Here we look at the best IT helpdesk software to improve your customer service in 2021, as well as the business benefits of choosing such a system.
Without having organised and streamlined IT support function, business growth is often hamstrung. More customers can simply bring more problems. Don’t forget – every ticket has a business cost attached to it. Therefore, a good IT helpdesk software system can help companies to oil the wheels of their IT support desk in order to speed throughput and increase customer happiness.
Service Desk Institute, in its “Analyst 2.0 survey”, found that 69% IT support tasks can be automated fully or partially. Now, imagine the impact it can have on the productivity of an organisation’s IT support team and the efficiency of the business as a whole!
What is Helpdesk Software?
Helpdesk software is a single platform (which can be on-premisis or cloud-based) that helps an organisation to streamline, prioritise, and process support tickets from multiple sources and support staff. This will speed throughput, increase internal or external customer satisfaction, and improve efficiency.
It makes it easier to track and monitor the open cases and employees don’t have to rush to the IT department whenever they face any technical issue.
In this roundup, we have signpost top IT helpdesk software that companies can try out in 2021:
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Freshservice
Prepare any list of top IT helpdesk tools, and the Freshservice name will usually appear in the list. Backed by the robust ability to streamline and automate IT workflow, Freshservice ticketing system is simple and quite straightforward to use. With its powerful AI-enabled automation feature, various repetitive tasks can be easily automated. It offers an entire range of IT service desk, ITSM, IT project management and IT asset management requirements.
Key Features and Benefits: User-friendly dashboard, more granular control over different ITIL and ITSM features, team huddle for more complex issues, SLA management, incident management and tracking.
Subscription Plans: Starts at an incredibly affordable price of just $19 per user per month and goes up to $109 per month for enterprise users. Even the free version packs a lot of punch.
Free Trial: Available.
Top Customers: Honda, NHS, Team Viewer
Website: https://freshservice.com/
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InvGate
The cloud-based ITSM application provides powerful team collaboration among users, automation and smart ticket management. It sends real-time alerts whenever a glitch occurs and also maintains a detailed log of the issue into the database. So, if a similar problem recurs in the future, the IT team can handle it more efficiently.
Key Features and Benefits: Powerful ticket management option, custom management of SLA (service level agreement), automated routing, network monitoring, asset tracking, and release management.
Subscription Plans: Offers three subscription plans— InvGate Insight, InvGate Service Desk, and InvGate Assets. Price for different plans is available on request.
Free Trial: Not found during our research
Website: https://www.invgate.com/
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ManageEngine
Touted as one of the most complete IT helpdesk solutions, ManageEngine boasts a top-of-the-line multi-channel ticketing system. It helps organise and streamline all support-related tickets coming from different platforms onto a single interface. It also offers a range of context-sensitive information to help understand and resolve issues quickly.
Key Features and Benefits: Powerful IT asset management, automated ticket assignment to the company’s resources, and more granular ticket management.
Subscription Plans: Pricing differs for on-premise and cloud platforms. The standard price for cloud-based platform starts from $64 per 50 users per month and it varies as per the number of users.
Free Trial: Available
Top Customers: AT&T, Barclays, Sony, Saint-Gobin
Website: https://www.manageengine.com/
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Altera
Packed with powerful remote monitoring and management features, Altera enables managed service providers (MSPs) to stay connected and productive from wherever they are. It’s especially suitable for MSPs.
Key Features and Benefits: All-in-one SaaS for MSPs, issue and customer segmentation, elegant and user-friendly mobile dashboard, ability to create tickets directly on mobile.
Subscription Plans: It offers three subscription pricing plans: Pro ($79 per user per month), Growth ($119 per month per user) and Power ($149 per month per user) for different business needs.
Free Trial: Not found during our research
Top Customers: Not seen
Website: https://www.atera.com/
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HubSpot Service Hub
HubSpot’s Service Hub helps organisations to organise and resolve customers’ issues while improving overall support desk productivity. Whenever required, the organisation’s IT team can access all information pertaining to the issue. It converts various requests into tickets automatically that can be further managed in a drag-and-drop pipeline. Other advanced features such as automation, bots and third-party app integration fosters enhanced understanding of the context of customer conversations.
Key Features and Benefits: Friendly interface, organises and monitors various tickets onto a single user interface
Subscription Plans: The starter plan is available at $50 per 2 users per month. Higher level plans (Professional and Enterprise) come at $400 and $1200 per month, respectively. However, its free plan is also loaded with a lot of features such as live chat and conversation bot.
Free Trial: Available
Top Customers: Newcastle University, Gofundme Charity, Frontify.
Website: https://www.hubspot.com/products/service
Final Thoughts on Choosing the Best System
Choosing the best IT helpdesk software should not be based on fancy features, but rather on how quickly and effectively they help close the ticket, the ability to support customer happiness and budget / value. Therefore, it’s important to spend some time to understand how useful these features are for your company before making a final call.