Earlier this year, we awarded the 2024 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Help Desk Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are unique in that they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user satisfaction scores.

Here are the winners in each segment, listed in order of research frequency on TrustRadius. We have also provided insights on how to pick the right help desk software based on your needs and current industry trends.

Overall Top Rated

• Intercom
• Freshdesk
• Zendesk Suite
• Salesforce Service Cloud
• SysAid
• NinjaOne
• GoTo Resolve
• SAP Service Cloud

What is help desk software?

Help desk software, which may sometimes also be referred to as customer service, service desk, or customer support software, provides the tools you need to organize your customer service activities and consolidate your interactions into a singular, ticket-based system.

This software can help you create one place where customers can request help from support agents or find answers on their own in a self-service knowledge base. Many help desks integrate with CRM, live chat software, and phone systems to create a suite of tools to help you effectively communicate with customers, so that interactions are as efficient and as easy to track as possible.

Key capabilities and trends

There is a growing segment of the population (younger digital-native generations in particular) who simply prefer to find answers online for themselves, without having to talk on the phone or interact with an agent. As a result, companies are putting more effort toward creating robust self-service support options that fulfill this need. More elaborate help desk solutions offer tools to help you build out your self-service knowledge base to includes forums, articles, FAQs, videos, recommendations, etc. that your customers can use to solve problems find information for themselves.

It’s still important to offer agent help if necessary, though, and many businesses want to have a smooth, consistent experience for customers–whether they start off looking for answers on their own but eventually need assistance, or submit a ticket right away and want to work on the problem themselves while they wait for a response.

Many customers now also expect support through social media channels. Many help desk solutions can be integrated with social channels, which can be monitored for complaints and requests that could become potential tickets in the system. There are point solutions for social media customer service on the market as well, which may have some overlap with help desks that offer social features.

Many enterprise suites offer “ominichannel” or cross-channel support tools that provide one interface for all support interactions, no matter the communication mode. Details are stored in the system (in real-time) every time a customer contacts your company’s support team, which creates a complete customer history all agents can easily access for quicker, more personalized care and smoother escalations.

Choosing the right help desk solution

Help desk software solutions are available in several pricing models, including freemium options, monthly or yearly subscriptions per agent, and one-time licensing or volume-based options that are more designed to accommodate scale. As you evaluate your options, make sure to consider the user experience for customers looking for help as well as the user experience for support agents, including the system’s information architecture and how well different resources/channels are coordinated.  

Using reviews in your research gives you authentic feedback from other companies with uses cases like yours–with agents, customers, and support cases that match your own–which can help you make a confident decision about which help desk software will work best for your business.

Top Rated Criteria

Products included in the 2024 Top Rated Help Desk Software list must have been in the top tier of their category in April 2024 to earn a Top Rated badge. To qualify for the Help Desk Software TrustMap, products have Recency, Relevancy, and Rating. This means they must have had:

• 10 published reviews on TrustRadius within the previous year,
• A trScore of 7.5 or higher, and
• At least .5% of traffic volume in their category.

Every reviewer is verified and every review is vetted before publication. Products are plotted on the map based on end-user data, including users’ likelihood to recommend scores as well as buyer research patterns. To learn more about Top Rated methodology, check out this page.