Looking for an IT help desk ticketing system to stay organized and deliver a hassle-free customer experience? This article contains a list of the best help desk solutions reviewed by users in the UK for small and midsize businesses (SMBs).

Help desk software enables organisations to respond more efficiently to customer queries.

Investing in the right help desk ticketing software may become crucial as your business expands. With this software solution, it could be easier for you to handle various customer issues and grievances. In this sense, ticketing software can help an organization automate the process of managing, resolving and tracking customer queries from a unified platform.

What is IT help desk software? How can IT help desk ticketing systems allow SMEs to streamline business operations? 

IT help desk software is a support software solution businesses use to manage, organize and track customer queries and service requests. Using this software, SMEs can:

  • Offer customer support across all of their brand’s communication channels 
  • Make informed decisions using reporting and analytics
  • Gather customer feedback
  • Personalize customer conversations to provide end-to-end solutions

This article reviews five of the best IT help desk ticketing systems on Capterra UK, which are listed alphabetically. For this list, we have considered software solutions with an average overall rating of at least 4.5/5 stars.

The five top help desk ticketing systems for UK business users

1.

EngageBay CRM platform overview  [Source: YouTube ]

EngageBay CRM is an IT help desk platform for all marketing, sales and support teams. This helpdesk software allows users to resolve queries faster and deliver support to all customers. The tool helps in ticket management, ticket automation, IT asset management, multi-channel communication, real-time chat and templated responses. Additionally, the tool allows users to store unlimited contacts and build strong relationships by keeping track of all their customer data in a centralized place. EngageBay CRM has a free version with a limit of access to 250 contacts. More details on the paid plans can be found on the tool’s official website. 

Product features of interest:

  • Agent support groups for ticket assessment: Get access to customer support groups, agent support groups, and sales support groups with a lifetime free trial.
  • Custom tickets view: Custom ticket views help customer support agents deliver effective service.
  • Service automation: Advanced service automation, including automatic ticket routing, escalations, task updates, and more.
  • Canned responses for customer service: Pre-determined responses for help desk messages and emails. In case of multiple queries, you can use EngageBay canned replies and save time.

2.

Freshdesk platform demo overview  [Source: YouTube]

Freshdesk is an IT help desk support software that helps users with intuitive ticketing, advanced automation, seamless self-service, and IT asset management. The tool provides omnichannel support which users can deliver fast and consistent customer service across email, phone, chat, WhatsApp Business, and other social media channels. Additionally, users can cut down on manual and repetitive tasks using advanced automation rules and other features like real-time chat, templatised responses and task prioritization. Freshdesk has a free version available with limited access to 10 users. More details on other plans can be found on its official website. 

Product features of interest:

  • Customizable analytics and report: Use customizable analytics and reports to track team performance, identify bottlenecks, and keep tabs on your team's goals.
  • Knowledge base: Enables customers to help themselves by finding answers on their own.
  • Ticket trend report: Analyze trends and stay on top of tickets by allocating resources at the right time.
  • Round-robin routing: Automatically assign tickets to all available agents in a group in a circular manner.

3.

ISL Light platform benefits  [Source: YouTube]

ISL Light is a remote help desk software that allows users to support their customers or access unattended computers. The software supports Android and iOS mobile devices from anywhere, and users can get a live view of their client’s remote screen and solve issues faster. This tool also helps in real-time communication, asset management, and multi-channel conversations. Moreover, this tool’s dual-panel file manager allows fast navigation and enables users to manage files and folders on local and remote computers quickly and efficiently. This tool does not have a free version available. However, all the details on the different paid plans can be found on ISL Light’s official website. 

Product features of interest:

  • Administration and audit management: Get a comprehensive overview of computer groups, users, and user groups. You can even monitor events within the administration pages using the ‘audit’ feature.
  • Access and control: Users can set up permanent access by installing a remote access agent on any Windows, Mac or Linux computer and setting up an access password. You can even set unattended access on an unlimited number of computers.
  • Manage multiple monitors: Display all remote monitors on a single screen or view each monitor in a distinct window while controlling a remote computer.
  • Auto-lock on start: This tool gives you the option to configure the computer to lock automatically once the remote access session is established and/or disconnected.

4.

Jira Service Management features overview [Source: YouTube]

Jira Service Management is a help desk platform that assists users in delivering valuable service experiences via a single centralised platform. This software helps users improve productivity by tracking work across the enterprise through an open, collaborative platform. Users can even link issues across Jira and connect data from other software development tools. Some typical features of this tool include multi-channel communication, real-time chat, IT asset management, and task prioritization. This tool has a free version with a limited space of up to 3 agents. More information on the paid plans is available at Jira’s official website. 

Product features of interest:

  • Incident management: You can bring your development and IT operations teams together to rapidly respond to, resolve, and continuously learn from incidents.
  • Configuration: Get visibility into the infrastructure that supports critical applications and services. You can also understand service dependencies to minimize risk.
  • Change management: Empower your IT operations teams with advanced contextual information around multiple changes from software development tools so they can make better decisions and minimize potential risks.
  • Problem management: You can group incidents into problems, fast-track root cause analysis, and record workarounds to potentially minimize the impact of incidents.

5.

 LiveAgent platform demo [Source: YouTube]

LiveAgent is an all-in-one customer care solution that offers a multi-channel toolset with 130+ ticketing features and 200+ integrations with other software solutions. With the help of this tool, users can streamline all customer communication in one place and get an organized view of all customer queries. The ‘live-chat’ feature of this tool is supported by essential features such as canned responses, real-time typing-view, and more. Other helpful features include multi-channel communication, IT asset management, and task prioritization. LiveAgent does not have a free version available. Additional information on the paid plans is available on the tool’s official website. 

Product features of interest:

  • Call centre: With the help of this tool, you can set up a call centre and offer a personal customer experience via phone calls. This tool helps handle inbound or outbound calls for smooth customer interactions.
  • Knowledge base: You can share the best business practices, informational articles, how-to guides, and more with this tool
  • Workflow automation: Get rid of all repetitive tasks with this tool’s ‘rules’ feature. Set up simple automation to automate basic help desk functions and focus on what’s important. 
  • Universal inbox: The universal shared inbox gathers all of your messages into one place and turns them into tickets, so you don’t have to monitor each communication channel separately.

How to analyse and choose the right help desk software for your business?

From planning to researching, identifying and choosing the right tool, an organization has to follow a step-by-step approach to implementing the best software solution. Selecting the ideal help desk software should ideally be done based on the following factors:

  • Consider looking into software that can manage customer support requests from multiple channels
  • Since customer details can be attached to service requests, ensure the platform is secure enough to prevent potential threats
  • Identify the level of onboarding support and service the provider offers

Looking for an IT help desk ticketing system? Check out our catalogue!


Methodology

To be considered for this report, products had to justify the following criteria as of September 2023:

  • All five tools in our list justify Capterra’s definition of help desk software: ‘Help Desk software is a customer service tool that enables organisations to respond more efficiently to their users. Help Desk software improves the ability of customer service departments to provide fast and effective support to employees, end-users, and customers. A help desk customer service ticketing system (also known as service desk software or ticketing software) can aid in answering technical and functional questions by providing improved methodologies for ticket tracking, IT management, and customer support.’
  • All tools included were specifically reviewed by users in the UK
  • They have the following core features:
    • Knowledge base management
    • Ticket management
  • They have a minimum average overall rating of 4.5/5 stars
  • All tools have had more than 20 user reviews over the past two years (15 September 2021 to 15 September 2023)

From there, the five products with the highest average overall ratings were selected for inclusion.