Freshdesk OverviewUNIXBusinessApplication

Freshdesk is the #2 ranked solution in top Customer Experience Management tools, #2 ranked solution in top Knowledge Management Software, #3 ranked solution in top Field Service Management tools, and #4 ranked solution in top Help Desk Software. PeerSpot users give Freshdesk an average rating of 8.0 out of 10. Freshdesk is most commonly compared to JIRA Service Management: Freshdesk vs JIRA Service Management. Freshdesk is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 55% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a computer software company, accounting for 19% of all views.
Freshdesk Buyer's Guide

Download the Freshdesk Buyer's Guide including reviews and more. Updated: March 2023

What is Freshdesk?

Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer support solution that provides organizations with the features necessary to effectively streamline their support processes. This includes powerful multichannel capability, integrated game mechanics, smart automations, and more.

The solution is designed to automate agent workflows and resolve routine questions using AI and bots. Freshdesk allows managers to prioritize, categorize, and assign tickets to their agents, making it easy for them to collaborate and quickly respond to customers. 

Freshdesk Features and Benefits

Some of the solution's top features and benefits include:

  • Simplified ticketing: With Freshdesk, you can easily prioritize, manage, and assign trackable tickets. The management system ensures that multiple agents don’t work on the same ticket by accident. You can easily set deadlines for ticket resolution based on specific categories and create custom statuses that suit your workflow to identify what stage a ticket is in.
  • Automation: Automatically assign tickets to agents and groups based on keywords and requests and set up automated repeated actions and provide quick, consistent responses to common questions using pre-formatted replies. In addition, you can choose to prevent the reopening of tickets when customers reply with a thank you.
  • Improved collaboration: Share tickets with other teams while retaining full visibility into the progress being made on the issue. Related tickets can be linked together to better keep track of the big picture. Tickets can also be split into smaller child tickets and assigned to multiple agents to help resolve complex, multi-stage issues.
  • Build up your knowledge base: Create effective support documentation by enabling agents to convert their ticket replies into knowledge base articles, while they reply.
  • Metrics and reporting: See how different agents and groups are performing by viewing various help desk metrics and improve performance by identifying problems based on insights.

    With Freshdesk’s reporting tools, you can schedule the periodic delivery of out-of-the-box and custom reports to your inbox. The solution’s customer satisfaction reports provide you with feedback on how your customers rate your support.
  • Forum moderation: Set up moderation workflows to ensure that forum posts that violate your guidelines are not immediately published. Critical issues raised in the community are automatically converted into tickets to ensure they get the required response.

  • Integration: Freshdesk’s open API can be used to integrate the solution with multiple  third-party systems. 
  • Comprehensive security: Freshdesk’s security features allow you to:

    • Set custom access permissions for agents.
    • Perform comprehensive audits of networks and systems.
    • Secure your own support domain or vanity URL with custom SSL certificates.
    • Whitelist IP ranges and restrict login access outside of work, or link IP whitelisting to a VPN.
    • Set up SSO scripts for credential authentication.

Reviews from Real Users

Freshdesk stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its effective ticketing system and its intuitive interface.

Deepak B., an application manager, writes, “Freshdesk has allowed us to measure and track the response and resolution time of tickets which has been reduced from seven to eight hours down to 30 minutes to one hour. This information is valuable for board meetings.”

Freshdesk Customers

Honda, 3M, Hugo Boss, Petronas, Sony Pictures, The Atlantic, goodreads, Clear Channel Radio, Penn University of Pennsylvania, unicef, Kuoni, Movember

Freshdesk Video

Freshdesk Pricing Advice

What users are saying about Freshdesk pricing:
  • "We use a combination of Freshdesk, Freshservice, and Freshchat. We use the whole suite. Weirdly enough, we pay more for Freshdesk than we do for Freshservice. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of pricing. You can get different bundles, and you can always move to different plans that are standard. Freshservice can go anywhere from $19 up to $120 per agent, per month. There is such a wide range, and it is very customizable to your needs."
  • "The best system plan is enterprise. It costs basically 79 Euros per agent per month when it's billed annually and 95 Euros per agent per month when it's billed monthly."
  • "It was definitely not expensive. It was two grand or maybe three grand total for a year. It has just straight and simple standard licensing fees. There is no additional fee."
  • "We use a licensing model only so we pay for the number of agents we have configured in the system only."
  • "The price could be better, but it's okay. Compared to ServiceNow and JIRA, Freshworks offers a competitive price. There are also additional licensing costs because you need Microsoft Outlook. Each new email account costs around $15 to $19."
  • Freshdesk Reviews

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    Business Systems Analyst at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
    Real User
    Top 5Leaderboard
    Phenomenal knowledge base and great for customer support functions, but not suitable if you are trying to solve problems and use assets
    Pros and Cons
    • "Their knowledge base is phenomenal. The way that it learns from our users is awesome, and responses are really awesome as well. It does a pretty good job of picking up what's needed. The knowledge bases are great."
    • "If Freshdesk had forms in it so that I could go to the portal and fill out a service request, that would improve it immensely and make it more valuable for enterprise customers, but that's not a current functionality. You can't have a certain catalog of any type. You can't be like, "Hey, I want to just go submit a ticket," and then type in. You can't prompt them to ask anything. It is just a blank form."

    What is our primary use case?

    I've implemented it at multiple companies. Currently, our service bot lives in there, and it is able to answer questions for people. 

    We have the Enterprise plan and the latest version. They're always on the latest. I don't even know how I would prevent that.

    How has it helped my organization?

    It is a little bit of a sore subject. We were with them because of some of what they had tried to implement in it, but it wasn't the appropriate solution.

    In some ways, it has improved the way our organization functions, but anything would do that because we only had Outlook. If you're on the phone for a million minutes a month, you're getting a lot of emails too. For managing that, anything is an improvement from just working through emails. People were working just on distribution lists. It was not even a group email; they had just distribution lists with 50 agents on them. That's impossible.

    I met one of their customers at a conference, and they love it for their customer support. That's because their support cases are not like, "Hey, I need to know where everything is in this logistics space right now." Their use case was like, "Hey, I don't like these pants. Can I return them please?" It is a very different use case than we had. So, for retail operations and anything like that, it is a perfect solution.

    When it is the appropriate solution, Freshdesk is fantastic. It is a fantastic product for basic customer support use cases, but trying to stretch it, at least a year ago, was just so time-consuming and frustrating. If you have the right use case for it, it is the perfect solution.

    What is most valuable?

    Their knowledge base is phenomenal. The way that it learns from our users is awesome, and responses are really awesome as well. It does a pretty good job of picking up what's needed. The knowledge bases are great.

    Its simplicity is valuable. It is straightforward and very easy for people. When we brought it in and moved from Outlook to ticketing, the concern was that a lot of our teams are older folks. They've been doing the same job for 15, 20 years, and they're not as likely to be as happy about the change. It was interesting to me that the older folks loved it and caught on to it so fast. The old timers, the people who've been there and doing their job, loved it. They never wanted to go to anything else. They absolutely loved it. The younger folks were like, "I wish it did more." When the younger people came into it and they realized that they could actually configure their own custom workflows for their stuff, they loved that. It was a lesson learned for me on what to train them on and what to give them access to because there are really good ways to set it up where it is not putting the system at risk.

    What needs improvement?

    If Freshdesk had forms in it so that I could go to the portal and fill out a service request, that would improve it immensely and make it more valuable for enterprise customers, but that's not a current functionality. You can't have a certain catalog of any type. You can't be like, "Hey, I want to just go submit a ticket," and then type in. You can't prompt them to ask anything. It is just a blank form.

    Their sales team all the time tries to convince you that this is the only product that they have. I don't know why. I really don't get it. I spent a year just being like, "No, we shouldn't be in Freshdesk for this." They were telling my bosses that we should be, and I was like, "I'm telling you that's incorrect. Why are you telling my boss that? You don't even work here?" You don't even go here. What are you doing? They don't even check your circumstances. I am a certified Six Sigma Black Belt. I gave them all of our process maps and everything, and they didn't even read over them. They just kept trying to put us into Freshdesk when Freshservice was a better fit because all we do is move around trucks, trailers, and drive. That's what we do all day long. I would like to know how we would do that without asset management or a portal with forums. They were just constantly trying to get us to implement break fix after break fix after break fix instead of putting us on the right product in the first place. It wasted a year's time and money.

    We are using it because the bot can't live in Freshservice. The bot has to live in Freshdesk. I wish the bot could live in Freshservice or be its own thing. If it was its own thing, it would be much easier, but you have to go into Freshdesk and go into the bot builder. It is weird. 

    Buyer's Guide
    Freshdesk
    March 2023
    Learn what your peers think about Freshdesk. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2023.
    687,947 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    It is scalable if your use case is appropriate for it. We have some people who are using it, but they're using just a bunch of workarounds in it. Currently, there are only 200 people using it in Operations. So, there is a team that is still using it. It is technically working, but they are moving away from it.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    They were using Outlook. Outlook is really good for emails to and from, but Outlook is not a ticketing system. You can't really compare the two. They just didn't have a solution before.

    How was the initial setup?

    They had a VP set it up, at which point I was hired to come in and fix it. They just didn't know what the consequences were of, for example, letting every single manager build the enterprise workflow that applied to everybody. So, it was constantly breaking. It just needed going in and just saying, "Hey, you don't need to go do that anymore. We can simplify this." That had to do with the wrong use case.

    It is a customer support tool. If you try to do enterprise support or logistics in it, there could be issues. All of my use cases have been B2B, and I've had it work really well. It did work really well at a smaller company with a smaller team where our account managers used it. That worked really well, but recently, I have been just a little bit removed from it. I'm now working on a deployment of it. So, we'll see how that goes in a couple of weeks or months.

    What about the implementation team?

    In a straightforward use case, one person is fine for deployment. In a not straightforward use case, you need three people or maybe more because it is a lot of custom development.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    We use a combination of Freshdesk, Freshservice, and Freshchat. We use the whole suite. Weirdly enough, we pay more for Freshdesk than we do for Freshservice. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of pricing.

    You can get different bundles, and you can always move to different plans that are standard. Freshservice can go anywhere from $19 up to $120 per agent, per month. There is such a wide range, and it is very customizable to your needs.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    It was done before my time.

    What other advice do I have?

    I would advise looking into the suite of products and using the right tool for your job because they all talk to each other really well. They're well built out. There are really good tools for different work functions. So, look into what a product gets used for. For your HR team, it is Freshteam. That's what it's for. So, all of those things exist, and they have really good purpose-built tools to build out a full suite, but trying to just configure something into something that it is not meant for is not a great idea. Just use the product that's meant for your function, and you'll have a much better time. Their sales team just wants to sell Freshdesk, and I don't know why.

    It is hard to rate it in a use case where they just kept saying, "No, you need to use this." And we're like, "Why? I don't want to." And they go, "Yes, you should." If somebody is vetting it for customer service, which is what it is for, then I'd rate it high, but if it is not being used for its intended purpose, then it is a very low score. 

    It wasn't the right use case at my current company, but when I implemented it at another company, it worked great there. I loved working with it. I really enjoyed the product. If you're looking at a customer support function, it is great, but if you're trying to solve problems and use assets and do these other things, then it is not great. 

    Overall, I would rate it a six out of ten. It is a great product when used correctly.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Public Cloud

    If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

    Other
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    Flag as inappropriate
    PeerSpot user
    Freshdesk/Zendesk Consultant at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
    Consultant
    Easy to use with great features and helpful technical support
    Pros and Cons
    • "It is quite easy to program custom apps and integrate them."
    • "There are some restrictions where you need automation and sometimes there is just no way to achieve what you need."

    What is our primary use case?

    I worked for a huge company operating in about 24 countries and covering about 42 online-shops, separated by brands. We needed a ticket system where we could have everything included and also have separation as there were different call centers working for this company. They were not allowed to see the data of each other.

    Freshdesk offers this, with some automation and some other rules that allow us to put in and restrict as necessary. This was the main cause for why we are using Freshdesk.

    How has it helped my organization?

    The productivity has much improved since the use of Freshdesk, as the agents don´t have to use different systems to get all information for the customer.

    What is most valuable?

    This is the best tool. There are so many good features, however, one of the main, best features is the restrictions allowed for the agent. With a few mouse clicks, you can change the restrictions for them. For example, what tickets they can see, or what features they can use. 

    You can put in some custom apps. It is quite easy to program custom apps and integrate them as Freshdesk is very open with tutorials, and they jump in whenever the programmer has issues.

    You can learn the solution yourself rather fast. It's not complicated to use. Basically, what you see what you get. You don't just have to use it out of the box; you can find workarounds easily. 

    One of the main benefits is that it is not complicated and the layout makes it easy to find what you need. Everything there, including email notifications, automation, SLA policies, customer sales sections, and so on. It's labeled. It's not complicated. When you click on something, you know what you will get, basically.

    What needs improvement?

    They have some flaws. No system is flawless. When I started working with Freshdesk and Freshcaller as well, they were separate tools. Freshdesk is for tickets processing, while Freshcaller is for taking calls and creating tickets out of it. However, these two solutions were more or less separated even though they kind of communicated with each other. And yet, it was not that easy to get a connection. Currently, they are already working to have an omnichannel. That way, you won't have to switch tabs. You can stay in a Freshdesk window and from there you can reach everything. This is the main thing that has to be improved and they're still working tirelessly on it. 

    There are some restrictions where you need automations and sometimes there is just no way to achieve what you need - but this is common with other tools.

    I'm raising feature requests for the system. However, when you add a feature request and then you have to wait - possibly even a couple of years until enough other companies raise the same feature request as you. Only when there is enough interest, it's put on a roadmap. 

    The size of your company seemingly does not really matter when it comes to having feature requests put on the roadmap. 

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've been working with Freshdesk since June of 2019.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    From the Freshdesk side, it's very stable. There are no issues with bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance is great. Of course, it depends on your internet connection and stuff and on your own computers. Sometimes, when it comes to Freshcaller, the service is not really stable. I experienced that in December last year. It was quite unstable, however, it's my understanding that they found a solution.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    In my former company, we had about 600 people using the solution. Now, I'm working with another company that is setting up Freshdesk and Freshcaller and there will be about 250 people.

    To scale the product is quite easy. Basically, you buy some service plan, such as the enterprise plan for example. It's based on agents. Whenever you want to add some agents, you just do it and it will be taken into account for the billing.

    How are customer service and support?

    You can talk to the support easily - just send an email - and they're very fast in helping you and offering solutions and workarounds. They have some great insights.

    My impression is that they are very dedicated and they have a lot of knowledge. I have to admit, I mostly worked with technical advisors who were dedicated to me. With the general support, I do not have that much experience. Sometimes I raise a ticket and, when my technical advisor is not available, some other agent or advisor will jump in. Mostly, they know what they're talking about. However, of course, when they have never seen my system or my setup and they are not into it, it's often not easy for them. Sometimes there are some misunderstandings, but those are sorted rather fast.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    This product was not the first choice. The first choice was Zendesk. However, there were some issues with the tool itself and with the attitude of the people there. We decided to move from Zendesk to another ticket system, and, with some research, we found Freshdesk and we decided to go with it due to the fact that it offers way more flexibility. On top of that, the people there are really dedicated and they're really human also. They don't want just to sell the product - they want you to be happy with the product. This was the second reason why we chose Freshdesk.

    Freshdesk offers way more competitive prices than Zendesk does. And, at that time, for Zendesk, it was not possible to do restrictions, such as ensuring one call center is not allowed to see data from another call center. 

    Of course, Zendesk has omnichannel from the start. Everything is integrated into one administration center and everything is connected already. You sometimes still have to find workarounds though as no system is perfect. This is the main advantage that Zendesk still has, however, Freshdesk is working on it to have their own omnichannel.

    How was the initial setup?

    When you get it, it's quite easy get up to speed. In Europe, you have to deal with strict GDPR-rules, and only when you take the highest price model, you will get a server in Germany. Apart from that, it's quite easy to get up and running.

    It took me a bit longer than two weeks to set everything up, because most of the things we wanted to have, we prepared in advance. I would say, to really get your bearing and to really know what you are doing, it takes about three to four weeks. Even then, I've been working with it for nearly three years now and I still learn. I'm still learning more every day.

    There is not really any maintenance. It's very stable and only requires maintenance when you have to change something due to any request or requirements from your own company. No technical maintenance is needed.

    What about the implementation team?

    When you get your demo version, you can do basically everything, try out everything, and there are people who can help guide you. There is a technical advisor and also an account manager. Whenever you have a question or whenever you don't know what to do, they are there to help you. During the first two weeks, I had constant calls with them to have a walkthrough and they would show me things and stuff like that. They're holding your hand basically. It's really great! They are very dedicated and want to help you and want you to be happy.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    Basically, they offer a free support desk, however, it's really small, with only a ticketing knowledge base and some other features. The best system plan is Enterprise. It costs basically 79 Euros per agent per month when it's billed annually and 95 Euros per agent per month when it's billed monthly. This cost covers everything - routing, sandbox, audit logs - the whole omnichannel package.

    In comparison, for Zendesk, the best service plan is 150 Euros per agent per month, when you are billed annually. There's a difference of about 70 Euros. Freshdesk is much more affordable.

    When you want to buy the enterprise support model, then you can talk to the Sales guys about if the price can be lowered. 

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    I had some looks into RightNow, OTRS and some others. All of them either had not the needed features or were too complicated to use for the end-user.

    What other advice do I have?

    I'm a customer and an end-user.

    I would advise potential users that, if you are happy with omnichannel, take Freshdesk. If you want to have a bit better integration, you should just use Zendesk.

    I'd rate the solution at an solid eight out of ten.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Public Cloud
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Freshdesk
    March 2023
    Learn what your peers think about Freshdesk. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2023.
    687,947 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Director of IT at a wholesaler/distributor with 51-200 employees
    Real User
    Top 10
    Solid, good price, simple to use, and requires negligible training effort
    Pros and Cons
    • "Its simplicity is most valuable. It is easy and simple, and it requires negligible training effort. I don't spend all my time goofing around trying to find stuff in the ticketing system."
    • "We have many cases where a ticket comes in, and it ends up having multiple team members working on it. It would be really nice to be able to assign a single ticket to multiple people, rather than having to create the parent-child hierarchy that they have set up. It generates a proliferation of tickets that I really don't want to have. Having to jump from a parent to one child and then to another child makes it harder for me to be able to see the entire case from end to end. A simple example is our new hire process or our termination process. We have people who leave. We also have people who come on board. We have got multiple people participating and doing things related to the leaving or onboarding process. Currently, I have to go to different tickets to be able to see whether all tasks are really done or not. If I could assign lots of people to one ticket, it would be really nice."

    What is our primary use case?

    We are using it for IT support, desktop support, and any issues with any of our applications. We use it pretty extensively. It is the portal that we use for any requests, work being done, questions, bug fixes, and third-party software bug fixes. We even use it for tracking small projects.

    It is a SaaS solution, so we have its current version.

    How has it helped my organization?

    We had over-customized HEAT to the point where it was just not very useful for a company of our size. Getting Freshdesk was like a breath of fresh air because it was simple to use. It required zero or negligible training effort on the part of my team. We just started creating tickets. We integrated it with our email so that we can auto-generate tickets. It wasn't too bad as a technical challenge, and it just worked.

    What is most valuable?

    Its simplicity is most valuable. It is easy and simple, and it requires negligible training effort. I don't spend all my time goofing around trying to find stuff in the ticketing system.

    What needs improvement?

    We have many cases where a ticket comes in, and it ends up having multiple team members working on it. It would be really nice to be able to assign a single ticket to multiple people, rather than having to create the parent-child hierarchy that they have set up. It generates a proliferation of tickets that I really don't want to have. Having to jump from a parent to one child and then to another child makes it harder for me to be able to see the entire case from end to end. A simple example is our new hire process or our termination process. We have people who leave. We also have people who come on board. We have got multiple people participating and doing things related to the leaving or onboarding process. Currently, I have to go to different tickets to be able to see whether all tasks are really done or not. If I could assign lots of people to one ticket, it would be really nice.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using this solution for a year and a half.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    We might've had one outage a long time ago. It was down for a fairly brief time. Other than that, it has been solid.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    We don't have a huge company, so it is kind of hard to tell, but certainly, I've had zero problems with performance and being able to look at lots of tickets versus a small set of tickets. It should be fine in terms of scalability.

    We have eight people in IT who are actively using it. Overall, we have 135 people in the company. They're the ones submitting tickets to us by email or by calling in, and then we create the ticket manually.

    In terms of usage, I don't see it going outside of IT to the rest of the company. We use it for basically 100% of our IT work. We're pretty all in.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    They were decent. I was CC'd on a couple of emails when we were setting it up initially. There was some stuff about the email integration that was probably the hardest thing we did, and we needed a little bit of technical help on that, and they were timely. We didn't have 14 different back-and-forth exchanges where you felt like they're just answering from a book rather than really listening to the problem that you have and trying to address it.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We were using HEAT. We switched because of the frustration amongst the whole team about how complex our system was. We had over-customized HEAT to the point where it was just not very useful for a company of our size. We needed something easier.

    How was the initial setup?

    I didn't do it. It was someone from my team. He did it in three or four days in the midst of everything else he was doing. It was simple. You just add in our users. He was able to import the names of everybody from the active directory, so we got all the employees there.

    We had to sit down and have a meeting to decide the lists, categories, and groupings, and then he just did it. A couple of days later, I started to use it in the pilot form, and we cut over to it fast.

    What about the implementation team?

    We implemented it ourselves. You don't need to have anybody else do it.

    In terms of maintenance, the only thing that we have to do to maintain it is just to add a new call type or something like that, but any of us can do that. It is very intuitive.

    What was our ROI?

    We have absolutely seen an ROI.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    It was definitely not expensive. It was two grand or maybe three grand total for a year.

    It has just straight and simple standard licensing fees. There is no additional fee.

    What other advice do I have?

    If somebody is implementing a new IT service desk ticketing system, they should definitely look at Freshdesk. If they just want a lean and mean system, it is really a great option. If you need a lot of ITIL complexity and have a very large team, and there is a lot of back-and-forth with tickets and heavy approval process and stuff, it may not be suitable. We have only one of their products. They may have other products that bolt onto it and add that in. We are using the simple version, and it doesn't necessarily have all those controls, but in our case, we didn't need all that.

    I would rate Freshdesk a nine out of ten. I am very happy with it.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Public Cloud
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Application Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    Effective CRM which has enabled our team to significantly reduce resolution time using the easy ticketing system
    Pros and Cons
    • "Freshdesk has allowed us to measure and track the response and resolution time of tickets which has been reduced from seven to eight hours down to 30 minutes to one hour."
    • "For integrations, we need to write code that communicates with their system in order to enable certain functionality in the system. This is a lot of work for their customers."

    What is our primary use case?

    We have many regional locations and one central HR team sitting in our head office. They receive a large number of queries from staff via email across a broad range of confidential topics. Using Freshdesk, we have been able to effectively manage both internal and external communication to this team using IDs and HRMS data. For example, once a staff member has left the company, their IDs are deactivated and their access to confidential information is prevented. 

    We have used Freshdesk to group and assign similar queries to particular team members who are available. This has ensured that no one is receiving unnecessary emails. We have also been able to ensure that if a query has received no response for a certain period of time, that it is passed to the next available team member. Our teams are able to engage using the app which is easy and doesn't require them to log into their email. 

    How has it helped my organization?

    Freshdesk has allowed us to measure and track the response and resolution time of tickets which has been reduced from seven to eight hours down to 30 minutes to one hour. This information is valuable for board meetings. 

    What is most valuable?

    The easy integration, open APIs, and their overall product, which can be integrated with in-house applications have been valuable. We have also been able to connect and integrate our social media accounts into our in-house ERP system. 

    Using Freshservice, our agents are able to see the full communication history with a customer in each ticket. This provides context for every agent, even in instances where we have new agents join the team. The solution also allows for the grouping of communication by employee ID which has been useful. 

    This solution allows us to auto-assign and close tickets if there's no response within 48 hours. We can upload separate holiday calendars and time zones for India, Europe, the UK, or regions that update times stamps for customer communication based on these different times.

    Freshdesk releases new features every few months based on the needs of their customers or the market.

    Finally, very little code is required to make changes to the system.

    What needs improvement?

    For integrations, we need to write code that communicates with their system in order to enable certain functionality in the system. This is a lot of work for their customers. For example, when we implemented Freshdesk, my team needed to write coding for four or five API integrations. The need to write this code also caused some difficulty as we write code on a different platform. Minimizing code for all integrations would make a big difference.   

    We would like to give access to Freshdesk for contract employees but this requires an email ID, which these employees do not have. Logging into Freshdesk is based on email login only. A year ago, we requested a different way for such employees to log in such as a mobile-based login but this is not yet possible. 

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have used this solution for three years. 

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    In three to four years, we have only had one incident in which emails were blocked which stopped our ticketing system from working. This impacted us for two to three days. Apart from this, we have not had any other severe issues. 

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    In total, we have 300 agents using Freshdesk across seven different teams. As this is a SaaS-based solution, it is easy to scale your use of the solution. 

    How are customer service and support?

    There is no direct contact number to reach a designated person. We need to call their tech support and deal with a different person each time. We usually need to reiterate what our issues are or write an email and the support phone numbers are UK numbers.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    I have previously used Zendesk.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is not complex. The user manual and initial demo given by the sales team of Freshdesk is good. Our non-technical team members were able to understand how it works within one to three weeks.

    The initial setup took around two to three weeks. What took the most time was writing the rules to manage the ticketing system. 

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    We use a licensing model only so we pay for the number of agents we have configured in the system only. 

    What other advice do I have?

    Before implementing Freshdesk, I would recommend understanding exactly which parts of the system you will need. You will need to know whether you will use the ticketing system only or need the whole management system including tracking all interactions, social media engagement, and the many other features Freshdesk has. It is important to first understand all of your own requirements. 

    Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Public Cloud
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Operations Manager at Instant Travel
    Real User
    Easily connects to folders and devices but lacks ability to change email subject
    Pros and Cons
    • "The feature that I have found most valuable is the way that it connects to various folders especially because we use it as a CRM tool. We can connect it with our phones and our chat, and also with the API and have it as an email service. Freshdesk just makes our life easier."
    • "I would like to be able to change the subject in emails for ourselves. If we could have the option to do that, it would improve our speed and the overall cleanliness of the CRM."

    What is our primary use case?

    It is mainly used for customer support via email or chat.

    How has it helped my organization?

    I am able to use more analytics to track the performance. I also noticed that the overall speed of the platform is improved compared to our last CRM tool provider.

    What is most valuable?

    The feature that I have found most valuable is the way that it connects to various folders especially because we use it as a CRM tool. We can connect it with our phones and our chat, and also with the API and have it as an email service. Freshdesk just makes our life easier.

    We were previously using OTRS on the on-premise server and there was limited space for us. With Freshdesk, we don't have to worry about that because they actually have a cloud version where you can store more information. Also, the analytics of Freshdesk, for me as a manager, make my life easier tracking the performance of the customer support team.

    What needs improvement?

    There are some features I would like to improve. For example, I would like to be able to change the subject in emails for ourselves. We use a lot of third parties. So if we want to handle an email from one of our suppliers or one of our clients, we have to have two tickets, and it would be easier if we could only have one ticket to handle everything. With Freshdesk, that's very difficult because we can't change subjects. So, if we could have the option to do that, it would improve our speed and the overall cleanliness of the CRM.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using Freshdesk for about a year and a half.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The stability is fairly good. We have had some small issues with system crashing but it was resolved quickly by the Freshdesk support.

    How are customer service and support?

    We had one issue that we had to escalate to the technical support. It crashed and we had to have their help to fix it. Their support wasn't the best, it took a little bit for the person to understand what I was trying to say. And they seem to have a lot of layers between the customer support and their tech team. But once it reached the tech team, they were very fast to solve it.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup was fairly simple. We had about a month of trial and then it was fairly simple when we launched. We had an onboarding person that gave us overall training for it, and then they have the Freshdesk Academy, where they have training videos on their platform that I could use. It would just direct my team to see it as well, so it's fairly simple. It didn't take too long.

    There were five people involved and it took about a month and a half.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    I think the pricing is fair. I don't think it's cheap, but I also don't think it's too expensive. It was one of the best values for your money that we found when we were checking the possibilities of substituting the old CRM tool.

    I think there is also a monthly fee, and if we want to have more features, we would have to also scale up the license.

    What other advice do I have?

    We switched to Freshdesk to have the possibility of having everything on the cloud. We used to have a physical server in our office and it just didn't make sense anymore.

    My advice to anyone thinking about Freshdesk is to test it a lot. There are some features that are very different from other tools. And make sure that you understand everything that you need. Also to talk with the sales personnel at Freshdesk to understand what they can offer. In our case, there were a couple of things that we had to adapt because I wasn't very clear with our needs on the onboard process. So, it was more of my fault than theirs but then we had to adapt it because Freshdesk just didn't have some options. For example, with their ticketing process.

    On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Freshdesk about a seven.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Public Cloud

    If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    SAP-Program Manager at Axium Packaging
    Real User
    Top 20
    A stable and scalable customer service software with a useful reporting feature
    Pros and Cons
    • "I like that it's very user-friendly. The way they designed this application, any layperson can just do some drag and drop actions and use it. It's not that difficult. It's also easy to implement. The most important thing is, you don't need to go to this application to create a ticket. You just send out an email, and the ticket is created automatically. I have never seen a feature like this before."
    • "There are a few things we have asked for, like a forward button. When a ticket comes in, we forward it, but it doesn't sync up with the forward. That is the one they have to rework. The other is when we forward the ticket, it doesn't go all, or certain things don't go with it. We have told them about it, and they are working on it. It would be better if they gave us a more standard reporting template. Although they already have some, many aren't usable. It would be easier if we had more templates to work with."

    What is our primary use case?

    We use Freshdesk for all our ticketing related to issues around the organization. We use this tool to communicate, track everything, and make everything visible for the organization. We didn't know what was happening before we got this application. Now we get to know what is happening at the plant level.

    How has it helped my organization?

    Freshdesk has an awesome reporting tool, and you can build all the reports and design them however you want. For example, I added a new field called a "reason" to the ticket to better understand why the user-created that ticket. After three months, I pulled the report with all the recent code, and it told us where the issue was and all the predominant problems we were facing. So, we came in and picked up the most important ten issues and started solving them, which has helped our organization. 

    What is most valuable?

    I like that it's very user-friendly. The way they designed this application, any layperson can just do some drag and drop actions and use it. It's not that difficult. It's also easy to implement. 

    The most important thing is, you don't need to go to this application to create a ticket. You just send out an email, and the ticket is created automatically. I have never seen a feature like this before. 

    What needs improvement?

    There are a few things we have asked for, like a forward button. When a ticket comes in, we forward it, but it doesn't sync up with the forward. That is the one they have to rework. The other is when we forward the ticket, it doesn't go all, or certain things don't go with it. We have told them about it, and they are working on it. 

    It would be better if they gave us a more standard reporting template. Although they already have some, many aren't usable. It would be easier if we had more templates to work with. 

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I use Freshdesk every day. 

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Freshdesk is a stable solution.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Freshdesk is scalable and easy to achieve. We have about 2,500 people using it at my organization.

    How are customer service and support?

    Technical support is good and super fast.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is straightforward. Implementing Freshdesk is super easy, and I did it in two days. You don't have to break your head with the configurations because it's very simple. In two days, you can start using it. The production version can be set up in a week, and the whole organization can start using it.

    Once you run a test, you'll understand what features are available and what are not. You will also better understand what you can develop. In contrast, if you want to install ServiceNow, you will need a consulting company to do that, and they charge thousands of dollars. With this one, you don't need them or your in-house developers. You can just go ahead and create it in about a week and deploy it to production.

    It's a one-time activity, and once you've done it, that's it. You don't have to do any maintenance.

    What about the implementation team?

    I implemented this solution by myself.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    The price could be better, but it's okay. Compared to ServiceNow and JIRA, Freshworks offers a competitive price. There are also additional licensing costs because you need Microsoft Outlook. Each new email account costs around $15 to $19.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We looked at other applications like JIRA and ServiceNow, but compared to Freshworks, they were expensive. Freshdesk is also quite easy, and just one person can set it up and get it running within a week. 

    What other advice do I have?

    I would definitely recommend Freshworks to potential users. If they are not using ServiceNow or a ticketing system in the environment, they should look at this solution, play around with it, and see how it works. They can look into other applications for mid-size to large-sized environments, but this is the best application. Even for a very tiny business, this is the best application.

    On a scale from one to ten, I would give Freshdesk a nine.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Public Cloud
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Asst. Vice President at a performing arts with 1,001-5,000 employees
    Real User
    Top 20
    It's such a simple tool and very intuitive, so the learning curve for new users is about an hour
    Pros and Cons
    • "The user experience on the platform itself is fantastic. The UI is clean and uncluttered, so it's easy to find any information about your customer or the issue at hand. You can find out the person responsible for that particular issue, what the problem is, who the stakeholders are, and how to resolve it. There are lots of tools that will help you do that as well."
    • "There aren't any features that we want to enhance, but we need to mature in our usage of some of them. I can't say any feature is missing or needs improvement, but a tool's built-in features need to evolve customer feedback. We have a dialogue set up for that kind of feedback."

    What is our primary use case?

    Our primary use case is support emails. When customers wanted to reach out to us, we had a help desk linked to the support email. When we receive tickets, all of them are classified by region and the assigned relationship manager. Then we divert them for resolution. 

    How has it helped my organization?

    One of the main benefits is user engagement. The interface is so fantastic that the learning curve for any user on the platform is maybe an hour. It's such a simple tool and very intuitive, so we can train a user and get them onto the platform within no time. If a user is aware of the business, using this tool is no hassle. The training time is so short on this platform for users at the associate level. 

    What is most valuable?

    The user experience on the platform itself is fantastic. The UI is clean and uncluttered, so it's easy to find any information about your customer or the issue at hand. You can find out the person responsible for that particular issue, what the problem is, who the stakeholders are, and how to resolve it. There are lots of tools that will help you do that as well.

    What needs improvement?

    When we ask them for changes or features, they usually provide a workaround or a feature. They stay on top of the latest technologies. The most significant feature they've added recently was two years ago. It was an AI chatbot, which is very important for business.

    They've gotten all the features at the right time and integrated them into the platform. There aren't any features that we want to enhance, but we need to mature in our usage of some of them. I can't say any feature is missing or needs improvement, but a tool's built-in features need to evolve customer feedback. We have a dialogue set up for that kind of feedback. 

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've used Freshdesk as an admin for at least 4.5 years now, so I've been engaged with the tool day in and day out.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    I've never seen Freshservice go down in the past 4.5 years that I've worked on that platform. I haven't had issues with usage or downtime. If there is downtime, we're told about it. We don't have trouble with connectivity because it's an SaaS tool, so there are no problems serving our customers. 

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    It's absolutely easy to scale. I'm sure this can handle any number of users or any volume of issues. We have 2,500 users at the moment. 

    How are customer service and support?

    Freshdesk support is great. If we ever had minor performance issues, it would just take an email or call to the support center, and they would fix it immediately.

    How was the initial setup?

    It's very straightforward. The initial implementation didn't take long, but I wasn't there at the time. When I became an admin, somebody else had already implemented it, so I'm unaware of the details. However, we did more implementations after that, but it was plug-and-play because we already had everything in place. There were no hassles. There's no maintenance on our side, either, because that's taken care of by Freshdesk.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    I would say Freshdesk is competitive compared to other products on the market. 

    What other advice do I have?

    I rate Freshdesk 10 out of 10. I recommend it because I think anybody who tries Freshdesk will be convinced that this is one of the best tools they could use for their organization. I see that all the leading organizations in the market use Freshdesk today for the support system.

    It's more than a support tool because it has a lot of integrations that you can work with. You need to work with the team and let them know its use cases. They have a solution for all the issues with customers that we face as an organization. I don't think they've ignored anything from a customer experience perspective. I would say that any company wanting to implement this particular tool should try it because I'm sure they will like it.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Public Cloud
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Jovana Pavlovic - PeerSpot reviewer
    Senior Back Office Manager at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
    Real User
    Top 5Leaderboard
    Reliable and handles large workloads but the tagging system is not great
    Pros and Cons
    • "It is very easy to make reports."
    • "Having so many tags makes everyday work a lot more complicated, and a lot more time-consuming."

    What is our primary use case?

    We are using the product for communication with the clients. We use it for opening tickets and communicating.

    What is most valuable?

    It is very easy to make reports. There are a lot of tags on every ticket. As a supervisor or as a head of a certain department, you can easily make reports for every agent on your team. 

    The solution is stable.

    It's scalable and is able to handle big workloads. 

    What needs improvement?

    Having so many tags makes everyday work a lot more complicated, and a lot more time-consuming.

    If I'm going to contact a client, then I have to put all of these tags, and that ticket is closed as the ticket has been sent. It's similar to when you send an email. That ticket has now been sent and therefore it's closed. If the client responds, the ticket will come back as open. However, if we send a ticket to a different department, let's say, then we have to put the ticket on as open to the different department and I'm not going to be able to see it unless the other department sends it and replies, and puts it back on my name as open. The ticketing feature is a bit complicated. 

    In order to send a simple email to a client, I need three minutes. And due to the fact that we send a lot of emails, that amount of time required is time-consuming for us.

    Freshdesk has a feature called Freshchat. I would like to have translation services inside the chat. We get a lot of clients from different countries speaking different languages.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've used the solution for five to six months.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The stability is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. Its performance is reliable.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The product is scalable. We handle quite sizable workloads and it is able to work well regardless.

    While we have 100 users, not everyone uses this solution. We use it for customer support, finance, the operations department, and the partner's department, which may be up to 15 people. We do use it on a daily basis. We do not plan to increase usage until we hire more people. 

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    Prior to this solution, we were using Zendesk. 

    For us, the difference is you can see all of the tickets in Zendesk. That's really important, as you can also see tickets from a different department. You can see how a certain specific case is being handled. Is it being handled well? What are the updates? 

    With Freshdesk, the tags are really time-consuming. You have to check with different departments and ask "Hey, have you checked this ticket, this ticket number?" You have to save the ticket number so you will be able to actually ask them. 

    How was the initial setup?

    I'm not responsible for the setup. That said, it's my understanding that we did have a couple of issues when it comes to workflow. For example, certain tickets should come to a certain department, and we have issues with that. 

    What about the implementation team?

    The company handled the initial setup in-house. 

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    I'm not familiar with the pricing aspect of the product.

    What other advice do I have?

    I would recommend Zendesk. I prefer Zendesk and would recommend it to everyone. Freshdesk I do not like as much. It's much more time-consuming. It's much more complicated. If you have a big workload, then that can get in the way of actually getting work done.

    I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. We've gotten used to it, however, it's too time-consuming. Choosing this solution was a management decision. It's not ours. It's not an ideal ticketing system.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user