to receive a surge in tickets following the launch of a new product or feature. With a looming deadline to address customer inquiries before they become frustrated with your business, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. A SaaS help desk solution can ease the transition by helping you organize and prioritize support tickets to improve your team’s productivity and ensure customer satisfaction. This article will explore how to confidently select a SaaS help desk solution that effectively manages high ticket volumes, enhances team productivity, and improves customer satisfaction.

One valuable tool for meeting these objectives is ChatBee's AI customer support. This intuitive platform integrates with popular SaaS help desk solutions to automate customer interactions and improve response times.

What is a SaaS Help Desk?

A SaaS (Software as a Service) help desk software is like a customer support center but tailored specifically for businesses that deliver software applications over the internet on a subscription basis. It helps track and manage customer queries from various channels like:

Chat

Social media

It often includes features to support customer satisfaction and operational efficiency, such as:

Self-help functionalities

Automations for routine tasks

Analytics dashboards

It can connect with other business tools and is designed to grow with the company’s needs while keeping customer data safe and secure.

How Does a SaaS Business Benefit From Implementing a Help Desk?

Help desks can be invaluable for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) businesses. Here are some key use cases for SaaS companies to leverage help desk software:

Customer Support

Issue Resolution: Support teams can easily track any technical issues customers raise through help desk tickets. This ensures systematic tracking and resolution of customer queries.

FAQs and Knowledge Bases: A centralized repository where customers can find answers to common questions, reducing the need for support interactions.

Personalized Support: Using data to provide tailored support experiences, making users feel valued.

Billing and Account Management

Billing Queries: Addressing questions related to subscription charges, renewals, and payment issues.

Account Changes: Assisting users in upgrading, downgrading, or canceling their subscriptions.

Internal Collaboration

Inter-Departmental Communication: Certain SaaS help desk software offers collaboration functionalities that can help streamline communication between various departments.

Escalation Procedures: Streamlining the escalating more complex issues to specialized teams or higher management.

Data Analysis and Reporting

Support Metrics: Monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) like response time, resolution time, and customer satisfaction scores.

Trend Analysis: Identifying common issues or bugs, helping the development team prioritize fixes.

If you’re worried about your bottom line, SaaS help desks save money. The average cost of manually handling a ticket is $22, but with help desk automation, teams can resolve up to 22 percent of tickets at no cost.

Essential Features of a Cutting-Edge SaaS Help Desk

SaaS businesses encounter particular challenges in delivering customer support. Your help desk system needs to be equipped with some fundamental features to help you mitigate these challenges. These can include:

Multichannel Support: Ensure that your SaaS help desk can handle customer inquiries from various channels like:

Email
Live chat
Social media
Phone

This provides a seamless omnichannel support experience.

Ticketing System: A robust ticketing system is crucial for organizing and tracking customer inquiries, allowing support teams to prioritize and manage them efficiently.

Knowledge Base: Look for a knowledge base feature where you can create and maintain:

Self-help articles
FAQs
Documentation

This empowers customers to find answers independently.

Automation: Automation capabilities should include ticket routing, auto-responses to common queries, and workflow automation to streamline support processes and reduce manual tasks.

Analytics and Reporting: Comprehensive analytics and reporting tools help you track support performance metrics, like response time, resolution time, and customer satisfaction scores, enabling data-driven improvements.

Integration: Ensure the helpdesk can integrate with other business tools such as CRM systems, email platforms, and analytics tools to create a cohesive support ecosystem.

Cost-Effective Pricing: Consider your budget and choose a helpdesk that offers a pricing structure that aligns with your financial resources.

By carefully evaluating these essential features, you can select a help desk solution that meets your current support needs and is flexible enough to adapt as your SaaS business grows and evolves.

AI Customer Experience

Omni Channel Customer Support

Help Desk Ticket Workflow

How to Scale Customer Support

What is a Support Ticket

What is a Help Desk

Help Desk Software Requirements

Helpdesk Best Practices

20 Best SaaS Help Desk Options for Managing High Ticket Volume

1. ChatBees: The AI Customer Support Optimizer

ChatBees optimizes RAG for internal operations such as customer and employee support, with AI-driven customer support software. Key features include:

High Accuracy and Easy Integration: Delivers the most accurate responses and seamlessly integrates into workflows with low-code or no-code options.

Agentic Framework: Automatically selects the best response strategy to enhance accuracy and quality for each use case.

Improved Efficiency and Scalability: Increases predictability and enables support teams to effectively manage a higher volume of queries.

No DevOps Required: Simplifies deployment and maintenance, freeing teams from DevOps overhead.

These capabilities allow operations teams to optimize their support processes without technical complexities.

Power of Knowledge Graph

Improving ticket resolution time by up to 52%

Auto Knowledge Graph Building

Upon connecting a HubSpot Ticket pipeline, the ChatBees app automatically scans your historical tickets, constructing a comprehensive knowledge graph from this data. The app actively monitors ticket closure events in real-time. ChatBees automatically incorporates a ticket into the existing knowledge graph when it is marked as closed.

This dynamic process ensures that your knowledge graph continuously expands and evolves, capturing recent customer interactions and resolutions.

Auto Maintain Knowledge Base

As products evolve and new features are added, knowledge bases can become outdated. ChatBees addresses this challenge by automatically identifying and filling gaps in your existing knowledge repository. It does this by intelligently extracting valuable insights from historical support tickets. This continuous, automated process ensures your knowledge base remains current and comprehensive, even as your product landscape changes.

By leveraging the wealth of information contained in past customer interactions, ChatBees maintains an up-to-date, interconnected repository of valuable information, enhancing your team's ability to provide swift and accurate support.

AI-Driven Ticket Resolution

Automated Reference Resolution and Interactive Copilot: ChatBees empowers support agents with a dual approach:

Automated Reference Resolution: Streamlines access to relevant information, enabling quicker resolutions.
Interactive Copilot: Assists agents in handling complex cases, allowing them to fine-tune responses for clarity and accuracy.

Auto Reference Resolution

When a new ticket is created in HubSpot, ChatBees springs into action, automatically analyzing the ticket's content. Drawing from a rich repository of historical tickets and your comprehensive knowledge base, it swiftly generates a suggested resolution. This AI-driven process provides support agents with a valuable reference point, offering relevant information and potential solutions at their fingertips.

Enhanced Agent Efficiency

With this intelligent recommendation, support agents can quickly review the suggested resolution, adapt it as needed, and address the customer's issue more efficiently. This streamlined workflow accelerates response times and ensures consistency in problem-solving across your support team.

By leveraging past resolutions and curated knowledge, ChatBees empowers your agents to provide more accurate, timely, and practical support, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction and reducing resolution times.

Ticket Copilot Support agents can also access the ChatBees user interface directly. This feature allows them to delve deeper into ticket-related inquiries and gain more comprehensive insights when needed.

AI-Powered Email Drafting and Seamless HubSpot Integration

Agents can leverage ChatBees' advanced AI to draft customer reply emails based on the proposed resolution. This functionality streamlines the communication process, ensuring that responses are accurate, consistent with the solution, and professionally crafted. We are integrating the copilot functionality directly into HubSpot, allowing support agents to manage follow-ups without leaving HubSpot or switching to the ChatBees UI.

Human Agent Centric Automations

ChatBees AI Agent revolutionizes customer support by automating complex issue resolution processes. When a customer issue arises, the AI Agent swings into action, performing a series of intelligent tasks:

Automatically analyzes the customer's issue

Retrieves relevant customer information

Executes appropriate actions based on the issue type

For instance, if a user requests license activation, the ChatBees AI Agent:

Automatically fetches the customer's details

Verifies the license purchase

Activates the license

Automating Routine Tasks

This automation extends to support scenarios, including processing refunds and other common customer requests. The human agent's role is streamlined to verifying and confirming these AI-initiated actions, significantly reducing manual workload and accelerating resolution times.

AI-Powered Analytics

ChatBees is developing advanced AI-powered analytics capabilities. This upcoming feature will provide deep, actionable insights from your support tickets. This tool will empower your team to proactively improve customer experience and optimize support processes by analyzing trends, common issues, and resolution patterns.

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

2. Zendesk: The Versatile Help Desk Powerhouse

Zendesk Service Suite is an industry-leading SaaS help desk that streamlines customer support through seamless automation and an intuitive interface. This unique platform offers omnichannel support and app integrations to ensure that all agents and customers can access the latest information on their tickets. Zendesk’s self-service portal also gives your customers the power to troubleshoot your software independently.

As an award-winning SaaS company, Zendesk knows what SaaS help desks need to succeed. You can empower your agents and customers to find answers faster with:

Customizable help center

Knowledge base

Online community

Customer portal

Then, with included reporting and analytics tools, you can quickly gain insight into your buyer behavior and stop service problems in their tracks.

Features

Custom views

Self-service options

Integrated voice software

Analytics and reporting

Live chat and messaging

Collaboration tools

API, SDKs, and app integrations

Automated routing

Custom branding

Omnichannel support

Multi-language support

Pricing: Starts at $55 per agent/month billed annually

3. Happy Fox: The IT Help Desk

Happy Fox is a cloud-based help desk solution designed with IT in mind. This platform includes key help desk features such as:

Ticketing management

Automation

Advanced reporting

It leaves options open for scalability. Happy Fox works for various projects but is primarily designed for support and project management needs.

Limitations and Considerations

There are a few cons to Happy Fox. The biggest is that all of their plans come with ticket limits, so customer support influx needs to be regulated. Compared to Zendesk, Help Scout has relatively few app integrations, and many special features must be purchased separately.

Features (for Enterprise Plan)

Smart rules-based automation

API, SDKs, and webhooks

Workflow macros

Live website chat

Advanced reporting

Ticket routing, categorization, and tagging

Unlimited shared inboxes

Branding customization

Knowledge base management

Multi-channel communications

Pricing: Starts at $ 9 Per agent/mo

4. Help Scout: The Small Business Help Desk

Help Scout is a SaaS platform geared towards smaller businesses. With a 14-day free trial and no minimum number of users, Help Scout is ideal for those just starting. Despite their smaller size, they still support essential features like:

Reporting

Knowledge base management

Simple integrations

With their focus on growing businesses, Help Scout offers a startup program with discounts for up to two years. This discount can also be negotiated if your company focuses on environmental sustainability or social impact, making Help Scout an excellent choice for small nonprofits.

It is worth noting that if you are a larger business, Help Scout may not be the best fit for your company, but they are scalable and can accommodate up to 500 users.

Features

Rule-based automation

Extensions and integrations

Templated responses

Website live chat

Analytics

Ticket routing and prioritization

Collaboration tools

Customizable branding

Knowledge base content management

Multi-channel support

Pricing: $75/mo

5. SolarWinds Service Desk: The IT Service Management Tool

SolarWinds Service Desk is an IT management system that streamlines service requests and processes. Their multi-channel software makes SolarWinds accessible from multiple devices, giving tech agents a lift in the field. SolarWinds also heavily focuses on efficiency through automation in all aspects of ticketing, including:

Creation

Escalation

Routing

Because SolarWinds charges by feature rather than by user, it can be expensive for companies needing a more complex tech stack. This may be a cost-effective choice for small businesses that don’t need many frills.

Features

Relationship mapping

Change management

IT asset management

Configuration management database software (CMDB)

Help desk knowledge base

Procurement tools

Service automation

Service desk chat

Service desk reporting

Risk management

Pricing: Starts at $19

6. JIRA Service Management: The IT Service Desk

JIRA Service Management is a new help desk branch of JIRA software. JIRA is best known for providing IT service ticketing. Still, its new service management help desk is a well-received addition to its existing software, especially if you’re already a customer.

JIRA is cloud-based, available on multiple devices, and focuses on automation, self-service, incident management, and conversational ticketing. It also supplies knowledge base software in its higher plans and analyzes incident fallouts.

Features

Conversational ticketing

Incident postmortems

Change management

Reports and metrics

SLA management

Asset management

Smart automation

Knowledge base (with Confluence subscription)

Incident management

Self-service portal

Pricing Plans

Free: $0 for up to three agents

Standard: $20 per agent/month

Premium: $45 per agent/month

Enterprise: Contact us for a custom quote

7. Salesforce Service Cloud: The CRM Help Desk

Salesforce is a leading sales and service software provider whose heavyweight features reflect this. Salesforce Service Cloud uses AI automation, complete customer profiles, and service analytics to streamline services and response times. Salesforce prides itself on its scalability; enterprise-level companies and small startups can use this software.

Integration Considerations and Salesforce Ecosystem

Salesforce’s full features and integrations are kept mainly within the software family. If you’re not already a Salesforce CRM user, you’ll need to invest a bit extra to set up integrations or pull data from the rest of your tech stack. If you’re already partnered with a CRM like Zendesk or HubSpot, it will likely be more accessible to stay in-house.

Features

Knowledge management

Workflow automations

Webhooks, SDKs, and APIs

3rd-party integrations

Omnichannel routing

Support operation analytics

Asset management

Remote access

Self-help portal

Customer forums

Workflow automation

Call center management

Pricing: Starts at $25 per user/month

8. SysAid: The IT Help Desk

SysAid is a high-ranking IT help desk solution. With a strong emphasis on automation, SysAid’s features focus on fast-paced ticket management and service response time. SysAid is a multi-channel software, so users can access it on-site or via a mobile app. While SysAid has a long list of features, several (including enterprise-level workflow and BI analytics) are only available on the higher-priced plans.

One drawback to SysAid is its strength: while ideal for IT teams, it’s not always the best choice as an overall SaaS help desk. If your company deals with a fair amount of IT, it may make sense to look into SysAid. If not, it might be best to look elsewhere.

Features

Dedicated customer success manager

LDAP integration (Active Directory)

ITIL package

Advanced custom fields

Third-party integrations

Task automation

Business value dashboard (in beta)

Pricing: Contact the company for a quote

9. Vivantio: The B2B Help Desk

Vivantio is a help desk solution for small- to mid-sized B2B businesses. Its essential features include useful basics such as:

Simple SLA

Branded self-service portals

Mobile app

Additional features with upgraded plans include:

Knowledge management

Kanban calendar views

Custom dashboards

Vivantio also uniquely offers a customer service management platform separate from its IT service management platform, allowing smaller businesses to purchase only what they need. Highly integrative, Vivantio pairs well with any established CRM.

Features

Ticket hierarchies

Intuitive interface

US & UK support centers

Call center management

Surveys & feedback

Real-time chat

Queue management

IT asset management

Workflow configuration

Pricing: Starts at $59 per user/month

10. Zoho Desk: The Help Desk for Zoho Users

Zoho is most known as a CRM tool, but its help desk should be addressed. Zoho’s help desk integrates with its CRM to align your tech stack, quickly move tickets across platforms, and log customer data into robust profiles.

High integration levels and advanced AI make Zoho’s help desk appealing to companies of all sizes. Smaller companies should note that its most popular features are only available with its more costly Enterprise plan.

Features

SLAs & escalation

Help center theme gallery

Private & public knowledge base

Customer happiness ratings

Reports & dashboards

Ticket sharing

Scheduled reports

Help Center customization

Zia - Artificial Intelligence

Pricing: Starts at $0 for up to three agents

11. Freshdesk: The Budget IT Help Desk

Freshdesk is a newcomer to the help desk scene, but it’s quickly becoming a top cloud-based IT help desk system. This platform is small but data-driven, with features like:

AI service management

Knowledge base software

Omnichannel communication

Limited Scalability and Feature Set

Freshdesk is ideal for small companies only looking for essential service tools. Its logging system is also primarily designed for teams using call centers and email support—not integrated chatbots or AI ticketing systems. This startup SaaS software might be a good fit if you’re looking for an affordable alternative to a more advanced help desk.

Features

Reporting and analytics

Mobile app

Service catalog

Canned responses

Approval workflows

Release management

Team dashboards

SLA management

Chatbot powered by Freddy AI

Pricing Plans

Free: $0 up to 10 agents

Growth: $15 per agent/month

Pro: $49 per agent/month

Enterprise: $79 per agent/month

12. Kayako: The Multi-Language Help Desk

The best SaaS helpdesk for teams offers multi-language support. Kayako originally set out in 2001 to make a more usable help desk ticketing system. Since then, they’ve continued to add to their product. Now users can offer support across multiple communication channels, including:

Chat

Self-service support

Feature Tiers and Collaboration Tools

These features are only available on their higher-cost plans. Kayako also offers collaboration features, such as adding internal notes to tickets and seeing when another agent works on a ticket to avoid duplicate work. All in all, Kayako has a strong offering worth checking out.

Price: Starting at $30/agent per month

13. Hiver: The Help Desk That Works Right Inside Gmail

Hiver’s multichannel customer service platform is an excellent tool for SaaS businesses because it enables them to provide prompt and proactive support without dealing with the complexities of a traditional help desk. Hiver integrates seamlessly with Gmail, so your agents can start immediately with the platform. No extensive training is needed.

Features

A single platform for all your business communications: Users interact with SaaS businesses across different channels due to diverse preferences, ease of accessibility, and convenience. Hiver enables user interactions across multiple communication channels, all accessible directly within Gmail:

Live chat

Knowledge base

Voice

Easily assign incoming queries to agents with a single click: Hiver allows you to convert customer conversations into actionable tasks and assign them to your team members. This ensures that incoming queries are noticed.

Automating Repetitive Tasks for Efficiency

Powerful automations to help teams focus on tasks that matter: SaaS businesses serve a large customer base, and agents need to be highly efficient. Hiver’s smart automations help teams automate repetitive tasks such as query assignments to help agents focus on more complex tasks.

Knowledge base to empower customers to self-serve: A client using your SaaS product will likely have questions, many of which might be common queries. With Hiver’s Knowledge Base, you can create a repository of help articles that your customers can refer to anytime. This enables self-service and reduces the workload volume on human agents.

Seamless integrations to help your teams work more efficiently: Hiver’s SaaS help desk integrates with several third-party apps. This helps your agents get their work done without switching between multiple applications.

SLA management to ensure timely resolutions: SaaS businesses must manage customer expectations and offer proactive support. Hiver’s SLAs help you promptly address all customer conversations with automated reminders and notifications.

Robust analytics to get insights into team performance and customer satisfaction: Hiver allows you to track key metrics such as first response time and average resolution time to help you understand how your team has been managing support interactions.

Built-in and custom reports to measure what matters to you: You can use these reports to get a complete overview of what’s working and identify bottlenecks in the customer support process. For instance, Hiver’s CSAT reports are a great way to see real-time customer feedback. This helps you craft better experiences for your customers.

Hiver Pricing Plans

Free Plan: $0

Lite Plan: $19/user/month

Pro Plan: $49/user/month

Elite Plan: $79/user/month

Free Trial: 7 days

This range of plans provides options for various team needs and budgets.

14. Tidio: The All-in-One Customer Service Platform

Tidio is not just a help desk tool; it’s an all-in-one customer service platform for your SaaS business. It provides a single inbox for omnichannel customer service with a ticket triage management system and automations. These features will help your support team become more efficient with queries and improve your overall customer experience.

Main Features

Client segmentation and tagging of visitors

Real-time visitor monitoring

AI chatbots with NLP technology

Multichannel support (live chat, email, social media)

Simple, intuitive user interface

Pricing

Free Version: $0

7-Day Free Trial: Available for all plans

Paid Plans

Starter: $29/month

Growth: Starts at $59/month

Plus: Starting at $749/month

Premium: Starting at $2999/month

15. Hubspot: The All-in-One Integration Tool

Though HubSpot is primarily known for its marketing and sales software, it recently released support software called HubSpot Service Hub. It’s help desk software that includes standard features like:

Shared inbox

Reporting capabilities

It also includes:

Satisfaction surveys

Automation capabilities

Option to build out a knowledge base

Using HubSpot CRM, you can connect customer profiles to Service Hub, giving your team more context and insight.

It’s important to note that the free plan lacks access to technical support and is limited to forums.

Key Features

HubSpot CRM integration

Automation and satisfaction surveys

Pros

Comprehensive Toolset: Offers a wide range of features, including shared inbox, reporting capabilities, satisfaction surveys, and automation, catering to various support needs.

Integration with HubSpot CRM: Provides a seamless experience for businesses already using HubSpot’s ecosystem, enabling better customer data management and personalized support.

Free Plan Availability: Its free plan makes it an attractive option for small businesses or those looking to trial the software before committing financially.

Pricing

Free Plan: $0

Starter: Starting at $30/month

Professional: Starting at $490/month

Enterprise: Starting at $1,180/month

16. JitBit: The Simple Help Desk

This is one of the SaaS contact center solutions with a unified email, live chat, chatbots, and knowledge base. It’s easy to use and quick to set up, so you can utilize all its features quickly. Jitbit also has a mobile app for you to stay up to date with your team and be available to clients even on the go.

Pros

Mobile apps for iOS and Android

Help desk automation

Over 500 integrations available

Pricing

Free 21-Day Trial: Available

Freelancer: $29/month

Startup: $69/month

Company: $129/month

Enterprise: $249/month

17. TalkDesk: The Ecommerce Help Desk

If you’re an ecommerce company looking for a custom support solution, TalkDesk may be worth checking out. They offer many standard help desk features, like:

Omnichannel support

Analytics

Self-service options

They also offer some features specific to the e-commerce space, like dynamic product recommendations using AI and proactive notifications for shipping or return updates to keep customers in the loop.

Price: Starting at $75/user per month.

18. LiveAgent: The Help Desk for Gamers

LiveAgent combines email, calls, and social media communication into a unified dashboard, offering simple setup and integration with the rest of their platform and tools to help team productivity. LiveAgent also offers a unique gamification approach to customer support. Teams can earn points and rewards for completing tasks, making customer support fun for your team.

Price: Starts at $15/agent per month.

19. Front: The Communication Hub

Front is a cutting-edge communication platform designed to enhance team collaboration and customer relations management by centralizing multiple channels into one shared inbox:

Emails

Social media

Chat

And more

Its intuitive design ensures every customer query is noticed, fostering a more collaborative and efficient response strategy. Front stands out for its ability to integrate with many apps and services, streamlining workflows and enhancing team productivity.

Pricing: Pricing starts at $59 per seat per month

Key Features

Shared inbox for seamless team collaboration

Integration with numerous apps and services

Advanced analytics and reporting

Customizable workflows to suit various team needs

Pros

With robust integration options, Front seamlessly connects with CRM systems, project management tools, and other essential business applications, enhancing productivity. It also provides detailed insights into team performance and customer engagement, enabling businesses to make data-driven decisions to improve service quality.

20. SysAid

SysAid is a comprehensive IT service management (ITSM) solution that caters to businesses looking for an all-encompassing approach to manage their IT services and support. It offers a wide range of features designed to streamline IT operations and improve efficiency, including:

Incident management

Asset management

Change management

Advanced automation capabilities

ITIL-Aligned ITSM Solution

SysAid's ITSM solution is built on ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) best practices, ensuring businesses can align their IT services with their overall business goals. With its robust functionality, SysAid aims to simplify complex IT processes, making it easier for IT teams to deliver high-quality service and support.

Pricing: Users must contact SysAid directly for pricing

Key Features

Comprehensive ITSM capabilities following ITIL guidelines

Advanced automation and AI capabilities

Pros

SysAid's adherence to ITIL best practices ensures that businesses can manage their IT services with industry-standard processes, improving efficiency and service quality.

Offering a broad range of ITSM features, SysAid can handle various IT service management tasks, from incident and problem management to change management.

Help Desk Benefits

Customer Experience Automation

Ticket Escalation

Self Service Customer Support

Service Desk Automation Ideas

Help Desk Benefits

Common Help Desk Problems and Solutions

Best Help Desk Software for Small Business

Generative Ai for Customer Support

Best Incident Management Software

Best Open Source Ticketing System

How To Choose the Best SaaS Help Desk Software

When selecting a SaaS help desk, prioritize the features that will meet your business needs and benefit your customers. First, consider your company’s size and volume of customer requests. If you’re a small business with limited support requests, you can likely get by with a basic help desk. As you grow, you can switch to a more robust solution that can handle the intricacies of your operations and customer support needs.

On the other hand, if you’re a large organization with an established online presence and receive hundreds of daily customer inquiries, you’ll need an advanced help desk with automation capabilities and extensive integrations to improve your support operations.

Tailoring Your Help Desk to Industry-Specific Needs

Consider your industry to determine if you need specialized features to address compliance or regulatory requirements. For example, a law firm may need a help desk with robust security features to protect sensitive client information. At the same time, an eCommerce business may look for a solution with integrations for their online store and customer relationship management (CRM) software.

Key Features of SaaS Help Desks

Automating customer requests and tools for managing support tickets are the key functionalities your SaaS help desk solution should have. But you should also look for valuable integrations and multichannel support. That way, you can stay in touch with your clients across different platforms using only one inbox.

Let’s look into the features a little bit more:

Automation

You should be able to automate the most time-consuming and routine tasks with a help desk system. These include request categorization, ticket assignments, and issue escalation. Automations make support processes easier and quicker while improving customer satisfaction and agent well-being. For example, choose a SaaS help desk software that offers capabilities like:

Ticket assignment rules

Auto-replies

Status updates

Variety of Integrations

Ensure the SaaS service desk tool you choose integrates with your current software. This will make the implementation and working with the software much more manageable. It will also help you avoid missing communication and dealing with multiple data sources.

Some essential integrations include your CRM system, eCommerce platform, and accounting software. For more specific tools, look at the software you’re using now and check if you can connect the help desk to these tools.

Multichannel Support

Ensure that customers can reach you via various channels and that your support team can see all the incoming messages in a single inbox. This will ensure that every message is noticed and that every client responds promptly to their inquiry.

You’ll also be able to personalize the interactions and ensure a unified brand voice across different platforms, including:

Your website

Social media

Communication channels

Ticket Management

Tagging, categorizing, assigning, and routing tickets are among the most essential features of a help desk solution. Your agents need to be able to easily manage all incoming communication and mark the tickets according to their status, priority, and owner. So, ensure the tool you pick has an easy-to-use management process.

SaaS Help Desk Best Practices

Getting the most out of your SaaS help desk requires setting it up properly and leveraging key features optimally. Following these best practices will allow you to maximize the customer service and operational capabilities offered by modern cloud-based help desk solutions.

Train All Agents on Help Desk Features

Introduce new help desk software features to agents and conduct continuous training around navigating the interface efficiently. Include in your training how to:

Use canned responses

Categorize tickets correctly

Attach error logs

Proper training on the help desk feature set makes support agents more effective and capable.

Set Up Clear Help Desk Workflows

Creating help desk workflows allows you to route tickets to the right agent based on automatically:

Category

Severity

Other factors

You can define steps like initial response, investigation, resolution, and follow-ups. Defined workflows improve agent productivity and the customer experience.

Use SLAs to Manage Ticket Priorities

Help desk SLAs (service level agreements) allow you to prioritize tickets by setting up first response times and resolution targets. For example, you can set an SLA of 1 hour for high-priority tickets and 4 hours for regular tickets. SLAs provide customers with transparency in response times and ensure urgent tickets get fast responses.

Enable Self-Service Options

Self-service help desk options like FAQ knowledge bases, user communities, and chatbots let customers help themselves, freeing up your agents’ time. Self-service also reduces ticket volume and the recurring of simple queries, so agents can focus on tickets that need human input.

Integrate with Other Business Software

Integrating your help desk with CRM, network monitoring, IT service tools, accounting, document management systems, and other software gives agents greater visibility into customer data and allows them to resolve tickets faster. Most SaaS help desk tools offer integration apps and open APIs to link with other software in your tech stack.

Email Ticketing System

Help Scout vs Zendesk

Freshdesk Alternatives

Tidio Alternatives

Salesforce Alternatives

Freshdesk vs Zendesk

Talkdesk Competitors

Help Desk Knowledge Base Examples

Use ChatBees’ AI Customer Support Software to 10x Customer Support Operations

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

ChatBees' agentic framework automatically chooses the best strategy to improve the quality of responses for these use cases. This improves predictability/accuracy, enabling these operations teams to handle more queries. No DevOps is required to deploy and maintain the service.

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