The help desk function is the cornerstone for resolving end-user issues, and these end users consist of customers and employees distributed across multiple business units and geographic locations. Accordingly, the help desk function should ensure better customer service to improve brand loyalty, and it should service employee requests efficiently to reduce the impact on productivity.
The help desk function has also become a vital part of IT service management across organizations. Therefore, it should not only streamline request processes but enable efficient IT process management, which broadly includes asset management, change management, and problem and incident management.
According to Transparency Market Research, the help desk solution market is estimated to be worth US$11 billion by 2023. There are many help desk solutions available with a wide range of features and capabilities, and they target businesses of different sizes. This article discusses two widely used help desk solutions—Zoho Desk and SolarWinds® Web Help Desk®—and compares them in terms of features. This comparison should help you decide which solution is apt for your business requirements.
Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk is a scalable solution targeting customer service and offering Android and iOS apps for ticketing management on the go. It provides knowledge base functionality to help enable end-user self-service for recurrent and common issues not needing help from a support agent. This helps agents focus on more important tickets requiring their expertise. Zoho Desk also has a feature called Agent Collision Detection designed to identify whether two agents are trying to work on the same ticket. Aside from this, Zoho Desk features an AI assistant called Zia capable of auto-tagging tickets, performing sentiment analysis, and assisting with ticket replies. Zia can also directly speak with customers to help find possible solutions from the knowledge base.
SolarWinds Web Help Desk
Web Help Desk is an affordable help desk solution offering features designed to help you manage IT processes such as asset management, change management, incident management, and problem management. The tool helps you automate ticketing processes like creation, assigning, routing, and escalation. Moreover, you can reduce chaos in your help desk by linking related tickets and grouping multiple tickets related to the same issue. The solution also offers native integrations with Active Directory and LDAP to help you eliminate manual inputs and synchronize user information. To enable remote support assistance for service requests, you can natively integrate Web Help Desk with SolarWinds Dameware® Remote Support if you have both products. Additionally, you can send automatic feedback surveys upon closing service requests.
Zoho Desk vs. Web Help Desk
Though Zoho Desk and Web Help Desk offer similar features in terms of ticketing automation, SLA management, and escalations, they differ in terms of deployment options and IT process management capabilities. In general, Zoho Desk targets customer service functions while Web Help Desk is suitable for managing IT help desk functions and processes.
Integrations
Zoho Desk integrates well with other tools and products under the Zoho umbrella, and it features a marketplace to integrate third-party applications such as Jira, Trello, and Asana. On the other hand, Web Help Desk offers native integrations with SolarWinds products such as Network Performance Monitor, Server & Application Monitor, and Network Configuration Manager.
IT Asset Management
Zoho Desk doesn’t offer IT asset management features natively; however, you can manage IT assets using a custom application available in the marketplace called IT Asset Tracker. Web Help Desk offers built-in asset management functions such as asset discovery, reporting, inventory maintenance, and record-keeping. It features a built-in scanning engine designed to discover assets using IP ranges or subnets. With Web Help Desk, you can also associate assets with relevant service requests, and the solution has out-of-the-box integrations for asset management solutions like Absolute Manage and Microsoft SCCM.
Deployment
Zoho Desk is a software as a service (SaaS)-based solution and doesn’t offer an on-premises deployment option. Unlike Zoho Desk, Web Help Desk offers both on-premises and cloud deployment options. Organizations might have to consider certain trade-offs in terms of security, compliance, scalability, and maintenance costs when choosing one deployment option over the other. For example, Zoho Desk won’t be apt for compliance requirements needing on-premises deployment. On the other hand, Web Help Desk can be installed in FIPS 140-2 compatibility mode.
Conclusion
Zoho Desk and Web Help Desk are both scalable solutions. If you’re looking for a customer service solution, you can choose Zoho Desk. However, if you want to support end users and streamline IT processes with a unified help desk solution, you can choose Web Help Desk. As your business grows and needs to service requests from more customers and employees, you can scale with Web Help Desk. The solution offers two different licensing options (subscription-based and perpetual licensing) on a per-technician basis, giving you more flexibility.
You can try Zoho Desk free for 15 days. Web Help Desk also offers a fully functional 14-day trial to help you evaluate.