IT teams juggle a myriad of responsibilities, from managing internal and external service requests to ensuring network security. This high-stakes balancing act necessitates specialized tools to maintain operational equilibrium. One such indispensable tool is service desk software, designed to orchestrate the complexities of IT support.
What is Service Desk Software?
Service desk software for IT teams to manage, organize, respond to, and track service requests from both internal and external sources. It often encompasses features for monitoring team performance and gleaning insights from request trends through analytics and reporting.
Unleashing the Benefits
Service desk software is a catalyst for improvement in several key areas for IT teams:
- Efficiency: Automation capabilities streamline routine tasks, and the potential for self-service tools like knowledge bases and chatbots liberates valuable time for human agents.
- Transparency: Acting as a single source of truth, service desks provide a panoramic view of ongoing tasks, bottlenecks, and trending issues, expediting resolutions and enhancing the customer experience.
- Security: Many service desk options incorporate asset management tools for meticulous device tracking. Granular permission levels for agents further bolster security by restricting access to sensitive information.
Service Desk vs. Help Desk: A Nuance of Focus
While often used interchangeably, a subtle distinction exists between service desks and help desks. Help desks primarily address reactive support, where customers seek assistance when encountering problems. Service desks, while offering reactive support, prioritize proactive service management. They focus on long-term solutions, incident prevention, and strategic process enhancements to elevate the organization’s overall service level. They may also handle requests for new services or manage physical assets like computers and mobile devices.
In essence, help desks center on customer or user needs, while service desks prioritize the needs of the business.
15 Best Service Desk Software Options
The market offers a diverse array of service desk software options, each with unique strengths and features:
- Help Scout: An intuitive, omni-channel communication tool with a shared inbox, knowledge base builder, AI functionality, messaging tools, and extensive integrations.
- Jira Service Management: An IT-focused tool for managing internal and external requests, with custom forms, self-service portals, SLA tracking, and asset management.
- SolarWinds Service Desk: Offers employee self-service portals, ITIL problem management, hardware management, benchmarking reports, and service desk chat.
- Spiceworks: A free, robust tool for managing, tracking, and resolving requests, with automatic ticket assignment, routing, basic reporting, and a knowledge base builder.
- ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus: From Zoho Corporation, this IT-oriented tool offers ITSM workflows, asset tracking, a shared inbox, self-service tools, task automation, robust analytics, and flexible deployment options.
- Zendesk: A well-known help desk solution with IT-friendly features like SLA management, request tagging, an omnichannel inbox, and integrations with IT tools for asset management.
- ServiceNow: An enterprise IT solution with tools for change management, asset management, request management, DevOps, self-service portals, and an AI-powered virtual agent.
- SysAid: An IT service management tool with asset management, AI-powered automations, integrations, change and problem management templates, SLAs, automated task and ticket assignments, and self-service tools.
- GoTo Resolve: Offers remote access and asset management, task automation, zero-trust security, a mobile app, agent collaboration tools, and user permissions.
- JitBit: An on-premise or cloud-based IT help desk with a shared inbox, basic reporting, automation options, and a mobile app.
- Rezo: A service desk add-on that analyzes conversations, builds automations, improves customer experiences, tracks agent performance, and offers agent assist tools.
- Salesforce Service Cloud: A help desk tool with asset management, field service capabilities, a knowledge base builder, live chat functionality, prebuilt analytics dashboards, omnichannel support, and a large array of integrations.
- HappyFox: A service desk tool with a shared inbox, knowledge base builder, asset management, a service catalog, integrations with IT tools, ticket templates, task management, a customer portal, and ticket auto-assignment.
- Exalate: A synchronization app that connects tools, syncs data across platforms, breaks down data silos, and offers customizable APIs, synchronization automations, custom mapping, and real-time data synchronization.
- Freshservice: A cloud-based IT help desk with machine learning-powered answer suggestions, support across platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams, task automation options, a self-service portal, contract management, multiple SLAs, and audit logs.
Selecting the right service desk or ITSM software is pivotal for IT teams. The right tools can simplify the management of complex responsibilities and propel your IT operations to new heights.
