Customer support is one of the most important factors in any business. An organization can become successful only if they have loyal customers. In order to provide better customer services in a systematic way, many businesses choose to adopt help desk systems. Zendesk is one of the prominent customer support tools in this list. But, for some reason, your business requirements may not match with the feature set provided by Zendesk. In such a case, you have to look for an alternative for this help desk tool. So, in this article, let us check the best Zendesk alternative and its advanced features.
A brief idea about Zendesk
As I have already mentioned, Zendesk is a popular customer support tool that can be integrated into any business organization irrespective of its size. This platform can be used to manage multiple aspects of your customer support process such as, managing tickets and communicating with customers in a convenient way. Its pricing plans vary based on the number of agents you need to add to the system. Even though it is an advanced customer support tool, it has a number of drawbacks that might lead you to think about an alternative.
As it is a SaaS-based help desk system, your data will be stored on their servers, which is a threat to your data privacy. All data, tickets, and even the knowledge bases can be accessed by the Zendesk team, which will create a security issue as sensitive data of customers could be passed through the system. Also, they often use the customers’ data for their analytics, which is again a threat to the customers’ trust towards you. Even though you have deleted your Zendesk account, they can still keep your data. So, you will be having less control over your data while using Zendesk.
Sometimes, you may find difficulty in exporting your customers’ data in a CSV or JSON file as they demand to write code to fetch data from your side instead of directly importing data. Also, it has some compatibility issues with certain website platforms.
If you consider its pricing, they charge comparatively higher costs based on the number of agent profiles required to add to the system. Their intermediate plan starts at $79 for adding 1 agent per month. Moreover, you will be having limited customization options to make it perfectly fit into your business environment.
So, if you find these drawbacks are affecting your customer support efforts, it is time to switch to an alternative!
Which is the perfect alternative for Zendesk?
Open Source HelpDesk & Customer Support Ticketing System – Simple & Flexible
This robust open source help desk system is a perfect alternative for Zendesk as it includes a set of advanced features to fulfill all your customer support requirements. It comes from the family of the popular WordPress help desk plugin WSDesk, so it inherits all its features efficiently. Since it is an open source help desk system, you can contact their support team to get an extreme level of customization to make it perfectly fit into your business operations. Also, it contains all features that overcome the drawbacks of Zendesk.
Let us analyze its features to get a deep idea about this awesome help desk system.
1. Open Source System
The first and foremost advantage of this help desk system is, it is an open source platform. As you know, open source systems are open for any customization as per the customers’ preferences. You can connect with the support team and share all your nitty-gritty requirements and get a perfect system done for your organization.
2. High Security and Privacy of Data
Unlike any other SaaS-based help desk systems, this tool allows you to store all your data on your server without any third-party intervention. So, you will not encounter any data breach issues while using this system. So, you will have complete control over your data.
3. Compatibility with Any Website Platforms
You can integrate this help desk system with any website platform such as WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, etc. It makes sure that all the functionalities of the help desk system will work smoothly even though you have integrated it with any website platform.
4. Seamless Third Party Integrations
You can seamlessly integrate with any third party plugins or extensions with this system for improving the overall performance of your customer help desk support.
5. Unlimited Agents
It allows you to add unlimited agent profiles without any hidden costs or additional charges. And, it offers plenty of features and specifications to increase the productivity of your agents using triggers to notify them for opening a ticket, solving, and closing it within a limited period of time.
6. Deploy as a Subdomain
In order to avoid the site loading time and storage issues, you can deploy this open source system as a separate entity of your website by adding it as a subdomain of your website. That is if the main site is – ‘maindomain.com’, you can deploy the help desk system as ‘support.maindomain.com’.
7. Customizable to Integrate with Any Business Domain
Be it a software company, a hospital, or a garage, you can adapt this system and get it tweaked to satisfy all your customer support requirements.
8. 24/7 Expert Consultation
If you got stuck with any issues or facing any technical glitches, you can immediately contact the support team. They will help you solve any issues at any time. Also, they will assist you to create knowledge base articles and integrate them with the support form.
9. Efficient Knowledge Base Integration
You can integrate your knowledge base and business case articles with the customer support portal in order to reduce the number of tickets. Also, you can configure it to list down all related articles of a specific topic of your products when a customer tries to type a concern related to that topic on the form.
10. Managed Hosting Services
If you need to keep your complete attention on your business and operational activities, you can choose the managed hosting plan of this plugin. With this option, you do not need to worry about the frequent updates and feature configuration as everything will be managed by the expert team on time.
11. Enhance your Customer Support Experience with ELEX Add-Ons
ELEXtensions provides a couple of add-ons to enhance the performance of your customer support experience while using this open source help desk system. You can charge for your expert consultation using an add-on – Pay For Support Add-On for WSDesk WordPress Support Ticket System.
Also, you can integrate the WSChat – ELEX WordPress Live Chat Plugin with this help desk system, and you can convert customers’ chat into convertible tickets for passing them to this system seamlessly.
12. Reasonable Pricing
This system comes with reasonable pricing plans based on the number of tickets you need to deal with in a day. The Starter plan comes at $79. The main advantage of this system over Zendesk is the difference in pricing. That is, you can add unlimited agents for $79, at the same time you have to pay more to Zendesk based on the number of agent profiles you need to add to the system.
Check a comparison table:
Conclusion
Hope you got an idea on Open Source HelpDesk & Customer Support Ticketing System and how it comes to be a perfect alternative for Zendesk. If you check the features, customization options and pricing, Open Source HelpDesk & Customer Support Ticketing System is the best choice for your business.
