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Email Ticketing System Inside Gmail
12 Best Email Ticketing Systems for 2024
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How can companies provide world-class customer support via email?
The answer is simple – by implementing an email ticketing system.
A system like this helps support teams handle customer emails at scale. It streamlines the entire process – from receiving a customer email to resolving it – ensuring your support team can make optimal use of their time and effort.
In this article, we’ll take a look at the 12 top ticketing systems that can revolutionise how your business handles customer support.
Table of Contents
- What Is an Email Ticketing System?
- Top 12 Email Ticketing Systems in 2024
- Key Features to Look For in an Email Ticketing System
- Best Practices for Using an Email Ticketing System
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- Wrapping Up
What Is an Email Ticketing System?
An email ticketing system is a tool designed to streamline customer emails effectively. The primary purpose of such a tool is to ensure that customer communications are tracked, responded to, and resolved in an efficient and organized manner.
The way it does this is by turning every customer email into a ‘ticket’. Each ‘ticket’ has a unique identification number – this helps teams get visibility and keep track of every customer email query, till the point of resolution.
Email ticketing systems have features such as automation (to create workflows),tagging (to categorize customer emails),and analytics (to measure support quality and agent performance).
It’s not just customer service teams that benefit from email ticketing systems; even departments like Finance, IT, and Client Servicing can also leverage these tools to efficiently streamline inquiries and requests.
Recommended read: Customer Support Ticketing System: The Complete Guide
Top 12 Email Ticketing Systems in 2024
Here are the top 12 email ticketing systems your business can pick up. Look for ease of setup, ease of training, range of features, and cost before making a decision.
| Tool | Best Suited For | Key Features | Starting Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hiver | Small, medium, and large businesses using Google Workspace | Email assignment, automation, reporting, customer feedback surveys, 24×7 vendor support | $15/month per user |
| Freshdesk | Small and large businesses | Collision detection, shared ownership, gamification | $15/month per user |
| Jitbit | Startups, medium-sized businesses, freelancers | Ticket categorization, assignment, analytics, live chat, knowledge base | $29 per month per user |
| HappyFox | Medium and enterprise organizations | Private notes, ticket assignment, categorization, chatbot | Pricing upon request |
| Front | Small to large organizations with a focus on email support | Ticket routing, shared drafts, live chat, analytics, universal inbox | $19/month per user |
| Help Scout | Small businesses, startups, nonprofits | Automation, response templates, analytics, live chat, knowledge base | $25/month per user |
| Zendesk | Large and enterprise companies | Collaboration tools, omnichannel integration | $49/month per user |
| Zoho Desk | Businesses that need a multi-channel customer service platform | Sentiment analysis, multilingual support, email templates | $7/month per user |
| LiveAgent | Businesses that need a customer service platform that offers a high level of customization | Ticket tagging, SLA management, canned responses | $9/month per user |
| Intercom | E-commerce, financial services, education, healthcare | Ticket creation and collaboration, live chat, in-app messaging | $39 per month per user |
| HelpCrunch | Online and e-commerce businesses | Email management, multi-channel communication, SLA management | $12/month per user |
| ProProfs Desk | Small and large-sized businesses | Ticket management, chat support, email integration, multilingual support | $10/month per user |
1. Hiver
Hiver is the world’s first Gmail-based email ticketing system. Given that it’s built for Google Workspace and looks and feels like Gmail, its interface is straightforward, user-friendly, and easy to understand. It comes with powerful email ticketing features, including email assignment, tracking, automation, reporting, customer feedback surveys, and more.
Hiver also helps team members collaborate effectively with the help of its Notes feature which allows them to have private and contextual discussions about customer requests right next to email threads.
Hiver’s greatest USP is its ability to humanize customer conversations. Unlike most email ticketing software that converts customer emails into support tickets, Hiver doesn’t assign ticket numbers to customer requests.
By doing so, it helps support teams see the human behind every incoming request or query. Hiver is built to drive long-term, meaningful customer relationships by preventing teams from looking at customer emails as one-time transactions and not reducing customers to faceless tickets.
Apart from its rich feature set and its ability to streamline the customer experience, teams love Hiver because of the impeccable 24×7 customer service it offers.
Did You Know: Among the top 12 email ticketing systems in 2024, Hiver is the only one specifically designed for Google Workspace teams.
Best suited for:
Small, medium, and large-sized businesses using Google Workspace.
Key features:
- Email delegation
- Live chat
- Voice Communication
- WhatsApp Support
- Knowledge Base
- Email tags
- Email notes
- Collision alerts
- Email templates
- Automations
- Analytics
- SLA management
- Customer satisfaction surveys
- Hiver offers integrations with the most frequently used apps such as Jira, Asana, Salesforce, QuickBooks, Okta and more.
- Harvey – The AI Bot.
Pricing:
Hiver offers three price tiers:
1. Lite: $15 per user per month
2. Pro: $49 per user per month
3. Elite: $79 per user per month
Free Trial: 7 days
2. Freshdesk
Freshdesk’s email ticketing system is amongst the most sophisticated in the industry. Its shared inbox makes it convenient for teams to organize, assign, and collaborate on email tickets. It converts customer requests from email and social channels into tickets. Further, it helps categorize and assign those tickets to designated agents. In the higher tier plans, agents can also share the ownership of tickets with others in the team.
The best part about Freshdesk is that it gives support agents rich context about a customer’s past interactions with your company, their feedback, and their previous support issues.
The other features that Freshdesk offers include automation, agent collision detection, a self-service portal, and a knowledge base (FAQs, help guides, etc.). It also provides gamification features to encourage and engage agents.
Best suited for:
Small and large-sized businesses.
Key Features:
- Automation
- Ticket trends and reporting
- Collision detection
- Rich customer context
- Shared ownership of tasks
- Integration with many apps like Google apps, JIRA, Dropbox, Mailchimp, Zoho CRM and several others through Zapier
Pricing: Freshdesk’s pricing starts at $15 per agent per month and goes up to $69 per agent per month. It also offers a free plan, but with limited features.
Free Trial: 21 days
3. Jitbit
JitBit is a popular email-based ticketing system that allows teams to process, assign, track, and automate incoming email tickets. Given that it has a relatively simpler interface compared to other email ticketing systems in its category, teams can set it up easily and start using it without too much hassle.
What also makes JitBit one of the most sought-after ticket management tools is its price. Unlike most other email ticketing software, Jitbit offers flat monthly and annual pricing options, which means that its plans aren’t priced per agent.
Jitbit offers a cloud-based as well as a hosted version of its email ticketing system to suit different types and needs of businesses.
Best suited for:
Small and medium-sized businesses, freelancers.
Key features:
- Ticket categorization and tagging
- Ticket status
- Assignment and tracking
- Analytics dashboard and metrics reports
- Live chat
- Knowledge base
- Email templates
- Collision alerts
Pricing: Plans start at $29 per month per agent.
Free Trial: 21 days
4. HappyFox
Founded in 2011, HappyFox is a help desk software that helps teams effectively perform all the essential functions of a good ticketing system. This includes assigning incoming emails to the right team members, categorizing tickets based on their type, status, or priority, automating repeatable tasks like changing the status of emails, round-robin ticket assignments, SLA management, and more.
It also lets you measure key metrics like first response time, time spent on tickets by staff, and more. Despite its extensive feature set, HappyFox has a rather simple and intuitive interface that makes it a preferred email ticketing system for medium to large-scale organizations alike.
Best suited for:
Medium-sized and enterprise organizations looking for an efficient email ticketing system.
Key features:
- Private notes
- Ticket assignment
- Ticket categorization
- Knowledge base
- Chatbot support
Pricing:
HappyFox offers 4 pricing tiers, namely, ‘Mighty’, ‘Fantastic’, ‘Enterprise’, and ‘Enterprise Plus’. The specific pricing details, however, are available upon request.
Free Trial: Not available
5. Front
Front is a shared inbox software that helps teams work and collaborate out of a common mailbox. Every incoming new ticket (be it via email, social, or live chat) lands in a central email inbox from where they can be assigned to team members based on availability and expertise.
Front is designed to encourage a highly collaborative work environment. It gives team members complete visibility into each other’s tasks and equips them with features (like shared drafts) that help them work together and make the most of each other’s expertise while handling incoming tickets.
Best suited for:
Small to large scale organizations with a primary focus on email support.
Key features:
- Ticket routing, categorization, and tagging
- Shared drafts
- Canned responses
- Live chat
- Analytics
- Universal inbox
- Knowledge content management
Pricing: Plans range from $19 per person per month to $229 per person per month.
Free Trial: 7 days
Hiver vs Front: Reasons, Reviews, and Ratings
6. Help Scout
Help Scout is another popular email-based ticketing system that helps teams, both small and large, manage their common mailboxes with ease. It has a clean interface and comes with features essential for efficient team email management like ticket routing and prioritization, automation, analytics, response templates, and tagging, amongst many others.
Apart from its ticketing system, Help Scout’s customers can also make the most of its built-in knowledge base and live chat functionalities. Further, its hassle-free integrations can easily allow your system to work with new and existing customer channels and databases.
Best suited for:
Small businesses, scaling startups, and nonprofits.
Key features:
- Rule-based automation
- Response templates
- Robust analytics
- Live chat
- Knowledge base
- Ticket routing, tagging, and prioritization
Hiver vs Help Scout: Reasons, Reviews, and Ratings
Pricing: HelpScout has three price tiers. Plans start from $25 per user per month.
Free Trial: 15 days
Top 10 Help Scout Alternatives for Businesses
7. Zendesk
Zendesk is an email ticketing system that’s ideal for teams that use multiple support channels and want a centralized hub to connect with their customers seamlessly across those various channels. This help desk software is especially useful for bigger teams with a large customer base as it helps integrate all customer interactions into one system, thereby providing teams with rich context into past customer interactions without having to do much digging.
Zendesk allows teams to conveniently track, organize and resolve email tickets while also empowering customers to resolve their own problems with the help of its community forums and self-service knowledge bases.
Best suited for:
Large and enterprise-sized companies looking for an all-in-one customer service ticketing system.
Key features:
- Ticket assignment
- Powerful analytics
- Automation
- SLA management
Pricing: Zendesk has three price tiers for small to large-sized businesses. Plans start at $49 per agent per month and go up to $99 per agent per month.
Free Trial: 14 days
Hiver vs Zendesk: Reasons, Reviews, and Ratings
8. Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk is an email ticketing system that empowers teams with highly contextual email management capabilities. Its sentiment analysis tool helps agents gauge the sentiment in a customer ticket before opening it. As a result, agents can respond to negative tickets faster.
Zoho’s helpdesk ticketing system also allows teams to collect tickets from multiple other channels apart from emails, such as social media, live chat, web forms, and telephone.
Best suited for:
Teams looking for a ticketing solution that offers multi-channel capabilities.
Key features:
- Reports and Analytics
- Sentiment analysis
- Feedback widget
- Multilingual support
- Email templates
- Multichannel support
Pricing: Plans start at $12 per agent per month. Zoho Desk also offers a forever fre eplan with limited features for up to 3 agents.
Free Trial: 15 days
9. LiveAgent
LiveAgent offers teams an advanced email ticketing solution that comes with a “universal inbox” and a “hybrid ticket stream”. With its universal inbox, team members can perform basic ticketing system functions such as organizing, assigning, and resolving customer tickets from a common dashboard. With its hybrid ticket stream, teams can follow up on customers’ ticket resolution journeys across multiple channels.
LiveAgent, like most popular email ticketing systems, helps teams automate repetitive tasks. Apart from that, this email ticketing software also offers features like canned responses for common customer issues, automated ticket routing, SLA management, and more.
Best suited for:
Teams looking for customizable email ticketing solutions.
Key Features:
- Workflow automation
- Ticket tagging and organizing
- SLA management
- Internal notes
Pricing: The email ticketing tool starts at $15 per agent per month. It also offers a forever free plan with limited features.
Free Trial: 14 days
10. Intercom
Intercom’s ticketing platform, also known as the Engagement OS, enables teams to easily collect, track and route customer queries. The platform comes with essential features for support teams to organize their workload, and resolve tickets via seamless collaboration.
It also has a ‘Messenger’ feature, which combines different apps in one window to perform a variety of actions; such as finding an answer in the knowledge base or starting a conversation.
Best suited for:
Early-stage to enterprise companies, in industries such as e-commerce, financial services, education, and healthcare.
Key Features:
- Ticket Creation
- Ticket Collaboration
- Live Chat Support
- In-App Messaging
- Knowledge Base
Pricing: Plans start at $39 per month per seat and goes up to $999 per month.
Free Trial: 14 days
11. HelpCrunch
HelpCrunch’s email ticketing software enables teams to manage multiple shared inboxes. With HelpCrunch, teams can easily streamline tickets and also make use of advanced features, such as team productivity analytics and detailed customer profiles. Streamlining of tickets can be done by tagging, assigning, and merging customer conversations.
Apart from customer support, even sales and marketing teams can make use of HelpCrunch. For instance, marketing teams can make use of email marketing campaign builders, and lead generation solutions.
Best suited for:
Online and e-commerce businesses of all sizes that want to decrease support costs and grow faster.
Key Features:
- Email Management
- Multi-Channel Communication
- Knowledge Base Management
- Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management
Pricing: The basic plan starts at $15 per user per month.
Free Trial: 14 days
12. ProProfsDesk
ProProfs Desk is a customer support and email ticketing system software designed to streamline communication and collaboration between businesses and customers. ProProfs Desk can be customized to meet the specific needs of different businesses and can be integrated with other popular tools such as Slack, Salesforce, and Zapier. The software is cloud-based, meaning that users can access it from anywhere with an internet connection. ProProfs Desk aims to help businesses provide fast, efficient, and personalized support to their customers while reducing costs and increasing productivity.
Best suited for:
Small and large-sized businesses.
Key Features:
- Ticket management
- Knowledge base
- Chat support
- Reports and analytics
- Automation
Pricing: The Essentials plan is $10 per month per agent, and the Premium plan is priced at $15 per month.
Key Features to Look For in an Email Ticketing System
When evaluating an email ticketing system, there are several key features to consider to ensure it meets the needs of your organization and provides an efficient and effective support experience for both your agents and customers.
Here are some of the essential features:
- Ticket Creation & Management: The system should automatically convert incoming emails into tickets and allow for easy categorization, prioritization, and status tracking.
- Ticket Assignment & Routing: It should have the capability to help teams manually (or automatically) assign tickets to specific agents or teams based on predefined criteria, such as the nature of the inquiry, agent expertise, or workload.
- Collaboration Tools: Features that allow agents to collaborate on tickets, share notes, and escalate issues to other teams or specialists are necessary when handling complex customer inquiries.
- Customizable Views & Dashboards: Managers should be able to customize access for support agents, based on their roles and responsibilities. For instance, a frontline agent should only be able to see what tickets they’re working on, and not have access to the entire volume of queries coming in.
- Performance Analytics: Comprehensive reporting and analytics tools to track metrics like response time, resolution time, customer satisfaction scores, and agent performance.
- SLA Management: The system should allow for the setting and tracking of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to ensure that tickets are addressed within agreed-upon timeframes.
- Multi-Channel Support: While the primary focus is on handling customer queries on email, it’s beneficial if the system can also handle inquiries from other channels like chat, social media, or phone, providing a unified support experience.
- Integration Capabilities: Look for systems that can integrate with other tools such as CRMs, project management software, and more.
- Mobile Access: In today’s mobile world, having a mobile app or a mobile-responsive interface can be crucial for agents. It helps them handle email tickets on the go.
- Customer Feedback & Surveys: The ability to gather feedback from customers after their issues are resolved can provide valuable insights into the support experience.
Best Practices for Using an Email Ticketing System
Using an email ticketing system effectively requires adopting certain best practices. These practices not only ensure that customer inquiries are addressed promptly and efficiently but also contribute to a positive customer experience. Here are some best practices for using an email ticketing system:
- Proper Training: Train all agents on the email ticketing system. Make sure they know how to use its main features. Offer extra training every 3 months to cover updates or changes.
- Categorize and Prioritize: Always categorize tickets based on their type (e.g., technical issue, billing query) and prioritize them based on urgency. This helps in routing them to the right agents and ensuring timely responses.
- Use Templates Wisely: While canned responses can speed up the responses your agents send, they should be used judiciously. Ensure that the response template is relevant to the customer’s query.
- Maintain a Knowledge Base: Regularly update and refine your knowledge base. Encourage agents to contribute answers to frequently encountered problems. This not only aids agents but can also serve as a self-help tool for customers.
- Set Clear SLAs: Define clear Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for response and resolution times. Monitor them regularly to ensure compliance and adjust as necessary based on feedback and performance data.
- Gather and Act on Feedback: After resolving a ticket, seek feedback from customers. Use this feedback to identify areas of improvement and implement changes accordingly.
- Keep Customers Informed: Always keep customers updated about the status of their tickets, especially if there are delays. Proactive communication can prevent frustration and build trust.
- Encourage Internal Feedback: Agents are the main users of your ticketing system. Encourage them to provide feedback on the system’s functionalities and any challenges they face.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Here are some frequently asked questions about email ticketing systems.
1. How Does an Email Ticketing System Improve Customer Service?
It improves customer service by providing a structured approach to managing inquiries. It helps prioritize, track and collaborate on issues. This results in quicker response times and higher customer satisfaction.
2. Can Email Ticketing Systems be Integrated with Other Tools?
Yes, most email ticketing systems offer integration capabilities with other business tools such as CRM software, live chat, and knowledge bases.
3. Are Email Ticketing Systems Suitable for Small Businesses?
Yes, there are email ticketing systems that are specifically suitable for small businesses. Platforms like Hiver, Zendesk, and Freshdesk, for instance, offer cost-effective pricing plans for small businesses.
4. Can I Track the Performance of My Customer Service Team with an Email Ticketing System?
Yes, these systems often include an analytics and reporting dashboard that helps in tracking key performance indicators such as first response time and average resolution time.
5. What is the Role of Automation in Email Ticketing Systems?
Automation in email ticketing systems helps route and categorize tickets and change the status of tickets – without any manual effort.
Wrapping Up
There’s no one-size-fits-all formula to achieve customer service excellence. Your customer service needs and goals are hugely dependent on the nature of your business, the type of customers you serve, and the long-term vision you have for your organization.
Having said that, investing in an email ticketing system is essential for all companies spanning different industries and sizes.
Why? Because email is one of the easiest, cost-effective, and efficient ways to deliver support. And by implementing the right email ticketing system, companies can focus on scaling effectively and providing their customers with impeccable customer experiences while their ticketing software does the heavy lifting for them in the background.
Good luck with your search for the best email ticketing system!
