Best SaaS Help Desk Software Platforms for Businesses in 2023

Help desk software helps you deliver an amazing customer experience which is a critical element driving the success of your business. Quality customer support will increase revenues and customer loyalty. Moreover, it’s easier to retain current customers than to acquire new ones.

90% of customers believe their problems should be addressed by a company immediately. If you respond too slowly chances are high you are losing both customer’s interest and trust.

To help you make the right decision, I have ranked and reviewed the CRM helpdesk system based on ease of use, features, turn-around time, pricing, integrations, ticket management, and more.

So let’s get started.

What is the Best SaaS Help Desk Software?

Here are a handful of SaaS help desk software providers to use this year.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot is one of the best saas help desk solutions that provide a service support software called HubSpot’s Service Hub, which is designed for a smooth customer experience. Moreover, its Conversations Inbox brings all customer communication channels like live chat, email, Facebook messenger, forms, and more into one universal inbox.

HubSpot CRM enriches each conversation using stored company and contact data automatically. Moreover, this CRM helps your support team to get contextual information about the customer’s history with your company.

You can start using Service Hub for free and set up your customer service team with ticketing, calling, team email, live chat, and more. Afterward, you can opt for a more proactive approach than a reactive customer engagement, by opting for one of the paid tiers and scaling your activity.

Best for Aligning marketing, service, and sales team. Additionally, if you’re already using other HubSpot software, integration is a cakewalk.

Key Features of HubSpot Service Hub:

• Offers customer feedback tools to assist your team to collect direct feedback and run surveys for customers.
• Offers a full help desk, with automation, reporting, and routing to easily turn emails and chats into tickets that can be prioritized, tracked, and organized.
• Conversations inbox that includes live chat, Facebook messenger,  email inboxes, forms, and more into one universal inbox.
• Provides a self-service knowledge base for customers to search for relevant information without needing agents.

Pros of HubSpot Service Hub:

• Offers a user-friendly interface.
• Great issue tracking, help desk ticketing, a self-service portal, and incident management.
• Includes solutions for helping agents measure customer satisfaction, helping customers find answers on their own, and become more productive.
• Integrates seamlessly with popular tools, like Facebook, Zapier, HubSpot’s free CRM, and Salesforce among others.

Cons of HubSpot Service Hub:

• Certain features are only available in paid tiers.
• The ticketing system is not universally applicable for all companies according to some sources.

Pricing Plans:

HubSpot’s Service Hub has a freemium package, then three paid tiers.

• Starter Plan: $45 per month
• Professional Plan: $360 per month
• Enterprise Plan: $1200 per month

2. JitBit

JitBit is a powerful help desk automation tool that offers an excellent email-first approach to customer support.

They offer every type of SaaS support like live chat, chatbots, integrations, and knowledge base. It is a cloud-based support ticket system that is affordable and integrates with Slack, Basecamp, Dropbox, and more.

Moreover, JitBit allows you to import customer contacts and other details from your existing contact management app using Zapier quite easily.

Best for: Startups to enterprise-level companies.

Key Features of JitBit:

• Offers a mobile help desk with mobile apps for Android and iOS.
• Provides automation triggers to assign tickets, set due dates, and send automatic replies.
• Includes a team mailbox to manage your ticket list with advanced reporting and filtering features.
• Provides “Ideas Forum” for customers to suggest and vote for new features.

Pros of JitBit:

• Strong email security and features with deduping, anti-flood protection, and anti-spam.
• Easy and very quick to set up their cloud-hosted system in under a minute.
• Their webhooks and built-in API provide powerful integration capabilities. They also connect with more than 500+ integrations.

Cons of JitBit:

• Features like your own domain, hiding their “Powered by JitBit” message, and downloadable backups aren’t available on their Startup or Freelancer Plan.

Pricing Plans:

JitBit offers four different paid plans for its users.

• Freelancer Plan: $29 per month (1 user)
• Startup Plan: $69 per month (4 users)
• Company Plan: $129 per month (7 users) includes downloadable backups and your domain
• Enterprise Plan: $249 per month (9 users) $29 per extra agent and hides the “Powered by JitBit” text, adds a CDN, and provides HIPAA compliance and expedited support.

3. Freshdesk

Freshdesk is an automated ticketing system for small businesses and large enterprises. Used by big names like Panasonic and HP, Freshdesk is one of the leading help desk platforms on the market today.

It provides support to a set of integration tools that allows you to connect your ticketing system with your existing CRM software or ERP tool.

The Freshdesk Arcade, Freshdesk’s unique gamification feature displays badges for top support performers along with leaderboards.

Best for: Serving external customers

Key Features of Freshdesk:

• Keeps track of conversations according to category and priority.
• Integrates with popular apps including Shopify, Office 365, and MailChimp.
• Offers a shared inbox for support agents to manage and access tickets from various channels, including voice, email, social media management tools, and live chat.
• Allows sales agents to make customer inquiries from their mobile devices using its app.

Pros of Freshdesk:

• Offers a free tier for small businesses eager to try out the product.
• Its gamification feature incentivizes agents to provide high-quality customer service

Cons of Freshdesk:

• Limits the key features to only the highest-priced subscription tier. For example, social signals and chatbots.

Pricing Plans:

Freshdesk is free for unlimited agents with limited features. Their standard support starts at $15 per agent per month when billed annually.

So now let’s understand the basics.

What is Help Desk Software?

Help desk software helps you reduce the time taken to address an issue faced by the customer for the customer support agents. This is possible due to streamlining incoming tickets from various channels into a single centralized dashboard.

The best service desk management software offers the following benefits for your team.

• Cost-effectiveness – All the maintenance work on the backend is handled by the software provider. Thus, it saves you from managing an entire team for SaaS help desk software.
• Scalability – You can launch efforts with a lower-cost, basic plan and move to a more advanced plan as your company grows.
• Easy implementation – Today, all service desk software is cloud-based eliminating the time-consuming setup process. Moreover, you can start with a trial or subscription, and quickly deploy the technology within your teams. Additionally, you can make the switch very easily if you are not happy with the online IT ticketing system.

What are the essential features in the most popular Help Desk Software for customer support?

With the above benefits in mind, every help desk system will vary.

However, there are a handful of crucial features you should look at very closely while purchasing any service help desk software for your customer support team.

• Ease of ticketing – Make sure it is easy to close and create tickets, route tickets, and make necessary modifications through the appropriate internal channels. Moreover, it should be simple for agents to store and access past tickets.
• App integrations – Having a help desk support software and actually using it are two different things. Make sure your software provider offers relevant integrations with other customer support tools. Thus, it will prevent the need for manual entries and updates by streamlining data across the boards.
  
• Ticket consolidation – Make sure your software provider offers integrations for connecting necessary support channels like social media, phone, email, and live chat. Finally, this will ensure you will not miss your customer’s voice.
• Self-service option – Make sure there is a knowledge base feature to offer guidance on common queries. Additionally, a knowledge base has other benefits other than speeding the support process. Beyond that, it serves as a content source for marketing teams looking to understand popular topics with customers and sales agents looking for enablement materials.

However, you should also take note that every industry comes with its own set of nuances. While the above features are generally important, be cognizant of your company’s specific needs.

IT helpdesk ticketing system software – Final Summary

This wraps up my list of the best helpdesk tools you can use for your business this year. I will keep updating the list with other reliable help desk software available in the market.

Every company is different, with processes and teams specific to their customer journey. What works for one may not work for the other.

I recommend you invest time and research on vetting platforms of interest upfront. Additionally, make sure the help desk management software grows with your business in the short and long term.

Moreover, solicit feedback from multiple teams that will be responsible for managing and implementing the tool. From there, narrow down to ideal solutions for your customers and your employees.

Which one of these top help desk software ticketing systems your team is planning to use? Let me know in the comment section below.