Zoho Desk Review, Pricing & Features
What is Zoho Desk?
Zoho Desk customer support platform with features like ticketing, live chat, chatbots, Help Centers, and more. Customer support software, or help desk software, is designed to manage and resolve customer problems.
Compared with similar companies, Zoho Desk is a mid-tier solution. Customers are very pleased with the tool overall. The main drawback we found is that it’s not very user-friendly and is difficult to learn to use. We recommend Zoho Desk for businesses that need to streamline their email support, provide Help Center documents for customers, and connect with customers via live chat.
Table of Contents
- What is Zoho Desk?
- Zoho Desk Review Summary
- Zoho Desk Pricing & Cost
- Zoho Desk Key Features
- Zoho Desk Customer Support
- Zoho Desk vs. Competitors
- Is Zoho Desk Right For You?
Zoho Desk Review Summary
Zoho Desk is the help desk platform offered by Zoho, a software company with a wide variety of products for businesses of all sizes. Zoho was founded in 1996 by Sridhar Vembu and currently has a customer base of over 60 million users. Zoho offers more than 30 software applications including Zoho Books, Zoho CRM, and Zoho People.
Zoho Desk has a basic free plan. This is notable as not every customer support software offers a free plan, though the free plan is nowhere near as advanced as the Freshdesk free plan. Otherwise, pricing ranges from $20 per person per month to $50 per person per month. This is fairly standard pricing for a mid-tier customer support platform.
Overall, Zoho Desk is a reliable mid-tier customer support platform that’s helpful, but not very user-friendly. If you’re a very small business, it may be worth it to use something equally powerful but more user-friendly like Zendesk or Freshdesk.
Zoho Desk Pricing & Cost
Zoho Desk has three paid plans that range in price from $20 per person per month to $50 per person per month. There’s also a basic free plan that allows for three users, which is helpful for very small businesses that need basic support features.
Pricing Plans
| Plan | Pricing | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free |
|
| Standard | $20 per user per month |
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| Professional | $35 per user per month |
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| Enterprise | $50 per user per month |
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Zoho Desk Key Features
Throughout this review, we’ll provide an overview of Zoho Desk’s features, usability, and customer service availability. Comparisons between Zoho Desk and similar tools will be provided throughout. We’ll also include images of Zoho Desk to give you a sense of what it’s like to work with the platform before you purchase it.
To learn more about how we research and rate software tools, read about SoftwarePundit’s review methodology.
Dashboard
The dashboard is the main section in the Zoho interface. It displays incoming and outgoing bandwidth from a variety of channels, your live traffic, agents, and more.
On the left, you’ll see the navigation system that customers use to navigate through Zoho Desk. We found that the navigation sections are not particularly helpful, as there is a side bar as well as a top bar to navigate. This makes Zoho Desk one of the least user-friendly tools to use at first.
Ticketing
Ticketing is Zoho Desk’s main feature. With this feature, your customers can send you tickets about issues they are having, and your team will be able to both respond to incoming tickets as well as send proactive outbound tickets.
A ticket will show the following information:
- Customer contact information
- Ticket status
- Due date
- Attachments
- Ticket title
- Tags
Live Chat
Live chat is a feature on your website that allows you to chat in real time with your customers. You can send targeted messages, attach Help Center articles so customers can help themselves, or simply send messages back and forth.
Some solutions, like Freshdesk, have an entirely separate chat solution that’s a bit easier to use than Zoho Chat.
Knowledge Base
A Knowledge Base serves as a self-help option for your customers. Your agents will create articles explaining your policies, answering frequently asked questions, and more. When the articles are published to the Knowledge Base, customers will be able to read the articles for themselves and solve some problems.
Below is what it looks like to create a Knowledge Base article.
Analytics
Compared with other customer support platforms, Zoho Desk has a relatively advanced reporting and analytics section. The reporting section is broken down into three tabs, which are Overview, Dashboard, and Reports.
Included in the reports are analytics concerning:
- Average reply time
- Customer satisfaction ratings
- Number of new, on hold, and closed tickets
- Product reports
- Article reports
Integrations
Zoho Desk integrates with not just all other Zoho products, but with many other popular tools. Popular integrations include:
Zoho Desk Customer Support
Support avenues will depend on your plan. Those on higher paid plans will have more available access to the Zoho customer support team, although availability is pretty strong even for the cheapest plan.
| Customer Support Channels | Live Chat, Email, Phone |
| Other Support Resources | Help Center, Blog |
| Application Status Page | No |
Zoho Desk Alternatives & Competitors
Zoho Desk is similar to other help desk and ticketing software platforms, such as:
Is Zoho Desk Right For You?
If you already use other Zoho products, Zoho Desk will fit into your suite of software tools seamlessly. The platform is fairly feature-rich, though not as user-friendly as competitors. If you’re looking for a well-priced customer support platform that offers live chat and a host of integrations, Zoho Desk is a reliable option.
We found that compared with other platforms, Zoho Desk does fall a bit flat overall, though it’s certainly still a worthwhile product. If you want something with more power, opt for Freshdesk or Zendesk. If you want something a bit more user-friendly, check out Tawk.to or HelpCrunch.
If you are interested in trying Zoho Desk, sign up for a free trial here.