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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Freshdesk

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AFreshdesk (a product of Freshworks Inc.) is a customer service solution with enterprise capability. Freshdesk unifies channels, conversations, AI capabilities, customer insights, and advanced ticketing into the Freshdesk Command Center so agents are ready to resolve. With Freddy, People-first AI, customer service teams can take AI agents live in minutes to fully resolve complex and simple queries, get response and resolution assistance from AI copilot, and stay ahead with AI insights.…

    $18

    per month per user

    Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor

    Score9 out of 10
    Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
    The Lightning Conductor is a content aggregation tool for Microsoft SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams. Users can build rich, modern content reports based upon SharePoint lists, SharePoint Search, Microsoft Graph or Microsoft 365 Groups. Content can be aggregated from lists and libraries, and other applications such as Planner, To Do, OneDrive, and Teams.

    $2,200

    per year per installation

    Pricing
    FreshdeskLightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Editions & Modules
    Growth
    $18
    per month per agent
    Pro
    $59
    per month per agent
    Enterprise
    $95
    per month per agent
    Lightning Conductor WSP
    From 1950
    per year One WFE
    Lightning Conductor Enterprise Edition
    POA
    per year Four or more WFE
    Lightning Conductor Online
    From 2200
    per year per installation
    Lightning Conductor Plus (Includes Data Viewer)
    From 2500
    per year per installation
    Lightning Conductor Online Enterprise Edition (>10,000 users)
    POA
    per year per installation
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    FreshdeskLightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—Prices stated are minimum per installation for "stock" products. $2.20 per user/year on top of base price. Enterprise editions can be amended to suit business needs if deemed necessary, additional costs incurred and TBD. All packages include free technical support. Free upgrades available to latest versions of tool as they are released. (online version)
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    FreshdeskLightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Considered Both Products
    Freshworks Inc
    No answer on this topic
    Lightning Tools
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    93%
    Would buy again
    213 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    207 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    93%
    Happy with the feature set
    213 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    147 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    174 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    FreshdeskLightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Freshdesk and Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Feature
    Freshdesk
    8.6
    210 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    -
    Ratings
    Organize and prioritize service tickets9.3206 Ratings00 Ratings
    Expert directory7.9140 Ratings00 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications7.812 Ratings00 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation8.115 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission9.0207 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ticket response9.1207 Ratings00 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of Freshdesk and Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Feature
    Freshdesk
    8.0
    185 Ratings
    0% below category average
    Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    -
    Ratings
    External knowledge base8.0169 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base8.0173 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Freshdesk and Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Feature
    Freshdesk
    8.3
    197 Ratings
    3% above category average
    Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    -
    Ratings
    Customer portal8.3169 Ratings00 Ratings
    IVR8.563 Ratings00 Ratings
    Social integration8.2105 Ratings00 Ratings
    Email support8.6197 Ratings00 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration7.7126 Ratings00 Ratings
    Project Management
    Comparison of Project Management features of Freshdesk and Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Feature
    Freshdesk
    -
    Ratings
    Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    8.6
    2 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Task Management00 Ratings8.82 Ratings
    Search00 Ratings8.42 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    FreshdeskLightning Tools Lightning Conductor
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    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
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    Score9.5 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Troop Messenger
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    FreshdeskLightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.6
    (277 ratings)
    9.0
    (4 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.5
    (25 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (42 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Availability
    7.5
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    7.6
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.4
    (41 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    7.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    7.7
    (207 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    6.5
    (7 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    8.5
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    7.9
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    6.8
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Professional Services
    8.7
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    7.6
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    7.7
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    FreshdeskLightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Freshworks Inc
    I believe Freshdesk is well-suited for companies that manage multiple accounts, such as those in the Business Process Outsourcing industry. It has all the necessary capabilities, such as ticket management that uses omnichannel to receive ticket requests from service requests (managed internally) in the system, emails, etc. There are also several workflow automations that can be built within the platform/system. What is lacking is the API documentation, which limits the possibilities for further automations. Overall, it is a highly recommended tool for managing employee productivity and timeliness.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    Having experience of SharePoint On Premise and also SharePoint Online, there isn't an out of the box app/webpart that enables you to 'roll up content' from a variety of source's (in my case SP Lists, but there are many other data sources it works with) across site collections with an easy to use and intuitive interface which is what Lightning tools excels at.
    Read full review
    Pros
    Freshworks Inc
    • No prior experience with similar platforms is required to use Freshdesk. I found its interface to be quite intuitive, at least for the end user.
    • It's easy to connect with other platforms, so you can sync and manage data from other platforms because the integrations work correctly.
    • Freshdesk's technical support is quite responsive, with short and effective response times. They have easily handled my questions and issues.
    • It has tools for customizing automated chats, answering frequently asked questions before transferring to an agent. Its configuration is extensive and highly customizable.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    • Aggregate documents across SharePoint site & libraries
    • Filtering for owner/person responsible & due dates
    • Ease of end-user filtering on columns
    • Color-coding & other formatting
    Read full review
    Cons
    Freshworks Inc
    • Freshdesk is buggy, full stop. I don't know how many support tickets I submitted related to user login.
    • There can be a language barrier with support and sales.
    • There were a couple of hours-long outages that significantly impacted my company's customer experience.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    • Mobile Friendly
    • Calendar/Gantt views
    • Complex/Custom Logic
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Freshworks Inc
    New support agents can learn the system quickly, minimizing training time and maximizing productivity from day one. Agents are more willing to use a system that is simple, reducing resistance to change and ensuring all interactions are logged (a common problem with complex systems). The platform is known for being easy to set up and customize, allowing teams (especially smaller ones) to get started with minimal technical expertise.The platform makes it easy to set and monitor Service Level Agreements (SLAs), ensuring customers get timely responses and helping managers enforce performance standards.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Freshworks Inc
    Freshdesk is extremely easy to use as implemented it on our own with average technical skills. A lot of the options are straightforward and Freshdesk provides easy-to-understand explanations for some of the more complex-sounding ones. We recently onboarded new specialists and they were able to learn Freshdesk with minimal training.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Reliability and Availability
    Freshworks Inc
    I have encountered a lot of errors in the Freshdesk, however, they tend to resolve it on priority or at least they will share the timeline by when this can be resolved. Most of the time the issue has been from the other partner's end. They take time to resolve their vendor issues and they don't have any timelines in case of developed app errors.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Freshworks Inc
    The reports take a lot of time to download if the time period is large. Also, the tickets take their sweet time to open and load. It is not fast as Zendesk. Only 30 tickets are visible in a single go and there isn't any option to select all. If we need to change the pages and dashboards it takes a lot of time to open.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Freshworks Inc
    Because I never worked with a company that responds so quickly to their customer! They are always fast at responding and very open to new ideas and quickly turning them around to include them in future releases. They walk us through when we need assistance and are very good at communicating. Overall top notch support
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    The Lightning Tools support team responds quickly, and team members are very friendly and helpful.
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Freshworks Inc
    In-person training is provided to all the agents and it is very easy to learn the basics of the Freshdesk interface. Solving tickets via dashboards, replying to the guest queries in bulk via Freshdesk. The training which is a bit hard is creating the logic according to the ticket flow and intergeration.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Freshworks Inc
    This tool is no doubt easy to learn but in-person training is a lot better than online training. It takes time to grasp things in the online training, however, in pandemic we have done all the training online. Apart from a bit more time we haven't faced any issues with online training.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Freshworks Inc
    Was a fairly quick implementation for us. However, we are only doing email integration and not some of the more complex integrations that are possible. One clarification on an earlier question. I selected that Freshdesk doesn't have a given feature, but this is not true. I selected this because there wasn't a selection for I don't use the feature. This is a weakness in the survey.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Freshworks Inc
    Compared to Crisp, Freshdesk offers much more organization and is just much more helpful when it comes to having more than one region/team. Not that Crisp is bad, but with Freshdesk, internal communication and collaboration are much easier, which was quite important for our team to grow.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    I haven't found another product to compare this one to. Only in SharePoint Online which has a similar App 'Highlight Webpart' ... it's far too complicated to set up and requires learning yet another language and exporting and importing via PowerShell to get any real results that would be useful.
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Freshworks Inc
    I was not very involved with the purchase/contract (my company purchased Fresjdesk before I was brought on), but I will say that pricing per agent made it difficult to grow our support team. Additionally, we were kind of disappointed after our upgrade because it didn't solve our pain points as much as we expected.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    Freshworks Inc
    My company had Freshdesk agents from support and success. It's generally difficult to customize permissions for different agent "roles." We were a fully distributed company, so "multiple sites" doesn't apply to us. We found Freshdesk features lacking as we grew our customer base, and adding agents wasn't easy because price steeply increases with number of agents.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Professional Services
    Freshworks Inc
    - good customer support
    - personal contact
    - usage limited to basic product features, individually designed solutions seem unlikely
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Freshworks Inc
    • Increased response times - Client Success maintains at 98% SLA for resolution
    • Categorization of feedback and issues - custom ticket fields make it easier for us to review why clients contact us on a high level
    • Standardization of internal procedures via templates, canned responses and automations
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    • Policies easier to portray
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor Screenshots

    Screenshot of MODERN SHAREPOINT LIST ROLLUP
The Lightning Conductor is a SharePoint Content Aggregator that can be configured quickly by business users. The Lightning Conductor can be used to aggregate content from SharePoint Lists such as Tasks, Document Libraries, Contact Lists, and Custom Lists making it easy to view content in one place even if it is distributed across many sites and site collections. Key data can be highlighted using conditional formatting and data-bars as shown. Content from Search and Microsoft Graph can also be aggregated with the Lightning Conductor.Screenshot of CONTENT AGGREGATION WITHIN MICROSOFT TEAMS
The Lightning Conductor Web Part can be used within Microsoft SharePoint or Microsoft Teams. Even if content is stored within SharePoint sites, it is useful to have aggregated Documents, Tasks, Announcements, Calendars or Custom Lists from multiple sites displayed in a single handy view in Microsoft Teams. The Lightning Conductor can be added as a Teams Tab in any Microsoft Teams Channel.Screenshot of BUILDING REPORTS ON MICROSOFT GRAPH
The Lightning Conductor can be used (without code) to aggregate content from Microsoft Graph as well as Search and SharePoint Lists. This example displays Microsoft Planner Plans and Microsoft Planner Tasks where users can Add new Tasks, Assign Users to Planner Tasks, Delete Tasks, and Complete Tasks. The same can be performed on Microsoft To Do items and displayed within Modern SharePoint pages or Microsoft Teams Tabs. The Lighting Conductor can also contain multiple views of content, making it ideal to display all of your tasks from SharePoint Task lists, Microsoft To Do and Microsoft Planner in a single web part or Teams Tab.

*Microsoft Graph Reports are only available for SharePoint Online and not SharePoint 2019.Screenshot of BUILDING REPORTS ON MICROSOFT 365 GROUPS
Powered by Microsoft Graph, the Microsoft 365 Group Rollup Provider enables users to aggregate content by browsing and selecting Microsoft 365 Groups. Within Microsoft 365 Groups, you’ll be able to select entities such as Drive Items, Owners, Members, Planner Plans, Planner Tasks, Events, Posts,  Sites, Lists, and Calendars.

*Microsoft Graph Reports are only available for SharePoint Online and not SharePoint 2019.Screenshot of AGGREGATING USING SEARCH
When performance is critical, search can be used for rollups. The Lightning Conductor offers three data source configurations to get to content. Object Model (Real Time Aggregation from SharePoint Lists), Microsoft Graph (Aggregation from Graph Entities such as Planner, OneDrive, Outlook), and Search. The Search Data Source enables the aggregation of content from large SharePoint lists and libraries when performance is critical. Thousands of documents can be displayed in under a second using Search.Screenshot of HIGHLIGHTING KEY BUSINESS DATA WITHIN VIEWS
End users and Site Owners can highlight the data that is important to them, the data that they need to prioritize. Using conditional formatting, data bars, and icons, conditions can be configured to highlight the data that is most important. Icons and Data Bars can be any color or size desired. Examples include highlighting High Priority tasks, Showing data bars for the completion progress of Tasks, or indicating which tasks are assigned to any particular user.