Top 10 Alternatives to Zoho Desk: Comparison of Leading Help Desk Software Solutions - Financesonline.com (2023)

As the industry’s first context-aware help desk software, Zoho Desk has helped thousands of businesses focus on the customer. While the platform has undoubtedly done great things for their customers, we know that not all businesses are made of the same cloth, and thus might have different needs that other customer support solutions might be better at giving to them.

It is for this reason that Finances Online has undertaken these multiple articles prepared by our experts to deal with such scenario. Would Zoho Desk be great for you? Let’s take a look at this customer support comparison and offer alternatives that might be more appealing for your particular line of business.

If you’re in business, you naturally want to keep your customers coming back and happy with your products and services. That entails innovation and a deep understanding of your user base. On the other hand, you cannot afford to drive away existing customers due to employees who don’t particularly do well interacting with them. The common path to addressing this issue is hiring well-mannered people. Modern business, however, requires another set of skills aside from this: knowledgeable people who can respond expertly to technical inquiries about the product.

In companies with diverse product and service portfolios, the sheer volume of data involved ensures that not only do companies have to invest in sharp people but also smart, capable customer support solutions able to assist helpdesk personnel with quick access to any information they might need, in real time.

The weight of this fact is borne by research which shows how even one customer satisfied with the company’s support people can gain another 9 more in the way of referrals. For companies with bad reputations, this should pave for taking a hard look at how it is hurting its business through poorly implemented customer support system.

The converse is more chilling: in America alone,33% of Americans say they’ll consider switching companies after just a single instance of poor service. If you are the owner of a business or one of its top executives, there is no better time to assess how your company is measuring up in terms of providing a great customer experience to your customers.

What is Zoho Desk?

Zoho Desk is a support desk platform that helps businesses deliver top quality customer support to their clients with tools that increase agent productivity and analytics and reports that enable managers to find key issues in agent performances so that they can improve their service as well make intelligent business decisions. It allows customers to find timely and relevant support without having to go too far.

With Zoho Desk, companies provide their support teams with the best tools, multiple support channels, and task automation so that they can deliver quick and responsive support to their clients. This help desk platform gathers together employees from other departments and empower them to give their customers a very unified customer service experience.

As an on-demand, web-based help desk software, Zoho Desk allows your agents to engage with customers and deliver satisfaction in the fastest and easiest way. And because it’s all on the cloud, lesser the cost of installation and maintenance, you could concentrate on your business than on the software itself.

Among its million of clients are Sears, Aon Hewitt, Essilor, Intel and Daimler.

Benefits of Zoho Desk

1. Context-aware responses for agents. Put a face to every ticket. Understand a customer’s history of interactions and respond with more clarity.
2. Tag and collaborate. Tag colleagues in tickets, ask questions, give answers, and collaborate like never before. Across the world is just across the desk.
3. Context-aware decisions for managers. See the complete picture in a single window. Track all your key metrics for quick and agile decision making. Understand the root causes of bottlenecks and other issues. Improve steadily with every ticket.
4. Context-aware approach for customers. Create a Knowledge Base to help customers find answers quickly, on their own.Build a community of customers and enthusiasts. Nurture and grow your tribe through sheer engagement. Give customers the gift of convenience. Help them across email, phone, chat, social media and more.
5. No hidden costs. The software carries no additional costs. It flexible pricing plans can be paid on a monthly or annual basis, and you get the complete feature set for the plan you choose. Moreover, you can use its free version as long as you want.
6. Connect with your customers via multiple touch points. Create support tickets from the phone, email, website, Help Center, and other channels. The community forums provide your customers with a platform for discussion with the ability to convert a forum post into a ticket.
7. Ease of Use. Zoho Desk is built for simplicity and usability. Every aspect of its operation and navigation is streamlined and made straightforward for easy use by anyone in the customer support/service unit.
8. Excellent support. Zoho Desk’s virtual help offers 24×5 technical assistance so you won’t have to be put on hold. You can also chat or email agents to get an immediate and assured response for your issues and queries.
9. One hub for all your apps. All the external and internal apps that you need can be integrated with Zoho Desk, eliminating the need to switch through different screens to open and work with different applications.
10. Work on the go. The system offers mobile capability for quick access to your Zoho Desk portal anytime. anywhere. Its Android and iOS apps give you convenient access to your contacts, tickets, tasks and all other information you need.

1. Freshdesk

Heading our top 10 alternatives to Zoho Desk is Freshdesk, an award-winning cloud-hosted help desk solution with useful features and exceptional customer service. The software is designed to meet the demands of both small businesses and large companies. Its most significant features are: multichannel capability; integrated game mechanics to increase agent productivity; multiple SLA policies, smart automations; and self-service portals.

The solution includes such standard features as help desk ticketing, knowledge base, and community platform. Once set up, Freshdesk turns your support emails into tickets that you can track for rapid and accurate response. Furthermore, the solution gives you flexibility to link forum questions to a ticket and vice-versa, allowing you to create a more streamlined set of answers and replies.

Freshdesk has integrated Live Chat, Phone Support, and Game Mechanics. It also works with legacy productivity tools and your CRM when you need to pull out customer information. Likewise, it works with popular help desk and multimedia apps, such as Google Apps, YouTube, Slideshare and other widgets that can spice up your knowledge base.

Freshdesk has apps for Android and iOS so you can take your help desk anywhere you go. Moreover, an appealing test drive of all software features is available to you when you sign up for a Freshdesk free trial.

Why choose Freshdesk over Zoho Desk:

1. Smart ticket management. Freshdesk’s intelligent automation capabilities organize and facilitate ticket flow as well as streamline support processes.
2. Automated ticket dispatch — You can automatically categorize, prioritize, and assign all incoming tickets to the right agent or team. The software can also check your helpdesk health, automate tasks according to major ticket changes, and assign agents to tickets based on rules you set.
3. Customize workflows to your needs. Freshdesk allows you to customize workflows to match your team’s unique activities such as creating custom statuses and roles and setting selective permissions.
4. Extendable platform. Freshdesk integrates with over 300 apps giving you a fully flexible and extendable platform that can work with your CRM, e-commerce, marketing app, chat tools, and more.

Our experts have also prepared these Freshdesk alternatives you can check out if it doesn’t suit your preferences.

2. Zendesk

Next on our top 10 alternatives to Zoho Desk is Zendesk, a leading cloud-hosted helpdesk solution used by more than 40,000 companies, from small businesses and startups to large enterprises and big brands like Zappos and Groupon. The system is easy to deploy and use, and businesses can utilize it to boost customer satisfaction, enhance productivity, and reduce costs.

Hundreds of agents can use the platform to manage thousands of tickets every day. Another advantage is it integrates your support channels such as chat, web, social media, and email. Finally, you can access the system from your desktop or mobile device, which means small businesses can even use a home-based, freelance support setup to minimize costs.

Why choose Zendesk over Zoho Desk:

1. Innovation. Zendesk’s agile development team innovates at a rapid pace, continuously improving the product and quickly responding to customer needs. It has a strong vision of the future and an aggressive roadmap to get there.
2. Built for scale. Zendesk’s track record of scalability and 99.9% uptime means you’ll never outgrow Zendesk. Companies like Groupon have expanded from a small team to one of the largest in the world, using Zendesk the whole way.
3. Zendesk Community. Interact with Zendesk, its partners, and other customers through its support forums, blog, and events, where you will find the information and insights to guide you towards more insights. You can follow the platform and keep the conversations going on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Pinterest.
4. Excellent support. No matter what the question, Zendesk’s dedicated team of customer advocates would be there to help with solutions and answers.

Still can’t make up your mind? Fret not and take a look at these Zendesk alternatives.

3. Salesforce Essentials

Coming in at our second spot is Salesforce Essentials. Released in 2017, this platform serves as an all-in-one hub for your sales, CRM, and customer support needs. It was created in order to help small teams face the demands of today’s customer support environment while selling faster and smarter. The software provides an easy-to-navigate and configurable interface equipped with 360-degree customer views, inquiry routing solutions, and multi-channel support It even offers intelligent self-service sites so you can give your customers a faster way to get hold of the information that they need.

In addition to its robust set of help desk features, Salesforce Essentials also has capabilities that let you perform sales pipeline tracking and customer relationship management. Meaning, you can effortlessly run your customer support efforts in line with your sales goals.

Another great thing about this software is that the vendor offers an affordable and straightforward pricing plan that covers all the tools you will need for your sales and help desk operations. To learn more about this product, you may sign up for a Salesforce Essentials free trial.

Why choose Salesforce Essentials over Zoho Desk:

1. Multichannel support. You can provide multichannel support from a single platform and respond to your customers more efficiently regardless of where their queries are coming from.
2. Self-service options. This software allows you to create FAQs, self-service sites, knowledge bases, and support portals so that your customers can access the information they need on their own. You may even set up public forums for your customers to interact with each other and share information.
3. Comprehensive features. Salesforce Essentials not only comes with help desk tools. It is also equipped with business intelligence tools, CRM options, and sales automation so you can conveniently manage your operations in one platform.
4. Fast deployment. The cloud platform allows you to have your customer support up and running in no time without the need for IT and technical assistance.
5. Highly configurable interface. Salesforce Essentials has open API capabilities that let it integrate with a large number of native and third-party applications. With this, you can easily configure it according to the changing needs of your business.

This platform offers great help desk functionalities, however, as mentioned previously, this is created for small teams. For larger companies, you might want to take a look at these Salesforce Essentials alternatives.

4. Wix Answers

Wix Answers is a comprehensive all-in-one help desk software solution—for free. Its help desk, ticketing system, and call center, among others, are built right in the Wix system where it’s developed and used by Wix to support their users.

Since Wix Answers is a module of Wix, a robust overall website builder, setting it up is quick and easy. You can create your own help center that suits your branding, manage tickets from multiple support channels, provide help to customers from anywhere in your website, administer a built-in call center, facilitate all communication, and access actionable business insights for informed decision-making processes. It has advanced customization options and a streamlined interface which makes it a smart, efficient, and reliable system for any business.

You can use all the features for free for a period of time to see if the software matches your needs.

Why choose Wix Answers over Zoho Desk:

1. All-in-one customer support solution. Wix Answers boast of immediate deployment and use. You can customize it to carry your brand, choose among a library of templates, add some extensive articles, and you have your working support center.You also get helpful insights so you can understand better your customers’ needs.
2. Knowledge Base. The software lets you manage and create all of your useful and valuable guides, tutorials, FAQs and other knowledge resources in one place, allowing your customers to look for answers to their queries, search through articles, and find the assistance they need.
3. Intelligent ticketing system: The smart ticketing system is ideal for tracking, managing, and prioritizing support tickets coming from various channels. Regardless of your ticket source, you can efficiently and promptly respond to any inquiry and issues raised by your customers. You can also automatically send articles directlyfrom your knowledge base, get instant recommendations onan article, and add customized fields to contact forms.
4. Call center. Phone support is made available to your customers through your own 1-800 number which also allows customers to do callbackrequests.

For more options on your choice of helpdesk solution, you may look at these Wix Answers alternatives.

5. HubSpot Service Hub

Service Hub is from HubSpot which, together with HubSpot CRM, Marketing and Sales, gives you a complete suite of tools to help you engage, guide and grow your customers. Service Hub comes with a comprehensive suite of features that lets you and your customer service teams provide the best customer experience.

Service Hub provides you a full front office solution. You now get one view of your customers across sales, marketing, and service. The unified platform means that your marketing team, sales team and service team can now have a single consolidated customer record from which they can extend optimum support.

Why choose HubSpot Service Hub over Zoho Desk:

1. Engage & respond to customers on all fronts.The platform allows you to interact and engage with your customers on whatever channel for a quick response and speedy resolution of issues. Fast and direct response is further facilitated by adding a live chat right on your website so you can meet customer expectations and help resolve issues in real time.
2. Collaborative conversations.It lets you handle at scaleone-on-one communications with your customer via a single universal inbox that brings together all your customer emails, messages, chats, calls, and more — all accessible by your support team.
3. Listen to customers like never before.Get to learn how happy and satisfied your customers by deploying surveys to collect direct responses and feedback which you can use to improve customer experience.
4. Automate and route.Put customer support processes on auto mode to create tasks, route tickets, and manage escalation. It lets you use responses from feedback to automatically trigger marketing emails to customers or notifications for your support team.
5. Do it with a knowledge base.Transform customers’ tickets and FAQs into a comprehensive knowledge base of documentation and help articles that are searchable online.

You could still review your options by browsing through this resource on Hubspot Service Hub alternatives.

6. Vision Helpdesk

Vision Helpdesk is a suite of three modules that can closely be integrated to give you a comprehensive customer service solution. It provides your customers with multiple channels to contact you.

Vision Helpdesk’s module focuses on ticket management and centralizing customer data like conversations, calls, chats, emails and social media posts. A Satellite Desk module is offered for corporations with several brands or products. It allows for individual portals for each brand but organized under a centralized place. Its Service Desk module serves as an I.T. service desk management system for asset management and technical requests. These modules give you an extensive customer service platform up front.

Why choose Vision Helpdesk over Zoho Desk:

1. Multiple Channel Capability. Vision Helpdesk can integrate several channels into one for better efficiency of your support team.It lets you easily keep tab of conversations between customers and support agents whatever channel customers use.The software boasts of integration with over 60 third-party apps, giving you an extendable platform.
2. Automated Ticket Workflow. Tickets are prioritized, categorized, and assigned automatically to specific agents according to agent expertise. Workflow automation from initial query to final resolution saves time and ensures efficiency in the support process.
3. Boost Productivity. Vision Helpdesk drives productivity with its gamification, private social hub, and task management features that facilitate agents’ communication, sharing, and collaboration with one another. They can discuss ticket issues, share files, and post company presentations, with the system keeping all conversations private.
4. Easy Customer Billing. The system can track billable hours, analyze them, and tie them up with your invoicing solution to give you accurate work time for purposes of time sheets and for billing your customers. It also lets you collect payments through leading payment gateway services.
5. Mobile Support. Vision Helpdesk offers native apps for Windows phone, iOS, and Android mobile devices, allowing your agents to log in and work on the go whether for managing tickets, resolving issues and more.
6. Self-Service Help Center. Vision Helpdesk enables you to set up an online help center that customers can easily access to find answers to their queries. The help center can be customized and comes with several features such as knowledge base, self-service portal, and online community that customers can tap into to find answers for themselves. A customer self-service system reduces operating cost and lessens the burden on your support unit.

If your company has less need of these advanced features, you might want to check out these Vision Helpdesk alternatives instead.

7. TeamSupport

TeamSupport is a complete customer support application that businesses can use to collaborate and communicate more effectively among their units and with clients for a faster and more accurate response. Along with your support team, your finance, technical, and sales teams can also collaborate and use the app for superior customer satisfaction. On top of that, you can extend the system’s functionality with seamless integrations with popular business solutions such as Dropbox, Zoho Reports, MailChimp and more.

TeamSupport offers scalable features and cloud-hosted plans for both small and large enterprises. Main features include ticket automation, ticket management, live chat, screen records, advanced customer self-service portals, and reporting functionality. Your support team can use the internal chat feature to conduct real-time conversations for collaboration. Finally, you can be productive on the go by using the mobile version for popular platforms such as Windows Phone, Blackberry, Android, and iOS.

The vendor offers a comprehensive free trial to get you up to speed with the features.

Why choose TeamSupport over Zoho Desk:

1. Simplified Process. TeamSupport simplifies the processes involved in customer service. It provides tools to bridge the gap between customer issues and having them resolved. It removes all obstacles usually encountered by customers and agents, allowing for fast and seamless resolution of issues.
2. Productivity Enhancer. TeamSupport gets rid of error-prone manual processes and automates most customer service workflows and task including call transfers, call routing, information sharing, ticket prioritizing, and many others. These reduce mistakes along the line while enhancing agent productivity.
3. Customer Accessibility. Customers get quick access to resources and information that can help them resolve issues. With any connected device, they can immediately access your support portal or knowledge center and browse through FAQs, how-to guides, video tutorials and other materials that can help them find answers to their issues.

If you want a wider choice, take a look at these top TeamSupport alternatives.

8. ConnectWise Control

ConnectWise Control is an efficient and quick remote support, access, and meeting system designed for modern technical assistance teams. It allows technicians to make their work more productive by using remote support and access to repair computers, providing updates, and managing machines. Using it, they can also conduct online seminars and prepare presentations for remote meetings. All things considered, ConnectWise Control is fast, reliable, hassle-free, and yet it includes the same features as much more complex remote control solutions.

As a member of a reputed productivity software family, this system will make it possible to provide quick, top-notch customer service, and ensure unobstructed communication between agents and technicians. The tool’s customizable nature allows you to bring your brand in the center of attention, and change everything from logos and icons to the language integrated on your website. ConnectWise Control functions in synergy with ConnectWise Automate, and offers flexible pricing tailored to the user’s possibilities.

Why choose ConnectWise Control over Zoho Desk:

1. Remote Meetings. ConnectWise Control makes it easy to invite and engage participants and meetings and webinars, and to benefit from their fresh ideas. All participants will get to see a shared screen, make screenshots and record videos, comment and contribute, and chat with each other. The best part of the process is that they will get to invite as many attendees as they want, all with a single click.
2. Quick and efficient customer service. With ConnectWise Control, you can forget about delays and inefficient service delivery. All of your customers will be served in time and in a knowledgeable fashion, and their problems will be addressed way before the deadline. The reason for this is that agents have all data available in a single system, and are able to collaborate and work on the same task simultaneously.
3. Enhanced security. ConnectWise now comes with an updated interface that supports a more granular permission assignment, and where setting up and empowering new users will be a breeze. The reimaged version leans heavily on self-governed controls and authentication, as a result of which it lets users create clone roles and use multiple authentication sources. Two-factor authentication remains a part of this package, which means that ConnectWise will still save all your trusted devices, and let you log in quickly and safely.
4. Searching and filtering session types and groups. ConnectWise Control makes it easy to stay on top of your tasks, and does so regardless of the agents working on a particular case. Explained in technical terms, this means that you will be able to group clients, sessions, and machines by last connected event time, last disconnected time, and other custom filters; and have the system provide suggestions for you as soon as you initiate your search for a particular session type.
5. Custom pricing. Instead of imposing fixed priced schemes full of features you may or may not use, ConnectWise adopts a modular, custom pricing approach, and lets you build your own package. You can choose the features and functionalities that correspond to your needs, and ask the company’s expert sales broker to calculate an amount that would be suitable for you. This way, Control as well as other ConnectWise products are made accessible to businesses from different scales and industries.

ConnectWise Control not exactly your cup of tea? Then you might want to check out these ConnectWise Control alternatives instead for more options.

9. Kayako

Kayako is a cloud-hosted help desk software that puts all your customer service channels in one place. Trusted by over 50,000 organizations worldwide, used by 131,000 support pros serving 100 million customers, the software can serve a wide range of customer service needs, from small businesses to the largest companies. Among those customers trusting Kayako to provide their help desk services include NASA, De Beers, Peugeut and the American Motorcyclist Association.

Kayako supports live chat, tickets, web, email, calls or self-service support to help businesses further extend their help to their customers. It helps you look for insights based on customer queries, such as sales trends and opportunities, performance metrics, and support bottlenecks. You can also put your support in autopilot to fast track replies to standard queries or repetitive tasks so your agents can focus on addressing more pressing issues, or organize and route emails for easy sorting.

Through help desk and live chat solutions, Kayako helps companies manage customer requests and conversations over any channel, support customers better, and stay personal as they grow.

Why choose Kayako over Zoho Desk:

1. Small businesses and startup-friendly. Providing the best customer support and experience does not require an army of support agents or a million-dollar investment. Kayako makes it possible toprovide world-class professional customer support even with a small team and without breaking the bank.
2. Wide integration.One factor that lets you step up your customer service is the ability of Kayako to integrate with dozens of applications and services that can help you manage in one platform pulling in of customer data, getting full visibility of your customers, automating workflows, and assisting customers in their journey, among many others.
3. Capable but affordable.Most would equate full capability with high-end, costly platforms. Kayako gives you robust features and capabilities minus expensive enterprise-level pricing, making it within reach of small support teams requiring the best but most affordable tools.
4. Multichannel support.The software lets you reach out and respond customers on all fronts. You can provide support in real-time from whatever contact point or channel your customers prefer whether through social media, by email, phone, live chat, tickets, and others.

While Kayako has its work cut out for small businesses and startups, your unique business requirements might have gone north, which means you will probably want to look at these Kayako alternatives.

10. LiveAgent

LiveAgent is a leading helpdesk application that combines multiple channels into a single compact solution. It includes email support, live chat, and social media integration for Twitter and Facebook. It features a comprehensive set of helpdesk tools including ticket management, reporting and gamification. Its LiveChat features are scalable to meet the needs of business of any size. The app can handle tons of tickets daily even with a small team.

LiveAgent setup is simple and fast. Tickets are centralized via a universal inbox and routed to the right department based on your presets. You can automate routing recurring issues to a knowledge base, too, freeing up your agents to focus on unique or pressing tickets. The use of universal storage bin also makes it easy to review the tickets for agent performance reviews.

Why choose LiveAgent over Zoho Desk:

1. Universal inbox. LiveAgent gives you a smart universal inbox where you can view and respond to every ticket from whatever channel – calls, chat, emails, forum posts, and social media. You get to manage and access them from one platform.
2. Hybrid ticket stream. Regardless of channel, tickets will have the same form and structure, allowing you to follow customers wherever they are while letting you maintain the same hybrid ticket with all important customer issues and information available.
3. Automated ticket routing. The system automates ticket distribution to ensure optimal work for agents. You can define and set the number chats, phone calls, and tickets received and resolved by agents as well as automatically route phone duty and assign pause times, among others.
4. Track agent performance. LiveAgent lets you easily track agent work and monitor performance. You’ll be able to get metrics on issues and tickets solved by your agents in a given period and even assess the quality of support they extended to customers.
5. Keep track of every request. The software helps you keep tab of requests whatever channel they come from and automatically turn them into tickets for easy follow-up, response, and resolution.

Still haven’t made up your mind? In that case, we have listed LiveAgent alternatives to further your inquiry into a viable helpdesk solution for your own use.