If you are looking to purchase a suitable help desk software app to boost your business, we can help you. In this article we look at a popular service Salesforce Sales Cloud and discuss five alternatives to it that may be a viable option for your company to try out. You are sure to find an apt solution for your business among them. We will also detail the most important elements you should look for in a help desk software product. Since there are many great solutions out there you may also want to read our comparison of top help desk software in 2015.
Overview of Salesforce Sales Cloud
Pricing: Starts at $25
Our experts have given Salesforce Sales Cloud a very good score of 9.6/10 which makes it one of the best help desk sofware solutions out there. However, Salesforce is not the number one software on our list, which is currently dominated by Freshdesk – our top help desk service of 2015.
For more information on the features and benefits of the app you can read our, detailed review of Salesforce Sales Cloud.
Features of Salesforce Sales Cloud:
Analytics
Approvals and workflow
Build and run innovative apps
Chatter
Communities for sales
Contact Manager
Dashboards
Email integration
Engage customers everywhere
Forecasting
Marketing and sales leads
Mobile to stay connected
Opportunities and quotes
Real time visibility
Social accounts and contacts
Workflow
Advantages of Salesforce:
Training resources
Workflow with reference to rules, validation rules, dependant picklists, triggers, etc.
Position flexibility (access, customized page views, etc.)
Data visibility
Disadvantages of Salesforce:
Emailing
Inventory management
Mobile interaction
Though Salesforce Sales Cloud is a good and popular product, there are some alternatives to this help desk software that are equally good or even better.
Top 5 competitors of Salesforce you can consider for a suitable help desk software for your business:
1. Freshdesk
Pricing: Free up to 3 agents, thereafter pricing starts at $15 per month
Here’s how part of Freshdesk UI looks like
Freshdesk is the winner of our Best Help Desk Software Award for 2015
The most significant competitor of Salesforce is definitely Freshdesk. After carefully analysis of dozens of popular help desk solutions, our B2B review team chose Freshdesk as the best help desk software out there. Freshdesk got the highest score of 9.8/10 in our evaluation which shows top level of the app’s functionality, collaboration features, customization, integration and customer support. The app also has a stunning 98% customer satisfaction rating showing how positive actual clients of Freshdesk are about the product. What is more, Freshdesk was distinguished with the Best Help Desk Software Award for 2015 as well as the Expert’s Choice Award for 2015 to further highlight its dominant position on the market. Freshdesk also offers a great freemium plan for up to 3 users and provides an excellent free trial plans that allows you to try our all the key features on your own. You can easily sign up for Freshdesk free trial here.
Freshdesk features:
Automations – Ticket routing, scenario automations
Community Portal with Idea Management & Voting
Email to Ticket Conversion
Integrations: Freshbooks, Google Apps, Harvest, CapsuleCRM
Knowledge Base
Leaderboard & gamification
Multi-channel support, including Facebook & Twitter
Multi-language & multi-time zone support
Multiple Service Level Agreement policies
Multi-product/multi-brand Support
Satisfaction Surveys
Self Service Portal
Freshdesk is a suitable app for support teams that use email and social media. It is also a highly flexible and scalable product. Freshdesk’s key strengths are an exceptional email tool, easy-to-create Solutions pages, and flexibility in upgrading. You can get more information about Freshdesk’s features, benefits, pricing plans and integrations in our detailed review of Freshdesk. You can also try out the tool on your own and sign up to Freshdesk free trial.
2. Samanage Service Desk
Pricing: Starts at $250/month
Here’s how Samanage UI looks like
Another competitor of Salesforce you should consider is Samanage Service Desk. This help desk solution offers many benefits such as an excellent workflow engine, good evaluation of all support tickets raised, and tracking of various performance metrics. There are a few minor drawbacks to this tool though. Samanage could be improved by adding more features to the workflow and by enhancing its email notifications. Its API could also be made a bit better.
Samanage Service Desk features:
Always current
Automatic classification
Built-in best practices
Contracts & Licenses
Crowdsource printers
Drag & drop setup
Fewer clicks
Integrations Suite
Invisible patches
IT Asset Management
IT Service Catalog
IT Service Desk
Knowledge Base
Mobile Access
No-regrets undo
Problems & Changes
QR Audit tool
Reports and API
Risk Detection
Risks tab
Self-service Portal
SLA Management
Snapshot view
Tailored dashboard
Warranty sync
After reviewing the app our panel of B2B evaluated Samanage Service Desk with a score of 9.0/10 which puts it on our list of top 10 help desk services. While not as flexible and reliable as Freshdesk or Zendesk, Samanage Service Desk is still a good choice for a company that needs a quality help desk app. If you need some more information about features, pricing and integrations of this service you can read our detailed review of Samanage Service Desk.
3. HappyFox
Pricing: Starts at $19 per staff/month
An overview of HappyFox interface
One more solution on our list of Salesforce competitors is HappyFox. It’s an innovative CRM tool with focus on providong help desk and ticketing systems to businesses in a wide range of industries, including education, computer and software, media and publishing, energy, travel and leisure, retail, and more. Users of HappyFox have pointed out a few things that could be improved though. For example, it is difficult to make changes on the mobile apps, and reporting can also be a bit tricky to get used to.
HappyFox features:
Advanced search
Canned actions
Community forum
Convert emails into tickets
CRM integration
Custom fields
Escalate tickets
Group contacts
In-depth reporting
Knowledge base and FAQ
Live chat integration
Merge tickets
Over 35 languages supported
Personalize queue
REST API
Scheduled reports
SLA management
Smart rules for automation
Social media integration with Facebook
SSO: Google and SAML
Supports voice, email, chat, social media, and mobile channels
Works on iOS, Android, and Windows mobile devices
Our B2B review team gave HappyFox a good score of 9.0/10 and the app is definitely on our list of top help desk solutions, although somewhat behind the current leaders in this category: Freshdesk and Zendesk. If you’d like to get more insight in to HappyFox features, pricing and integration options that feel free to read our detailed review of HappyFox.
4. Help Scout
Pricing: $15 per user per month
Here’s how the user interface of Help Scout looks like
Another competitor of Salesforce is Help Scout. It’s a help desk software company based in Boston, MA, and its prominent customers include Treehouse, Basecamp, GrubHub, and Trello. This solution offers quite a range of advantages like helping clients to communicate via emails, short learning curve, using the Note feature to chat with other uses about a customer query, preventing double responses to the same customer email, using the built-in work builder to automate any number of custom actions, and creating a hosted knowledge base.
Help Scout features:
Help Desk
Reports
Docs Knowledge Base
Email Integration
Security and Reliability
Help Scout users have pointed out that the app could improve some of its features. For example, it can provide more reporting and foreign language translation support for tickets. The knowledge base needs a bit of polishing, the visual editor is sometimes unpredictable, and the concept of sites, collections, and categories can be slightly cumbersome.
Our experts have given Help Scout a score of 9.1/10 which makes it a reliable help desk solution, although not as reliable as the current leaders in their category: Freshdesk and Zendesk. If you need any extra information about how the app works and its features you can read our detailed review of Help Scout.
5. Work[etc] CRM
Pricing: Starts at $78/month
A quick glance at Work[etc] user interface
Our last alternative to Salesforce is a service called Work[etc]. It’s a solution that offers an all-in-one platform for businesses that includes CRM, billing, help desk, project management, customer portal, social media and more.
Work[etc] CRM features:
Billing featuring multi-currency, subscription, and catalog
CRM with customer account history, reminders, contact tagging, and more
Custom Fields viewable on sales, projects, and support cases
Documents, Blogs, and Reporting
For five to 100 employees
Gmail and Outlook Plugins
Helpdesk with support tickets
iPhone, mobile, and Android Support
Project Management with client access, among others
However, Work[etc] has a few drawbacks as pointed out by users. Its Android apps could be improved, emails could be streamlined so that project tags are attached to them to enable easier filing, and the billing/invoicing system can be improved further.
Our experts have given Work[etc] a score of 9.0/10 which earns it a place in our list of top 10 help desk software products. It’s not one the very best solutions like Freshdesk or Zendesk, but it certainly is a solid piece of help desk software. For a more detailed analysis of Work[etc] pricing, features, and benefits you should read our detailed review of Work[etc].
Key Features of a Good Help Desk Software Solution
There are tons of help desk software apps in the market. Each product offers its own features, price plans, and licensing models, and claims to provide various benefits. Thus, selecting a good help desk software app is not an easy task. However, you need to look for these integral features in any help desk software product which mark out the best apps from the ordinary.
Excellent Ticket Management
This is the foundation of a good help desk system and is essential to provide responses to service requests and technical issues. The app should help you to effectively organize and manage your workload which can greatly improve your resolution time and the overall efficiency of your customer support. You should be able to divide the tickets logically to enable easy management. Reassigning or escalating tickets should be streamlined and you should be able to get multiple team members to help in resolving a ticket if necessary.
Knowledge Base
If you receive a number of tickets on the same issue, then you can ask your team to provide their knowledge about the issue in a knowledge base. This can reduce workload and resolution time. The knowledge base should contain useful articles for self-help and be easily searchable.
Use of Metrics and Statistics
You should be able to analyze and evaluate the responses to customer queries. You can use customer feedback, statistics, and graphics to assess the performance of your technical and customer support teams.
User-friendly Interface
You should be able to provide your customers a convenient and simple interface that they can use to report IT incidents. Your help desk portal should be easily navigable. A user-friendly interface also helps organizations avoid deployment complexities. It improves efficiency and offers quicker return on investment.
Easy Implementation and Reliable Support
The help desk system should be simple to implement so that your agents spend less effort and time on learning to use the tool. This will help them focus more on adopting the app to provide good customer support. Small to medium businesses should be able to train their agents and use a new app within four weeks. If you think more time is needed, maybe the system is overgeared for your requirements.
The company that sells the help desk software should provide reliable support to help you deal with bugs or downtime quickly. Live phone support is thus essential and not just email support. Cloud-based systems should provide a guaranteed uptime SLA so that you are confident about their service efficiency.
Compatible with Best Practices in the Industry (ITIL)
The software should be compatible with ITIL best practices so that you are assured of established standards. You should be able to structure issues as problems and incidents, and then feed them as change requests. The package should also offer compatibility with Service Level Management.
Bottom Line
Our detailed analysis of all popular help desk solutions concluded with naming Freshdesk Freshdesk as the best service available on the market today. Freshdesk’s impressive score of 9.8 is unmatched by the other tools we have reviewed and its Best Help Desk Software Award for 2015 further highlights its reliability. You can easily find out why Freshdesk is so great by testing the tool on your own with their free trial plan. If you want to check the apps features on your own you can sign up for Freshdesk free trial here.
The post Salesforce Competitors: 5 Alternative Help Desk Software Apps to Choose From appeared first on Financesonline.com.