Vendor:
Founded:
Headquarters:
Freshworks
2010
San Mateo, CA
Customers:
Deployment Model:
Free Trial:
50,000+
Cloud
Yes
Freshdesk At A Glance
Product Overview
Freshdesk Support Desk enables customer service agents to proactively respond to tickets and collaborate better on resolving support issues. It streamlines repetitive tasks with automated features, and it enables companies to offer self-service functionality so that their customers can find answers before submitting a ticket. Freshdesk Support Desk also allows agents to organize and prioritize tickets rather than use an email system to track them.
The software has numerous benefits, including:
- Ability to manage and respond to omnichannel communication
- Integration with customer relationship management (CRM) software, eCommerce solutions, WhatsApp and other applications
- Multilanguage capability
- Scalable pricing plans
We also want to note the Freddy AI product that uses machine learning technology to assist both agents and customers. Freddy AI engages with the customer in any channel and provides them with a relevant answer from the knowledge base. It also detects the customer’s intent and follows up with them with additional answers or routes them to an agent. On the flip side, it helps agents by automatically triaging priority tickets, offering suggested canned responses, scanning social channels for any company mentions, and detecting thank you messages from customers.
Features
Freshdesk Support Desk has many features. We focus on its key ones.
Ticketing – The software automates many ticketing tasks, including scanning, prioritizing and assigning open tickets. It also scans the current tickets hourly for any updates and sends alerts to agents to act on pressing ones. The agents can see the tickets within the team inbox, and they can customize how they want to view them. Additional ticketing features include collision detection (preventing more than one agent from working on a ticket at the same time), ticket merging (grouping tickets with similar issues into one), canned responses and an activity log.
SLA management – Agents can organize and track Service Level Agreements (SLAs), which helps them stay on top of resolving support issues with deadlines. Managers can set up rules noting when each ticket needs a reply, then the software can deliver automatic reminders to agents.
Collaboration – There are several collaboration features that help multiple teams work together on the same tickets. Freshdesk integrates with the Freshconnect chat software, so agents can chat within a ticket. With the Shared Ownership feature, multiple teams can access the same tickets and stay in the loop. The Linked Tickets feature allows similar issues that are reported on multiple tickets to be grouped together into a master ticket, and the Parent-Child Ticket feature breaks down complex support issues into sub-tickets that multiple team members can work on.
Omnichannel – The Omnichannel Timeline feature lets agents visualize the customer journey from email, chat, social media and other channels. They can turn customer emails into tickets and answers calls directly from Freshdesk. Agents can also manage their company’s Twitter and Facebook accounts directly from the software, and the Social Signals feature reads any tweets that tags the company, detects any relevant issues and convert the tweet into a ticket. And the Omniroute feature automatically assigns calls, emails, and chat messages to the appropriate agent.
Self service – Companies can offer customers a self-service portal to cut down on the amount of support tickets. They can customize the portal to fit their brand (e.g., logo, colors, URL), and assign specific users to create and update the knowledge base, monitor social channels and moderate the community forums. Users can add relevant content to the knowledge base, including videos, images or articles, and edit them based on a customer’s feedback. The knowledge base is available in up to 42 languages and can be embedded into a company’s website, mobile app or chat tool. Users can also develop a community forum for customer interactions, and in addition to moderating posts and comments, they can track customer requests (e.g., an issue that’s upvoted by multiple customers will need to be acted on).
Reporting and analytics – Managers can set up unique dashboards for their team by selecting from a library of over 20 metrics. They can create individual targets and continually monitor them. Freshdesk provides built-in curated reports on metrics like Ticket Volume Trends, Agent and Group Performance and Top Customer Analysis. Managers can also create custom reports with a drag-and-drop interface, drill down in them for more details and schedule reports to be sent by email.
Field service management – Field service management is an add-on feature that enables technicians to address a customer’s issue at their site (e.g., cable or HVAC technicians). Managers can use the drag-and-drop Scheduling Dashboard to create appointments, assign them to technicians and track technicians’ workloads. Technicians can use the Freshdesk mobile app to view assignments, resolve issues, get customer signatures and track their time.
Target Market
Freshdesk targets companies of all sizes in various industries, such as retail, education, hospitality, health care and manufacturing. We’ve listed 10 of its customers below.
- American Express
- Bridgestone
- Hamleys
- HP
- Lesley University
- Panasonic
- SilverWiz
- SmartBuyGlasses
- TeleResult
- The University of Sydney
Implementation/Integration
Companies that want to enroll in a paid plan can sign up for a 21-day free trial of the Enterprise plan or the Pro Omnichannel plan. They can sign up online and begin using the software quickly. At the end of the trial, they can add their credit card information to their account and select a subscription plan.
Freshdesk Support Desk integrates with other Freshworks products and third-party systems, such as CRM software, telephony providers, project management solutions and eCommerce software.
Customer Service & Support
Freshdesk has a resource library that includes how-to guides, webinars, videos and whitepapers. The Freshworks Academy includes courses for users that want to learn how to use the software and gain better skills in customer service.
Email support is available for all plan users, and 24/5 phone support is included in all paid plans.
Pricing
Freshdesk Support has a free plan that accommodates an unlimited number of agents and includes email and social ticketing, ticket dispatch, the ability to set up a knowledge base, the Ticket Trend report, team collaboration and a datacenter location.
There are three paid plans (billed annually), which are:
- Growth – The Growth plan costs $15 per agent, per month and includes all the features of the free plan, plus automation, collision detection, Freshworks Marketplace apps, help desk report, SLA and business hours management, custom email server, custom ticket views, ticket fields and statuses, customer field and a custom SSL.
- Pro – The Pro plan costs $49 per agent, per month and includes all the features of the Growth plan, plus round-robin assignments, custom roles, custom reports and dashboards, customer segmentation, version control in knowledge base articles, up to five dedicated support portals for multibrands, up to 5,000 collaborators, extendable API limits, customer satisfaction surveys and reports, multiple SLAs and business hours, SLA reminder and escalation, a multilingual knowledge base and custom apps.
- Enterprise – The Enterprise plan costs $79 per agent, per month and includes all the features of the Pro plan, plus skill-based routing, a sandbox for testing new features, an audit log, knowledge base approval workflows, IP whitelisting, social signals, unlimited support portals for multibrands, PCI compliance and HIPAA compliance. It also includes some features of the Freddy AI tool, such as agent scripts, email bot, auto-triage and an article suggester.
In addition, Freshdesk offers omnichannel capabilities that combine the features of the Support, Messaging and Contact Center solutions. The plans (billed annually) are:
- Growth Omnichannel – The Growth Omnichannel plan costs $29 agent, per month and includes up to 2,000 free bot sessions per month, up to 2,000 incoming messages per month, email/social/messaging/telephony channels, a knowledge base, a chatbot builder, chatbot analytics, topics, contact management, custom inbox views, SLAs and business hours, access to the Freshworks Marketplace app store, automations, data center locations, ticket/conversation/call reports and a basic omnichannel dashboard.
- Pro Omnichannel – The Pro Omnichannel plan costs $59 per agent, per month and includes up to 3,000 free bot sessions, up to 3,000 incoming messages per month, custom SLA and business hours, custom roles and permissions, custom reporting and dashboards, WhatsApp Business, Apple Business Chat, team performance report, advanced automations, multilingual support, extendable API limits, up to 5,000 collaborators, knowledge base versioning, holiday routing, agent availability report, advanced call management, customer satisfaction surveys and reports and custom apps.
- Enterprise Omnichannel – The Enterprise Omnichannel plan costs $99 per agent, per month and includes up to 5,000 free bot sessions, up to 5,000 incoming messages per month, IP range restrictions, a sandbox, HIPAA and PCI compliance, a agent assist bot, an email bot, auto triage, a canned responses suggester, allowed IPs, an audit log, knowledge base approval workflows, up to 5,000 collaborators, agent shifts, a thank you detector, social signals, user authentication, RPA connectors, omnichannel routing, a voicebot, speech-enabled IVR, abandoned call metrics and service level monitoring.
Freshdesk has two add-on features: up to 1,000 additional bot sessions at $75 per month and field service management for $15 per agent, per month. That includes a scheduling dashboard, offline availability, time tracking, analytics, a map view and iOS/Android apps.
Shortcomings
Some users have mentioned that the mobile app isn’t always user friendly (e.g., incoming tickets doesn’t synchronize correctly) and that there are limited options in customizing reports.
Screenshots
About
Freshworks’ mission is to provide organizations with an easy-to-use customer engagement solution so that they can build better relationships with customers. It launched in 2011 as a customer service software and has grown its product portfolio since then with Freshworks CRM (2016), Freshworks 360 Multiproduct Suite (2018) and Freshsuccess (2020).
Freshworks has received many accolades, including recognition from Gartner (e.g., 2020 Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center, 2019 Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation) and the Forbes‘ 2019 Cloud 100 List. It’s headquartered in San Mateo, CA, and has offices in India, Australia, Germany, France, Singapore, the Netherlands and the U.K.
