An organization’s ability to efficiently and effectively resolve customer complaints is one key, and unavoidable, aspect of doing business. Customer service design and management is the front door to your business, and oftentimes, it is the function that will make or a break you in the long run. Make the customer feel heard and whole, and you potentially turn a one-time customer into a lifelong customer. Alternatively, ignore the issue or handle it slowly or poorly, and guarantee that you lose a customer for life.

You can also guarantee that a poor customer service interaction will be shared and spread by word of mouth or social media much faster, and wider, than any positive customer service experience ever will. It is much cheaper to retain a current customer than to acquire new customers. To ensure that dissatisfied customers do not have the opportunity to jeopardize your company, businesses should prioritize investment in their customer service function.

Because the processes behind an effective customer service strategy are complex, it helps to rely on a software to do the majority of the heavy lifting for you. This is where Software as a Service, or SaaS, comes in. Specifically, an SaaS Help Desk. An SaaS Help Desk is a digital tool that supports your customer experience team, and ultimately, your revenue goals. At a very high level, an SaaS Help Desk is used to track and resolve requests from your customers.

From ticketing to the point of resolution, there are often many teams and resources involved in ensuring the customer feels heard and taken care of. Organizations should capitalize on this innate feedback loop and find ways to measure and continuously improve their customer experience processes.

Using an SaaS Help Desk enables an organization to meet two primary business goals:

  1. Satisfy and retain existing customers while also creating new customers
  2. Satisfy and retain your own employees/customer support agents

Managing customer support is a challenge, and the businesses who do it exceptionally well, and with immediacy, will win. Customers need to feel heard and know they matter to you. Whether the Help Desk is resolving an issue or helping a customer better understand a product, the support agent is boots-on-the-ground for an organization’s revenue growth.

When your employees feel supported through high-level training, effective tools and resources, and other means of internal support, they are more likely to continue working for you. The best SaaS Help Desk solution is one that empowers your support agents to do less manual busy work and spend more time doing what they do best, empathetically assisting your customers.

Ultimately, using a properly aligned SaaS Help Desk for your organization will increase the productivity of your support agents and the customer support function as a whole. It will also contribute to the bottom line by helping to retain current customers, who will look to purchase again, or serve as a positive mouthpiece for your business in the marketplace.

Businesses use SaaS Help Desks to simplify their operations. Instead of building something in-house, you can buy a tool that already exists and is ready for immediate use. These solutions are flexible and cost effective. You pay to rent or subscribe to the software, which allows you to also cancel if it no longer serves your needs. The deployment time is relatively quick, meaning your team does not have to wait weeks to begin using the Help Desk. Rather, use and training can begin almost immediately. These software options also come with their own security and maintenance, meaning your business will not need to hire additional IT support for your help desk needs.

With a variety of competitive options available in the SaaS Help Desk marketplace, you will find that there are many features to weigh and consider before selecting the right software for your business needs. See the list below to gain a better understanding of what an SaaS Help Desk software may offer:

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Benefits of SaaS Help Desk Software

#1 Ticketing System

Ticketing is the backbone of your Help Desk. Do your research to understand the ease of ticketing and the exact process by which the creation, routing, modification, prioritization, closing, saving and storing is handled. Are tickets consolidated and centralized in one place? Who has access to this information? Are there features or automation that result in faster ticket resolution? Can tickets resolve themselves through a Knowledgebase?

#2 Scalability

Some software is best for small companies, and other SaaS serve as enterprise-level products. Occasionally, Help Desk software will have scalable architecture. This means the features, along with the price for use, grows along with the business.

#3 Customization & Organization

Depending on the software, you may be able to customize and organize your dashboard, workflows, personal interface, ticket escalation, and more. Determine if your Help Desk needs are simple or more complex, and if minimal or hyper-customization is a factor in your purchasing decision.

#4 Omnichannel, Variety of Channel Support

One software solution should support all of your channels: email, social media, website, chat, SMS, Voice over internet Protocol (VoIP). This multi-channel approach will streamline your back-end and make life easier for your support agents.

#5 Productivity Tracking

With a properly aligned SaaS Help Desk for your organization, you can lift the burden on your customer support team. Certain software can help support agents resolve tickets faster, resulting in more satisfied customers and more time for your team to focus on improving the customer service of your organization.

#6 Performance Tracking & Agent Training

Organizations can rely on certain Help Desk software to track the performance of their support agents in effectively resolving issues. Think of it like a built-in feedback loop. Some even offer agent training to help improve outcomes.

#7 Automation & Canned Messages

Save your agent’s time by offering a solution that uses canned messaging and automation to serve the customer. This type of messaging can help triage the issue until an agent is free to assist. Additionally, the step-by-step guides created and published to help customers also aide your internal help desk. With step-by-step guides to complex inquiries, agents can also use canned responses for almost any service request.

#8 Self-Service Portal

Give customers the opportunity to be self-sufficient through use of a knowledgebase. These are typically quick answers to simple questions that do not require an agent. This can also be a community forum or space for customers to learn from, and help, each other.

#9 Application Integrations

Effective Help Desks are capable of supporting a range of application integrations. From scheduling, to project management, to internal messaging – look for the level of integration and information centralization that makes sense for your needs.

#10 Sales and Lead Generation

Turn your customer support channel into a profit center. With the right interfaces and capabilities, support agents can unlock or gain sales through their customer support. By capitalizing on the feedback loop that is your ticketing support system, your business has the opportunity to turn a disgruntled customer into a new sale.

#11 Operational Efficiency & Change Management

Choose a tool that can help you analyze your business processes and make meaningful changes. Certain tools can help you identify bottlenecks, repetitive mistakes, or any number of data points that will enhance your operational decision-making. This will also lead to a better change management program with a deeper understanding of the data that impacts and drives change in your business.

#12 Customer Surveying

Gain real-time feedback on the Help Desk services you offer. By surveying your customers after they receive support, you are able to collect information and adapt your customer service processes and protocol for continuous improvement.

A few SaaS Help Desk options stand out from the rest. Here are our five software recommendations, in no particular order, to get you started as you begin your selection and due diligence process.

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Top 5 SaaS Helpdesk Platforms

1. Zendesk

  • Flexible software
  • Consumer friendly, seamless service
  • Easy ticket management
  • Advanced-level reporting
  • Analytics to monitor the operational efficiency of your organization
  • Multi-channel, integrated support
  • Ability to host different communities, enhances self-service portal effectiveness
  • Customers can discuss their issues and solve together
  • Completely automated with mobile support system
  • Chatbot, live chat messaging
  • Call center software

Customers include: Shopify, Uber, Airbnb, OpenTable, Slack, Squarespace

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2. Freshdesk

  • Free trial and cost-effective
  • Scalable architecture, good for all sizes and types of business
  • Mobile app
  • Clean user interface
  • Strong ticket management
  • Social media, Shopify, Mailchimp, and other integration options
  • Ability to analyze business processes, measure and improve efficiency
  • Performance tracking via agent feedback
  • Multiple ways to raise tickets
  • Ability to customize
  • Track conversations with categories and priorities
  • Agents easily access, assign, prioritize and merge tickets
  • Resolve issue together as a team through a shared inbox
  • Automates repetitive help desk tasks
  • Community forums and great for support agents and customers

Customers include: American Express, Hewlett-Packard, Panasonic

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3. LiveAgent

  • Fair price, as low as $15/month, cancel anytime
  • Multi-channel support system
  • Live chat, social media integration, and email management
  • Cloud-based call center
  • Efficient collaborative space with web-embedded forms
  • Consolidates all tickets in one place for easy access
  • Ability to customize work flow

Customers include: Forbes, NASCAR, USC, Airbus

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4. Zoho Desk

  • Free option for introduction
  • Unique capabilities to increase productivity and measure agent performance
  • Ability to generate auto-reports to make life easier for agents
  • Improve customer relationship management
  • Multi-channel integration of different social media platforms with live support
  • Huge knowledgebases for customer to find different solutions on their own
  • Email, telephone, and live chat
  • Automation in workflows, ticket assignment, escalations
  • Ability to customize everything
  • Top level security, including GDPR
  • New artificial intelligence customer service solution with Zia, an AI-powered assistant

Customers include: Renters Warehouse, UCLA, Rogers

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5. ProProfs Help Desk

  • 15-day free trial
  • reduce tickets by almost 80%
  • Track metrics and measure customers satisfaction levels
  • Offers agent training
  • Very impressive user interface
  • Ability to create different notes and labels to enhance collaboration
  • Collaborative email
  • Simplifies agents’ job with easy issue tracking and faster ticket resolution
  • Smart reports
  • Multi-channel
  • Chat and survey capabilities

Customers include: Dell, Sony, Cisco, LinkedIn, Adobe

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Thank you for visiting our site. We hope you learned something new from this article and found it comprehensive and helpful. Good luck as you search for, or create your own, SaaS Help Desk solution.

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