A Help Desk solutions are an absolute must for a business or an enterprise and should be one of the first things they should invest in. All the complicated processes become simpler and it saves a lot of time and resources, making the business as a whole efficient. Agents and Supervisors are provided with huge relief and support with help desk tools around. It makes their job much easier and their desks clutter-free. If you are a new business owner, whether it is small or big, help desk software is one of the first things you should download and invest in.
What is a Help Desk platform?
The system is a very convenient query and problem management system which enables customers and staff to keep businesses in the loop with their problems and questions from point of contact until they reach a resolution. Ticket management, query management, and support are vital elements of a good Help Desk tool. Problem-solving is a very important factor when it comes to customer satisfaction. The modern Help Desk solutions provide support through various channels of communication such as e-mails, chat support, websites, toll-free numbers, and SMS.
As we know Free and Open Source are the two most important elements business owners and webmasters look for when downloading software. This proves to be economical and provides freedom, which is essential when you are setting up a new business or a website. This blog will look into the best available option when it comes to free and open source help desk software solutions.
Help Desk has always been among the top challenges indicated by marketers when it comes to customer service. It all sums up customer-centricity. Before we move onto free and open source help desk software, let's have a look at one of the most popular help desk software.
HubSpot Help Desk Software
HubSpot Help Desk solution is one POPULAR system that allows the support team to stay aligned and structured. The following section will help you learn how you might be best benefited from this software, how your team can consume it, and more.
With the kind of customer, volume and velocity that the support team comes across every day, it gets challenging to extend the right kind of support and practice empathy without a system.
HubSpot's Help Desk & Ticketing software is explicitly designed to connect with customers and grow through their experience. The software makes it easy for the support team to document, organize, track, and resolve each of your customers’ issues right from one single dashboard, which is easily accessible by the entire team. The software is just ideal for tracking and meeting all your customers’ service level agreements.
(Image Source: HubSpot Help Desk)
Key Features:
- Intuitive dashboard
- Easy to log in & organize customer records
- Track issues from one single dashboard
- Automated customer service process
- Prioritize request
- Facility to automatically convert emails into tickets
- Facility to deploy a survey and gather feedback
- Live Chat
- Conversational bots to add more value to your live chat facility
- In-built reporting
HubSpot Help Desk & Ticketing software comes with a 14-day free trial, and one can avail of the advanced tools by choosing the Starter package as low as $35 per month.
Besides HubSpot, we would also like to brief you about one of the most popular help desk tools known as - ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is a remarkably popular software when it comes to delivering extraordinary customer services. It provides centralized control and enhanced visibility over every IT issue to ensure that businesses deliver accurate and uninterrupted services to their clients. For more than a decade now, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus has proven to be extremely user-friendly and effective for IT resources and stakeholders alike. Help desk ticketing is now effortless with the help of this software and thus adapting and using it would definitely benefit your business in terms of better productivity and profitability.
(Source: ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus)
Key Features
- Allows managing the entire life cycle of IT tickets accurately, ultimately leading to reduced outages, improved productivity of the agents, and delivering flawless services to the clients.
- Optimizes the utilization of the workplaces within your organization’s campus and at the same time helps in regularly monitoring the amenities and services provided to the clients.
- Ensures asset management, including inventory control, and keeps track of the software license renewal dates and purchases.
- Enables creating projects and managing resources, including tracking changes and progress of every project to deliver services to the clients within a stipulated time frame.
- Allows analyzing the root cause of the problem so that issues don’t arise repeatedly and there is a consistent boost in productivity.
Another one sophisticated help desk software is SuperOps, which is widely used for customer support and service functions as follows;
SuperOps
SuperOps is a prominent AI-powered help desk and support software that comes with features to remotely track, prioritize and resolve the requests of clients easily. It is widely used by project and customer support managers owing to the capabilities such as unified PSA-RMM functions, conversational support, contextual ticketing, intuitive reports, admin console, smart resource tracking, role-based access, etc. The tool helps businesses view entire ticket history in a single thread, put the ticketing process on autopilot, assign and schedule tickets, serve personalized canned responses, send recurring invoices to clients and many more to provide top notch and best quality customer support. It also comes with integrated billing, in-built quotes and robust security measures besides supporting integration with QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, Xero, Stripe, Pax8, etc., for streamlined remote customer support and ticketing process.
(Source: SuperOps)
Features:
- Service desk software with modern ticketing
- Client management
- Contract management
- In-built invoicing and quote management
- Powerful workflow automation
- Turn existing processes into reusable runbooks
- Customizable reports with scheduling
- Centralized data sharing and storing
- Custom rebranding
- Automatic time-tracking
- Ticket assignment and scheduler
- SLA and invoice automation
- Canned responses
- Timed triggers
Now let us see the free and open source Help Desk solutions.
The Top 3 Free and Open Source Help Desk systems are:
- HelpDeskZ
- UVdesk
- Faveo
Help Desk Comparative Analysis Chart
Let us explore the listed free and open source help desk solutions with further details:
HelpDeskZ
(Source: HelpDeskZ)
Features:
- PHP-based system software
- Grouping function
- Bulk actions and query management
- Personalization
- Multilingual
- Message and mail piping
- Custom fields and templates
- Knowledgebase
- Canned responses
HelpDeskZ is a PHP-based free and open source software that comes with an array of features. The dashboard is very simplified and it stacks various functions and processes on a single screen. The messaging and mail functions are very convenient as well due to automatic pipelining. Its multilingual capability is very useful as well. The personalization feature is very useful for agents and supervisors which enables them to personalize their dashboards and they can also customize dashboard fields and message templates. HelpDeskZ is one of the most convenient and simplistic free and open source help desk software platforms out there.
UVdesk
(Source: UVdesk)
Features:
- Ticket Administration
- Task and Mail Management
- Multi-Channel Support
- Knowledgebase
- Agent Performance Examination
- Social Media Integration
- E-commerce Integration
- Help Desk Migration
UVdesk is what a modern tool is supposed to be. It makes running a business absolutely clutter free. Its seamless multi-channel support and social media integration is quite a boost over other help desk solutions. Task and Mail management is very simple and convenient for agents and supervisors. UVdesk is also mobile friendly so you can now manage your business even on the go. It also has an add-on feature for supervisors that enable them to examine the performances of agents in detail and work on it. Also, it comes with a Form Builder App and a File Viewer App for convenience. UVdesk follows all the top standards of security protocols to avoid data breaches.
Faveo
(Source: Faveo)
Features:
- SLA and Priority management
- Responsive Design
- Built-In Knowledgebase
- Multilingual
- Agent Collision Avoidance
- Ticket Rating and Ticket Merging
- Custom Forms and Canned Responses
- API and In-App notifications
Faveo is another modernized system that has social media and mobile integration. SLA management is a very important feature of Faveo which strengthens customer and business relationships. It also enables agents to select Priority customers and manage them accordingly. Its huge in-built knowledge base and multilingual ability create a huge database. Agent Collision Avoidance is another vital feature Faveo has. It is a rare feature when it comes to help desk systems. This saves a lot of time and resources for the business. The ticketing system is seamless and has powerful functions such as Ticket Merging for the agents and Ticket Rating for the customers.
Conclusion:
The above list is the top 3 free and open source help desk tools on the internet and any of them would definitely make your business or enterprise efficient and systematic. Help desk solutions are almost a compulsion for business owners today being a path-breaker to efficiency and profitability.
There are various premium help desk systems in the market as well that have various advanced features.
To explore more options and a detailed overview, please visit our page on Help Desk Software tools.
