Posted on January 24, 2022 in Marketing Thoughts

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates. As much as we appreciate this piece of business advice from Bill, we at Birdseed hope to help you avoid learning by this method.  Keeping your customers happy, and earning their loyalty and positive reviews is a key component of your business.  From our software that helps to immediately engage your website visitors, to recommendations for help desk software that provides a range of customer service solutions, you shouldn’t have to let an unhappy customer walk away from your business.

What Is Help Desk Software? 

Help desk software allows businesses to resolve a range of customer service issues, queries, and concerns by managing tickets from receipt all the way to resolution. It also provides your agents with a wide array of support and tools that promote collaboration between them.

Help desk solutions refer to the specific process of addressing customer issues. Some CRM solutions can include a help desk function and vice-versa, some help desk solutions may have CRM functionalities. ( see our CRM review blog here)

3 Free Help Desk Software Programs 

As amazing as Help Desk software sounds, be aware it does have some drawbacks.   Be aware that help desk solutions are often prime targets for phishing, spyware, malware, and viruses since they contain customer data and your company’s internal communication.   Ensure you have strong firewalls, training for your employees, and backup systems/ redundancy systems in place.  If a bug happens in the software, you could potentially lose customers (plus gain negative reviews!) and experience delays.

Make sure you choose your business help desk software carefully and consider all of your needs now, and in the future.  We have reviewed three of our favorite software for you below, but there are literally hundreds on the market.

Zoho Desk 

A web-based service, Zoho Desk is the industry’s first context-aware help desk software. It is intuitive and easy to use. Most of the important functions you need are easy to locate and responsive. The quality of customer support is good, like all Zoho products.  Reporting tools and analytics help managers identify issues and concerns that pertain to their sales forces performance and productivity, resulting in a higher satisfaction rating you’re your consumers and ultimately, doing better business.  If you are using the Zoho CRM software, this software will integrate perfectly.  On the con side, end users must submit tickets, and if your agents need to create a ticket, it is quite complicated.  Also, language support seems to be a bit limited.

Overview: This software will organize your information to support your customer, making customer service easier once you get your information set up and going. Agents have assigned specific tickets, but all other agents have access and can help each other.

Pricing: Their free plan supports up to three agents, but does not have time tracking on tickets. The highest tier offering is $25 per agent per month.

Zoho Desk Pricing Comparison

Hesk

Hesk is an incredibly user-friendly help desk platform offered free by IT solutions provider SysAid. It can be installed on your local devices or deployed in the cloud to help you receive, organize, track and resolve customer support issues.

The best feature, in my opinion, is the ability to prioritize tickets by urgency. You can also easily categorize and filter them in various ways. I like that you can track the time dedicated to resolving each ticket and once set up each support ticket allows you to communicate directly with the customer via email back and forth. You can also easily tell which CSR is working on what item.

Con’s include lack of features and reports of poor customer support. Although it has some really cool things that you can customize, it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that some other platforms do.

Overview:  Hesk is an easy-to-use, customer service tool that allows for basic features and some customization. Good for a small team that doesn’t have many steps or complexities in their funnel.

Pricing:

Hesk is free. As stated, Hesk is a free help desk software system from SysAid. While Hesk is completely free as long as you don’t mind the “Powered by Hesk” link and logo. If you want to remove that you can pay a licensing fee of 40 bucks, however for those that want Live Chat and some of the other “fancy” enterprise-level features, you will need to purchase the SysAid which can be expensive. (I couldn’t find the exact price for SysAid as all of the pricing forms say custom quote.)

C-Desk

is a free help desk solution for multiple business divisions to include, but not limited to: IT, HR, Accounting, and Customer Support. It works very similarly to an intranet portal for a company. People can categorize and assign tasks by group or team. Many bundled features along with C-desk can be used by every department in an organization, Like Asset Management, Events and Photo Gallery, Calenders, Knowledge Base, Projects and Tasks, Surveys and Forms, Cash Voucher Management System, and even an internal forum. (think wiki)

Overview: C-Desk is a software that is good for companies with small or remote departments. It has basic features, but one thing that stands out is that these features cross almost every aspect of a business. However, for straight help desk and customer support, it is somewhat limited.

Cons – While there are many features, there are some not included which I would think is part of the standard support and help desk structure.

Pricing: C-Desk is completely free for unlimited users.

So Which One Is Best?

Each of these three help desk software programs is made for different solutions. Our overall favorite is ZoHo, primarily because of the great integration it has with other areas of your business. If none of the above fits your company’s needs, I would be happy to suggest some others as there are hundreds of other Help Desk software programs out there vying to earn your company’s business.

In the long run, a help desk software program that fits your company’s needs will help your customers express their needs to you quickly, allowing you to help them quickly.

Thanks for reading! Were there any Help Desk Software programs you love that you think people should know about?

Until Next Time,

Robert Urban – CMO of BirdSeed 

Current CMO of BirdSeed and best-selling author, Marine veteran, and PhD.  Offers expert-level strategy and execution for SAAS and technology business through relationship-driven marketing, content, and sales while leading and managing people from all different backgrounds. BirdSeed is headquartered in Orlando, Florida.