Freshservice

Freshservice is cloud-based IT service management (ITSM) software and IT service desk that incorporates ticketing and asset management capabilities with user experience to deliver a unified platform.

Developed by Freshworks, Freshservice is a cloud-based IT service desk and ITSM solution that serves tens of thousands of small and midsize businesses (SMBs), startups and enterprise customers around the globe. It delivers a ticket-based solution where support requests are processed via support tickets, which are then forwarded to and managed by the appropriate IT support agents and teams. Support tickets typically generated through calls, email or form-based web solutions.

Freshservice was originally designed according to IT infrastructure library (ITIL) best practices, specifically tailored to assist IT departments, teams and organizations in providing the best quality customer service and service delivery possible, ensuring customer satisfaction and retention. The cloud-based platform features an intuitive user interface (UI) that can be easily configured and customized to meet the requirements of its users. Additionally, Freshservice can be seamlessly integrated with third-party business solutions and IT-based systems.

Freshservice is one of the many products offered by Freshworks, along with Freshdesk, Freshsales, Freshmarketer and Freshteam. While both Freshdesk and Freshservice have some similarities, the latter places more emphasis on technical IT services with ITIL support. In other words, Freshservice can be categorized as an online IT helpdesk but with a fresh twist. The cloud-based solution effectively combines quality user experience with efficient ticketing and asset management capabilities such as enhanced impact analysis, robust configuration management and auto-discovery of various resources.

Freshservice is a smart and highly scalable IT service management (ITSM) platform that is capable of providing great employee experiences with an intuitive, no-code solution. It comes with state-of-the-art machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) functionalities, which help ease the workload of IT agents and teams within an organization, while boosting their workflow efficiency and productivity through task automation.

With its powerful AI capabilities, Freshservice offers the scalability and flexibility that allows it to be used by teams that depend on legacy systems that run on a hybrid cloud model as well as modern IT firms and departments that manage their entire IT infrastructure solely via the cloud.

Freshservice Features

Freshservice is a cloud-based IT service desk and ITSM solution that allows SMBs and global enterprises to optimize and streamline their IT operations. The software solution offers a wide variety of features that help to simplify IT services and other key customer service processes. The following are some of the core features and capabilities that are available with Freshworks’ Freshservice ITSM platform:

IT service desk solution

Freshservice’s IT service desk solution is equipped with various tools and capabilities such as incident management, service-level agreement (SLA) management and self-service portal. The incident management tool helps you manage, prioritize and track support tickets on a central dashboard. You can implement and leverage a comprehensive knowledge base to help enhance the quality of your IT service by delivering sufficient answers and solutions to specific problems and incidents in a much more efficient and convenient manner.

The service-level agreement or SLA management function allows you to create and tailor SLA policies for staff members and other employees with predefined expectations. You may also leverage preset automation rules to facilitate the automation process of either the ticket escalation or notification messages for SLA breaches.

The self-service portal feature enables your employees and staff members to raise tickets directly from the support portal. It also lets them track the progress of their submitted tickets. You can then customize the self-service portal to offer team-based options that are tailored to help customers and employees with self-service.

IT service management solution

Freshservice’s IT service management capabilities offer a number of features such as problem management, task management and service catalog. The problem management feature provides meaningful reports and analyses to help your IT team identify potential issues and problems, which are achieved by comparing both past and present problems, and then deliver the appropriate resolutions. It provides a complete overview of the events leading up to the discovery or occurrence of the problem, giving you the opportunity to find the root cause of the issue.

The task management tool, on the other hand, gives you the ability to breakdown your projects into more digestible tasks and subtasks. You can then assign them to each of your team members via a central dashboard and keep track of the progress of each task through the activity log. You can also manage time-restricted tasks by way of an automated notification system that is designed to prioritize specific tasks according to their urgency and impact to the project as a whole.

The service catalog function is tailored to help employees, team members and other users navigate and find the appropriate service required by offering a comprehensive view of all the service options that are visible to the end users. It also helps to simplify the request fulfillment process, deliver reliable insights into service availability and auto-assign the right IT support agents and approval workflows.

IT asset management solution

Freshservice’s IT asset management function provides a few crucial features, including contract management, inventory management and asset management. The contract management tool helps you save all the critical details of each of your existing contracts, ensuring that alerts and notifications are sent to the right people whenever the expiration is closing in on any of your available contracts based on the contract schedules. It is a single system of contract records that allows for the creation of automated workflows for approvals and the monitoring of the activation and deactivation of approved contracts.

The inventory management function is designed to make things easier for you and your team, specifically when it comes to keeping track of all the tools and applications within your software stack, as well as the hardware, the digital and virtual assets. It helps in ensuring that all assets are allocated and used efficiently. Inventory management also keeps your organization from making unnecessary purchases by giving you the ability to re-furbish and re-use still viable assets and resources.

The tool provides real-time data and it helps to minimize the need for manual entry of asset information across different phases. Inventory management also helps automate periodic updates of all your available assets in an effort to save the company from any unwanted last-minute expenses.

The asset management function is tailored for managing and tracking the entire lifecycle of assets that include all existing hardware and software elements, from the moment they are procured up until the point of disposal. Freshservice lets you access and view detailed information on all of your available assets with just one click. This can help minimize the associated risk of implementing new projects without the appropriate resources, planning and the proper backup.

Freshservice Benefits

Some of the core benefits of Freshservice are its comprehensive service catalog, its accessibility, its intuitive and integrated platform, as well as its robust self-service portal for customers.

Comprehensive service catalog

Freshservice offers a service catalog that is intended to work as a modern e-commerce solution. It is meant for your customers, allowing them to ask for new services in an easier and more convenient manner. Freshservice’s service catalog is supported by a powerful and flexible backend that provides IT professionals and teams with the ability to effortlessly edit, add and remove service items in the least amount of time possible.

Great accessibility through mobile devices

Freshservice offers a mobile app that allows your IT agents and team to manage their tasks and accept tickets while on the go. Staff members and teams can utilize the app to process support tickets and resolve issues much more quickly and efficiently, thus increasing customer satisfaction and retention. In addition, your customers can also benefit from the Freshservice mobile app to raise IT-related issues and submit service requests anytime and anywhere. The Freshservice mobile app is widely adopted by the majority of users due to the convenience and practicality it offers.

Fully integrated and intuitive solution

Freshservice is specifically designed to bridge the gap between all user types, from the inexperienced novices to the more advanced technical users. The cloud-based solution provides modern, user-friendly training to help users, of varying experience level and skill sets, learn how to navigate and master the system.

Moreover, Freshservice can also be customized to meet the requirements of both IT and non-IT users. It offers multichannel support, which helps to streamline the process of managing tickets and issues raised by customers using different channels such as by phone, live chat, via email, in-person or through the self-service portal.

Freshservice Pricing

Freshworks’ Freshservice solution is available through four main subscription packages. A 14-day free trial is available with access to all the available features offered. The four main packages are Starter, Growth, Pro and Enterprise. The following prices are based on an annual billing cycle:

The Starter pack is priced at $19/agent per month and the Growth subscription plan starts at $49/agent per month. The Pro package goes for $89/agent per month and it comes with ITSM, ITOM and project management for larger organizations. The Enterprise plan starts at $109/agent per month.

You may visit the vendor’s official website for more information about their pricing, to check the add-ons and to sign up for your free account.

Conclusion

If you’re in the market for a feature-rich and easy-to-use internal IT service desk platform, you should probably consider Freshservice. It is equipped with all the features and tools you need to create and implement your IT service desk. The cloud-based solution offers robust agent helpdesk capabilities, granular performance analytics and exceptional asset management.