Item: Freshdesk
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Freshdesk

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The main usage of the tool is for communication with customers. Through FreshDesk the initial contact to customers is conducted. The consulting process starts with the usage of multiple canned forms. After the initial phase, sales and project management are made through FreshDesk. It is useful especially for support issues.

The main problems solved are f.e. communication with a customer across the team, having a customer data base and data insights through the classification of issues. Automation through reply-templates and forms speeds up communciation in many cases.

Pros and Cons

Pros

creation of individual ticket templates
detailed exports
creation of answer templates and canned forms
no bugs, rarely any technical issues, great support

Cons

Options to connect FreshDesk data with other systems, f.e. through APIs
more options for automation
lot of manual typing, upload of contact data should be possible to create/update multiple contacts at one

Return on Investment

Resolution time -50 %
Time saving -80%

Implementation Rating

Freshdesk has a clear and easy to handle user interface. The features and structure are easy to grasp and most of them are intuitive, so there is no special training required. Most options are also easy to find and edit. Same goes for increasing the scope of usage.

Customer Satisfaction

Yes, as described before time for resolution and/or until first reply could be reduced significantly, which on the other end leads to higher customer satisfaction.

Alternatives Considered

YouTrack, Jira Software and Atlassian Confluence

Freshdesk has the broadest scope of features, at least from what is obvious. Integration with Outlook / Emails works better than in some of the products mentioned above. Freshdesk features tools for automation which are required for scaling. Also the user interface is the most easy to handle. It has to be mentioned though, that the products mentioned were used in their charge free plans, while Freshdesk is a paid product.

Key Insights

Do you think Freshdesk delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Freshdesk's feature set?

Yes

Did Freshdesk live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Freshdesk go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Freshdesk again?

Yes

Other Software Used

YouTrack, Atlassian Confluence, Jira Software, Microsoft Teams

Likelihood to Recommend

Freshdesk is good for communicating with customers, receiving and answering support issues and keeping an overview of messages / customers. Freshdesk helps with organizing customer data and with clustering support cases. It is also very flexible and tickets can be created with many options, which can also be exported to work with (e.g. Excel).

For CRM and Project Management there are better tools.

Freshdesk Feature Ratings

Using Freshdesk

Users and Roles

12 - Operations, Product, Project Management, Partner Management

Support Headcount Required

3 -

- Process optimization

- product and offer knowledge: FD support needs to know about the offer and customer needs. He/she needs to know about business processes and where quality issues exist or may occur

- needs to be someone who works with all other users, to ensure all user-requirements are met

Business Processes Supported

customer support
project management
issue handling

Innovative Uses

messaging multiple customers at once

Future Planned Uses

process automation
data oriented decision making

Likelihood to Renew

- use case for FD within organization is clear

- features used match needs

Evaluating Freshdesk and Competitors

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Scalability
Ease of Use

organized customer support and task tracking & sharing

Evaluation Lessons Learned

I would not change it

Freshdesk Implementation

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Yes -

- initial setup

- structure and process definition

- further details, multiple ticket types and canned responses

- optimization, dashboards etc.

Change Management Lessons

Change management was a minor issue with the implementation -

- provides structure and overview

- more professional and efficient customer service needed with growing numbers

- holistic use of few tools is better than many tools scattered across multiple teams

Implementation Issues

initial setup does not provide much support or guidance
no useful advice for making the most of individual use case
initial setup takes time, as most functions and features are edited manually to the last detail

Freshdesk Training

Training Types Used

No Training

In-Person Training

Online Training

Ease of Freshdesk Training

would not recommend, is possible but takes a lot of time
many useful features are not ovious

Configuring Freshdesk

Product Configurability

- usage is limited to few use cases

- in some parts configurability is not enough (f.e. removing or renaming certain ticket fields, drop downs etc.)

- solutions based on organizations, customers etc. are not available or very limited, making FD usage very monotonous

UI Customization

No - we have not done any customization to the interface

Extensibility and Customization

No - we have not done any custom code

Freshdesk Support

Support Rating

- overall the support is good, because reaction time is fast and issues are resolved satisfyingly

- AI chat bot is improvable, does not always understand the problem

- sometimes requested features are rejected and no efforts for substitutes are made

Freshdesk Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response	Need to explain problems multiple times