Freshdesk (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
Zoho CRM Plus
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Zoho Corporation offers Zoho CRM Plus, a customer experience management platform that features a virtual AI assistant, process automation and business rules engine, and customer behavior analytics.
Zoho CRM Plus offers more functionality then any of the other tools we looked at. We didn't feel like adding several additional software solutions just to get the same we can have in one package here. Zoho is maybe not perfect in every aspect but overall it's a great choice.
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.
Starting with campaigns, once we send the campaign out, prospects who open it are moved into the sales funnel; the sales team then calls or emails the prospect. Our VOIP works in conjunction with Zoho CRM Plus, so phone calls are logged into the contact. And generates another call, letter, or appointment with the client on the Zoho calendar. Emails are sent through Gmail since Zoho CRM Plus does not work with Gmail. The client's email must be copied and pasted into Gmail. (responses are tracked in the Zoho CRM Plus). Once the sales team meets with the client and starts the process, it turns into an "opportunity" where all stages in the sale are tracked. We mail merge the contact info to the correct letter template, then download it into "Word," where the letter is proofed and corrected as necessary (Zoho merge does not allow you to work in "Word" 2019). When finalized, it is then uploaded back into Zoho CRM Plus under the Opportunity. The sale then continues through the process, and once signed off on, all the details of the job are logged into the Zoho CRM Plus. When the job is completed and closed out, Zoho CRM Plus automatically sends the client a thank you email. The client will then can biannual automatic emails reminding them to set up their bi-annual inspection.
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.
Zoho CRM Plus is very good at automating many functional areas of our company including: sales, marketing, operations, and engineering. It is functionally rich, and matches the functionality we used to have with Salesforce.com, but at a much more reasonable cost.
Zoho CRM Plus is easily "configured" to match our business processes. The ability to configure the user interface is very good, and the "BluePrint", custom functions, and reporting allow us to automate our unique operational needs.
The buying process for Zoho CRM is extremely friendly. You can switch between software types from basic CRM to Zoho CRM +. You also can pay monthly, or annually, and don't have to purchase months before your renewal dates and get pestered by sales people.
Managing attachments. Limited space for each user and you can’t easily delete attachments in bulk so if you reach your limit it becomes expensive to buy more space or labor-intensive to find and delete attachments manually.
You can’t filter accounts by their related module fields. For example, in list view, filter all accounts with more than one contact.
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.
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.
I personally started off as a CRM novice. But in a matter of 2 months, I was writing my own custom workflows, playing with modules and fields, and training my sales and operations teams to manage leads and accounts. Simply put, the system is intuitive after a brief introduction. The level of customization is staggering until you change your mindset. Zoho CRM Plus excels where you're able to attack your goals as problems already solved in the platform — you just need to locate the feature to make what you want to happen... happen! I equate it to the Adobe Creative Suite. You don't pick the fun filter before you lay out what exactly you want to draw. With that mindset intact, you can dial in the system to meet your and your team's needs based on your proposed SOLUTIONS, not just leaning heavily into a single feature to "force" some ROI.
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.
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.
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
Every account representative I have worked with has been extremely helpful and nice. You can tell the account reps and support staff truly care about the product and want to provide you with the resources that you need. The response time is also fast for support inquiries and that has been a massive help for us.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I utilize HubSpot to gather data based on IP addresses from customers who visit our website. I do not use Zoho CRM for forms since the customization is clunky to design. HubSpot collects account data from the form and that helps me evaluate to sales potential of that account. Then I use Zapier to Zap the info into Zoho. Zoho CRM then is used to reach back out to the customer and begin tracking interactions
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.
I would recommend that module wise update feature be opened up, for free to an additional 50-75% of paid users. These users can be restricted to work on a single module to update information only where they do not cross over multiple modules
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.
I already discussed this prior with the Enterprise Support. But them aside, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Zoho is committed to connecting their userbase together. Within a month or two of using the product, we were told about Zoho User Groups. We had one right in my backyard (Chicago). I was able to both attend a meeting (pre-covid), and then stay in touch in an integrated Cliq channel. I always have power-users at my fingertips to ask quick questions. That Zoho makes it a point to keep these connections, and empower them... makes my life easier when inevitable "wants" pop up.
The ROI is significantly positive due to the comprehensive set of modules available.
Positive: My clients have better Dashboard data developed through Zoho Analytics than they do even though they use Salesforce. Also, Zoho CRM Plus can integrate with Salesforce or other system either through their own integrations or from Zapier.
Campaigns allows me to target specific prospects via HTML emails, and complete tracking. This is a complement to the more shotgun approach of social media,
