Best Ecommerce Help Desk Software

If you run an online business that sells goods and need to provide customer service for those goods, then you will know the importance of having a help desk software. Having a help desk software is important because it streamlines the entire process that happens from the time a customer asks for help until the time when their problem is resolved. Because there are lots to choose from, it is hard to decide which one is best, so we decided to help you out by compiling a list of what we feel are the top 5 ecommerce help desk software solutions available today.

What is ecommerce help desk software?

An ecommerce help desk is a customer contact platform for all your customer service. This might mean pulling in information from several sources:

• Emails from your online store.
• Messages from marketplaces like Amazon and eBay.
• Phone call logs.
• Live chats.

You can help all your customers from the same browser window, and all support records end up in the same place.

Help desks also come with tools to make support easier. For example, you can create a library of saved replies so you don’t have to write the same answer 20 times a day.

Does your ecommerce business need a help desk?

Not every ecommerce business needs help desk software. It’s rarely free, it takes time to set up, and it forces teams to change how they work. Sometimes it isn’t worth the resources it uses.

But only sometimes.

In most cases, a help desk will save time, money, and keyboard-sore fingers. Whether it will do that for you depends on the way your team serves its customers.

Read through the benefits below to see how an ecommerce help desk can help your business.

Make multichannel support easier

How many support channels do you use? Definitely email, right? How about eBay messaging? Amazon messaging? Chat? Others?

If you’re dealing with more than one, you’re providing multichannel support. Almost every ecommerce business does. Since different channels have different interfaces, passwords, sets of tools, and message archives, they tend to get isolated from the rest of the business.

Siloing each channel like this can cause huge problems:

• Inconsistent support across different channels.
• Difficulty prioritizing requests.
• The need to create and maintain redundant systems.
• Trouble collecting and analyzing support data.
• Longer training times for employees who serve multiple channels.
• Slow responses as agents switch from screen to screen and back again.

A help desk puts everything in one place and eliminates all the issues above. Most help desks support email by default and can pull in other channels with the help of upgrades and apps.

When you can go from flipping through browser tabs all day to answering everything on a single screen, it’s magic.

Save time on replies

Take a look at the support tools you use right now. Do they make it possible to meet response time expectations? If not, could you make better use of them?

Take Amazon as an example. Their email templates let you save answers to common questions and enter them with two clicks, much like saved replies in a help desk. Are you taking advantage of tools like these, or are they getting ignored?

A few hours learning and setting up the tools available to you might turn into that much time saved every week.

When you understand what you already have, check whether a help desk would be a step up. Most will let you:

• Create saved replies (also known as email templates or prepared responses).
• Set up automatic responses, reminders, and notifications.
• Assign conversations to specific agents.
• Organize and prioritize customer interactions.
• Automate repetitive management tasks with tools like workflows

Few other support systems offer so many time-saving features. In addition, help desks make these tools available across all of your supported channels, not just one.

Would these make customer service easier for your team, or do you already have all the tools you need to reply as fast as possible?

Identify who helped which customer

Have you ever looked at a teammate’s response and wondered, “Who wrote this?”

Maybe the responder was less than professional. Maybe the author had some information that you don’t, and you’d like to pick their brain.

Whatever the case, you need to know who sent that message, but there’s no way to tell.

Some support systems (like eBay’s) don’t track who wrote which response. Agents can always write in a signature, but that slows them down and invites inconsistencies.

Help desks provide separate accounts for everyone on your team, logging who wrote which reply and when. They also make it easy to view all of a given agent’s responses, so there’s no more guessing.

Keep support records organized

Collecting data points on support can feel like chasing marbles down a hill. Every time you pick one up, others roll further away as more requests come bowling in. If you’re dealing with multichannel support, it gets even worse as they bounce down side roads and skitter into the bushes.

You may keep up using a spreadsheet for a while, but that very quickly becomes unsustainable.

Here are some signs your team may be chasing too many marbles:

• A customer writes in about a prior request, but agents can’t locate it and have to ask the customer to re-explain the situation.
• Team members often ask each other for info they can’t find on their own.
• Large-scale problems go unrecognized for too long because patterns are hard to identify.
• When the support manager is asked to provide a statistic, they have no information.

You might have less trouble if you only provide support from one email address. However, if you have messages in multiple systems, you’ll be rolling down that hill like Princess Buttercup.

Help desks put all your marbles in a nice, level box so they can’t roll away from you. With all your customer service in one place, all your records are in one place as well.

Most help desks will even sort your data points with deep search options. They make it easy to find every message from a given person, whether that person is an agent or a customer. More advanced features like custom fields allow you to track details unique to your business, such as SKUs or shipment tracking IDs.

Do whatever it takes to avoid losing your marbles.

Make important decisions using accurate data

OK, so you’ve collected your basic info. You have your marbles. Now what? Does that data mean anything, or are you going to have to spend some quality time with Excel and PowerPoint?

Help desk reporting tools can gather info and crunch numbers fast. Some can show details like your busiest times and days, average first reply times, and customer satisfaction statistics.

This actionable data powers smart decisions. You’ll know when your customers need you most, where there’s room for improvement, and whether new strategies are working. If you’re sick of making decisions in the dark or spending hours in spreadsheets, a help desk will help.

The 8 best ecommerce help desk tools

If after reading the information above, you decided your business could benefit from a help desk, start your shortlist of options to consider with the eight great ecommerce help desk tools below.

1. Help Scout

Best for growing teams focused on customer support.

Help Scout is a complete customer support platform dedicated to helping growing teams deliver exceptional customer service. When you sign up, you get access to an entire suite of customer support tools.

Help Scout’s shared inbox tool makes managing customer conversations hassle-free. You can automate routine tasks like ticket sorting using workflows and add additional context to conversations using notes. With saved replies, you’re able to answer routine requests quickly.

You’re also able to empower customers to find answers on their own with Docs and Beacon. Docs is knowledge base software that lets you create, organize, and manage support-related content. The intuitive WYSIWYG editor makes content creation quick and easy, and the built-in search capabilities ensure customers can find the information they need.

With Beacon, you’re able to deliver help content wherever your customers are through an embeddable widget. Customers can search your help documentation directly from the widget, and you can even set suggested articles for each individual page. If they’re not able to find what they need, they can submit a request to your support team from the widget, too.

More specifically for ecommerce teams, Help Scout also offers integrations for Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento, letting you see things like order history to streamline customer interactions. If you use another platform, you can always create a custom integration using the API.

Best of all, you can set up Help Scout in a matter of hours and be a power user by the end of week one. You also get access to world-class 24/6 support if any questions come up during your set up. It’s everything any ecommerce team needs to deliver outstanding customer support.

Price: Starting at $20/user per month.Try the customer support platform your team and customers will loveTeams using Help Scout are set up in minutes, twice as productive, and save up to 80% in annual support costs. Start a free trial to see what it can do for you.Try for free

2. Zoho Desk

Best for teams using another Zoho product.

Source

Zoho is most known for their CRM tool, but they have actually had a help desk solution for years called Zoho Desk. It includes some of the common tools you’d expect to see like a shared inbox tool, a knowledge base builder, and options to do live chat support.

You’re able to automate certain routine tasks, and their AI product, Zia, can reduce ticket volume for agents (though it’s only offered on their highest-cost plan). On the ecommerce side of things, you’re able to connect to Shopify and some other online marketplaces through third-party integrations.

If you’re using Zoho CRM, you’re able to seamlessly connect customer profiles to your help desk software, which can provide additional context to customer conversations. We should note, some basic features like collision detection are limited to higher-cost plans. You also have limited access to Zoho’s support team, unless you’re on a higher-tier plan.

Price: Starting at $14/agent per month.

3. Freshdesk

Best for teams doing phone support.

Source

Freshdesk is a customer support platform that includes a number of different customer service tools. There’s a shared inbox, a knowledge base builder, live chat software, and even AI-powered automations you can utilize.

Where Freshdesk really shines is phone support. They have advanced phone management features and include minutes on all of their omnichannel plans. It’s something to keep in mind if your team communicates with customers over the phone regularly.

On the ecommerce front, Freshdesk has a Shopify app that lets you see order history, provide refunds, and cancel orders directly from their tool. They also have integrations for other ecommerce platforms in their marketplace, though they aren’t as robust.

Price: Starting at $29/agent per month.

4. Gorgias

Best for Shopify-based businesses.

Source

Gorgias is a help desk solution with a heavy focus on ecommerce use cases. When you sign up, you get access to a shared inbox tool, which supports a number of channels including email, Facebook, and Instagram. You also get access to a live chat tool.

Gorgias also offers Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento integrations (though Magento is only available on the higher-cost plans). After setting them up, you’re able to see, edit, and even refund orders directly from the help desk application, saving your team lots of time.

That said, there are a couple of downsides. First, Gorgias doesn’t offer much in the way of self-service tools – for example, they don’t have a knowledge base builder. Second, their pricing is based on volume, meaning your costs could vary month to month, which may be difficult for some teams to stomach.

Price: Starting at $50 per month.

5. Zendesk

Best for large teams with big budgets.

Source

If you’ve done any amount of looking for customer service software, chances are you’ve come across Zendesk. They offer a customer support platform that has all the usual suspects like a shared inbox, a live chat tool, a knowledge base builder, and even proactive support options through automated messages.

With Zendesk you also get access to a number of collaboration tools like internal notes and collision detection. You can improve productivity by automating routine tasks and can even go a step further by utilizing Zendesk’s AI tool (though it is limited to their higher-cost plans and there are limits on replies).

You can also connect to most ecommerce sites through third-party integrations in Zendesk’s Marketplace. Honestly, there’s not a lot Zendesk doesn’t do. That said, Zendesk is on the pricier end of help desk tools. Also, many users report there are additional setup costs and that getting the software fully set up can take upwards of three months.

Price: Starting at $49/agent per month.

6. Zendesk

Zendesk is one of the most established help desk software options. They serve businesses from small-medium companies to multinational organizations. Their packages are customizable, and you can add different features as you need them.

It offers ticketing, a wide range of integrations with different channels and platforms, recording of phone calls, reporting, and ticket tracking to name just a few. Zendesk is designed with multiple functions in mind and can serve e-commerce and other sectors efficiently.

The software can help you help your customers, save time with workflows and automation and provide excellent customer service from one location.  

Review Scores

• Shopify App Store: 2.9/5 from 115 reviews
• Capterra: 4.3/5 from 126 reviews
• G2 Crowd: 4.2/5 from 2275 reviews

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• All messages from all platforms are integrated to one place, which makes it very efficient. You can see each sector (phone, email, help-center, and chat) in one place.  
• Records phone calls, which is a plus. 
• Streamlined and efficient, easy to customize.
• Some users reported good customer service.
• Allows for the attachment of all types of content, from photos and files and special attachment formats.
• Allows for internal conversations regarding the customer’s issues before releasing an external answer or question response, which is very helpful.
• Wide array of APIs for integration and customization.
• Combination of WYSIWYG and HTML Knowledge Base article editor – allows for an increased number of users publishing articles.
• The tabs on each ticket issue are great and you can see who else is currently viewing the tickets you are looking at.

Cons:

• The free trial has the features of the top tier, so capabilities are very limited after the free trial if you don’t choose the top tier package.
• Slowed down the site for some users.
• Installing the app does not automatically create a Zendesk Support account, which is needed for the app to work.  The app can’t sync to the account until it is set up separately.  
• Price plans and packages are complicated and require add-ons for full functionality.   
• Some users reported that there was a lag between emails sent and arriving in the workspace.
• Not always clear and user friendly, takes time to work out how to use it properly.
• Some users found it to be quite slow and buggy at times.
• Limited reporting on the cheaper plans, which makes it expensive for limited reporting.  
• Initial setup and getting the admin side properly set up is time-consuming.
• Some users here reported very poor customer service, which was slow and unknowledgeable.  
• The metrics are geared more for a large support center and agent productivity, rather than customer experience.

Pricing (yearly):

• Free Trial: Yes
• Support: $5 to $199 per month, depending on features
• Support Suite: $89 to $149 per month, depending on features
• Custom-built: Custom pricing depending on features
• Sales and Platform: Numerous packages available
• Add-ons and additional features for all plans: pricing varies

Website: https://www.zendesk.com

7. UVdesk

UVdesk is a cloud-based application with some great features to satisfy your customers and make your life easier. It allows you to control your workflow and boost productivity by doing so much for you automatically.

UVdesk creates tickets from social media comments, emails, and messages. It provides live chat functions and automated responses to frequently asked questions. The form builders, information center and customizable options allow you to make it very personalized for you and your customers.

UVdesk is very easy to use and customize, which makes it very efficient to use. This gives you more time and energy to focus on your customers and giving them the best experience possible!  

Review Scores

• Shopify App Store: 4.8/5 from 18 reviews
• Capterra: 4.3/5 from 12 reviews
• G2 Crowd: 4.3/5 from 2 reviews

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• It’s easy to use and simple to install and set up.
• Offers Live Chat Support for the customers and live chat that feature did not slow down the page.
• Generates tickets if someone comments/messages on any social media handle.
• Great customer support, responsive and attentive to detail.  
• Allows you to manage multiple stores and marketplaces from one place.
• Allows you to create personalized feedback, contact us and suggestion forms.
• Tickets can be assigned to different team members and can be prioritized.
• A wide selection of integrations.
• Constantly improving and developing new tools to keep it up to date.
• Good reporting and filtering. Agent Insights tool allows you to measure the capabilities of specific agents.
• The knowledge base feature can generate frequent questions and answers. Predefined templates for common queries save a lot of time.
• It has a very user-friendly interface.
• Highly customizable, can have multiple forms with multiple fields.
• Great for small-medium sized businesses.

Cons:

• Lacks some branding flexibility for standard functions.
• The free version does not offer all functions but is still a good option.
• Comprehensive functionality and configuration can be a bit complex for some users.

Pricing (yearly):

• Free Trial/Open Source: Free
• Pro: from $96, depending on number of agents
• Enterprise: from $360, depending on number of agents

Website: https://www.uvdesk.com/en/

8. Help Scout

Help Scout takes automation to a new level, it helps you identify customer needs and the solutions needed to meet them. It keeps conversation histories accessible from within the message window when responding to clients and allows you to share internally so you can collaborate with your team to come up with the best solution to their query.

The automation features allow it to answer frequently asked questions for you and provides you with relevant content too. This cuts down the time spent on common queries and streamlines the process for unique queries, allowing you to provide fast and insightful customer support.

Improved response times, accuracy and personalization improve the customer support experience and help you nurture that connection with your customers.  

Review Scores

• Shopify App Store: N/A
• Capterra: 4,7/5 from 163 reviews
• G2 Crowd: 4.3/5 from 225 reviews

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Very easy and intuitive to use.
• Great customer support that is quick and helpful.
• Search functionality is great and uses keywords so you can create automated responses to frequent questions. The reporting is also useful for creating guides based on real search terms.
• The ticketing system integrates with Infusinsoft and Trello, so you transfer information between teams.
• Allows you to assign tickets and leave notes for teammates, which makes customer support more efficient and accurate for that specific client. The private conversations/notes that are attached to a customer conversation give you a record of why that specific solution was chosen.  
• You can use one email account, yet have multiple people responding to those incoming emails and you can assign them to specific people.
• Links to previous conversations are provided in the sidebar within a conversation, so you can access them easily.
• Shows you when customers viewed the emails you sent so you can see if you need to follow up or not.
• They’re a certified B Corporation, which means they meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.
• Provide really good resources for their clients to make the most of the software and they constantly do upgrades and updates to improve.

Cons:

• Workflow automation is not very well organized and would be better with more customization capabilities.
• Some users reported that it was slow to load and felt ‘clunky’ at times but was great at other times.
• Permission levels for team members do not allow much flexibility and it does not keep a log of who changed what.
• Customer service can be slow, and it can be difficult to connect with a human support agent if you need more than a pre-defined response.
• Reports can be inaccurate, and some information doesn’t pull to the reports at all, making it difficult to use the reports.
• Some users reported system glitches, errors, and bugs that lead to emails going to the wrong recipients.

Pricing (yearly):

• Free Trial: Yes (15 days, different packages)
• Standard: $20 per user/per month
• Plus: $35 per user/per month 
• Company: Custom Pricing

Website: https://www.helpscout.com

9. Front

Front collates all your incoming queries, sorts and manages them, from various channels. It allows you to see all your tickets in one place, making large volumes of incoming tickets manageable. This improves response times and allows you to give your best support to your customers.

Reminders, personalization, and the ability to share drafts internally to verify that information is correct makes giving timely, accurate, and personal responses easy, every time.

Internal reporting allows you to measure and track performance for your team, record responses sent and gather customer information through surveys.  

Review Scores

• Shopify App Store: N/A
• Capterra: 4.5/5 from 199 reviews
• G2 Crowd: 4.6/5 from 610 reviews

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Easy and accessible when doing the initial set up and easy to use. The user interface is attractive and well designed.
• Features help teams work together for sales and support. The abilities to share, assign, comment on, snooze and resurface issues make ‘zero inbox’ possible.
• Great for categorizing and efficiently assigning inbound messages, with tags, notes and color-coding. Displays who in the email chain has read the email. Allows team members to converse within the thread but out of sight of the customer.
• Quick sharing of drafts, which is great for confirming accurate information across multiple departments before sending it to the client.
• Allows for integration with external CRM.

Cons:

• Some users reported that customer support was not great at all and issues took a long time to be resolved.
• Some users had bugs and glitches when using Gmail.
• Templates and rules are not very customizable, which limits functionality.
• Does not allow for ‘lite agents’ that only use it from time to time. All agents are paid for, regardless of how often they use it/if they’re filling in for another agent.

Pricing (yearly):

• Free Trial: Yes (7 days, different packages)
• Starter: $9 per user/per month
• Plus: $24 per user/per month
• Prime: $49 per user/per month
• Enterprise: $79 per user/per month
• Add-ons: $20 per to $200, depending on feature

Website: https://frontapp.com/help-desk-software

10. HappyFox

HappyFox is a cloud-based e-commerce help desk software. It is very easy to use, which makes it quick to set up and get going, even for those who don’t have experience with similar software.

It generates tickets automatically from emails and social media, sending them to a single place for you to manage them all with ease. The software comes with everything you need to run, no add-ons needed.

Automation helps you decrease the hours you would spend manually dealing with every query and helps you provide accurate feedback to your clients as quickly as possible. Features include knowledge base building, surveys, reporting, assigning to specific team members, and customization options.

Review Scores

• Shopify App Store: N/A
• Capterra: 4.6/5 from 82 reviews
• G2 Crowd: 4.6/5 from 118 reviews

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Easy to use across teams, easy to view data, and easy to customize.
• Creates a knowledge base for automation and template purposes.
• Surveys are useful for qualifying pain points, issues, and solutions to get a full picture of customer satisfaction.
• Excellent customer support, which is available 24/7, and smart guidelines that help users improve.
• Sends updates to both email and phone notifications, allows for incoming tickets to be assigned to specific team members if needed. Assists communication between teams and departments.
• The interface is attractive and simple to use once it is set up.
• Offers good customization for reports, branding SLAs, and ticket types.

Cons:

• The initial set up was lengthy and complicated.
• Responding to tickets on mobile is limited.
• Some users reported notification delays that caused response delays.

Pricing:

• Free Trial: Yes (access to a trial account, after watching a demo, on request only)
• Agent-Based and Unlimited Agent Plans: Pricing on request, contact them via their website
• Offer 10% discount for an annual subscription

Website: www.happyfox.com

11. Kayako

Kayako e-commerce help desk software helps you provide great customer service. It collates your incoming queries, from multiple channels, into one shared inbox for you. It also allows for easy integration with live chat software if you need one.

Kayako provides customer support in different languages, making it ideal for stores with international customers. Tickets and conversations are customizable, allowing you to further personalize your support for your customers.

They have a mobile app that can sync with all the smart devices, allowing you and your customers to be connected in real-time from anywhere. These features make Kayako a great choice for building and maintaining close relationships with your customers, for increased loyalty and retention.

Review Scores

• Shopify App Store: N/A
• Capterra: 4/5 from 154 reviews
• G2 Crowd: 4.1/5 from 196 reviews

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Allows for tickets to be sorted and organized into folders, assigned to teams or departments, keeps a full history of communication on tickets to refer to. Very efficient at organizing and streamlining incoming messages from various platforms.
• Offers live chat for immediate responses to customers.
• Offers simple ticket handling features and acts as a support portal that one can use fast and free as a cloud solution for a small team or company.
• Great customer support, professional and responsive.
• Very easy to use and simple to customize. The Control panel and dashboard are clear and uncluttered.
• The KQL Report Generator feature is easy to understand and allows you to extract relevant information and set statistics based on your own specifications.
• Offers a public customer portal for customers to view their tickets.
• Provides very good reports on an individual level of what is being done for a customer or specific issue.

Cons:

• Some users found the interface was not very user friendly and was difficult to navigate.
• Some users found the sales team to be aggressive and that the product offering changed without warning or choice.
• Allows for limited customization with fonts and colors.
• Not as advanced as competitors in terms of integration options.
• Working with different queues in different departments can be confusing and overwhelming for some.
• Some features are present but not fully functional in a way that makes them valuable. For example, the timekeeping feature tracks the time and if it is billable or not but does not send that information to reports so you can’t work out the cost to the company associated with it.

Pricing (yearly):

• Free Trial: Yes (14 days, different packages)
• Inbox: $15 per agent/per month
• Growth: $30 per agent/per month
• Scale: $60 per agent/per month
• Enterprise: $100 per agent/per month

Website: https://www.kayako.com

12. Re:amaze

Re:amaze streamlines conversations with customers well. Automated chatbots, live chat, and message templates help you keep your responses quick and accurate.

It allows you to collate several support sites into one place for centralized control and responses that you can manage easily.

Built-in reporting features keep conversations up to date and organized. The automated workflow keeps your conversations moving and helps you keep your customers happy and feeling connected and cared for.

Customer satisfaction surveys, both quantitative and qualitative, help you keep your finger on the pulse and maintain a high level of customer satisfaction.

Review Scores

• Shopify App Store: 4.9/5 from 157 reviews
• Capterra: 4.9/5 from 54 reviews
• G2 Crowd: 4.6/5 from 124 reviews

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Great customer support that is detailed, quick, and helpful.
• A “lean, affordable, and completely effective” option.
• Integrates seamlessly with Shopify, even at a very detailed level.   
• Displays all customer information (order number, tracking number, past correspondence, etc.) in the same window as the email, so that we can quickly and effectively help customers.
• Initial setup is easy and simple and there is a lot of material available to learn how to use it effectively.
• Allows you to filter by store and/or ticket type, which is very convenient if you have more than one store.
• Integrates with social media platforms and various e-commerce platforms, including BigCommerce.
• Regular updates and improvements to the software.  
• Automation and templates make responding to common questions much quicker and easier, saving time.
• A great option for a company that has multiple staff members accessing the same email box, such as an info or sales email.

Cons:  

• Some users reported issues with Facebook integration and replying to messages via Facebook when the customer was not online at the time.
• Some users reported back end issues with the live chat function.
• Is not HIPAA compliant, for those in the medical field.
• Spam filtering could be improved.
• Limited text formatting in emails so users can’t insert things like tables.  

Pricing (yearly):

• Free Trial: Yes
• Basic: $29 per team member/per month
• Pro: $49 per team member/per month
• Plus: $69 per team member/per month
• Starter: $59 flat rate per month (Basic plan features, limited to 500 conversations a month)
• Enterprise: Custom Pricing

Website: https://www.reamaze.com

CONCLUSION

Choosing an eCommerce help desk software is a tough task, especially if you are planning to start your own business. A good help desk software is needed to be able to take care of customer communication, comments and inquiries in an organized manner. The options available out there can make anybody go berserk! Here I will share my personal experience after trying a couple of different help desk software for online stores. I have also tried to include reviews about the best software based on their usefulness and popularity amongst the majority of ecommerce entrepreneurs.

“What’s the best ecommerce help desk software?” – It’s a question you hear asked a lot, but with so many different options how do you know which one to go for? In this quick guide, we’ll take you through our top comparison table so you can decide for yourself.