If you’re a CX leader running an enterprise-level organization, you need help desk software that goes beyond just automating basic support processes and managing tickets. Among literally hundreds of things to consider, your business needs to factor in cost, scalability, integration and deployment options, as well as long-term value.
So, how do you figure out which enterprise help desk software is the right option? You’ve gotta evaluate the features, pros, and cons of each solution—along with feedback from real customers.
And that’s exactly what we did in this guide.
Check out this list of the top 10 enterprise help desk software you should consider for your business, along with some guidelines on understanding the differences between enterprise and SMB help desk tools.
Enterprise vs. SMB Help Desk Software: Key Differences
Sometimes, enterprises tend to use cheaper help desk software to optimize costs. However, this approach isn’t ideal, as not all help desk software is made for enterprise scale.
Here are the key distinctions when comparing enterprise versus SMB help desk software.
Scope and Scale
Scope and scale are crucial considerations when choosing help desk software because they directly impact the software’s effectiveness in meeting the needs of the organization.
Enterprise
Enterprise help desk software is designed for large organizations with diverse needs and vast user counts. These tools are equipped to handle high volumes of tickets across multiple channels and often feature advanced functionalities such as AI-driven ticket routing, and comprehensive reporting, and offer multiple integrations with other enterprise-level systems.
SMB
SMB help desk software is designed for smaller businesses with one focus – efficiently handling support requests. Typically, these tools handle lower ticket volumes and offer fewer features, focusing on essential functionalities like ticket tracking, basic reporting, and customer communication tools.
Features and Customization
Robust features and customization options are another essential factor to consider as they enable organizations to tailor the software to their specific needs, improve efficiency, adapt to changes, and enhance the overall user experience.
Enterprise
Enterprise help desk software has extensive customization options that align with specific workflows and processes of the organization, with advanced analytics, omnichannel support, and extensive integrations. These tools also provide robust API support for integration with ERP platforms, CRM, and marketing automation tools, offering high adaptability to cater to multifaceted corporate needs. Additionally, they often include customizable dashboards for real-time data analysis, automated workflows for increased efficiency, and the capacity to manage and analyze large datasets.
SMB
SMB help desk software typically offers core functionalities tailored to smaller businesses, emphasizing ease of use. While customization and integration options may be more limited compared to enterprise solutions, they still effectively meet the needs of SMBs for managing help desk operations.
Support
Before selecting a help desk software product for your organization, assess the provider’s support capabilities. Since the primary purpose of helpdesk software is to assist your organization in solving problems, if the provider doesn’t offer reliable support, you should probably explore other options.
Enterprise
Enterprise help desk software often comes with dedicated support teams and exhaustive training, including comprehensive services that sometimes extend to having dedicated account managers. This thorough support structure ensures businesses can fully utilize all the software’s features and effectively navigate its complexities.
SMB
SMB help desk software typically provides generalized support and user-friendly training resources. While support levels are more limited compared to enterprise solutions, they often include various online materials, community forums, and standard customer service channels.
Top 10 Enterprise Help Desk Solutions on the Market Right Now
In this section, we aim to assist you in selecting the best help desk software for your business. We provide an overview of the leading tools available in the market. Our evaluation focuses on key features such as ticket management, knowledge base management, and integration capabilities, in addition to assessing ease of use and pricing options.
You will also find the pros and cons of each help desk solution, along with customer reviews sourced from platforms like G2 and Capterra. This offers valuable insights into how actual customers perceive the services provided by these platforms.
- Kustomer
- Zendesk
- Freshdesk
- Salesforce Service Cloud
- Jira Service Desk
- SolarWinds Service Desk
- Service Now
- Zoho Desk
- Happy Fox
- Help Scout
1. Kustomer
Kustomer is an omni-channel customer engagement platform that offers enterprise-level organizations a comprehensive view of their customer interactions. With Kustomer, companies can deliver a consistent customer experience across multiple channels and significantly reduce the cost of their customer service operations.
Kustomer aggregates customer data from multiple business segments to gain a comprehensive understanding of each customer. With its integration options and advanced AI capabilities, Kustomer can help you automate routine tasks and reduce response time, ticket resolution time, and more.
Pros:
- Smart workflows for automating repetitive tasks help to manage customer requests more efficiently and optimize response time.
- Offers omnichannel support, which includes social media, messaging, email, and more, for comprehensive customer engagement.
- Includes an integrated knowledge base, facilitating self-service and empowering customers to find solutions independently.
- Provides real-time analytics and metrics, and generates reports about your conversations, team members performance, and customer base.
- The intuitive interface is simple to navigate and enables agents to quickly search, view, and segment customers based on any internal or external data
- Kustomer integrates with all top business software that you use from day to day.
Cons:
- Pricing may be out of range for early stage startups.
- New support agents may have a steeper learning curve while getting to know the platform’s functionalities.
Pricing:
- Kustomer’s enterprise plan is priced at $89 a month for each user.
- It includes key features like Multi-Channel Communication and Business Process Automation.
- The Ultimate plan costs $139 a month per user and includes everything from the Enterprise plan.
- Additional benefits of the Ultimate plan include Unlimited Collaboration Users and Real-Time Dashboards.
Key Features:
- Workflow Automation: Optimize ticket management and support requests, enhancing efficiency and streamlining the entire customer support process.
- SLA Management: Maintain high customer service standards by consistently ensuring service level agreements are met.
- Comprehensive Integrations: Integrates with the most popular CRMs, such as Dialpad, Facebook, BigCommerce, Five9, and more.
- Dedicated Mobile App: Kustomer features a dedicated iOS mobile app, enabling seamless customer support anytime, anywhere, fostering greater accessibility and convenience.
- Built-in Chatbots: Has advanced chatbots for efficient customer interactions, ensuring quick responses and improved customer engagement.
- Contextual Customer Profiles: Kustomer provides a unified view of all customer interactions, including past conversations, support tickets, purchase history, and more.
- Self-Service Portal: It has an easy-to-navigate help center for your website, helping you reduce contact rates at scale.
- Real-Time Analytics: The feature-rich dashboard for monitoring customer experience and agent performance in Kustomer is like a command center for understanding and enhancing how your business interacts with customers.
Why do users prefer Kustomer?
- One customer on Capterra praised Kustomer, saying, “We were able to manage our calls and email effectively, we could easily create a follow-up with our client since the ticket will remain on the agent’s bucket for a long period of time”.
- Another customer on G2 said “Kustomer is the best thing that has happened to our customer support team. It has improved our efficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction.”
2. Zendesk
Zendesk is a popular help desk software solution designed to help businesses manage and improve their customer support, interactions, and relationships. Its robust help desk system provides a wide range of customer service and engagement capabilities that integrate with almost all the apps in your stack and cater to industries from every sector.
💡 Related Read: Is Zendesk Worth It? Here’s Their Biggest Pros & Cons
Pros:
- User-friendly interface that ensures both support agents and end-users can navigate the platform effortlessly, enhancing their overall experience.
- Zendesk has a smart ticketing system equipped with automated ticket assignment, which optimizes the workflow by distributing tasks among agents based on predefined criteria.
- Fully-fledged omnichannel support that integrates with social media channels, allowing businesses to manage customer interactions and inquiries across various online platforms.
- User reviews suggest Zendesk has one of the best live chat tools.
- The product is designed to scale with growing businesses.
Cons:
- Some advanced functionalities may require additional add-ons or access to higher pricing plans.
- Even though it’s customizable, it has comparatively less flexibility than some of its competitors.
- For organizations seeking support software with advanced project management features, Zendesk might be somewhat limited.
- While Zendesk can scale to accommodate a large number of users, some businesses have reported that it can become clunky and slow as they grow.
- Recently Zendesk has also been criticized for its data collection practices and use of third-party cookies.
- Less responsive customer service – with common complaints cited in this guide to Zendesk’s top competitors.
Pricing:
- Zendesk offers a Suite Team plan at $55 per agent per month, with a ticketing system and support across multiple channels like email, chat, voice, and social messaging.
- The Suite Growth plan costs $89 per agent per month, adding service level agreements and multilingual support to the features of the Suite Team plan.
- At $115 per agent per month, the Suite Professional plan includes everything from the previous plans plus custom and live analytics.
- For larger organizations with more complex needs, the Suite Enterprise plan is available.
Key Features:
- One of Zendesk’s key features is that this automation tool helps support teams in streamlining workflows and boosting productivity.
- It has a knowledge base and self-service portal for FAQs.
- Real-time messaging and notifications further provide a great customer support experience.
- Has enterprise-grade security such as SSO and two-factor authentication.
What do users like about Zendesk?
- One customer on G2 said “Chat, Call, Customization, and easy masking of PI and PII using Zendesk and SLAs can be easily managed in Zendesk and altered at any time.”
- Another customer on G2 praised Zendesk, saying “Zendesk accomplishes most of what we need as an organization, with little fuss and good customization.”
3. Freshdesk
Freshdesk is a customer support and helpdesk software platform that helps businesses manage their customer service operations. It also provides tools for ticketing, email, chat, knowledge base management, and more, which enables organizations to handle customer inquiries and support requests efficiently. Freshdesk is designed to improve customer service by centralizing communication, automating repetitive tasks, and providing insights into customer interactions.
Pros:
- Freshdesk has affordable pricing and offers a free plan.
- This software prioritizes the needs of an IT team and, therefore, has plenty of ITSM (IT Service Management) and IT help desk features.
- Has practical ticket management tools for IT teams to help streamline the organization’s processes.
- FreshDesk integrates with over 600 apps, including Active Directory.
Cons:
- Some of Freshdesk’s features require extra integrations or add-ons to get the full experience of using the tool.
- The interface might not be as intuitive for some users
- Freshdesk’s multilingual capabilities are limited.
- Even though FreshDesk has in-app collaboration features, some users find using it for conversations somewhat challenging.
- There is a significant gap between subscription plans.
Pricing:
- Freshdesk’s pricing starts with a Free plan that includes integrated ticketing across email and social platforms, and a knowledge base, suitable for up to 10 agents.
- The Growth plan, at $15 per agent per month, builds on the Free plan by adding automation features and access to over 1000 marketplace apps.
- The Pro plan offers advanced automation for $49 per agent per month, including up to 5000 collaborators, custom roles, and objects.
- The Enterprise plan is available at $79 per agent per month, featuring full support with bots and the capability to handle unlimited products.
Key Features:
- Freshdesk is listed among the top-rated IT Asset Management solutions.
- SLA management ensures that service requests are handled within agreed-upon processes and timelines.
- Customizable help desk solution with plenty of widgets and templates.
- Freshdesk offers specialized tools for tracking KPIs. This helps to gain deep insights into helpdesk performance and customer satisfaction levels and CSAT score..
What do users like about Freshdesk?
- One user in G2 has mentioned that “From the moment I started using it, I was swept off my feet by its incredible user-friendliness.”
- Another happy user in G2 said “Their customer support is fantastic. I can always reach out to them and know I am going to get help within 24 hours.”
4. Salesforce Service Cloud
Salesforce Service Cloud is a customer service application, which is part of the Salesforce platform. Its help desk system is designed to support customer service operations by providing a comprehensive set of tools for managing customer interactions, inquiries, and support services.
Pros:
- Salesforce Service Cloud works well with Salesforce’s CRM solutions, making it a logical choice for existing Salesforce users.
- Advanced routing for support tickets redirects tickets based on predefined criteria, ensuring that each customer issue is addressed by the most qualified agent.
- AI features provide predictive analytics and actionable insights. This helps customer service teams anticipate customer needs and optimize their service strategies.
- Comes with a very clean and easy-to-use UI.
Cons:
- Primarily designed for those who already use Salesforce.
- High pricing for small businesses.
- Users may face limitations on data storage, resulting in additional costs for increased storage capacity.
Pricing:
- Salesforce Service Cloud’s Starter Suite is offered at $25 per user per month. It supports basic CRM needs with features like case management and a knowledge base.
- The Professional plan is priced at $80 per user per month with additions like case swarming and omnichannel routing.
- For advanced CRM services with AI capabilities, the Enterprise plan is available at $165 per user per month.
Key Features:
- Omnichannel Support helps businesses streamline their support processes and enhance agent efficiency.
- Provides essential metrics and KPIs that can help track and evaluate your support team’s performance.
- The built-in chatbot feature efficiently addresses repeating customer issues, optimizing response times and allowing the support team to focus on more complex problems.
What do users like about Salesforce Service Cloud?
- According to a G2 review, one Salesforce service cloud customer found it is an ideal choice for his company because of its seamless integration with other Salesforce products and third-party applications his company uses.
- Another user had reported his experience with the Salesforce service cloud on G2 as, “Great case management and assignment feature, flexible logic building capability based on case source.”
5. Jira Service Desk
Jira Service Desk, or Jira Service Management, is a service management software developed by Atlassian. It’s primarily designed for IT service teams who manage a large volume of tickets and are looking for a help desk solution to deliver support efficiently.
Pros:
- Works well with other Atlassian tools, making it straightforward to integrate.
- Strong focus on IT support and ITSM (IT Service Management)
- With Jira Service Desk, you can create as many SLA policies as you need.
- Link conversations directly to Jira tasks with the tool’s chat sync feature with Slack and Microsoft Teams
Cons:
- As it’s aimed at technical teams, it’s not the top option for businesses looking only for a customer support tool.
- It may be challenging for the end user due to its complexity.
Pricing:
- Jira Service Desk offers a Free plan that is available for up to 3 agents, with basic features like 2 GB file storage and email notifications.
- The Standard plan costs approximately $22.05 per agent per month and expands on the Free plan with up to 20,000 agents and 250 GB file storage.
- The Premium plan, at an estimated $49.35 per agent per month, includes Atlassian Intelligence and advanced incident management, along with unlimited file storage.
- You need to get the Enterprise plan for comprehensive features like enhanced data and analytics and centralized security.
Key Features:
- This service desk tool is tailor-made for IT teams, and it includes powerful asset management features.
- Smart SLA management and notifications ensure you always respond to customer queries in a timely manner.
- Customizable workflows for ticket management.
What do users like about Jira Service Desk?
- One user on G2 said, “Jira Allows users to directly create tickets through the customer portal rather than calling into a helpdesk”.
- Another user on G2 said, “The ease of organizing projects in different ways, including administrators, analysts, and users in such a way that you can limit the administrators of one project to modify another, leaving this to the Jira administrator.”
6. SolarWinds Service Desk
SolarWinds Service Desk is a cloud-based service desk and asset management software for IT departments. It offers a comprehensive platform for service management, IT asset management, and configuration management. The system is ITIL-ready, featuring capabilities in Incident, Problem, Change, and Release Management.
Pros:
- SolarWinds Service Desk is appreciated for its stability, which is a crucial factor for IT service management platforms.
- Users highly rate its effectiveness in organizing and prioritizing service tickets.
- The platform includes a comprehensive change management feature, including a change requests repository and a change calendar.
- It provides robust IT asset management features, including configuration management and policy and contract enforcement.
Cons:
- Integration with other tools like Monday.com and Active Directory can be challenging.
- Some users find the mobile application for SolarWinds Service Desk quite difficult to use.
Key Features:
- SolarWinds Service Desk stands out with its self-service tools and subscription-based notifications.
- It has a strong emphasis on ITSM collaboration and documentation, as well as ITSM reports and dashboards.
- The service includes a self-service portal, a service catalog, a knowledge base, and an SLA management tool.
- Features like software and hardware inventory tracking, robust and flexible reporting, and contract and license tracking enhance its asset management capabilities.
Pricing:
- SolarWinds Service Desk offers an Essentials package for growing teams at $39 per month, per technician. It features basic tools like incident management and a service portal.
- The Advanced plan is available for mature IT organizations at $79 per month, per technician. It includes all Essentials features plus options like custom fields and virtual agents.
- For full customizability, the Premier plan costs $99 per month, per technician, adding advanced features such as Visual CMDB and Dependency Mapping, and up to 1,500 API calls per user per minute.
- All plans support unlimited users and come with a free trial option to test the service.
What do users like about SolarWinds Service Desk?
- One user on the G2 review said, “Some of the best features of Solarwind are service catalog, self-service portal, knowledge base documentation for common issues.”
- Another user said on G2, “It’s a classic incident management tool, intuitive and easy to adopt both for the IT staff and end users.”
7. ServiceNow
ServiceNow is a cloud-based IT Service Management (ITSM) solution that is widely recognized for its advanced features for managing IT operations and services. This tool is primarily designed for enterprises in need of a robust and scalable help desk system for IT service management.
Pros:
- ServiceNow is good at organizing and prioritizing service tickets.
- The platform offers comprehensive self-service tools, including a knowledge repository, where users can find answers to common issues.
- ITSM collaboration and documentation features like discussion threads facilitate issue resolution.
- ServiceNow’s ITSM reports and dashboards are highly praised by users for providing valuable insights that help to improve service desk operations further.
Cons:
- The user interface could be more intuitive, as some users report having trouble finding specific functions and options.
- The routine upgrades, occurring approximately every six months, can be somewhat inconvenient, particularly when migrating from one version to another.
Key Features:
- ServiceNow offers robust IT asset management capabilities, including configuration management and a dashboard for tracking the organization’s software portfolio.
- The platform includes an effective change management system, with features like a change requests repository and a change calendar.
- SLA management ensures that all requests are handled according to predefined processes.
- In addition to ITSM, ServiceNow provides a wide range of integrations with various third-party applications.
Pricing:
- ServiceNow offers a free plan for 1-10 users and 1-3 support agents, which is suitable for small teams.
- This free tier includes a full-featured YouTrack with Helpdesk and allows for unlimited reporters.
- For teams with more than 11 users, the price is $4.40 per user per month, with discounts available for larger numbers of users.
- Support agents on these larger teams are charged $5.00 per agent per month.
What do users like about ServiceNow?
- An example review on G2 says, “The best thing I like about ServiceNow IT Service Management is its tracking of each and every detail of a particular request.”
- A customer on Capterra said, “ServiceNow makes submitting tickets for issues across teams extremely easy and comprehensive.”
8. Zoho Desk
Zoho is primarily known as a customer relationship management tool, but it also offers a help desk solution for customer interactions, called Zoho Desk. Key features of Zoho Desk include omnichannel support, self-service options, sentiment analysis, and service-level agreement management. Zoho Desk also aims to enhance agent productivity through contextual support and AI features, as well as an advanced response editor. This help desk software integrates with various platforms and offers customizable options that fit different business needs.
Pros:
- Flexible and customizable interface.
- As a browser-based software, Zoho Desk ensures cross-platform functionality.
- The software integrates well with other Zoho products making it a logical choice for existing users.
- It is well known for its user-friendly interface.
Cons:
- Requires a paid plan to integrate with other Zoho tools, including its CRM, Analytics and BugTracker.
- Requires an Enterprise plan for live chat.
Key Features:
- Zoho Desk supports customer service across various channels, including live chat, phone support, and social media integration.
- It offers features for organizing and prioritizing service tickets, along with subscription-based notifications and SLA management.
- It includes forums, external and internal knowledge bases, and Q&A sections.
- Zoho Desk provides automated responses and efficient ticket management.
Pricing:
- Zoho Desk’s Standard plan is priced at $14 per user per month and includes all the essential support features.
- Their Professional plan costs $23 per user per month and provides simplified collaboration and process automation.
- Enterprise plan is $40 per user per month. It offers live chat, advanced AI, and customization options.
What do users like about Zoho Desk?
- An example G2 review – “A more accessible service desk solution for a smaller organization.”
- An example Capterra review – “Zoho is priced accordingly, it’s not too expensive and it does have a variety of other/supporting services to compliment the full all one system.”
9. HappyFox
HappyFox is a cloud-based customer relationship management solution that provides help desk and ticketing solutions to businesses of all sizes. It’s known for its ease of use, affordability, and robust features.
Pros:
- Robust ticketing system for organizing and managing customer queries effectively.
- Multi-channel support including email, chat, social media, and phone, all in one ticket support system.
- HappyFox allows for significant customization and automation.
- Offers a variety of integration options
- Offers plans for unlimited agents
Cons:
- Each pricing plan has a user minimum.
- Users have noted limitations in the file size that can be attached to tickets.
- Some users find the reporting features a bit complex and challenging to set up.
Key Features:
- Its multilingual agent portal makes it a great option for global organizations and teams.
- HappyFox supports creating multilingual knowledge base articles.
- The platform facilitates issue resolution through collaboration tools like discussion threads and social tools.
- Allows you to track and analyze help desk metrics.
Pricing:
- Mighty: $26 per agent/month.
- Fantastic: $39 per agent/month.
- Enterprise: $52 per agent/month.
- Enterprise Plus: $64 per agent/month.
What do users like about HappyFox?
- An example G2 review – “I love HappyFox because it is a robust, user-friendly ticketing system that you can set up within 24 hours and go live with little to no training.”
- An example Capterra review – “The software is able to be customized to your needs and is flexible for as many users as you need to have access to. You can create specific rules and statuses that help the flow of communication stay in an organized manner.“
10. Help Scout
Help Scout is a customer support platform that helps businesses provide excellent customer service through various channels. It offers a range of features to improve efficiency, collaboration, and overall customer experience.
Pros:
- Help Scout is specifically built for support teams. Therefore, the user interface is straightforward to use for any customer operation.
- Strong automation and workflow features.
- Help Scout is very easy to set up and doesn’t require a lot of training
Cons:
- Doesn’t offer as many integrations as its competitors.
- No free plan available.
Key Features:
- Simple and intuitive interface.
- Help Scout’s shared inbox feature fosters team collaboration by including tools like mentions and private notes.
- Help Scout comes with pre-built dashboards, helping you to stay on top of your team’s performance. You can also build custom reports.
Pricing:
- Standard: $20 per user per month, up to 25 users, includes 2 shared inboxes with email, live chat, and social channels, and 1 Doc knowledge base.
- Plus: $40 per user per month, includes 5 shared inboxes with email, live chat, and social channels, and 2 Docs knowledge bases with restricted access.
- Pro: $65 per user per month for 10+ users, includes 25 shared inboxes with email, live chat, and social channels, and 10 Docs knowledge bases with restricted access.
What do users like about Help Scout?
- An example G2 review – “I really like how easy it is to have separate folders and inboxes for different teams, but HelpScout also makes it really easy to collaborate and leave notes for each other.”
- An example Capterra review – “Love that you can set up multiple mailboxes and have multiple emails routing into one space. The ability to see when a customer has viewed an email is also particularly useful and the search option is perfect.”
Why is Kustomer the Ideal Enterprise Help Desk?
- Unified Customer View: Kustomer gathers all customer interactions from various channels into one place. This provides agents with a complete history of each customer’s journey and fostering personalization and optimizing response time.
- Intelligent Automation: Workflow automation in Kustomer is designed to handle repetitive tasks and processes. This doesn’t only improve ticket resolution rate, but also allows agents to focus on more complex customer inquiries.
- Customization & Integration Options: Kustomer is a very flexible platform. It allows businesses to tailor the software to their specific needs and workflows. Moreover, their robust API facilitates integration with a wide range of third-party tools and systems, from CRM to e-commerce platforms. This flexibility in integration promotes cross-departmental collaboration, as team members can easily access and share information with sales, marketing, and other relevant departments.
- Omnichannel Support: Kustomer provides unified support across multiple channels, including social media, email, and live chat, improving overall customer experience and satisfaction. By integrating all channels into a single interface, Kustomer helps agents track and manage conversations efficiently.
- Intuitive Design: Kustomer has a user-friendly intuitive interface that makes it easy for agents to find and use the tools they need. The straightforward navigation of the platform reduces the learning curve for new users, increasing agent productivity.
- Scalability: Kustomer is designed to accommodate businesses of varying sizes, from startups to large enterprises. The platform can efficiently manage increasing ticket volumes, ensuring that the quality of support remains high even with demand escalation.
- Proactive Improvement: Kustomer values user feedback and uses it as a primary resource for ongoing product improvements. This commitment guarantees that the software evolves in line with the industry trends and customer service teams’ actual needs and challenges.
Delivering exceptional customer experience requires much more than a reliable ticketing system. In a world where one small mistake in customer support is enough to change your brand image overnight, good enterprise help desk software can make or break your business.
And this is where Kustomer can help.
- Kustomer doesn’t only enable you to view customer data; it allows you to store, manage, and act on that data across multiple touchpoints – all from a single platform.
- Use Kustomer to determine intent, prioritize conversations, and route support requests based on needs and capacity, or go further with advanced AI chatbots to orchestrate hyper-personalized automation, accelerate resolution, and meet demand at scale.
- Measure the performance and effectiveness of your support teams, and efficiently allocate resources where they are needed the most.
Stop relying on band-aid solutions! Revolutionize your customer experience with Kustomer, the ultimate future-proof solution.
Don’t just take our word for it. Schedule a demo now to learn how Kustomer can help you.