A buyer's guide
How to choose help desk software for a small team
Choose help desk software for a small business by checking three things first: that it covers the channels your customers really use, that the price stays predictable as the team grows, and that your data comes out with you if you leave. Below is the full checklist, with the arithmetic and the questions worth putting to any vendor.
The checklist
Eleven things to check before you choose a ticketing system
None of these is about how the screens look. They are the points a small team usually discovers in month two, when changing tools is already expensive.
- 01
The channels you really have
Start from where enquiries arrive today: email, the phone, chat apps such as WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, and the chat on your website. Every channel the help desk leaves out stays a separate place where things get lost. Check which plan each channel is in, not only whether the product has it.
- 02
Price per agent or per team
Ask whether the price is per agent or per team. A per-agent price is multiplied by everyone who signs in, so the bill grows with each hire; a per-team price stays the same until you reach the plan's limit. Do the sum for the team you expect to have in a year (worked example below).
- 03
SLA counted in business hours
A response target is only fair if its clock follows your working week. Look for SLA deadlines set by priority, counted in business hours, paused on public holidays, and a warning before the deadline instead of a report after it.
- 04
Routing to departments
If sales, support and accounts answer different questions, each enquiry should reach the right team without someone sorting the inbox every morning. Check whether routing can follow the mailbox a message arrived in and the customer who sent it.
- 05
Shifts and automatic assignment
If your people work shifts, automatic assignment has to know who is actually at work. A round robin that hands a ticket to someone on leave or on a break only moves the problem. Ask whether assignment reads the shift plan, leave and breaks.
- 06
One timeline per customer
When a customer rings about an email they sent last week, the agent should see both in one place. Ask whether calls, emails, chat messages and internal notes end up in a single history per customer or in a separate list per channel.
- 07
A satisfaction survey
A short survey when a ticket is closed is the cheapest way to learn how customers felt about the answer. Check that you can word it yourself, in the languages your customers speak, and where the scores show up.
- 08
GDPR: export and erase one person
Sooner or later a customer will ask what you hold about them, or ask you to delete it. Check whether an admin can export everything about one person and erase it from inside the product, call recordings included, without raising a request with the vendor.
- 09
Getting your data out when you leave
Ask before you sign what you can take with you, in which format and on which plan. Customers, contacts and the ticket history are the minimum; find out whether exporting all tickets needs a higher plan.
- 10
Interface language
The people answering customers spend the whole day in the interface. If part of the team prefers another language, check that each person can choose their own, and that what customers see (the tracking page, the chat window, the survey) comes in their language too.
- 11
Where the data is hosted
For a company in the EU, the simplest answer is a data centre in the EU and a processing agreement that is part of the terms. Ask where the data and the backups are kept, whether backups are encrypted, and whether anyone has actually restored one.
The arithmetic
Per agent or per team: what 3, 10 and 25 people cost
With per-team pricing the monthly price is fixed for the plan, so the cost per person falls as the team fills it. Here are ZynTrail's plans for three team sizes, excluding VAT.
| People | Plan | Per month | Per person per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Start, up to 3 | €35 | about €11.67 |
| 10 | Business, up to 10 | €75 | €7.50 |
| 25 | Pro, up to 25 | €149 | €5.96 |
To compare with a per-agent price, multiply that price by 3, 10 and 25 and put the results next to these. Remember that the plan also depends on what you need, not only on headcount: a team of three that wants WhatsApp needs Pro, which is €149 a month for up to 25 people. Paid yearly, each plan is billed as ten months.
Before you sign
Questions to ask any help desk vendor
- Is the price per agent or per team, and what will the team we expect next year cost?
- Which plan includes each channel we need? Is the phone part of the product or a separate one?
- Does the SLA clock count business hours only, and does it stop on public holidays?
- Can automatic assignment skip people who are off shift, on leave or on a break?
- Can we export all our tickets, customers and contacts, in which format, and on which plan?
- Can an admin export and erase one person's data without writing to you?
- Where are the data and the backups kept, and when was a backup last restored?
- Is the GDPR processing agreement part of the terms or a separate negotiation?
- What happens to our account if a payment fails?
- How long is the trial, how many people can use it, and which features does it include?
Our own answers
Where ZynTrail fits
ZynTrail is help desk and contact-centre software for small and mid-sized teams, from three people up. Against the checklist above:
- Email, Messenger, Instagram and the website chat are in every plan. WhatsApp Business comes with Pro and up, and telephony, our own cloud PBX, with Enterprise.
- The price is per team: €35 a month for up to 3 people, €75 for up to 10 and €149 for up to 25, excluding VAT. Enterprise is on request.
- SLA deadlines by priority, counted in business hours and paused on holidays, with a warning before the deadline: Business and up.
- Routing by mailbox and by customer. The first department is in every plan; more need Business and up.
- Automatic assignment, round robin or least busy, that picks only people on shift, not on leave and not on a break, using the shift plan: Pro and Enterprise.
- One timeline per customer, and a 1–5 satisfaction survey for email tickets, in every plan.
- An admin exports or erases one person's data from inside ZynTrail, call recordings included, in every plan.
- Customers export to Excel or CSV, contacts to CSV, and any ticket as a CSV transcript, in every plan. All tickets for a period come as one Excel workbook from Business up.
- The interface is in English, Bulgarian and Russian. ZynTrail is a hosted service only, with data in an EU data centre; details on the security page.
Two things it does not have, so you do not have to ask: an ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certificate, and a public knowledge base for customers. The knowledge base is for your team and the AI assistant.
Before you write to us
Questions about choosing a help desk
What is help desk software?
Help desk software turns each customer enquiry into a ticket with an owner, a status and a deadline, so a team can see who is handling what. It also keeps each customer's history and measures how quickly customers get answers.
When does a small team need a help desk rather than a shared inbox?
Usually once three or four people answer the same customers. Before that a shared mailbox can work; after it, the same email gets two answers and nobody is sure who owns a case. More on shared inbox or help desk.
Is per-team pricing cheaper than per-agent pricing?
It depends on the size of the team. Multiply the per-agent price by the number of people you expect in a year and compare it with the per-team price for the same number. The fuller a per-team plan is, the less it costs per person.
What should we test during a trial?
Real enquiries, on every channel you use. Send an email and a chat message as if you were a customer, follow each to an answer, and look at what the customer sees. Then try an export, so you know how your data comes out.
Does a help desk have to include telephony?
No, but if customers ring you, calls kept outside the help desk are the ones nobody writes down. Either choose a help desk with its own phone system, or check exactly how calls become tickets.
See it against your own case
Tell us how many people answer customers and which channels your enquiries come in on. We will walk you through the screens your team would actually use, with your own case in place of a demo script.
Every plan starts with a 30-day trial of the Pro features, which is everything except telephony.