Freshdesk vs Freshservice: Help Desk vs Service Desk

Before comparing Freshdesk and Freshservice, it is crucial to understand the differences between help desk and service desk software. By understanding the distinctions between these two types of customer support platforms, organizations can make informed decisions about which solution is best suited to their needs.

Help Desk vs Service Desk

What is the difference between the Help Desk and the Service Desk? One is often confused with the other, and the mix up seems natural. Is it because both act as hotlines to help and service people?

Both platforms, after all, have a similar goal: resolve end-user issues/requests as efficiently as possible.

Despite the resemblance, deciding which customer support platform is right for your organization comes down to your process needs. This is where the Help Desk separates itself from the Service Desk.

An easy way to remember the difference between the two platforms is identifying what type of end-user is requiring support: external (Help Desk) or internal (Service Desk).

Help Desk – Designed for External Customer Support

The Help Desk focuses on customer-facing care, allowing teams to connect with external customers and manage tickets addressing their issues, requests, and services.

It is a central point of contact for customers who need assistance with technical or IT-related issues all in one place, organizations can access ticket history as well as monitor which staff are working on what task/activity to ensure no external customer is left unattended or forgotten.

Help Desk Benefits

• CRM – Customer Relationship Management
• Focused on Customer Care
• Helps solve external customer issues
• Provides a single pane of glass for external customer contacts
• Delivers answers to external customer questions
• Assesses external customer satisfaction
• Gauges agent effectiveness

The Help Desk is key for providing external customer support, but what happens when that customer is an internal one?

Service Desk – Designed for Internal Customer Support

In contrast, the Service Desk is a tool designed for internal IT support. It addresses internal technology issues, improvements, and service requests, which are managed from an ITIL Best Practice perspective.

Service Desk Benefits

• ESM – Enterprise Service Management
• Focused on Internal Improvements
• Helps solve internal customer technology issues
• Provides a single pane of glass for internal customer contacts
• Delivers answers to internal customer questions
• Assesses internal customer satisfaction
• Gauges agent/technician effectiveness

Both types of platforms assign tickets and ensure teams have access to all support information in a centralized location, but despite the similarities between these ticketing systems, the process needs for the two categories of end-users are not interchangeable.

When considering internal and external customer support, each requires unique and well-defined workflows, service level agreements, self-service features, and KPIs.

Freshdesk vs Freshservice

Freshworks is a leading provider of modern SaaS solutions. Included in their portfolio of products are Freshdesk (Help Desk) and Freshservice (Service Desk). Which is right for you? It comes down to organizational needs. Which type of end-user is your organization supporting? An external or internal customer?

Freshdesk is a cloud-based support platform built for the Customer Experience (CX), combining multiple support channels (email, chat, telephone, self-service portal, and social media) into a single pane of glass.

Giving customers the option to use the support channel of their choice, Freshdesk manages external customer service and provides collaboration across all business teams, enabling organizations to implement standardized ways of assigning and monitoring tickets and requests.

With Freshdesk, organizations possess the ability to unify multiple points of contact and provide instant help across all channels. Leveraging tools designed for managing external customer tickets, it establishes simplified techniques for agent assignment, ticket prioritization, monitoring, and analytics to gauge performance and customer satisfaction.

Like Freshdesk, Freshservice provides reporting, chatbot, and the ability to configure self-service portals, but in contrast, Freshservice is a cloud-based IT Service Management platform for performing internal IT support.

With tools built for managing tickets related to technology issues and service requests, the platform can be expanded beyond IT to support organizational departments like Facilities, Finance, HR, Legal, Procurement, and Cybersecurity.

For a more granular approach to service delivery, and to improve the level of service offered by IT teams within an organization, Freshservice leverages the ITIL methodology, including 6 ITIL Best Practices: Incident Management, Change Management, Problem Management, Asset Management, Request Fulfilment Management, and Service Catalog Management.

As such, to effectively manage in-house IT support, Freshservice includes additional capabilities for CMDB, managing configuration changes, and monitoring assets from both availability and lifecycle perspectives.

Designed for a more compliance-based approach to organizational needs, the ITIL-ready platform allows teams to standardize more complex approval processes and monitor multiple escalations and IT issues that may take several days to completely resolve.

Key Features of Freshdesk 

• Ticket Management: Manage customer support requests through a centralized ticket system
• Knowledge Management: Create and store articles and answers to common customer questions
• Reporting and Analytics: Access detailed reports and analytics to track the performance of your customer service team
• Multi-channel Support: Provide support through a range of channels, including email, phone, chat, and social media
• Self-Service Portal: Allows end-users to make requests, create and track issues, and find answers on their own
• Field Service Management: Automate scheduling and dispatching of field technicians, manage work orders, optimize technician routes and schedules, and provide real-time updates to ensure efficient field operations and customer satisfaction
• Time Tracking: Track the time spent by your team members on each ticket
• Satisfaction Surveys: Measure customer satisfaction levels with built-in surveys to identify areas for improvement and gauge the effectiveness of your support team
• Mobile App: Access Freshdesk from anywhere, at any time, using the mobile app to stay on top of customer requests

Key Features of Freshservice

• Incident Management: Streamline the process of logging, tracking, and resolving incidents, ensuring that customer issues are resolved quickly and efficiently
• Change Management: Implement changes to your IT infrastructure in a controlled and organized manner, minimizing the risk of disruption and downtime
• Problem Management: Identify and address the root causes of recurring issues, reducing the number of incidents and improving overall IT performance
• Asset Management: Manage all of your IT assets in a single place, including hardware, software, and licenses, to track and optimize your asset inventory
• Service Catalog: Create a catalog of services that your IT department offers, enabling end-users to easily request IT services and support
• Self-Service Portal: Empower end-users to find answers to common IT questions and make requests on their own, reducing the workload of your IT team
• Knowledge Management: Create and store articles and answers to common IT questions, enabling end-users to quickly find the information they need
• Reporting and Analytics: Access detailed reports and analytics to track the performance of your IT service desk, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions
• Multi-channel Support: Provide IT support through a range of channels, including email, phone, chat, and social media, ensuring that end-users can reach support in the way that is most convenient for them
• CMDB: Understand the impact of change by tracking and managing all of the configuration items in your IT infrastructure, maintaining an up-to-date inventory of all assets and their dependencies

What separates Freshdesk from Freshservice?

Freshdesk and Freshservice are both customer support software solutions from the same parent company, Freshworks. However, they serve different purposes and target audiences.

Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer service platform designed to help businesses manage customer interactions across various channels, including email, phone, chat, social media, and more.

Freshdesk offers a range of features, including ticket management, automation, knowledge base, reporting, and more. Freshdesk is suitable for businesses of all sizes and industries that want to streamline their customer support operations and provide top-notch customer experiences.

On the other hand, Freshservice was specifically designed for IT departments to manage their service requests, incidents, problems, changes, and releases. It is an ITIL-ready IT service management (ITSM) platform that helps businesses improve their IT service delivery and efficiency. Freshservice includes features such as asset management, service catalog, CMDB, and more, making it a comprehensive solution for IT service management.

CX vs ITSM

Looking for more information?

Watch our companion webinar looking at the differences and benefits of CX vs ITSM:

Freshdesk vs Freshservice: What Type of Customer Are You Supporting?

Or watch it here without going to Youtube:

What Are Your Help and Service Desk Process Needs?

To meet the demands of end-users, Freshworks provides platforms to support both types -- external (Freshdesk) and internal (Freshservice) – both of which have been globally recognized for their rapid user adoption by both employees and customers.

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