Since making your customers happy and satisfied is important and necessary, you need a help desk system to support and assist them in a systematic way. There are many help desk systems available in the market which is free as well as premium with a different set of features.
An ideal help desk system must contain several modules such as ticket management, agent friendly features, detailed analytical reports, etc. Also, it should be able to gather queries and concerns from customers through multiple sources such as email, SMS, phone call, social media, etc. Overall, it must be a user-friendly platform for customers to raise queries, as well as agents for dealing with the queries and concerns.
In this article, we will be discussing a free open source help desk system that would totally satisfy your business requirements with its advanced features.
ELEX WordPress HelpDesk & Customer Ticketing System is one of the top-notch basic version help desk plugins for WordPress websites. Let us go through its specifications in this article.
A Brief Idea About ELEX WordPress HelpDesk & Customer Ticketing System
As you know, a best fitting help desk system is critical for any organization to take care of their customers. This help desk and customer support plugin come with a handful of advanced features to fulfill almost all requirements needed by organizations. You can deploy this system as a part of your main website or as a separate subdomain to avoid loading and memory issues. And, its AJAX-based coding will never load the website each time.
Other advanced features of this plugin are as follows:
Unlimited agents
This help desk system allows you to add as many agents as required without any restrictions and hidden costs.
Unlimited tickets
You can receive, store and deal with unlimited tickets by assigning to multiple agents in this system without any additional charges.
Easy view of tickets
The tickets will be automatically gathered under the right categories and agents. And, you can make use of the filtering option to check the Solved, Unsolved, and Pending tickets.
Automated triggers
You can trigger certain actions to make the agent’s job much faster. For example, you can set a trigger to send an email notification to the ticket assignee. With this free version of the plugin, you can configure a single trigger. If you need to add multiple triggers, you can go for its premium version.
IMAP and Google OAuth integration
You can seamlessly convert emails received to multiple addresses as convertible tickets and pass them to the help desk system. This would help you to not miss a single query or concern sent by customers to your multiple email IDs.
Email blocking
You can block certain email IDs and spammers by receiving and sending messages to them.
Response templates
To make the response to customers faster, you can create and store certain templates. Also, you can create answer templates for frequently asked questions.
Detailed performance reporting
This plugin will generate a performance report based on a specific time duration. This report will also contain the performance report of individual agents and their satisfaction score added by the customers. These reports would help to analyze the current potential of your customer support services and the customers’ satisfaction with your performance.
In addition to these, you can easily integrate EDD (Easy Digital Download) and WooCommerce plugin with this basic version.
Now, let us check the limitations you may encounter while using the plugin.
- Only compatible with WordPress websites.
- Limited customizations.
- Cannot restrict the ticket raisers.
- No autosuggestion of knowledge base or business case articles for ticket raisers.
- No auto-tagging and assigning of tickets.
- Limited scalability.
- No managed hosting plans.
But, its premium version will help you avoid some of the limitations listed above. But, if you need a help desk system that is compatible with multiple website platforms and need to extensively customize the help desk system, you can go for an open source help desk system.
Why Do You Need an Open Source Help Desk System?
Adopting an open source help desk system would have many benefits for your organization. It is cost-effective and highly customizable according to business requirements. There are many open source help desk systems available in the market with a different set of features.
There are many reasons for choosing an open source help desk system for your organization. Every organizations’ business goals and environment are different from others. So, integrating an out-of-the-box solution may not satisfy all your requirements. Or, the system may contain excessive features, which are not required for your organization.
Building a tailor-made help desk system for your organization is not a cost-effective solution. Hence, it would be better if you choose an open source help desk system that almost satisfies your requirements and tweak them the way you need them.
Some open source software teams would publish the source code for the public through various repositories, from which the organizations can download and tweak the system according to their needs with the help of a developer.
But, there are teams who offer personalization of the system from their side itself. This option has many benefits such as:
- You would build the help desk system strongly as the developer of the main system will be the one who tweaks it.
- You would get excellent customer support as you can report bugs directly to the team rather than a third-party developer.
- The team would help you in designing the system, deploying it, and maintaining it.
- It will be cost-effective compared to hiring a third-party developer.
Now, let us check one of the advanced open source help desk systems in the market – Open Source HelpDesk & Customer Support Ticketing System – Simple & Flexible and its advanced features.
Open Source HelpDesk & Customer Support Ticketing System – Simple & Flexible
This advanced open source help desk system is coming from the family of WSDesk and inherits all its features. This system is basically an out-of-the-box solution as you can directly implement this system in your organization. But if you are not completely convinced with its default features, you can go for personalization of the system.
You can sit with the support team and share your small and large requirements with them.
Now, let us check other features of this system one by one.
Works well on any website platform
This help desk system is compatible with all website platforms such as WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, Magento, etc.
Ensures 100% data security and privacy
This help desk system allows storing all your data on your own server. Hence, no external dependency can hamper your daily workflow. Since no third party can monitor your data, you can ensure its privacy.
Unlimited agents
This system allows adding unlimited agent profiles without any hidden cost.
Can choose a subscription plan based on daily tickets
This system comes with 3 subscription plans such as Starter, Pro, and Ultimate. Based on the number of tickets you need to handle in a day, you can choose a plan accordingly.
Open for third-party integrations
Your help desk system might require other third party extensions or plugins to enhance its performance, like you may need to install a pay for your support option along with your help desk system. You can feel free to discuss it with the help desk team and get it done.
24/7 expert assistance
It could be any technical glitch or a bug that hampers your workflow, you can reach the team at any time to solve the issues. And, for any expert consultation like knowledge base integration or any other third party integration, you can contact them immediately.
Managed hosting services
You can choose their managed hosting plan if you want to completely concentrate on your business goals. They will take care of your system updates, maintenance, version updates, etc. when you choose the managed hosting plan.
These are the main features of this open source help desk system.
To sum up,
A help desk system is inevitable to manage the communication with your customers in a systematic way. If you require a free help desk plugin, you can go for WSDesk. Or, if you need more customization and additional features, you can choose Open Source HelpDesk & Customer Support Ticketing System.
Further Reading:
- The Best Zendesk Alternative
- The Best Free WordPress Live Chat Plugin
- The Best Free Chatbot for WordPress
- How to Add Free Live Chat in WordPress (Just 3 Steps)