Freshdesk

Freshdesk offers a host of tools for sorting and prioritizing help requests in a more efficient manner. The help desk software augments two-way communication between your customer services reps and their clients, providing a more user-friendly experience to both staff and customers. Freshdesk helps small to mid-sized companies build a fully-functional help and support desk through their highly customizable, cloud-based software.

This help desk and customer support application is adaptable, allowing a business to customize their Freshdesk sites with company logos and other elements specific to their business, as well as to define their business rules and processes. The software’s core functionality is centered around its ticketing system which sorts through customer help requests, distributing ticket numbers to each client and routing them to the correct agent, whilst assuring them that am agent will be with them promptly.

You can support your customers through multiple mediums using Freshdesk, inclusing phone, email, your website and social media such as Twitter and Facebook. Freskdesk also offers your customers a self-service portal through which they can find solutions to common issues, get access to articles and company documents, and view shared tips left by other users.

What is Freshdesk?

Freshdesk offers a way for businesses to organize, prioritize and sort client requests without expanding their work force. Though a smart ticketing system and the ability to set custom business rules, customer experiences can be tailored to match each client. Freshdesk also provides your clients with the ability to help themselves, by automatically creating a company knowledge-base based on archived emails, conversations and ticket resolutions. The knowledgebase can be designed to reflect your company´s branding.

Freshdesk offers a number of customization tools. Upon signing into Freshdesk, you will be given a unique URL to reflect your company name. Alternatively, you can set up Freshdesk to point to your preferred domain. The Freshdesk help desk solution also includes a customizable dashboard that gives users a summary of all tickets and recent activities. Freshdesk is multilingual offering customer support tools in 18 languages, including popular languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portugese and Polish. Multi-time zones are also supported.

Freshdesk Main Features

Ticketing System

Freshdesk provides an automated ticketing system which reads and sorts through all incoming tickets, assigning them to the most appropriate representative,.

Freshdesk uses a common policy called SLA (service level agreement), with pre-defined parameters for service workflows. You can use a standard SLA policy for all of your customers, or you can also create custom SLAs for priority customers with specific needs and requirements. Through the Ticket tab you can set all your ticketing rules and workflows for your ticket system.

In order to keep the lines of communication between your team and your clients in need of help open, Freshdesk allows you to transform your company email into support tickets. These emails are set up as automatic response to requests emails, letting your clients know that their request has been received and queued, and that an agent will contact them promptly. You can also define behavioral rules for requests so that certain tickets are routed to the most appropriate support personnel.

Consistent Branding

Freshdesk gives you the option to use your own branded email address when sending request responses, rather than the one that Freshdesk automatically assigns you when you first sign in. To help ensure that your help desk emails are not treated as spam, Freshdesk recommends that you create an SPF record of your emails in your DNS zone file if you are using your own domain.

Freshdesk’s FreshThemes feature enables companies to offer a consistent visual experience across their company and helpdesk webpages. This can be done through pre-defined themes or you can customize themes through the use of Javascript and CSS code.

Self Service Portal

Freshdesk’s Self Service Portal provides your clients and agents with a singular place to find all the information they need to get answers to the most frequently asked questions with a knowledge-base of technical and training advice. The Self Service Portal in Freshdesk serves as a space that holds all your important company documents, such as fact sheets, company handbooks, and brochures, as well as self-help tips and articles. You can create a knowledge-base for either public consumption or exclusively for staff, or both.

Through the use of forums, Freshdesk continues to encourage conversation and feedback between your help desk team and your clients. The Forum section provides several tools to keep these lines of communication open. Tools included within the forum section include Announcements, Report a Problem, Tips and Tricks and Feature Requests. You can use these tools to post important updates and make announcements, as well as to receive feedback from your colleagues and clients. Within each of these tools you have the ability to create a topic, you can input information to each topic and save it within the portal for further discussion.

Multi-Channel Support

Freshdesk helps users to automate tasks and save on ticket resolution time through integration with multiple platforms. This includes email integration, a feature which allows agents to manage, update, reply to and assign tickets directly from their email accounts as requests come in. You can configure the settings in Freshdesk so that all emails sent to your account are logged as tickets, they can then be categorized, prioritized and assigned to the correct agent. You can also set up automated email actions such as sending acknowledgement emails or notifications.

Another emailing features of Freshdesk includes “Email to Knowledge base”. This feature automatically converts email threads or ticket replies into articles in the knowledge base article. These emails are saved as drafts which can be edited before sending them to the knowledge base for publication.

Other channels supported by Freshdesk include social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. You can be notified of all customer activity associated with your brand on either channel and reply directly to these in real time. You can also use Freshchat, Freshdesk’s live-chat solution and Freshfone, the software’s integrated voice telephony system to provide further support channels to your clients, as well as to track tickets from multiple sources.

Enhanced reporting

The Freshbooks software offers a number of reporting features for measuring time and productivity. These features include an integrated time tracking tool which allows your agents to measure the time they spend on various support tasks. This tool can use this information to automatically generate time-sheets, even differentiating between billable and non-billable time spent.

Agents can assign themselves to tasks and then start the task timer to measure the time spent on each task. Admin supervisors can also assign agents to specific tasks, subtracting and adding total time spent on overall ticket resolution. Freshdesk data can be automatically fed to other third-party applications, including Freshbooks or Harvest, and compiled to generate client invoices and payments.

Freshdesk’s At-a-Glance Reports feature allows you to get a quick overview of the activity of you entire helpdesk, as well as individual customers, agents and teams. Freshdesk also provides reports that let you identify your top performing agents and teams, as well as your based clients. You can use this tool to compare agents and customers using key metrics to see how they perform against each other.

Advanced Notifications

The Freshdesk help desk solution includes an agent collision prevention feature. If another agent opens up a ticket you are working on, you will be alerted through a flashing icon next to your open ticket. If another agent is already writing back to a customer, a pen icon lights up on the screen to inform you of this. If you have a ticket open and an update occurs, then the refresh icon will light up. If you click on this you will get access to all the latest information associated with that ticket.

The “Ticket Watchers” feature alerts you to tickets that are of specific interest to you. For example, this might be a ticket that was assigned to you at an earlier stage, or one that addresses your area of support. You can set up email notifications associated to ticket topics and specific ticket activity. With this information, your sales teams can prepare valuable metrics for use during their next call with a client.

Gamification of your Helpdesk

One of the newer features that Freshdesk added last year includes Freshdesk Arcade, providing the ability to gamify your help desk activities. By using the Freshdesk Arcade feature you can incentivize your staff to meet targets and send staff on certain “quests” to earn points. The tool will reward teams and agents based on a point system that determines the quality of their service performance, based on speed and customer satisfaction.

For example, teams or agents that solve customer issues in a more timely manner get certain badges, virtual trophies and a number of points that send them climbing up the leader board, an appropriate reward system can then be determined by the company.

Freshdesk Integrations

Freshdesk offers a growing number of native and 3rd party integrations. Native integrations include Facebook and Twitter; Saleforce, Highrise, Zoho CRM, Sugar CRM and Capsule; Freshbooks and Harvest; Atlassian from Jira; Google Analytics, Google Calendar, Gmail Gardets, Google Hangouts and Google Drive; HelpOnClick and Snap Enagae; MailChimp, Campaign Monitor and Constant Contact; Olark, Survey Monkey, Dropbox, Zapier and Shopify, among others.

Third party integrations include Magento, Talkdesk, Kipfolio, Pipeliner, OneSky, Userlike, Woo Themes, Timecamp, and Fromcrafts.

Freshdesk also offers a service called Freshplugs so companies can create custom integrations.

Freshdesk also has a help-desk plugin for its mobile app called MobiHelp that comes in the form of both an Android app and an iOS app. The app functions on all mobile devices including iPhones, Androids, iPads and Blackberries.

Freshdesk Pricing

Freshdesk offers 5 different pricing plans. The most basic plan is the Sprout plan which is offered for free and can be used for up to 3 agents, it includes email support, phone support and a knowledge base. Additional agents on the Sprout plan costs €12 per month.

The Blossom plan costs €14 per agent per month and includes social support, community forums and game mechanics. The Garden plan costs €20 per agent per month and include live chat, multiple products and multiple locations. The Estate plan costs €32 per agent per month and includes enterprise reports, portal customization and custom agent roles. The Forest plan costs €56 per agent per month and includes IP whitelisting and custom email servers.

A free trial is available for 30 days on the Estate plan for an unlimited number of agents.

Freshdesk Bottom Line

• Use the Solutions section to create a public or private company knowledgebase
• Automatically route tickets to the correct agents and teams with the Dispatch’r
• Define specific SLA policies for priority customers for speedier resolution
• Convert email threads, replies and tickets to knowledgebase articles
• Customize and brand your own unique Freshdesk page with its own URL
• Available in 16 different languages, and includes dozens of integrations
• Ability to gamify your helpdesk to reward your top agents
• Freshdesk’s mobile plug-in app is compatible with all mobile devices