When you’re running a small business, every decision you make goes a long way in shaping your customers’ experience, and in turn, their loyalty towards your brand. You have to do absolutely everything you can to earn their trust – answer questions, take special requests, and sometimes just be there for them round the clock to show them that you care. 

When you’re operating on a shoestring budget and a lean team, you might look for different ways to cut costs as much as possible. To help you with your customer interactions, we have provided you with the best help desk software for your small business. Check them out below.

• What is the best Help Desk Software for Small Business?
• How can you find the Best Helpdesk Software for your Small Business?
• How do I Create a Help Desk Ticket?
• How does Help Desk Software work?
• Why does my Small Business need a Helpdesk Software?
• What is the Difference Between Service Desk and Desktop Support?
• What is Help Desk Staff?

What is the best Help Desk Software for Small Business?

1. Zendesk Support 

Zendesk Support is our top overall recommendation for helpdesk software. Zendesk offers a wide range of support solutions for various business sizes and needs, as well as a full product suite that includes everything you could possibly ask for in a helpdesk solution.

Read Also: Top 10 Help Desk Solution

It’s a powerful software, yet it’s extremely easy to set up and use. Zendesk Support is fully customizable and integrates with more than 500 different third-party apps.

Some of the top features of Zendesk Support include omnichannel integration, ticket forms, multi-brand support, conditional and custom ticketing, pre-defined ticket actions, and team collaboration tools.

Pricing for Zendesk Support starts at just $5 per month.

The entry-level plan will be a bit limited, but as you can see, Zendesk has a plan for everyone based on your business needs.

Every Zendesk Support plan comes with the Lite versions of Zendesk Chat, Zendesk Talk, and Zendesk Guide. For those of you who want to get the most out of your helpdesk software, consider upgrading to the Zendesk Support Suite.

Starting at $89 per month per agent, the product suite bundles the apps for Support, Chat, Talk, and Guide into a single package, at either the Professional or Enterprise level.

The Zendesk Support Suite is 35% cheaper than purchasing each of those products individually. From simple to advanced helpdesk needs, Zendesk has it all. Try Zendesk free for 30 days.

2. Freshdesk 

Freshdesk is a helpdesk solution provided by Freshworks, a company known for offering high-quality business solutions with a focus on customer service. More than 150,000 businesses trust Freshdesk for helpdesk software, making it one of the most popular options on the market today.

We recommend Freshdesk to small businesses that are outgrowing email for customer support. Freshdesk is a simple and effective introduction to ticket support.

With Freshdesk, you’ll be able to simplify service communications, collaborate with other team members, and automate repetitive tasks. Freshdesk has an excellent free plan for startups and small businesses that are just getting their feet wet with Helpdesk software.

While the free plan will obviously have some limitations, you can use it for an unlimited number of agents and still benefit from basic features like email and social ticketing, ticket dispatch, and customer self-service via knowledge base.

For those of you who want features like automation, reporting, SLA management, and hundreds of apps to extend your helpdesk capabilities, paid plans start at just $15 per month per agent.

3. Zoho Desk

Zoho is another company that offers a wide range of solutions and software for businesses. More than 50 million users worldwide use Zoho solutions. Zoho Desk is the helpdesk software issued by Zoho. Like everything else branded by Zoho, it’s robust, intuitive, and easy to use.

With Zoho Desk, you’ll be able to automate manual support tasks, manage conversations with customers across multiple channels, offer customer self-service tools, and connect your helpdesk with other tools like Slack, Trello, Salesforce, accounting software, CRM software, and more.

Zoho Desk is designed to work for businesses of all sizes and verticles. From SMBs to SaaS, Telecom, and Enterprise organizations, Zoho Desk has it all.

Zoho Desk is affordable as well. You can start using it for free with up to three support agents.

Paid plans start at $12 per agent per month. This software makes it easy for you to scale as your company grows and your needs change. Adding new support agents is a simple process, and you can always upgrade your plan.

You’ll also be able to provide support on the go using the Zoho Desk mobile app.

One potential downside of Zoho Desk is its own customer support for you as a business. Unless you’re on the Enterprise plan, you won’t be able to reach them on weekends and holidays. So while you might be offering support to your own customers on those days, Zoho doesn’t offer the same support to you.

4. Freshservice 

Freshservice is another Freshworks solution. But it’s nothing like Freshdesk, which we reviewed earlier. 200,000+ businesses use Freshservice. This software is designed specifically for IT teams and ITSM (IT service management).

Use Freshservice to modernize your business.

Provide service to your employees by departments, such as HR, finance, marketing, and facilities. Freshservice is a single platform that allows you to streamline service management roles with a consistent experience for everyone.

On the agent side, your IT team can automate monotonous tasks and benefit from AI-powered chatbots. Freshservice has plans to accommodate teams and businesses of all sizes.

The rates start a bit higher compared to some of the other solutions on our list. However, this is the first helpdesk solution we’ve reviewed that’s built for internal business support. For those of you who are in need of a back-office management solution for IT service management, Servicedesk will be a top choice to consider.

5. Jira Service Desk

Jira Service Desk is another helpdesk system for ITSM and internal support. But unlike Freshservice, Jira Service Desk is designed for larger companies like small to mid-sized enterprises.

Businesses like Airbnb, Twitter, Square, Domino’s, and other global brands trust Jira Service Desk for helpdesk support at scale. You can use Jira Service Desk for both internal and external support, although internal support features are definitely the primary focus for this platform.

Jira Service Desk allows your employees to request services and support for anything. From a broken bathroom sink to infrastructure support, computer problems, or employee onboarding, this platform has it all. The Jira Service Desk software supports up to 5,000 employees and an unlimited number of customers.

Jira Service Desk integrates with more than 1,000 different apps for nearly every use case you can imagine. From Zoom to Splunk, G Suite, Slack, and more, you can fully customize Jira Service Desk to accommodate the needs of you and your team.

One of the benefits of Jira Service Desk is its progressive pricing model. The more agents you have, the cheaper it costs per agent. For example, 100 agents cost $15.75 per agent per month. But 1,000 agents cost just $5.33 per agent. This pricing structure is ideal for large organizations.

In addition to the cloud version of Jira Service Desk, you can deploy this software directly on your self-managed sever or data center.

Try Jira Service Desk free for 7 days.

6. HappyFox

HappyFox is an award-winning helpdesk solution that’s trusted by Fortune 500 brands like Lowe’s and Whirlpool. This helpdesk software is an all-in-one ticketing system. It’s designed for businesses that want to provide better and faster support across multiple channels from a single platform.

HappyFox supports ticketing for email, social media, phone, and live chat. It also has tools for customer self-service support and knowledge base solutions.

Pricing for HappyFox starts at $29 per month per agent.

At this price point, it’s a little more expensive than some of the other options on our list. But with that said, HappyFox’s entry-level plans are more feature-rich than some of the other basic plans we’ve seen on the market.

All plans come with unlimited tickets, smart rules, and knowledge base support. However, HappyFox does require a minimum of 3 agents per plan. So it’s not ideal for solo users. From ticketing to automation, productivity tools, and advanced reporting, HappyFox is a top helpdesk software for any business to consider.

They don’t offer a traditional free trial. But you can contact their sales team to request a demo and configure an account for free.

7. Kayako

While so many helpdesk solutions on the market today prioritize automation and self-service, Kayako puts a strong emphasis on providing customer service with a personalized touch.

With Kayako, you can manage customer conversations across any channel while gaining a deeper understanding of the entire customer journey for each unique individual.

Each conversation includes detailed information about customers’ behavior. You’ll see what pages they viewed, what products they added to their cart, and more. This gives your support agents a deeper understanding of what’s happening before the customer even asks for help.

Live chat software is built-in to each Kayako helpdesk plan.

Pricing for Kayako starts at $15 per agent per month. For advanced features like automation rules, custom reporting, multi-language and multi-brand support, you’ll need to upgrade to the Growth plan, which starts at $30 per agent.

For small teams and small businesses, Kayako is a top solution for helpdesk software with a personal touch. You can request a demo or try it free for 14 days.

8. Cayzu 

More than 20,000 businesses trust Cayzu for helpdesk software. This is arguably the most simple helpdesk solution on the market today, for agents and customers alike. Cayzu provides helpdesk software to small businesses, e-commerce websites, schools, MSPs, and nonprofits.

With prices starting as low as $4 per month, you won’t find a cheaper deal from a legitimate provider in this industry. The Basic plan is exactly what it sounds like. It offers the bare minimum required to run your helpdesk solution.

These low-level plans won’t accommodate the needs of large organizations or businesses with complex ticketing systems. With that said, smaller businesses tend to find the simplicity refreshing. The software is cheap but still gets the job done.

All plans are cloud-based, so there’s no installation required. You can access Cayzu from anywhere, including the mobile app. You’ll also benefit from unlimited support, free app integrations, and automatic backups. Try Cayzu free for 14 days.

How can you find the Best Helpdesk Software for your Small Business?

You can take these factors into consideration as you’re evaluating and shopping around for helpdesk software.

1. Ticket Support

Ticketing is one of the primary functions of helpdesk software. Ticket support allows your team to manage, route, and resolve problems for customers and employees. The best helpdesk software supports ticketing on multiple channels and can even automate manual tasks like ticket creation and ticket routing.

Certain software will cap the number of tickets you can create in a month. Larger operations should look for unlimited ticketing plans.

2. Communication Methods

Look for helpdesk software that allows your customers to communicate with your support team across a wide range of communication channels. Common communication methods include email, social media, live chat, and phone support.

Regardless of the communication method, the software should allow you to reply and manage tickets from a single dashboard. So if a customer sends a support inquiry via email, it will appear on the same dashboard as a customer who reached out via Facebook.

Make sure your helpdesk solution supports all of your customer service communication methods. Certain platforms have those tools built-in. In other cases, you’ll need to integrate your helpdesk software with a third-party communication tool.

3. Customer vs. Employee Support

What exactly do you need helpdesk software for?

Lots of helpdesk solutions are geared toward customer support. But certain platforms are designed specifically for ITSM and internal employee support.

For those of you in need of in-house helpdesk software, you’ll want to lean towards Freshservice or Jira Service Desk.

4. Business Size

The size of your operation will have a significant impact on the helpdesk software you choose.

Businesses with a handful of agents won’t have the same needs as an enterprise with hundreds or thousands of support agents. In most cases, larger organizations will have more complex needs.

Freshdesk is our top pick for small businesses. Zoho Desk has the ability to accommodate the needs of scaling companies. Zendesk has the capability to support teams of all sizes, from startups to enterprises.

5. Plans and Pricing

The vast majority of helpdesk software pricing is based on two factors—agents and features. The per agent price is based on the number and quality of the features you need. You’ll pay a fixed rate per month per agent. Committing to an annual contract will give you the best possible rate.

It’s important to weigh the features in each plan side by side. Most helpdesk software offers the best features with more expensive plans. But you might not need them.

Think about your team at scale. The difference between $20 or $40 per month might not seem significant. But what happens when you go from 10 agents to 50 agents? Or from 50 agents to 150 agents?

Some software, like Jira Service Desk, offers progressive pricing. Meaning the price per agent is cheaper if you add more agents to your plan. Larger organizations should definitely keep this mind when evaluating different options.

How do I Create a Help Desk Ticket?

If you are of the notion that setting up a help desk for the first time is a huge ordeal that takes lots of people, many hours of work and loads of complicated tasks, we are glad to debunk that theory for you. Here are easy steps you can take to create one.

1. Configure Help Desk Categories

Your tickets may be directed to various teams within your organization. Go ahead and create categories like Sales, Support, Marketing etc, add forwarding email addresses for each and publish these support email addresses on your portal for your customers to contact you in case of issues.

2. Set Up Email Forwarding

Create a forwarding rule in your mailbox to route all incoming tickets to the pre-determined email box. For example, if you want to reroute emails from ‘support@company.com’ as tickets, add ‘support@company.com’ in the incoming email address textbox, and then put up a forwarding rule for all mails on ‘john@company.com’ to be forwarded to the given account and you are good to go.

3. Invite Support Staff

All your staff are not of the same skill set. HappyFox help desk lets you create roles and privileges for all your staff. Create roles for your staff like ‘Admin’, ‘Regular staff’ etc. These roles decide what access and privileges each staff will have including Managerial and Ticket level permissions.

4. Create a Knowledge Base

It is imperative you allow your customers to help themselves and get answers faster. HappyFox Knowledge Base Content Management for example allows you to create a complete knowledge base for your staff and customers. Take all your self-help articles and add them to your customized knowledge base, so that your customers can access them directly without having to raise a ticket. Create an internal knowledge base for your staff to refer in case of issues.

5. Personalize and Brand Your Help Desk

Take a minute to customize your Support center with your choice of colors, font, and styling. You can even add your company logo, include a personalized description on your Support center

How does Help Desk Software work?

• A user sends an email to the help desk or logs into a web-based help desk management software app to send the message. The message is received in the help desk monitored mailbox
• The ticket is transferred to the specific mailbox category based on the user’s selection
• Your customer service team is notified of a new ticket by email, push notifications on the phone, SMS, or other methods
• An agent takes a particular ticket, usually the first ones to be received. By choosing a particular ticket, other agents will not also waste time on the same ticket
• The agent and the user interact in various ways, including:
  • Updating the ticket and posting replies
  • Attaching files
  • Optionally adding other people to the discussion interaction is done on the help desk web interface. However, the user has an option to post replies through the web interface or via email
• When the issue raised by a user is resolved, the tech will close the ticket
• Depending on your business preferences, the ticket may be posted on the company’s knowledge base section

Why does my Small Business need a Helpdesk Software?

Good help desk software helps help desk agents to deal with a variety of end-user “contacts” – be they related to incidents, requests for service or information, or complaints – precisely once. This means that multiple calls (or other forms of contacts such as emails) about the same issue or requirement are recorded as tickets, linked together, and passed to the same individual or team working on it.

The help desk software ensures that all issues are ticketed and monitored such that tickets are never left unattended (with delays and service level breaches), forgotten, or lost.

Help desk software facilitates this through prioritization, categorization, automated routing, service level management, and escalation capabilities. It also supports modern help desks across the whole range of their responsibilities, including:

• Capturing and recording the relevant details of all incidents, requests, complaints, and other end-user issues. In addition to providing a means for help desk agents to enter those details, the help desk software also allows the direct capture from end-user self-service logging, email integration, and automatic capture from monitoring tools and devices.
• Allocating and routing issues to the appropriate help desk agents or directly to second or third line support staff. The help desk software will also manage the transfer of tickets between different help desk agents and resolution groups.
• Managing and reporting on ticket statuses, so staff and customers can easily check on the status and progress of their tickets. Management can also get visibility into help desk workloads, team and individual performance, service level achievement, and end-user customer satisfaction and feedback.
• Facilitating self-service to help reduce help desk workloads, with the help desk software’s knowledge base and knowledge management capabilities helping end users to help themselves.

Additionally, modern help desk software will directly support how the help desk agents and processes interface with other IT service management (ITSM) processes, for example linking with information on upcoming and recent changes, problems, and errors being processed. Perhaps most importantly, helpdesk software can also link help desk agents to key sources of data and information.

What is the Difference Between Service Desk and Desktop Support?

In searching for the ideal outsourced IT support company for your business, you may have come across some technical terms and phrases. Many of them are probably phrases you’ve heard before; however, you may not be sure of their precise technical meaning within the IT space.

While there are general and universal terms, there may also be variations of these phrases from one service provider to another. When receiving a quote, make sure you have a full understanding of what your service plan will include.

Help Desk

Help Desk refers to a central point of contact (external or internal) who can be consulted if problems arise. This technician would then determine the root cause of the issue and delegate the work to the appropriate department or team.

Desktop Computer Support

Desktop Support covers office equipment and end-users. Desktop Support often includes break-fix coverage as well as limited support and technical guidance. Desktop Support is typically offered remotely, to repair and support software-related issues on company networks and individual users’ computers. It often also includes coverage of telephones, printers and other peripherals.

Here is the easiest way to distinguish between the two.

Service Desk/ NOC :  Most of the work performed by the service desk focuses on the network and systems. The service desk can almost be viewed as a mission control center. They monitor and manage and IT network. A 24/7 NOC service desk typically monitors the network and system security, performance, and backup processes.

Help Desk : The Help Desk is more customer-oriented.  The Help Desk has interaction with the end-user, or someone representing the end-user, to directly respond and resolve technical problems as they arise. Customers or employees can typically reach the Help Desk by clicking a support icon, emailing them, or dialing a toll-free number.

What is Help Desk Staff?

For many companies, the IT help desk acts as the face, or the front of the house, of the IT organization. It handles employee issues and service requests, while also dealing with most, if not all, of the communications between end-users and the IT organization. The help desk is a crucial player in delivering IT services to the business and has a number of responsibilities it needs to uphold in order to be successful.

We will now explain three of the key help desk responsibilities and offer advice on how best to deliver against them.

1. Deliver Great Customer Service (As Well As Great Outcomes)

First and foremost, in the current times of employees experiencing superior customer experiences in their personal lives (and bringing the same expectations into the workplace), the number one responsibility of any IT help desk should be to deliver against end-user needs while also providing great customer service.

That said, it’s easy for IT organizations to fall at this hurdle because they’re too internally focused, with help desk policies and processes (and how these are implemented) serving technical teams ahead of customers.

Hopefully however, your help desk exists to serve your organization’s end users, and the roles they fulfill, and so it’s their needs that you put before anyone else’s. This should include providing your customers with information they need, resolving their tickets efficiently, communicating with them about business impacting issues and changes, and generally just being easily accessible when they need you.

End users will ultimately want to be treated as human beings, rather than IT asset custodians, and ideally as customers (of IT support).

How can you do this?

• Research end-user habits – for instance, what types of tickets are they logging? What are they complaining about? What common questions are they asking? What help-based information are they looking for? This research will help your help desk to better understand your customers’ needs, which means that you’ll be better able to meet their needs.
• Regularly survey customer satisfaction levels – there’s no better way to find out what your customers need, want, like, and dislike than just straight-up asking them. This could be in the form of online surveys, after-call surveys, or even face-to-face interviews. Customer feedback is vital because it’ll tell you what’s working and what’s not, so you can adjust operations, and even policies, accordingly. It’s ultimately free consultancy!
• Communicate in line with end-user needs and expectations – whether it’s an individual ticket, a major incident, or planned maintenance you must ensure that you’re communicating with end users as they expect you to. If a logged ticket needs to be escalated, then tell the affected end user(s). If a major incident takes down a critical system, then update affected parties regularly until resolution. And if you’re planning maintenance, then alert your end users well in advance so that they can make any necessary arrangements. Communicating to customers is one of the easiest things to do, but often falls by the wayside because other work gets in the way. And a lack of communication is ultimately only going to lead to unhappy customers and more work in the long run as you tackle complaints and “chaser” emails and calls.
• Resolve as many issues at first contact us you can – ideally, whenever possible, your help desk agents should avoid having to call-back end-users or escalate the ticket. The more first-call resolutions your help desk can provide – thanks to the collective knowledge levels of agents – the happier your customer base is going to be.
• Provide a self-service portal to support self-help – modern customers like to be able to find the help they need quickly, and an IT support self-service portal can act as a one-stop-shop they can visit to find the answers to common questions, documentation to help them resolve their own issues, and a space to log their own tickets should they need to do so. A self-service portal will empower end-users which will, in turn, lead to more satisfied customers. It also has the potential to save your organization money in support costs – and the more your end users can do to help themselves the less it costs to assist them.

2. Provide Accurate Reports That Demonstrate Performance, Drive Improvement, and Prevent Issues

Reporting is an essential task for any IT help desk.

Reports can show how well help desk staff are performing (both individually and collectively), how many incoming incidents and requests the business is facing, whether or not service level agreements (SLAs) are being met, which resolver teams are not turning tickets around quickly enough, etc. They can even highlight problems causing repeat incidents, identify ticket trends, and show ongoing escalations.

Reports are also useful for tracking data and performance over time too, and you should be using these to demonstrate how your IT support levels are improving.

How can you do this?

• Consistently present the figures well – your weekly and monthly reports should be shared around your IT department, and wider afield as appropriate, so everyone has a view of what’s going on. Your performance data should not be kept secret even if it doesn’t look great right now. And you can always pair it with a performance improvement plan if you need to.
• Use real-time reporting to aid proactivity – real-time reports, and dashboards, should be used where possible so you always know what position your help desk is in. Plus, if someone urgently needs information you can provide it on the spot. Dashboards should be created for any stats that you frequently consult, and these can be shared with other IT managers that need the data. Real-time reporting will also save you lots of time because, when it comes to pulling your monthly reporting pack together, the required data is instantly available.
• Analyze and visualize your data – reports should be used to identify patterns, highlight trends, and spot any anomalies. This is made even easier when visualizations are used to present your data – because graphs, and similar, are much easier to consume than raw data in an Excel spreadsheet.
• Alert teams, when needed, using the reporting data – use your reports to alert IT managers and teams to potential issues. This highlights where issues are, or will be, and allows you (or others) to get ahead of the game. This might mean that you can get a fix implemented before disaster strikes.

3. Share and Exploit Your Collective Knowledge

Having a knowledge management capability, and knowledge base is a great way to share the knowledge your IT help desk has collated – both individually and collectively. A knowledge base will provide relevant information to your end-users and technical teams alike.

Read Also: Complete Business Solution

The knowledge articles in the knowledge base can be role-based too, meaning they’re only accessible by the people who need, and perhaps authorized, to use them. By sharing knowledge, your help desk will have the ability to prevent calls coming in, thus reducing ticket volumes and workloads, and make both your customers’ and agents’ lives easier.

How can you do this?

• Implement a FAQ area – your knowledge management capability should include a space where end users can find answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs). Not only will this make them happier – because they can get the information they need quickly – it will also prevent your help desk agents from having to deal with the same inquiries again and again.
• Review and assess documentation regularly – your knowledge base will be fairly useless if you don’t regularly review the documentation stored inside. This might be because articles can’t be found, can’t easily be understood and used, or have become outdated. For the latter, you should add review dates to each document in order to avoid outdated content. You can either update it, if still required, or retire the document if it’s no longer needed. For the former two issues, assess how many tickets are being created for which knowledge articles already exist. Then try to understand why the relevant knowledge articles aren’t being used.
• Provide easy-to-do fixes – you can use your knowledge base to provide information to end users that will help them to solve their own issues. These simple fixes should be able to be performed without the need for admin credentials and they’ll free up your agents to deal with more complex issues.

In Summary

The IT help desk of course has many other responsibilities to uphold but customer service, reporting, and knowledge management should certainly be up there at the top because:

• Without good customer service, your help desk will likely develop a bad reputation and you’ll struggle to get end users to use your services.
• Without reporting you won’t be able to see how your staff and processes are performing or how well your help desk is meeting business needs.
• Without knowledge management, you’ll be reliant on what individual agents know and you’ll never be able to get to a position where customers are able to resolve their own issues. A knowledge base can empower both customers and employees for a more effective and harmonious working environment.