Mobile Help Desk: Benefits, Use cases, Apps
Table of contents
Mobile devices make our lives easier by offering us unparalleled convenience, connectivity, and instant access to information at our fingertips.
These features also equip frontline agents to provide exceptional customer support.
Whether they’re in the office, working remotely, or on the move – enabling your agents to offer uninterrupted customer service through their phones improves their productivity and responsiveness.
They can handle support tickets, answer customer queries, and access relevant information – all from their mobiles. If you think about it, customer service has never been easier.
In this blog we explore mobile help desks. We cover their benefits, a few cases, and as a bonus, we’ve also consolidated some of the top mobile help desk applications in the market.
But first, let’s start with the basics.
Table of Contents
- What is a Mobile Help Desk?
- What are the Benefits of a Mobile Help Desk?
- What are the Various Types of Mobile Help Desks?
- 10 Mobile Help Desk Applications for Your Customer Support Team
- Wrapping Up
What is a Mobile Help Desk?
A mobile help desk is a type of customer support software that can be used on smartphones or tablets. Customer service agents can use mobile help desk applications to engage with customers and manage support tickets on the go. All you need is an internet connection.
Most mobile help desks offer the following features:
- Ticket management
- Knowledge base
- Collaboration and internal communication capabilities
- Real-time messaging
- Analytics and reporting
A mobile help desk helps agents to remain productive and offers them the flexibility to offer responsive customer support from anywhere.
What are the Benefits of a Mobile Help Desk?
The biggest advantage of a mobile help desk is that it is easily accessible. Agents can access the help desk even when they are working remotely.
“When a support team can manage tickets and communicate with customers from anywhere and at any time, it can really benefit a business in many ways — some of which are not immediately tangible. You can expect improved efficiency and responsiveness, but higher customer satisfaction follows on and that in turn helps with retention and ultimately profitability.” Draven McConville, CEO of Klipboard.
Aside from this, here are some of the other significant benefits of mobile help desks:
- Better responsiveness: Agents do not have to wait to log into their help desk portal from their desktops. They can respond to customer inquiries through their mobile app, reducing wait times and improving response times
- Uninterrupted support: Mobile help desks allow support agents to work outside regular office hours or at different locations. This means they have the flexibility to offer continuous support no matter what
- Improved Productivity: Agents can view, update, and respond to customer tickets from their mobile devices, streamlining ticket management and improving productivity
What are the Various Types of Mobile Help Desks?
Here is a detailed overview of the different types of mobile help desks and how they can be used.
1. On-site technical support
Consider a network engineer who has to visit an office premise to diagnose a problem with the organization’s network infrastructure.
In this case the engineer can login to his mobile help desk application to immediately access customer data and maybe even collaborate with the main support team. Once the engineer has diagnosed the issue and decided on next steps, he can update the ticket status directly from the mobile application.
2. Remote work
Many organizations have global support teams that work remotely across multiple locations. There may also be situations like the COVID-19 pandemic where employees need to work from home and hence they need access to support tools across all devices.
In both cases, mobile help desks are a great way to offer a centralized platform for your support agents to collaborate and offer customer support even when they are working remotely. It helps agents stay connected and access important customer information irrespective of their location.
3. After-hours support
Some critical customer issues may require support agents to provide after-hours support. This can be the case even during weekends or holidays when agents are likely to be traveling.
Equipping your agents with mobile help desks ensures that they can provide prompt responses to urgent queries after business hours or even if they don’t have access to a desktop.
4. Event support
If you’re attending a large scale event like a tradeshow or conference, a mobile help desk is a good way to enable event staff to address customer queries. They can use the application to handle on-site inquiries, address issues, and ensure a smooth event experience for customers.
5. Emergency responses
If your desktop or other office systems are disrupted by sudden outages or disruptions, a mobile help desk can help you stay on top of customer queries and coordinate your responses. It allows agents to offer immediate assistance, ensuring that customers are not impacted by the downtime.
You Might Also Like: 7 Free Help Desks for Your Support Team
10 Mobile Help Desk Applications for Your Customer Support Team
Here’s a list of some of the popular help desk applications if you’re looking to invest in a robust customer support tool that can be accessed from any device.
1. Hiver
Hiver is an easy-to-use, intuitive help desk that works right out of your inbox. It allows you to engage with customers across channels such as email, chat, phone, knowledge base, and WhatsApp.
Hiver’s mobile application is compatible with both iOS and Android devices, allowing your agents to stay productive any time, any where.
The platform can be used by customer support, finance, HR, and ITSM teams across multiple industries.
Key features of Hiver’s mobile help desk
- Shared inboxes: Access emails from shared inboxes like support@ or invoices@ directly from your inbox. Always stay on track with customer emails
- Internal collaboration: Hiver Notes is present alongside every email thread. Simply @mention your teammates for inputs. They are immediately notified and can respond to your message.
- Shared Drafts: Work collaboratively on email replies to business queries using Shared Drafts. Team members can edit the draft in real-time so that you can craft the perfect response to customer queries
- Email assignment: Assign incoming emails to the right agents with Hiver’s Email Management capabilities. See who is working on what and ensure your team is never overworked
Pricing
Hiver has a three tiered pricing plan that starts at $15 per agent per month and goes up to $79 per agent per month.
2. Freshdesk
Freshdesk is a comprehensive customer service solution used by businesses to streamline their support operations
One of the key features of Freshdesk is their forever free plan that can be used by support teams with up to 10 agents. It is a great option for small businesses with minimal support requirements.
Freshdesk also has a mobile application that allows you to access all the features of the platform even when you’re on the go.
Key features
- Ticket management: Assign, track, and update support tickets from your mobile, ensuring timely resolution of customer queries
- Canned responses and solution articles: Use templatized responses to respond to repetitive business queries. Save yourself from having to type long replies to emails
- Search-on-the-go: Search for tickets and get more context on your customers from the search functionality in the mobile app. This makes responding to customers easier
- Time-tracking: Keep track of the time you spend working on each ticket. Record time entries and monitor your billable hours
Pricing
Freshdesk pricing starts from $15 per agent per month and goes up to $69 per agent per month.
3. Zendesk
Zendesk is a leading customer support solution that provides advanced capabilities better suited for large teams and businesses.
The platform offers several robust features such as ticket management, self-service options, and multichannel support.
Zendesk’s mobile application is a great add-on for agents who are constantly on the move.
Key features
- Ticket management: Agents can create, track, and update tickets in no time using Zendesk macros. A Zendesk macro is a pre-defined set of actions that can automate tasks such as adding comments, updating fields, ticket tracking, removing tags, or adding attachments
- Search and deep linking: Agents can quickly search and find customer tickets and related information by using keywords or URLs
- Views: Prioritize your workload efficiently by filtering through ticket queues according to ticket type, priority levels, assignee, tags, and more
- Reporting and analytics: Track KPIs and metrics related to agent performance and customer satisfaction with ease
- Agent Dashboard: Get the complete overview of ticket queues at both individual and team level
Pricing
Zendesk has a four tiered pricing plan that starts at $55 per agent per month.
You Might Also Like: Hiver vs Zendesk – A Comprehensive Comparison
4. Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk’s cloud-based help desk provides a centralized ticketing system for support teams to seamlessly manage customer queries across multiple channels.
Zoho Desk mobile allows agents to provide seamless customer support at all times irrespective of whether they are at their desk or not.
Key features
- Custom views: Get a bird’s eye view of the status of all your tickets by assignee, progress, and priority. Sort tickets based on these criteria and prioritize urgent requests first
- Ticket peek: Gain insights into every interaction your team has had with a customer with just a few clicks. This makes it easier to offer contextual responses to every ticket
- Gestures: Simply use easy swipes on your mobile screen to perform routine actions such as editing, assigning, and moving customer tickets. For instance, swipe right to close a ticket.
- Response templates: Use response templates to quickly respond to customer queries instead of drafting long replies on your mobile
- Offline access: Access your mailbox even without an internet connection. You can read and reply to your emails and they are stored in your outbox. Responses will be sent once you’re online again
Pricing
Zoho Desk has a three-tiered pricing plan that starts at $10 per agent per month.
5. BoldDesk
BoldDesk’s help desk solution offers premium customer service features at SMB friendly pricing. The platform is super easy to set up and use and allows you to streamline your customer emails with ease.
The BoldDesk mobile application acts like a help desk in your pocket with multiple features that can improve your productivity.
Key features
- Ticket views: Use advanced search filters to locate your customer tickets and view which ones have to be addressed on priority
- Parent-child ticketing: Split complex tickets into multiple smaller tickets and assign them to multiple agents. This makes it easier to deliver timely resolutions to customers
- Time tracking: Record billable and non-billable hours using the work logs feature. Track how much time agents spend on resolving customer tickets
- SLA logs: Ensure tickets are responded to within specified time frames. SLA breach logs keep track of instances where response times were not met. This helps monitor agent performance and identify areas for improvement
- Canned responses: Respond to common queries quickly with the help of templatized email responses
Pricing
BoldDesk has a three-tiered pricing plan that starts at $25 per month for 3 agents.
6. LiveAgent
LiveAgent’s robust customer support solution is designed to streamline customer communication for businesses of all sizes.
LiveAgent’s mobile help desk helps you stay connected with customers and website visitors at all times, allowing you to offer uninterrupted support.
Key features
- Chat: Use LiveAgent chat to interact with customers in real-time directly from the platform’s mobile app
- Preset filters: Organize your tickets so that they are easy to find with the help of customizable filters. The more specific your filters, the easier it is to locate the right ticket
- Push notifications: Get alerted every time a new ticket is created or a chat is initiated. Never miss customer conversations even when you are on the go
Pricing
LiveAgent has a four-tiered pricing plan that starts at just $9 per agent per month.
7. Happyfox
HappyFox is a help desk ticket management software that provides multiple robust features to seamlessly manage customer queries.
HappyFox offers a mobile help desk application that allows your agents to act on tickets and collaborate with teammates from their smartphones or tablets.
Key features
- Conversation history: Maintain a chronological record of your interactions with customers. Pull them up in just a few clicks whenever you want
- Push notifications: Set up customized push notifications to receive alerts whenever a new ticket is created or an existing one is updated
- Organized queues: Configure custom queues so that your tickets are organized in the way you want to prioritize them
- Ticket actions: Create tickets, update status, add comments, or reply to customers from your mobile app using ticket actions
Pricing:
HappyFox has a four tiered pricing plan that starts at $26 per agent per month and goes up to $64 per agent per month.
9. Help Scout
Help Scout offers a unified platform for support agents to manage customer communications.
Help Scout offers a number of features such as shared inboxes, knowledge base, collaboration, and automation capabilities to streamline support.
The platform also has a mobile app that is available for both iOS and Android devices.
Key features
- Active conversations: Quickly pull up conversations in progress to view their status and who is working on them. You can also change conversation statuses when it has been completed.
- Notes: Collaborate on customer queries with the help of Notes. Tag teammates you want inputs from and they get immediately notified
- Saved replies: Reply to customer conversations faster by leveraging saved replies in your emails
- Tags: Use tags to categorize your conversations and mark what is important or urgent
- Help Scout inboxes: Access conversations from all of your shared inboxes on the mobile application with just a few clicks
Pricing
Help Scout has a three tiered pricing plan that starts at $20 per agent per month and goes up to $65 per agent per month.
10. Kayako
Kayako’s help desk software comes with a number of features and functionalities that allows businesses to offer personalized and efficient customer support.
Support agents can easily manage customer conversations across any channel. It includes a live chat tool that allows you to provide around the clock support to customers.
Kayako’s mobile app is fast and user-friendly. It allows your support agents to reply to customer chats and update tickets quickly and easily.
Key features
- Ticket management: Edit ticket properties, update statuses, and add replies to tickets even when you are not at your desk
- Mobile macros: Automated actions such as adding common replies, notes, and making updates to conversation fields to save you time and effort
- Offline views: Access ticket information even when you are not connected to the internet to enable uninterrupted support operations
- Live Chat: Agents can offer live chat support directly from the mobile app, providing real-time assistance to website visitors and app users.
Pricing
Kayako’s pricing includes two types of plans – one for its cloud-based solution and the other for its on-premise system. The pricing is customized according to your business needs.
Wrapping Up
Mobile help desk solutions give agents the flexibility and efficiency to manage customer inquiries and tickets on the go.
Businesses can leverage mobile help desk applications to provide seamless and uninterrupted support experiences, leading to improved response times and better customer satisfaction.
However, choosing a mobile help desk for your business can be tricky, especially with so many options available in the market. Always consider the following aspects when evaluating a help desk for your support team:
- Budget
- Ease of set up and use
- Features
- Business objectives
A help desk like Hiver is an affordable option for businesses. The platform has a robust mobile application and offers several critical support features and functionalities.
If you’re curious to know how Hiver can help you elevate your customer support and uncomplicate email management, sign up for free to learn more!
