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In the year 2021, email support is arguably one of the most, if not the most, important channels of customer service.

The best and most effective customer support teams around have ticketing systems that help manage and organize their incoming traffic. This system allows the team to view and prioritize tickets so that they can respond efficiently. It also offers a better view of resource allocation and makes it easier to track metrics and set goals.

If your company isn’t already leveraging an email ticketing system, we would strongly advise you consider adding one to your tech stack. Ticketing systems are especially useful for remote companies, where developers, managers, and support staff work across a range of time zones, devices, and shifts. Basically, email ticketing systems bring clarity and procedure to the sometimes messy world of distributed asynchronous work.

If you want your customer service team to be at their best, then they’re going to need the best tools to do their job. In this post we’ll break down some of our favorite email ticketing systems, but before we dive in, let’s cover some of the basics.

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What exactly is an email ticketing system and what should you be looking for?

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Simply put, an email ticketing system is a business app that allows you to convert multiple customer emails into tickets. These tickets are then organized in a single place so that customer issues and requests can be easily accessed, tracked, and managed from a single place.

However, the best email ticketing systems are not confined to just realm of email. In addition to email, you can track customer conversations arising from various communication channels such as chat, phone, social media, knowledge base, community forums, and more. Much like CloudApp, email ticketing systems were originally introduced to encourage team collaboration and improve customer experience. But how do you recognize a great ticket solution when you see one? These are some features we would recommend you look for:

• Ticket Conversion: Email ticketing tools can automatically convert your support conversations into distinct tickets. So it doesn’t matter if a customer drops an email or contacts your support team via a chat box, all incoming conversations can be tracked in one place. You can even set up email forwarding rules to route all support emails from multiple email accounts into a single, shared inbox.
• Automated Ticket Assessment: With an email help desk software, tickets can be automatically assigned to relevant agents or teams. You can choose the default ticket assignment feature to route tickets to available agents or use skill-based routing to assign tickets to individuals who are most capable to handle them. For instance, all technical issues can be assigned to an agent who has the relevant technical expertise.
• Self-Service Knowledge Base: The best email ticket system gives businesses the option to offer proactive customer service by creating a customer-centric knowledge base or help center. Customers can find all relevant information in the form of help articles, videos, FAQs, etc. to resolve their primary issues. You can even create an internal knowledge base for your employees. Whenever they encounter a new customer issue, they can contribute to existing help articles or create new ones.
• Real-Time Reporting: The reporting features of a ticketing system can help you gauge agent performance, identify improvement areas, keep a tab on key performance indicators (KPIs), and track key customer service metrics. You can share CSAT or NPS surveys with customers to allow them to rate your service or the overall experience of interacting with an agent.

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The 10 Best Email Ticket Systems of the Year

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1. Hubspot

‍HubSpot has a ticketing app that features an all-in-one email ticketing system. Its ticketing system logs all customer interactions into one central location, making it easier for reps to see the status of opened cases. The system also alerts reps about status changes on tickets as well as the next actionable step to take in the case’s workflow. On teams where reps are fielding 30+ cases a day, it’s significantly helpful to have this type of clear interface that outlines their day-to-day workload. HubSpot’s help desk offer also includes ticket automation features which streamline customer service processes. It has a routing system that distributes tickets to reps as well as custom automation features that allow users to set up their own ticket workflows. This way reps can set up personalized ticket workflows according to the customer’s needs. Price: Free

2. ProProfs Help Desk

‍ProProfs offers a great email-based ticketing system that is designed to be user-friendly and is as easy as using Gmail. Agents can easily set the priority of a support ticket as ‘High’, ‘Low’, or ‘Normal’ and ensure urgent tickets can never slip through the cracks and are resolved first. The best part of using ProProfs is that you can get access to multiple customer support tools- live chat, knowledge base, survey maker, etc. that help you offer delightful support 24×7. Customer service teams can achieve more together with collaboration features such as internal comments, custom fields, ticket labels, internal chat, and others. Price: $10/month

3. FreshDesk

With Freshdesk’s customer email management software, you can rise above average customer service by streamlining issues into one universal inbox. Your agents can easily manage customer conversations, gather customer feedback, analyze trends, and do much more. In addition, they’ll always have easy access to a customer’s details such as ticket history or past conversations, a customer’s unique ID, their feedback, and other necessary details that help them offer contextual assistance. Price: $15/month

4. Zendesk

‍Zendesk is another popular email-based ticketing system that is ideal for tracking, prioritizing, and solving customer support tickets. All conversations can be found in a single location so that communication between you and your customers is efficient as well as personal. With Zendesk, you can empower customers to help themselves. Build a dedicated help center and a community forum to encourage customers to resolve issues at their own pace- while reducing your support ticket volume. Price: Different plans ranging from $5-$99/month

5. HelpCrunch

There are minor details in its interface that distinguishes HelpCrunch from its competitors. For example, it color-codes tags to make it easier to visually determine the status of tickets. Customer support reps have a fast workflow and it helps to be able to look at and interpret things at a glance without having to slow down. Another unique feature that HelpCrunch offers is its internal notes tool. Reps can leave notes to one another on open cases to discuss how to best engage with the customer. Price: $23/month ‍

6. SysAid

‍SysAid’s email help desk software is built for IT support teams and offers all important features in one place- a powerful ticket management tool, IT asset management, live chat, self-service, password reset functions, and a lot more. Support managers can access detailed reports right on their dashboard. Moreover, your team can target the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to understand your IT support performance and make better business decisions in minutes. Price: Request for Details

7. Zoho Desk

‍Zoho Desk offers an intuitive and context-aware email management software with multi-channel capabilities. Moreover, the tool offers smart multi-lingual support, and automated answer suggestions to help your agents always stay prepared while replying to a ticket. This email ticketing system comes with many collaborative features that allow your agents to communicate the issues with other teams through private comments and tags. This significantly reduces miscommunication as all interactions take place in one shared place. Price: $12/month

8. Hiver

Hiver is quite different from other email ticketing systems out there. It helps you deliver fast and empathetic customer service right from your Gmail inbox. With reports, you can get actionable insights into workload distribution, SLA violations, and the overall team performance. Help desk managers can easily assign emails as tasks to their team members with a single click. The agents can mark the status of an email as ‘Open’, ‘Pending’, or ‘Closed’ to better organize and track customer conversations. Price: $22/month

9. Paldesk

Paldesk is a free help desk software which includes a ticketing system that supports multi-channel support teams. Paldesk connects your email, phone, and chat tools together so that each channel can be monitored through the same dashboard. When reps need to follow up on chats or phone calls, these cases turn into email tickets that are stored on the same interface. That way reps have a consistent follow-up process for every request they receive, regardless of the support channel. Price: Free

10. Salesforce

With near-endless reporting, Salesforce is known for the amount of things that you can track. This is good for large business operations. With the professionals guiding deployment, it is also highly customizable. As one user writes, “Of course like with all other Salesforce tools there is a high learning curve and you need to have professionals designing and customizing the system but it is well worth it.” Salesforce customers praise its functionality. Price: $25/month ‍

In Conclusion

There’s no denying that email support is one of the most popular and foundational channels of customer success. From the customer side, it is more professional and convenient. For the businesses side, its an extremely efficient and cost-effective solution. A win-win. If you’re a growing businesses, at some point you’ll lose control over your inbox. But don’t fret. When you find the best email ticket system for your support team you can streamline multiple processes and offer your customers and great customer experience. ‍ ‍ ‍ ‍ ‍ ‍