In today’s competitive world, good customer service can make a big difference for small businesses. Studies show that most service teams believe that help desk software for small businesses can really improve how they work.

But what is a help desk in the first place? Well, it’s something like a central hub that makes customer inquiries and problems easier to address. Small businesses can turn help desks to their advantage in taking care of their customers’ needs.

In this guide, we’ll cover the following:

• What is help desk software for small businesses?
• Top 5 Help Desk Software for 2024.
• Why do small businesses need this kind of software?
• Our Top Choice: Why Front is a great option.
  

What is help desk software for small businesses?

Help desks are single-point locations provided for performing active interaction with customers who require support. Small business help desk software enables smaller businesses to handle customer support in an effective manner through interaction while keeping simplicity and usability at the top of the pile and with generally lower ticket volumes for a smaller enterprise. They offer core capabilities related to ticket tracking, communication tools, basic reporting, and needs-oriented solution availability.

While choosing a help desk solution, the possible drawbacks associated with the traditional system must be taken into consideration for small businesses. Not all traditional help desk systems work for every small company due to its complexity, and many are oriented towards larger enterprises. Smaller teams may find them overwhelming and highly difficult to navigate and manage for support requests. Traditional help desk tools are often rigid to the dynamic changing needs and new functionalities of a small business or might not integrate well with pre-existing workflows.

Traditional help desk systems eat up so much time, effort, and expertise to implement and maintain that a small business often does not have. To this regard, the team has to opt for a platform where they will get it up fast and that is going to be very easy to maintain with fewer members.

A small business should have a help desk software solution to sail through all of its relations, especially the really hard ones. This will help in linking one-on-one with the customers and forging strong meaningful relationships.

The top 8 small business help desk software solutions in 2024

Front

It collaborates with over 8,500 businesses of all shapes and sizes to deliver game-changing service and high CSAT scores that win customers for life. It is an outstanding help desk for small businesses that offers a strong, extensible feature set so they can adapt it according to their unique needs.

Core features of Front:

• Omnichannel shared inbox: Bring emails, chats, SMS, WhatsApp, and more within a single platform. Teams can view all messages from a single familiar interface, and hence the efficiency will increase, with any decrease in switching between multiple tools. For small businesses, this centralization of communication management leads to rapid response time and greater productivity. Get the best of both worlds: help desk efficiency with email familiarity.
• Real-time team collaboration: Small business teams need to stay agile and efficient. Front’s collaboration features, like internal comments, message assignments, and shared drafts enable teams to work together seamlessly on responding to messages. In a fast-paced business environment with teammates wearing lots of hats, real-time collaboration enables teams to make quick decisions and resolve issues with ease.
• No-code workflow automation: Small businesses need to move fast and make the most of their people and processes. Small teams can use Front’s rules engine to design and build automated workflows. Easily route and assign incoming messages, helping teams reduce email volume and resolve issues faster, at scale. Automating manual tasks means more time for teams to focus on strategic business initiatives.
• Productivity boost with artificial intelligence: Small companies need a boost to work faster and do more with less. Front’s AI capabilities help resolve customer inquiries instantly and power team efficiency. From instant chat resolution to email thread summarization and instant drafts with AI, AI can help your team do more for customers in record time.
• Analytics and insights: Small business teams need to stay vigilant in tracking key performance metrics like response times, message volume, and customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores to learn and scale. Front’s analytics and reporting features help users get visibility into team and individual performance, track key metrics, and identify areas for improvement.
• Integrations and API: Integrations allow small businesses to connect Front to all of the other critical tools and apps that keep them running, such as CRM systems, project management platforms, and help desk software. In Front, you can bring all of your best-used tools and systems right into the platform. Key customer context is one click away in the sidebar, empowering your team to bring important details or reference historical data in a snap.
• Knowledge base: Any chance to take a load off customer support teams might be critical to smaller teams with lesser budgets. Front offers teams the ability to centralize knowledge in the help center for easy access to information and frequently asked questions, allowing customers, teams, and partners to find what they want at the moment they need it.
• Award-winning customer support: The truth is, under-resourced teams often use a little help along the way, extra guidance as they get set up with a new tool, and scale its usage across a business. In Front, one knows that an outstanding customer support team constantly attains close to 100% CSAT! Extensive knowledge base, Front community, and Front academy will be there to offer users assistance to help maximize value from Front.

Zendesk 

Zendesk is the best choice, For small businesses that want to offer comprehensive customer support. Zendesk has a ticket-based system which is the perfect approach to deal with slipping off and transactional customer conversations. Besides that, around Zendesk, flow improvement tools are available to achieve workflow automation thus it can eliminate repetitive jobs and make the process of support run smoother.

Advanced features are available within the system for automation, SLA management, and reporting, but with the need for additional integrations by businesses requiring streamlined collaboration.

Zendesk may be more appropriate for higher-volume support settings where easier questions are typically solved by agents on their own, with less collaborative effort.

Core features:

• Ticketing system
• Business rules
• Customer details and interaction history

Zendesk G2 rating 4.3 / 5

Price:

• Team: Support $19/agent/month
• Team: Suite $55/agent/month
• Growth: Suite $89/agent/month
• Professional: Suite $115/agent/month

Freshdesk

Freshdesk is a very scalable product that would most definitely work for any company. The solution has flexible pricing plans and is suitable for nearly every kind of business. It offers adjustable features and a strong ticketing system through which teams can effectively organize, prioritize, and track customer inquiries. Being slightly less collaborative than other platforms, Freshdesk may have been envisioned more for transactional inquiries and industries which require no sophisticated service. 

Key features: 

• Custom ticket views 
• Email ticket routing 
• Knowledge base
  Time tracking

Freshdesk G2 rating: 4.4 / 5

Pricing:

• Growth: $15/agent/month
• Pro: $49/agent/month
• Enterprise: $79/agent/month

Hiver

Zendesk remains a popular customer service solution for many small firms. The ticket-based system is its main strength, and because of that, it is considered the go-to platform for customer support in such businesses. Additionally, Zendesk administrative tools ensure that workflow is integrated, thus cutting repetitive tasks and making sure that support processes run smoother.

Hiver is a well-known tool for its simplicity and user-friendliness, which is why it is recommended for small businesses that have low resources after acquiring it. The platform is such that it is built to enhance collaboration by integration with Gmail and the provision of shared inboxes, email delegation, and email notes. By the way of email it also supports collaboration. Hiver is thus an advantageous tool that meets the needs of enterprises by enabling fast and smooth communication with the customers and team members. 

Its capabilities include plans that are flexible. The system also has certain partner applications that can be accessed in conjunction, which is not, however, as abundant as other applications.

Core features:

• Email management
• Multi-channel capabilities 
• Live chat
• Knowledge base

Hiver G2 rating: 4.6 / 5

Pricing:

• Lite: $15/user/month (yearly)
• Pro: $49/user/month (yearly)
• Elite: $79/user/month (yearly)

Help Scout 

The operation of the Help Scout customer service platform is a simple process with instructions not too hard and as they say it is perfect for small teams as well. 

The analytical aspects of the product are not as powerful as other competitors — you can, however, get a vague idea of what is happening by checking real-time performance; go deeper and the platform is lacking in analytics features for those who need more.

Principal functions include:

• Email management
• Shared email inboxes, voice, WhatsApp channels
• Live chat 
• Knowledge base

Help Scout G2 rating: 4.4 / 5

Pricing:

• Standard: $20/user/month
• Plus: $40/user/month
• Pro: $65/user/month

Salesforce Service Cloud

Salesforce Service Cloud is based on a case management model. It might turn out to be attractive for those teams already using tools from the more extensive Salesforce portfolio. From the interface, staff are able to get a holistic view of the customer, capturing information from many sources: CRM systems, interactions with services, purchase history, and social media activities.

It has a robust configuration, but sometimes flexibility can be a double-edged sword because it is complex and requires time, also needing dedicated training in order to learn it, implement it, and maintain it. The setup time and knowledge requirement may not suit small companies that want to set up the platform quickly and start running it.

Core features:

• Case Management
• Customizable reports & dashboards
• Knowledge base
• Salesforce Service Cloud G2 rating: 4.3 / 5

Pricing:

• Starter suite: $25/user/month
• Professional: $80/user/month

Why do you need help desk software for small businesses?

Every day, more and more small businesses are using help desk software to help them network with their customers. This is a quite good thing because the help desk technologies can be not only effective, but also excellent. It could be a perfect way for small businesses to adopt this technology without compromising their personal nature, which makes them different from others. Help desk software can make customer relations more personal in the use of different situations:

• Better organization and collaboration

As a solution, help desk software allows companies to process all their customer queries in a more organized manner, thus not leaving any questions unanswered’. 

• Accessibility

Help desk software makes it easier for businesses and customers to communicate anywhere and at any time—a small business can respond to customer inquiries from a desktop or a mobile device, which is based on web or mobile apps. Self-service, such as the knowledge base, and chatbots are the main choices for online support. These options enable customers to prioritize queries and acquire new skills in the process, which leaves room for flexibility. Also, customer satisfaction is achieved through the variety of choices they can select to obtain solutions and the fast response to the questions they ask.

• Data and reporting

Help desk software supports data analysis and the generation of reports, which are the tools for small businesses to monitor customer relationships. Through the use of data, companies are able to find key insights into their customer interactions. The inclusion of milestones like the time to respond and the pause period in calling in to issue resolution should be considered as a trend analysis in the management of such KPIs.