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Application Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Effective CRM which has enabled our team to significantly reduce resolution time using the easy ticketing system
Pros and Cons
  • "Freshdesk has allowed us to measure and track the response and resolution time of tickets which has been reduced from seven to eight hours down to 30 minutes to one hour."
  • "For integrations, we need to write code that communicates with their system in order to enable certain functionality in the system. This is a lot of work for their customers."

What is our primary use case?

We have many regional locations and one central HR team sitting in our head office. They receive a large number of queries from staff via email across a broad range of confidential topics. Using Freshdesk, we have been able to effectively manage both internal and external communication to this team using IDs and HRMS data. For example, once a staff member has left the company, their IDs are deactivated and their access to confidential information is prevented. 

We have used Freshdesk to group and assign similar queries to particular team members who are available. This has ensured that no one is receiving unnecessary emails. We have also been able to ensure that if a query has received no response for a certain period of time, that it is passed to the next available team member. Our teams are able to engage using the app which is easy and doesn't require them to log into their email. 

How has it helped my organization?

Freshdesk has allowed us to measure and track the response and resolution time of tickets which has been reduced from seven to eight hours down to 30 minutes to one hour. This information is valuable for board meetings. 

What is most valuable?

The easy integration, open APIs, and their overall product, which can be integrated with in-house applications have been valuable. We have also been able to connect and integrate our social media accounts into our in-house ERP system. 

Using Freshservice, our agents are able to see the full communication history with a customer in each ticket. This provides context for every agent, even in instances where we have new agents join the team. The solution also allows for the grouping of communication by employee ID which has been useful. 

This solution allows us to auto-assign and close tickets if there's no response within 48 hours. We can upload separate holiday calendars and time zones for India, Europe, the UK, or regions that update times stamps for customer communication based on these different times.

Freshdesk releases new features every few months based on the needs of their customers or the market.

Finally, very little code is required to make changes to the system.

What needs improvement?

For integrations, we need to write code that communicates with their system in order to enable certain functionality in the system. This is a lot of work for their customers. For example, when we implemented Freshdesk, my team needed to write coding for four or five API integrations. The need to write this code also caused some difficulty as we write code on a different platform. Minimizing code for all integrations would make a big difference.   

We would like to give access to Freshdesk for contract employees but this requires an email ID, which these employees do not have. Logging into Freshdesk is based on email login only. A year ago, we requested a different way for such employees to log in such as a mobile-based login but this is not yet possible. 

Buyer's Guide
Freshdesk
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about Freshdesk. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this solution for three years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

In three to four years, we have only had one incident in which emails were blocked which stopped our ticketing system from working. This impacted us for two to three days. Apart from this, we have not had any other severe issues. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

In total, we have 300 agents using Freshdesk across seven different teams. As this is a SaaS-based solution, it is easy to scale your use of the solution. 

How are customer service and support?

There is no direct contact number to reach a designated person. We need to call their tech support and deal with a different person each time. We usually need to reiterate what our issues are or write an email and the support phone numbers are UK numbers.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have previously used Zendesk.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is not complex. The user manual and initial demo given by the sales team of Freshdesk is good. Our non-technical team members were able to understand how it works within one to three weeks.

The initial setup took around two to three weeks. What took the most time was writing the rules to manage the ticketing system. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We use a licensing model only so we pay for the number of agents we have configured in the system only. 

What other advice do I have?

Before implementing Freshdesk, I would recommend understanding exactly which parts of the system you will need. You will need to know whether you will use the ticketing system only or need the whole management system including tracking all interactions, social media engagement, and the many other features Freshdesk has. It is important to first understand all of your own requirements. 

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Amit Lavi - PeerSpot reviewer
VP Customer Success at Secret Double Octopus
Real User
Useful automation of tickets, helpful support, but missing some small capabilities
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of Freshdesk are the automation of tickets to assign them to different agents, and the managing of documents is easy."
  • "Freshdesk could improve its capabilities. It's missing the article formatting, and the overall look and feel make it not easy to use. The administration instructions on how to manage the automation, capability, and integration with third parties, such as chat or bots, are very important in these types of solutions."

What is our primary use case?

We are using Freshdesk for a help desk and a call center for documentation and ticketing for customers.

How has it helped my organization?

Freshdesk allows our customers easy and simple way to consume the documentation as well as manage all tickets 

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of Freshdesk are the automation of tickets to assign them to different agents, and the managing of documents is easy.

What needs improvement?

Freshdesk could improve its capabilities. It's missing the article formatting, and the overall look and feel make it not easy to use. The administration instructions on how to manage the automation, capability, and integration with third parties, such as chat or bots, are very important in these types of solutions.

In a future release, it would be beneficial if Freshdesk added the ability to publish files. For example, if I have an FTP site and I need to publish something for customers, such as installation files, I cannot do it in Freshdesk. I have to upload that on another system and bring it in as a link instead of being able to do everything in one place.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Freshdesk for approximately three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Freshdesk is 90 percent stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Freshdesk is scalable. This is a SaaS solution, which is not managed by us.

We have approximately 500 agents and managers that are working with this solution which are outside customers.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support from Freshdesk is great, they are responsive.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used JIRA Service Management, but it was very expensive. We decided to go with Freshdesk because of the price. However, today I'm considering moving to Zendesk because they are richer in features and integrations and it allows me to do much more than Freshdesk.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of Freshdesk is not straightforward because there is a lot of preparation. However, this is something that would take time in any solution because you need to build your own look and feel.

I rate the initial setup of Freshdesk a five out of ten.

What about the implementation team?

The deployment of Freshdesk was done in-house.

The maintenance of Freshdesk is not simple. This includes directly the overall capabilities, such as formatting documents that you want to load and the ticket life cycle process.

I rate the maintenance of Freshdesk a five out of ten.

What was our ROI?

Freshdesk helps us to manage the customers and requests and documentation. With all the difficulties, we did receive an ROI that helps us to work with customers.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We pay approximately $70 per agent to use Freshdesk. We have 10 agents, which is approximately $700 or $800 per month. It is a fixed license, there are not any additional fees.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

we did evaluated other tools like SalesForce service and zendesk as well 

What other advice do I have?

My advice to others is they should check that Freshdesk services all their use cases, mainly on the documentation. It is standard ticketing, usually, it's fine. However, the documentation which you publish in the portal is not rich enough. You need to know what to do.

I rate Freshdesk a six out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Freshdesk
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about Freshdesk. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Head of HR and Training at ProSpark
Real User
Top 20
A very helpful tool for generating reports and managing customer inquiries
Pros and Cons
  • "It generated reports for us, which helped us identify the status of requests and the aging of requests."
  • "I would like to see a little bit more color in the solution."

What is our primary use case?

I used it within my team because the team came from different locations. So we used FreshStack as part of our CRM. When it came to our clients, we used it for anything customer-related. If there was any increase for the client, we used it.

We used Freshdesk as a customer service platform. We used it to deal with client inquiries, log issues, and requests. We used it to answer any questions that the customers might have about the LMS platform that we built because the platform was integrated with Freshdesk. If they had any inquiries, they would log into our platform, and we received them through Freshdesk.

We had about ten Freshdesk users in our company, and anywhere between a hundred and a thousand customers using it.

What is most valuable?

What I found the most valuable about Freshdesk is that it generated reports for us, which helped us identify the status of requests and the aging of requests. There are certain levels to a ticket depending on the category. Whenever we downloaded the report, we were able to see the aging of the tickets, ensuring that we were 100% with the SMAs that we've committed to your client.

What needs improvement?

I would say that Freshdesk is a little blunt. I would like to see a little bit more color in the solution. Other than that, I had no other issues with it. Our company didn't need anything highly technical, and Freshdesk was a helpful tool that did whatever we needed at the time. Even though we are located in the Philippines, we were able to assist our clients in Singapore and Indonesia through Freshdesk.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used Freshdesk for about three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Since it was cloud-based, we didn't have any issues with the stability of the solution at the time. It was a really good tool for us.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We did not have any issues with the scalability of Freshdesk. We had anywhere from a hundred to a thousand users but never had any problems with the solution.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before switching to Freshdesk, I had used Zendesk. I used Freshdesk for about three years and then started using Mojo Helpdesk.

How was the initial setup?

Freshdesk was set up by our tech team. We needed the tech team to integrate it with our platform since we could not do it ourselves, but I would say that the setup was user-friendly and that the solution does not require much maintenance.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I don't know much about Freshdesk's pricing since my managing director was the one who purchased the solution.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

If I were to choose from Freshdesk, Zendesk, and Mojo Helpdesk, I would opt for Freshdesk just because I was using it more extensively than other solutions. Zendesk was also good but I only used it for a year. When it comes to Mojo Helpdesk, the onboarding was not very extensive, and there were questions I had that were not answered. That was not directly the fault of Mojo Helpdesk, but the people who made us use it. Additionally, some of the functions ended up not working properly.

What other advice do I have?

I think good onboarding and good training are key to ensuring that the person using the solution will be able to understand all of its features and maximize its use. In addition, a good onboarding program for the client and for the user is crucial in order to optimize the platform.

Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Jovana Pavlovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Back Office Manager at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Real User
Reliable and handles large workloads but the tagging system is not great
Pros and Cons
  • "It is very easy to make reports."
  • "Having so many tags makes everyday work a lot more complicated, and a lot more time-consuming."

What is our primary use case?

We are using the product for communication with the clients. We use it for opening tickets and communicating.

What is most valuable?

It is very easy to make reports. There are a lot of tags on every ticket. As a supervisor or as a head of a certain department, you can easily make reports for every agent on your team. 

The solution is stable.

It's scalable and is able to handle big workloads. 

What needs improvement?

Having so many tags makes everyday work a lot more complicated, and a lot more time-consuming.

If I'm going to contact a client, then I have to put all of these tags, and that ticket is closed as the ticket has been sent. It's similar to when you send an email. That ticket has now been sent and therefore it's closed. If the client responds, the ticket will come back as open. However, if we send a ticket to a different department, let's say, then we have to put the ticket on as open to the different department and I'm not going to be able to see it unless the other department sends it and replies, and puts it back on my name as open. The ticketing feature is a bit complicated. 

In order to send a simple email to a client, I need three minutes. And due to the fact that we send a lot of emails, that amount of time required is time-consuming for us.

Freshdesk has a feature called Freshchat. I would like to have translation services inside the chat. We get a lot of clients from different countries speaking different languages.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for five to six months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. Its performance is reliable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The product is scalable. We handle quite sizable workloads and it is able to work well regardless.

While we have 100 users, not everyone uses this solution. We use it for customer support, finance, the operations department, and the partner's department, which may be up to 15 people. We do use it on a daily basis. We do not plan to increase usage until we hire more people. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Prior to this solution, we were using Zendesk. 

For us, the difference is you can see all of the tickets in Zendesk. That's really important, as you can also see tickets from a different department. You can see how a certain specific case is being handled. Is it being handled well? What are the updates? 

With Freshdesk, the tags are really time-consuming. You have to check with different departments and ask "Hey, have you checked this ticket, this ticket number?" You have to save the ticket number so you will be able to actually ask them. 

How was the initial setup?

I'm not responsible for the setup. That said, it's my understanding that we did have a couple of issues when it comes to workflow. For example, certain tickets should come to a certain department, and we have issues with that. 

What about the implementation team?

The company handled the initial setup in-house. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I'm not familiar with the pricing aspect of the product.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend Zendesk. I prefer Zendesk and would recommend it to everyone. Freshdesk I do not like as much. It's much more time-consuming. It's much more complicated. If you have a big workload, then that can get in the way of actually getting work done.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. We've gotten used to it, however, it's too time-consuming. Choosing this solution was a management decision. It's not ours. It's not an ideal ticketing system.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Calvince Okello - PeerSpot reviewer
Customer Success Lead at Power Financial Wellness, Inc
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Facilitates real-time chats with clients and provides integration with other applications
Pros and Cons
  • "I used Freshdesk for communication with the clients, such as real-time chats."
  • "The solution's inbound calls could be improved."

What is most valuable?

I used Freshdesk for communication with the clients, such as real-time chats. Freshdesk provides integration with apps like WhatsApp.

What needs improvement?

The solution's inbound calls could be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Freshdesk for less than one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I haven’t faced any issues with the solution’s stability.

What other advice do I have?

We performed customer interactions, including chats and ticketing with Freshdesk. I would also do a few outbound calls. I would passively recommend Freshdesk to others because I have not used Freshdesk that much.

The solution's multichannel support feature is good and time-bound. The response resolution time is also good because of the multichannel support feature. Some clients raise their concerns through WhatsApp, and others send emails, both of which are integrated with Freshdesk. You can capture all those conversations and tickets and merge them as one. This would be easy because of the multichannel support feature in Freshdesk.

Overall, I rate the solution eight and a half out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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PeerSpot user
Operations Manager at Instant Travel
Real User
Easily connects to folders and devices but lacks ability to change email subject
Pros and Cons
  • "The feature that I have found most valuable is the way that it connects to various folders especially because we use it as a CRM tool. We can connect it with our phones and our chat, and also with the API and have it as an email service. Freshdesk just makes our life easier."
  • "I would like to be able to change the subject in emails for ourselves. If we could have the option to do that, it would improve our speed and the overall cleanliness of the CRM."

What is our primary use case?

It is mainly used for customer support via email or chat.

How has it helped my organization?

I am able to use more analytics to track the performance. I also noticed that the overall speed of the platform is improved compared to our last CRM tool provider.

What is most valuable?

The feature that I have found most valuable is the way that it connects to various folders especially because we use it as a CRM tool. We can connect it with our phones and our chat, and also with the API and have it as an email service. Freshdesk just makes our life easier.

We were previously using OTRS on the on-premise server and there was limited space for us. With Freshdesk, we don't have to worry about that because they actually have a cloud version where you can store more information. Also, the analytics of Freshdesk, for me as a manager, make my life easier tracking the performance of the customer support team.

What needs improvement?

There are some features I would like to improve. For example, I would like to be able to change the subject in emails for ourselves. We use a lot of third parties. So if we want to handle an email from one of our suppliers or one of our clients, we have to have two tickets, and it would be easier if we could only have one ticket to handle everything. With Freshdesk, that's very difficult because we can't change subjects. So, if we could have the option to do that, it would improve our speed and the overall cleanliness of the CRM.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Freshdesk for about a year and a half.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is fairly good. We have had some small issues with system crashing but it was resolved quickly by the Freshdesk support.

How are customer service and support?

We had one issue that we had to escalate to the technical support. It crashed and we had to have their help to fix it. Their support wasn't the best, it took a little bit for the person to understand what I was trying to say. And they seem to have a lot of layers between the customer support and their tech team. But once it reached the tech team, they were very fast to solve it.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was fairly simple. We had about a month of trial and then it was fairly simple when we launched. We had an onboarding person that gave us overall training for it, and then they have the Freshdesk Academy, where they have training videos on their platform that I could use. It would just direct my team to see it as well, so it's fairly simple. It didn't take too long.

There were five people involved and it took about a month and a half.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I think the pricing is fair. I don't think it's cheap, but I also don't think it's too expensive. It was one of the best values for your money that we found when we were checking the possibilities of substituting the old CRM tool.

I think there is also a monthly fee, and if we want to have more features, we would have to also scale up the license.

What other advice do I have?

We switched to Freshdesk to have the possibility of having everything on the cloud. We used to have a physical server in our office and it just didn't make sense anymore.

My advice to anyone thinking about Freshdesk is to test it a lot. There are some features that are very different from other tools. And make sure that you understand everything that you need. Also to talk with the sales personnel at Freshdesk to understand what they can offer. In our case, there were a couple of things that we had to adapt because I wasn't very clear with our needs on the onboard process. So, it was more of my fault than theirs but then we had to adapt it because Freshdesk just didn't have some options. For example, with their ticketing process.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Freshdesk about a seven.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1960482 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Systems Analyst at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Phenomenal knowledge base and great for customer support functions, but not suitable if you are trying to solve problems and use assets
Pros and Cons
  • "Their knowledge base is phenomenal. The way that it learns from our users is awesome, and responses are really awesome as well. It does a pretty good job of picking up what's needed. The knowledge bases are great."
  • "If Freshdesk had forms in it so that I could go to the portal and fill out a service request, that would improve it immensely and make it more valuable for enterprise customers, but that's not a current functionality. You can't have a certain catalog of any type. You can't be like, "Hey, I want to just go submit a ticket," and then type in. You can't prompt them to ask anything. It is just a blank form."

What is our primary use case?

I've implemented it at multiple companies. Currently, our service bot lives in there, and it is able to answer questions for people. 

We have the Enterprise plan and the latest version. They're always on the latest. I don't even know how I would prevent that.

How has it helped my organization?

It is a little bit of a sore subject. We were with them because of some of what they had tried to implement in it, but it wasn't the appropriate solution.

In some ways, it has improved the way our organization functions, but anything would do that because we only had Outlook. If you're on the phone for a million minutes a month, you're getting a lot of emails too. For managing that, anything is an improvement from just working through emails. People were working just on distribution lists. It was not even a group email; they had just distribution lists with 50 agents on them. That's impossible.

I met one of their customers at a conference, and they love it for their customer support. That's because their support cases are not like, "Hey, I need to know where everything is in this logistics space right now." Their use case was like, "Hey, I don't like these pants. Can I return them please?" It is a very different use case than we had. So, for retail operations and anything like that, it is a perfect solution.

When it is the appropriate solution, Freshdesk is fantastic. It is a fantastic product for basic customer support use cases, but trying to stretch it, at least a year ago, was just so time-consuming and frustrating. If you have the right use case for it, it is the perfect solution.

What is most valuable?

Their knowledge base is phenomenal. The way that it learns from our users is awesome, and responses are really awesome as well. It does a pretty good job of picking up what's needed. The knowledge bases are great.

Its simplicity is valuable. It is straightforward and very easy for people. When we brought it in and moved from Outlook to ticketing, the concern was that a lot of our teams are older folks. They've been doing the same job for 15, 20 years, and they're not as likely to be as happy about the change. It was interesting to me that the older folks loved it and caught on to it so fast. The old timers, the people who've been there and doing their job, loved it. They never wanted to go to anything else. They absolutely loved it. The younger folks were like, "I wish it did more." When the younger people came into it and they realized that they could actually configure their own custom workflows for their stuff, they loved that. It was a lesson learned for me on what to train them on and what to give them access to because there are really good ways to set it up where it is not putting the system at risk.

What needs improvement?

If Freshdesk had forms in it so that I could go to the portal and fill out a service request, that would improve it immensely and make it more valuable for enterprise customers, but that's not a current functionality. You can't have a certain catalog of any type. You can't be like, "Hey, I want to just go submit a ticket," and then type in. You can't prompt them to ask anything. It is just a blank form.

Their sales team all the time tries to convince you that this is the only product that they have. I don't know why. I really don't get it. I spent a year just being like, "No, we shouldn't be in Freshdesk for this." They were telling my bosses that we should be, and I was like, "I'm telling you that's incorrect. Why are you telling my boss that? You don't even work here?" You don't even go here. What are you doing? They don't even check your circumstances. I am a certified Six Sigma Black Belt. I gave them all of our process maps and everything, and they didn't even read over them. They just kept trying to put us into Freshdesk when Freshservice was a better fit because all we do is move around trucks, trailers, and drive. That's what we do all day long. I would like to know how we would do that without asset management or a portal with forums. They were just constantly trying to get us to implement break fix after break fix after break fix instead of putting us on the right product in the first place. It wasted a year's time and money.

We are using it because the bot can't live in Freshservice. The bot has to live in Freshdesk. I wish the bot could live in Freshservice or be its own thing. If it was its own thing, it would be much easier, but you have to go into Freshdesk and go into the bot builder. It is weird. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable if your use case is appropriate for it. We have some people who are using it, but they're using just a bunch of workarounds in it. Currently, there are only 200 people using it in Operations. So, there is a team that is still using it. It is technically working, but they are moving away from it.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

They were using Outlook. Outlook is really good for emails to and from, but Outlook is not a ticketing system. You can't really compare the two. They just didn't have a solution before.

How was the initial setup?

They had a VP set it up, at which point I was hired to come in and fix it. They just didn't know what the consequences were of, for example, letting every single manager build the enterprise workflow that applied to everybody. So, it was constantly breaking. It just needed going in and just saying, "Hey, you don't need to go do that anymore. We can simplify this." That had to do with the wrong use case.

It is a customer support tool. If you try to do enterprise support or logistics in it, there could be issues. All of my use cases have been B2B, and I've had it work really well. It did work really well at a smaller company with a smaller team where our account managers used it. That worked really well, but recently, I have been just a little bit removed from it. I'm now working on a deployment of it. So, we'll see how that goes in a couple of weeks or months.

What about the implementation team?

In a straightforward use case, one person is fine for deployment. In a not straightforward use case, you need three people or maybe more because it is a lot of custom development.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We use a combination of Freshdesk, Freshservice, and Freshchat. We use the whole suite. Weirdly enough, we pay more for Freshdesk than we do for Freshservice. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of pricing.

You can get different bundles, and you can always move to different plans that are standard. Freshservice can go anywhere from $19 up to $120 per agent, per month. There is such a wide range, and it is very customizable to your needs.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

It was done before my time.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise looking into the suite of products and using the right tool for your job because they all talk to each other really well. They're well built out. There are really good tools for different work functions. So, look into what a product gets used for. For your HR team, it is Freshteam. That's what it's for. So, all of those things exist, and they have really good purpose-built tools to build out a full suite, but trying to just configure something into something that it is not meant for is not a great idea. Just use the product that's meant for your function, and you'll have a much better time. Their sales team just wants to sell Freshdesk, and I don't know why.

It is hard to rate it in a use case where they just kept saying, "No, you need to use this." And we're like, "Why? I don't want to." And they go, "Yes, you should." If somebody is vetting it for customer service, which is what it is for, then I'd rate it high, but if it is not being used for its intended purpose, then it is a very low score. 

It wasn't the right use case at my current company, but when I implemented it at another company, it worked great there. I loved working with it. I really enjoyed the product. If you're looking at a customer support function, it is great, but if you're trying to solve problems and use assets and do these other things, then it is not great. 

Overall, I would rate it a six out of ten. It is a great product when used correctly.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1580043 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of IT at a wholesaler/distributor with 51-200 employees
Real User
Solid, good price, simple to use, and requires negligible training effort
Pros and Cons
  • "Its simplicity is most valuable. It is easy and simple, and it requires negligible training effort. I don't spend all my time goofing around trying to find stuff in the ticketing system."
  • "We have many cases where a ticket comes in, and it ends up having multiple team members working on it. It would be really nice to be able to assign a single ticket to multiple people, rather than having to create the parent-child hierarchy that they have set up. It generates a proliferation of tickets that I really don't want to have. Having to jump from a parent to one child and then to another child makes it harder for me to be able to see the entire case from end to end. A simple example is our new hire process or our termination process. We have people who leave. We also have people who come on board. We have got multiple people participating and doing things related to the leaving or onboarding process. Currently, I have to go to different tickets to be able to see whether all tasks are really done or not. If I could assign lots of people to one ticket, it would be really nice."

What is our primary use case?

We are using it for IT support, desktop support, and any issues with any of our applications. We use it pretty extensively. It is the portal that we use for any requests, work being done, questions, bug fixes, and third-party software bug fixes. We even use it for tracking small projects.

It is a SaaS solution, so we have its current version.

How has it helped my organization?

We had over-customized HEAT to the point where it was just not very useful for a company of our size. Getting Freshdesk was like a breath of fresh air because it was simple to use. It required zero or negligible training effort on the part of my team. We just started creating tickets. We integrated it with our email so that we can auto-generate tickets. It wasn't too bad as a technical challenge, and it just worked.

What is most valuable?

Its simplicity is most valuable. It is easy and simple, and it requires negligible training effort. I don't spend all my time goofing around trying to find stuff in the ticketing system.

What needs improvement?

We have many cases where a ticket comes in, and it ends up having multiple team members working on it. It would be really nice to be able to assign a single ticket to multiple people, rather than having to create the parent-child hierarchy that they have set up. It generates a proliferation of tickets that I really don't want to have. Having to jump from a parent to one child and then to another child makes it harder for me to be able to see the entire case from end to end. A simple example is our new hire process or our termination process. We have people who leave. We also have people who come on board. We have got multiple people participating and doing things related to the leaving or onboarding process. Currently, I have to go to different tickets to be able to see whether all tasks are really done or not. If I could assign lots of people to one ticket, it would be really nice.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for a year and a half.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We might've had one outage a long time ago. It was down for a fairly brief time. Other than that, it has been solid.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We don't have a huge company, so it is kind of hard to tell, but certainly, I've had zero problems with performance and being able to look at lots of tickets versus a small set of tickets. It should be fine in terms of scalability.

We have eight people in IT who are actively using it. Overall, we have 135 people in the company. They're the ones submitting tickets to us by email or by calling in, and then we create the ticket manually.

In terms of usage, I don't see it going outside of IT to the rest of the company. We use it for basically 100% of our IT work. We're pretty all in.

How are customer service and technical support?

They were decent. I was CC'd on a couple of emails when we were setting it up initially. There was some stuff about the email integration that was probably the hardest thing we did, and we needed a little bit of technical help on that, and they were timely. We didn't have 14 different back-and-forth exchanges where you felt like they're just answering from a book rather than really listening to the problem that you have and trying to address it.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using HEAT. We switched because of the frustration amongst the whole team about how complex our system was. We had over-customized HEAT to the point where it was just not very useful for a company of our size. We needed something easier.

How was the initial setup?

I didn't do it. It was someone from my team. He did it in three or four days in the midst of everything else he was doing. It was simple. You just add in our users. He was able to import the names of everybody from the active directory, so we got all the employees there.

We had to sit down and have a meeting to decide the lists, categories, and groupings, and then he just did it. A couple of days later, I started to use it in the pilot form, and we cut over to it fast.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented it ourselves. You don't need to have anybody else do it.

In terms of maintenance, the only thing that we have to do to maintain it is just to add a new call type or something like that, but any of us can do that. It is very intuitive.

What was our ROI?

We have absolutely seen an ROI.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It was definitely not expensive. It was two grand or maybe three grand total for a year.

It has just straight and simple standard licensing fees. There is no additional fee.

What other advice do I have?

If somebody is implementing a new IT service desk ticketing system, they should definitely look at Freshdesk. If they just want a lean and mean system, it is really a great option. If you need a lot of ITIL complexity and have a very large team, and there is a lot of back-and-forth with tickets and heavy approval process and stuff, it may not be suitable. We have only one of their products. They may have other products that bolt onto it and add that in. We are using the simple version, and it doesn't necessarily have all those controls, but in our case, we didn't need all that.

I would rate Freshdesk a nine out of ten. I am very happy with it.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user