Freshdesk Overview – The Good and Unhealthy for 2024

Freshdesk is a powerful assist desk answer–it intuitively converts your buyer emails into tickets so your workforce can simply handle and prioritize them. Not solely does this software set up queries, however it additionally automates workflows and duties, saving your workforce worthwhile time. Freshdesk is thought for its excellent worth, scalability, and superior communication and analytics options. Its smooth design enhances the expertise for purchasers and help brokers alike by simplifying and routing correspondences robotically.

Examine Freshdesk to its Closest Rivals

Freshdesk is a hybrid assist desk answer mixed with name middle performance. As such, it competes with a variety of manufacturers in several classes. 

If many of the service you present is over the cellphone, Nextiva is our favourite name middle answer and our high choose for many companies. It’s inexpensive, straightforward to implement, easy to study, and comes full of all the decision dealing with, routing, outbound dialing, and customer support instruments you want. 

Don’t want superior name middle options? Assist desk software program, like Freshdesk (our high choose), Zendesk, or HubSpot could also be a better option.

Zendesk is a powerful selection for smaller groups which are simply getting began–HubSpot affords the perfect free omnichannel help answer we’ve seen. 

Freshdesk: The Good and The Unhealthy

The Good:

Extremely Customizable Interfaces: Freshdesk’s FreshThemes function lets customers customise their dashboard, making it a breeze to maintain it trying each sharp and on-brand. With a contemporary, clear interface and prebuilt themes, Freshdesk begins off straightforward for newcomers. Utilizing FreshThemes can also be easy. You select a template after which drag and drop the weather you want most, equivalent to ticket lists or analytics charts. This customization does greater than make your dashboard look good, it additionally streamlines your work by placing every thing you want only one click on away.

Canned Types: A canned kind is a pre-set template utilized in buyer help interactions for fast data gathering from clients, serving to to unravel their points extra effectively by making certain all needed particulars are supplied upfront.

What units Freshdesk aside on this area is its easy integration of those kinds into the ticketing workflow. As soon as a canned kind is saved, it’s available inside the reply editor on the ticket particulars web page, making it straightforward for brokers to insert the knowledge with just some clicks.

Personalized Stories: Freshdesk affords customized analytics on the Professional and Enterprise plans to assist directors extract deeper insights from their buyer help information by specializing in what issues to their particular organizations. Not like conventional reporting instruments that provide restricted metrics and fields, Freshdesk’s customized reporting function permits customers to create reviews tailor-made to their distinctive enterprise wants. Customers can:

• Select particular metrics to comply with
• Apply related filters to arrange information
• Share metrics teamwide

Freshdesk’s widget library additionally supplies a wealth of choices for information visualization, from pre-built templates to customizable widgets—which will be tailor-made to showcase metrics throughout varied modules equivalent to tickets, timesheets, and surveys.

Lastly, the drag-and-drop performance makes it straightforward to rearrange widgets and resize them to suit the specified structure, making certain that customers can effortlessly design reviews that swimsuit their preferences.

Good AI-Powered Ticketing: Freshdesk’s AI-powered assistant, aka Freddy AI, supplies clever solutions to brokers as they work on tickets, serving to them navigate the platform and discover options sooner.

Probably the greatest elements of this function is its agent collision detection, which prevents a number of brokers from engaged on the identical ticket by mistake. Plus, SLA administration helps you to set deadlines for responding to and resolving tickets based mostly on issues like enterprise hours and different classes, all powered by AI-connected expertise.

Robust Collaboration Capabilities: Freshdesk presents a set of collaboration options meticulously designed to streamline teamwork and expedite concern decision.

• In-ticket discussions: By involving stakeholders from various groups, these discussions keep visibility and context, resulting in speedier resolutions.
• Shared possession of tickets: Permitting groups to deal with points concurrently fosters transparency and ensures immediate responses to buyer queries.
• Mum or dad-child ticketing system: By dividing duties and selling accountability amongst inside groups, this technique accelerates concern decision.
• Integration capabilities: With methods to unify help and subject groups, these capabilities facilitate a greater general customer support expertise for brokers and clients. 

High-Tier Routing: Routing expertise directs buyer inquiries to the suitable brokers or departments, enhancing effectivity and buyer satisfaction. Freshdesk has dozens of routing-related choices and options, together with IVR, automation guidelines, dynamic name routing, customized name flows, omnichannel ticket assignments, auto ticket distribution, chat routing, and extra. The routing choices you’ll get depend upon the merchandise you buy. 

Workflow Automations: Freshdesk is provided with the instruments to automate routine duties and permit customer support brokers to give attention to extra advanced points.

Right here’s an inventory of generally automated duties in Freshdesk:

• Ticket task
• Ticket prioritization
• Standing updates
• Observe-ups
• Buyer notifications
• SLA insurance policies
• Stories and analytics
• Approval processes
• Buyer onboarding
• Ticket escalation
• Electronic mail automation

The Workflow Automator identifies particular occasions like ticket creations and ticket updates, then performs specified actions based mostly on these occasions. All you must do is create a algorithm and triggers to let this system know precisely what you need it to do. Along with inside automation, there are over 1,000 applications that instantly combine with Freshdesk. This lets you unify your accounts and make it possible for your whole information is synced.

The most well-liked integrations embrace WhatsApp, Slack, Shopify, Salesforce, Microsoft Groups, and Mailchimp. Freshdesk’s app retailer has a nice design and a useful search bar with class sections and filtering choices, making it straightforward to seek out the manufacturers you wish to hook up with your assist desk software. If you wish to construct your individual app integration, the Freshworks Neo Platform affords a customizable enterprise answer.

Supported Communication Channels: Freshdesk covers nearly each communication channel to make it simpler for purchasers and companies to remain in communication. For instance, a digital name middle could join with clients by way of cellphone at first however swap to e-mail help outdoors of enterprise hours. This sort of service is crucial for elevating the general contact middle expertise.

You’ll have the ability to leverage e-mail, cellphone, chat, kinds, a assist widget, social media, and a self-service portal for true omnichannel customer support. It provides you entry to conversations and assets from a number of channels in a single display screen, lowering the agent’s task-switching time between completely different instruments. It additionally permits supervisors to trace real-time efficiency for a greater administration expertise.

A Free Plan You Can Really Use: Freshdesk’s free plan affords limitless brokers, contacts, and tickets. It’s a wonderful approach for small companies to get began with out burning their finances.

The Unhealthy:

Steep Studying Curve: Freshdesk boasts a wealthy array of options, which may initially overwhelm those that are simply getting began with a assist desk software. There are additionally a ton of various services to select from, making every thing much more difficult. To make issues simpler, we suggest avoiding customized themes and analytic show builds till you’ve gotten conversant in this system.

Lag with Sure Integrations: Freshdesk states its dedication to offering a variety of integrations, but some customers have expressed a want for extra seamless connections with particular third-party instruments. Gradual information syncing appears to be the primary concern. 

Pricey at Scale: Though Freshdesk affords a free plan, scaling up can turn into expensive. Some companies discover the soar in pricing between tiers a bit steep, particularly small to medium-sized enterprises with tight budgets.

Freshdesk Plans and Pricing

Freshdesk is well-known for providing a free plan, so upgrading to different tiers relies on the bells and whistles you need for your small business. 

The Free Plan

The Freshdesk Free plan is a perfect launchpad for startups and small groups. Right here’s what you possibly can anticipate from this tier:

• Value-free effectivity: Equip as much as 10 brokers with a complete ticketing system for free of charge, maximizing worth for rising companies.
• Streamlined ticketing: Deal with e-mail and social media interactions effortlessly from a single dashboard, making certain a cohesive buyer help expertise.
• Insightful analytics: Leverage ticket tendencies and dispatch reviews for a transparent view of buyer inquiries and workforce dynamics.
• Empower clients: A self-service data base reduces inbound queries, permitting clients to seek out their very own solutions rapidly.
• Knowledge compliance and pace: Select your information middle location to optimize efficiency and cling to regional information laws.
• Enhanced collaboration: Promote workforce effectivity with built-in collaboration instruments, supported by 24/7 e-mail help.

Regardless of how the free plan lacks automation and customization choices, it contains loads of options to get you began and set up your customer support operations.

Progress Plan: Beginning at $15 per Month per Person

The Freshdesk Progress plan contains all of the options of the Free plan, plus:

• Automation
• Collision detection
• Over 1,000 market apps
• In-depth helpdesk report
• SLA administration & enterprise hours
• Customized e-mail server
• Customized ticket views
• Customized ticket fields & standing
• Customized SSL
• Time monitoring for brokers
• 24-hour cellphone help on weekdays

The Progress plan will present essentially the most worth to up-and-coming companies in search of to boost their buyer help capabilities with superior automation, customization choices, and prolonged help protection.

Professional Plan: Beginning at $49 per Month per Person

The Professional plan fits bigger companies or these with advanced buyer help wants. It builds upon the Progress plan by including:

• Administration of a number of merchandise
• As much as 5,000 collaborators
• Spherical-robin routing
• Customized roles, objects, reviews, metrics, apps, and dashboards
• Segmented buyer help
• Buyer journey monitoring
• Canned kinds
• Model administration within the data base, which will also be multilingual
• Group boards
• Prolonged API limits
• CSAT surveys & reviews
• A number of SLA insurance policies & hours
• SLA reminders & escalation
• Report sharing

Corporations that profit essentially the most from the Professional plan are those who handle a number of services, require detailed buyer segmentation and personalised help paths, or want superior reporting and analytics to drive decision-making.

Enterprise Plan: Beginning at $79 per Month per Person

So far as enterprise-level pricing goes, Freshdesk’s Enterprise plan is comparatively inexpensive, particularly contemplating the depth of its choices. This plan contains every thing within the Professional plan, plus:

• Limitless merchandise
• Sandbox
• Agent shift administration throughout time zones
• Audit log
• Talent-based routing
• Information base approval workflow
• Versatile data base hierarchy
• IP vary restriction

This plan is all about customization and scaling, so it’s best-suited for organizations centered on delivering distinctive, tailor-made help experiences. If customer support is the only most necessary component of your small business—and also you worth unparalleled management over your operations—then this plan could also be for you.

How We Reviewed Freshdesk

When trying into Freshdesk, we needed to take considerably of a singular strategy as a result of it affords each assist desk and name middle options. 

We seemed carefully at:

Ease of use: We simulated the consumer experiences by contacting buyer help, walked by means of Freshdesk’s interface, and assessed its intuitiveness for varied help duties.

Channel centralization: From e-mail to social media, we researched and checked the provision of over 10 channels for organizing and responding to buyer inquiries.

Routing choices: To find out how Freshdesk manages incoming help requests, we examined its ticketing choices, utilizing each automation and particular routing guidelines.

Information base instruments: We reviewed Freshdesk’s agent coaching guides, public data base, and supplemental coaching movies.

Automation: We evaluated the automation capabilities inside the platform, together with workflows and rule-based actions for managing varied help processes.

Analytics and insights: We watched detailed walkthroughs of case research and demos to investigate the creation and evaluate of each premade and customized analytics charts. 

Integrations: We browsed Freshdesk’s intensive assortment of API integrations and browse buyer opinions score the effectiveness of essentially the most generally used ones.

Customer support: By making an attempt to contact the corporate by means of cellphone, chat, e-mail, and get in touch with kind, we confirmed availability, response time, and help high quality.

Pricing: We in contrast Freshdesk’s pricing to its closest opponents, contemplating the options supplied in every plan.

Take a look at our favourite name middle options or assist desk platforms to study extra about how we evaluate the various kinds of software program and our high picks. 

Freshdesk FAQs

What are the advantages of Freshdesk?

Freshdesk affords an entire buyer help platform by means of omnichannel integration, superior ticketing, automated duties, customizable workflows, and complete reporting.

What integrations does Freshdesk supply?

Freshdesk affords over 1,000 direct integrations with common apps like WhatsApp, Slack, Shopify, Salesforce, Microsoft Groups, and Mailchimp. It additionally affords customizable enterprise options by means of the Freshworks Neo Platform.

Are there any disadvantages of Freshdesk?

The principle criticism from Freshdesk customers is that there are occasional pace and loading points that decelerate operations. Some subscribers have to refresh tickets usually, which may interrupt some workflows.

To assist reduce tech points, make it possible for each your {hardware} and software program are up to date. It’s also possible to strive utilizing a unique browser in the event you expertise pace points with Freshdesk.

What number of companies use Freshdesk?

Freshdesk is a broadly used customer support platform, with over 12,000 firms actively utilizing it as of 2024. The platform’s reputation spans companies of all sizes and sectors globally, highlighting its versatility.

The businesses using Freshdesk are most regularly present in america and inside the IT sector. Nonetheless, a number of sorts of companies use Freshdesk, starting from universities to medical laboratories.

Can I take advantage of Freshdesk free of charge?

Sure, Freshdesk affords a free plan designed for small groups and new companies which are simply beginning out with buyer help. It contains primary options equivalent to:

• Built-in ticketing throughout e-mail and social
• Ticket dispatching
• Information base
• Ticket pattern reviews
• Out-of-the-box analytics
• Optionally available your information middle location
• Crew collaboration
• 24/7 e-mail help

Whereas it lacks extra superior options equivalent to superior customization or cellphone help, it’s a wonderful worth for these with smaller help wants.

Which is best, Zendesk or Freshdesk?

Selecting between Zendesk and Freshdesk relies on your distinctive wants. 

Zendesk affords a strong platform with intensive customization choices, superior analytics, and a complete set of options appropriate for big enterprises and companies with advanced buyer help necessities.

Finally, it’s beloved for its highly effective ticketing system, dwell chat capabilities, and lots of integrations.

Freshdesk, then again, is usually praised for its user-friendly interface, affordability, and effectiveness for small to medium-sized companies. It supplies important help instruments equivalent to ticketing, a data base, and automation options which are straightforward to arrange and use.

Altogether, Freshdesk may supply extra upfront worth due to its free plan. Zendesk has no such providing, with plans beginning at $55 a month.

If doable, give each platforms a try to assess them based mostly on their options reasonably than solely contemplating the fee. You might discover that one platform’s particular options higher align with your small business wants, making it the superior selection for you.