Characteristics of a good WordPress Helpdesk solution

A good helpdesk solution should essentially help in better customer experience. You need to ensure that it offers a comprehensive set of features to help you provide exceptional customer experience. First, let us try and understand some of the advanced features of a superior WordPress helpdesk solution:

No restrictions in number of agents and tickets

When you check out some of the popular helpdesk solutions, you may see many of them have restrictions when it comes to the number of agents who can use it. This may not be a great feature when your business is going through a rapid  growth phase. Paying additional charges every time a new agent is added to the team may not be a great outcome for a small business. So, look for WordPress helpdesk and support solutions with no restrictions in terms of number of agents and tickets that can be handled at a time.

Simple interface to manage tickets

The support agents will be mostly accessing the helpdesk system through the admin backend. This interface needs to be smooth and user friendly for agents to help them respond quickly to customer queries. An Ajax-based interface will quickly load tickets without reloading the page. Agents should also be able to view tickets in custom order and to sort them quickly using varied filters. Basically, if support agents are able to handle the ticket dashboard smoothly, they will be able to respond to customers quicker as well.

eCommerce integration

If you are running an eCommerce store, you have to integrate the helpdesk system to your store to make the customer support process streamlined. With the help of a support system integrated with eCommerce, your customers will be able to raise queries by associating them with specific products. Similarly, the agents will be able to see the purchase history and other details of the customers they are interacting with. The customer experience on your web store will be much superior if you have a helpdesk system that smoothly integrates with the eCommerce platform.

Workflow automation

If you have a big store and a considerably large number of products, your customer support process too will be complex. There will be a set of actions that happens before a customer query is replied to and resolved. A good helpdesk system will help you automate such routine actions in your customer support workflow to make the process faster. Sending notifications, assigning to an agent or department, adding priority tags, etc.can be easily automated.

Self service and canned responses

Not all customers will have the patience and time to wait for a support agent to answer to their queries. A lot of your customers will be willing to find answers on their own. By integrating with a knowledge base, you will be able to provide a good self service option through your helpdesk. In fact, this will help reduce the number of queries and make the system more efficient. Similarly, predefined answer templates or canned responses can help agents respond faster to repetitive queries. You may have to look for knowledge base integration and canned responses feature before zeroing in on a WordPress helpdesk solution.

Analytics tools

Good analytics insights are key to improving any digital solution. Obviously a good analytics dashboard can help your customer support system be much more efficient. On the analytics dashboard, you should get a good view on the resolution rate, response times, individual agent performance, queries related to a specific product, etc. The WordPress helpdesk solution that you choose should have a good analytics dashboard to help you measure performance without hassles.

Best WordPress Helpdesk and Support Ticket plugins

Now, let us explore the features of some of the popular WordPress helpdesk and support ticket plugins.

WSDesk

WSDesk is one of the most popular WordPress helpdesk and support solutions that you can choose to enhance customer experience. It integrates well with eCommerce platforms such as WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads. Even the basic version of WSDesk is feature rich with options to convert emails to tickets and unlimited agent profiles. Compared to other Saas-based solutions, WSDesk gives better control to store owners as it does not data in the cloud. The data related to your store and customers will be saved on your server itself and you need not depend on the service provider to access it.

Feature highlights

Here is a quick look at some of the standout features of WSDesk.

• Easy to manage support agent profiles
• Ajax-based interface for fast loading and sorting of tickets.
• Customize the contact forms.
• Triggers and automation to optimize your support workflow.
• Integration with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
• Canned responses for faster issue resolution.
• Back and restore settings and ticket data.
• Advanced shortcodes to customize certain functionality.
• GDPR compliant.

A single site subscription of WSDesk will cost you $89.

WooCommerce Help Scout

This plugin helps you integrate your WooCommerce store to Help Scout customer support solution. That means you will have to subscribe to a Help Scout subscription plan as well to make full use of this one. With the help of a shortcode, you will be able to place a Help Scout support form anywhere on your website. Moreover, it lets you initiate a conversation with any customer right from the order details page. This is a comprehensive solution that will help you manage your customer support much more efficiently than relying on multiple tools.

Feature highlights

Here are some of the exceptional features of Help Scout:

• Multichannel support through email and chat.
• Initiate targeted conversation with customers.
• Better collaboration of support agents with features like private notes, tagging, saved replies and collision detection.
• Automate actions to optimize workflow.
• Intuitive reporting features.

The single site subscription of the plugin has a price tag of $79. This is in addition to the Help Scout subscription.

Zendesk for WordPress

With the help of a free WordPress plugin, you will be able to integrate Zendesk support system to your blog or website. On your website or blog, you can display a Zendesk feedback tab that will let users search the knowledge base, chat with an agent or submit a ticket. Users registered to your website will be automatically signed in to Zendesk as well. You will be able to turn blog comments to tickets to respond to users promptly. Please note, you will have to subscribe to a plan of Zendesk to be able to use it.

Feature highlights

• Zendesk offers a range of advanced features to make your helpdesk system extremely robust.
• Multichannel support through email, mobile, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Multilingual admin interface with support for over 40 languages.
• Custom contact forms with conditional logic.
• Automation and triggered workflow to make your support system more efficient.
• Canned responses for quicker response to customers.
• Extensive analytics insights to improve customer experience.

WPHelpdesk

This plugin will help you focus on enhancing the customer experience on your site with an organized approach to customer support. WPHelpDesk has a robust filtering system that will help you prioritize support queries. Depending on the size of your team, you will be able to customize it to get absolute control over your support workflow. With the help of add-ons, you can easily integrate it with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.

Feature highlights

Let us take a look at some of the features of WP Helpdesk that will help you improve your support process.

• Easy to configure
• Extensive customization options to mould the user interaction pattern.
• View ticket history of each customer to prioritize requests.
• Integration with eCommerce platforms.
• Collaboration between support agents.
• Suitable for businesses of all sizes.

The single site subscription of the basic version without add-ons will cost you $99.

WP Support Plus Responsive Ticket System

This is another WordPress plugin that will help you set up a customer support system for your business. It will let you set up a customer support system with unlimited tickets and agents. It even allows guest users to submit a ticket. The plugin is Ajax based and helps to make your customer support system extremely fast. It comes with a set of add-ons that allows you to extend the functionality and features. You can opt for the free version or one of the paid options that comes with dedicated support and multiple add- ons.

Feature highlights

Here are some of the notable features of this plugin.

• Import emails directly to your ticket system
• Notifications to different users on your helpdesk system.
• Set up rules to assign incoming tickets to specific agents.
• Integration with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads
• Enhanced customer experience with knowledge base and canned replies.

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