Employees rely on IT support teams to overcome their daily tech challenges, be it system crashes, network outages, account unlock, software installation, or troubleshooting. Seamless IT support is what your employees look for.

However, the internal help desk in many companies still struggles to handle queries efficiently. They are slow to respond to employees, use complex ticketing systems, and lack proper communication. This leads to employee frustration due to long wait times and lost productivity. 

The real problem with why your IT support teams fail to keep up with the flood of IT requests is they lack the right tools. 

And the solution lies in implementing a robust internal IT help desk software that simplifies the ticketing process and enables IT teams to resolve employee queries faster. 

In this article, we’ve compiled the 10 best internal IT help desk software and discussed how you can leverage AI and automation to amplify your IT support and employee experience. 

But before we dive into the tools, let’s first understand what IT help desk software is and why you need it.

Internal IT help desk software is a tool used by companies to manage and track requests or issues raised by employees. When someone in your company needs help fixing a broken laptop, accessing software, or unlocking an account, they raise a ticket through the system.

This ticket contains all the important details about the issue, such as the employee name, issue type, and urgency of the resolution. The system then assigns the ticket to the right person or team to handle it and tracks its progress until it’s resolved.

So, the key objective of the internal IT help desk software tool is to streamline IT support processes, ensure faster response times, reduce downtime, and create a productive work environment for both employees and IT teams.

IT teams handle an influx of support requests daily. Any delay in their response would mean prolonged downtime, lost productivity, and a halt in business operations, negatively impacting the company’s bottom line. 

The internal IT help desk software helps respond faster, prioritize issues, improve employee satisfaction, and make informed decisions. Here’s how: 

Ticket triaging

Ticket triaging refers to sorting and prioritizing IT support requests based on their level of urgency and complexity. An IT help desk software uses preset rules to categorize incoming tickets by priority to ensure critical issues are resolved without delay. 

This means your IT support teams can ditch manually sorting tickets and resolve critical issues faster than ever. 

Centralized ticketing  

The software serves as a centralized platform for managing and tracking IT requests. It gathers tickets from multiple platforms, such as websites, email, Slack, or MS Teams, into one place, preventing IT teams from wasting time on informal requests or finding scattered information and reducing the chances of errors, such as overlooking critical issues.

Self-service options

The internal IT help desk software provides self-service capabilities, enabling employees to resolve issues independently. It seamlessly integrates with your knowledge base to retrieve relevant solutions for employee queries. 

This decreases the volume of repetitive tickets, significantly reduces the IT team’s workload, and allows them to focus more on resolving important IT issues.  

Reports and analytics

For IT leaders, it is important to understand the efficiency of IT support and identify areas for improvement. The internal help desk tool helps with this by providing actionable insights into the IT team’s performance. 

IT leaders gain a comprehensive view of resolution times, recurring issues, and employee satisfaction scores, which helps them make informed decisions about improving IT support and preventing potential disruptions.

IT help desk is the first point of contact when an employee encounters a technical issue. On an average the IT support agents receive hundreds of such support requests. It becomes difficult for employees to sort and keep track of each ticket manually. This is why many businesses turn to internal IT help desk software to help IT teams resolve issues faster and improve employee productivity. 

Here, we’ve compiled the 10 best IT help desk software, including key features, pros, cons, and pricing.

1. Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk by ZOHO is a leading help desk software that offers a wide range of features, such as multichannel ticketing, sentiment analysis, and knowledge base integration. Enterprises can use this platform to automate repetitive tasks, categorize tickets, improve employee self-service, and more. 

Key features

• Zia (AI assistant): The AI assistant has the capability to answer queries, auto-tag tickets, perform sentiment analysis, and detect anomalies in the ticketing process. IT teams can leverage Zia to manage tickets with greater accuracy and speed. 

• Omnichannel ticketing: The platform brings all the queries from Slack, MS Teams, email, phone, and website to one place, allowing IT teams to respond and resolve issues effectively. 

• Insights and reporting: Zoho Desk allows users to create reports and visualizations to gain actionable insights into the team’s performance. The platform also provides a live dashboard showing individual agent activity, live traffic, pending tickets, and customer satisfaction scores.

Pros 

• 24/7 IT assistance

• The platform is efficient in routing tickets

Cons

• Accessing advanced features will incur additional costs.

• Users express a steep learning curve.

• Users report issues with integrating the software. 

Pricing

• Standard: $9.47 per user/month (billed annually) or $15.38 per user/month (billed monthly) 

• Professional: $16.57 per user/month (billed annually) or $24.85 per user/month (billed monthly) 

• Enterprise: $28.40 per user/month(billed annually) or $37.86 per user/month (billed monthly) 

Jira Service Management

Jira service management by Atlassian is an industry-leading AI-driven ITSM platform that offers a wide range of features for request management, change management, incident management, and asset management. JSM provides a single integrated platform to bring DevOps, IT, and business teams together to streamline organization-wide service management operations.

Key features

• Self-service portal: The platform provides a self-service portal through KB integration where employees can submit requests, track their status, and find solutions to common issues. 

• Reporting and analytics: The platform offers a customizable dashboard for users to analyze ticket trends, resolution time, and more to measure key metrics like MTTR, FCR, and CSAT. 

• SLA monitoring: Jira service management enables IT support teams to define, measure, and report on SLAs. The platform monitors the SLA and notifies the IT leader upon breaches for better accountability. 

Pros

• Improves cross-functional collaboration

• Efficient self-service capabilities

• Smooth integration with JIRA 

Cons

• The platform can be overwhelming to use for non-technical users

• Users state that the platform is complex to configure

• Users state limitations is SLA management

Pricing 

• Free

• Standard: $18,750 (billed annually) or $19.04 per agent/month (billed monthly) 

• Premium: $47,500 (billed annually) or $47.82 per agent/month (billed monthly)

• Enterprise: contact the sales team to know more

SysAid

SysAid is an internal IT help desk tool companies can use to automate and simplify creating, tracking, and managing IT requests. The platform improves IT teams' efficiency, reduces workload on IT agents, and improves customer satisfaction. 

Key features

• Knowledge base integration: The platform seamlessly integrates with your company’s knowledge base. This feature helps improve self-service and provides quick answers to repetitive queries.

• SysAid Copilot: The AI assistant greatly improves self-service options through KB integration. It equips support agents with the resources needed to resolve issues quickly and provides employees with personalized and accurate answers, enabling them to solve queries independently. 

• Automated notifications: SysAid sends real-time alerts informing IT agents and employees about ticket escalations, status changes, or resolution updates. 

Pros 

• Users say it is easy to set up knowledge-base articles using the platform

• Efficient in SLA monitoring

Cons

• Accessing advanced analytics in the platform will incur additional costs

• Users report bugs while tickets are created

• Users report that performance slows down while dealing with tickets and processing workflows. 

Pricing 

Contact SysAid for pricing.

Freshservice

Freshservice is part of the Freshworks product suite, a popular ITSM platform that offers IT ticketing, incident management, change management, device management, and more to help businesses streamline their IT support.

Key features

• Ticket routing: The platform analyzes each ticket based on predefined rules, such as complexity, ticket type, and timeline, then routes it to the agent with relevant skills and expertise.

• Virtual agent: Freddy AI is the virtual agent that assists users with common queries and tasks like password resets, FAQs, printer issues, etc. It provides personalized answers for each query based on the user’s past interactions and preferences. 

• Multichannel support: Freshservice provides a unified system for managing IT requests from multiple places, including Slack, email, and the web portal

Pros 

• Provides comprehensive analytics 

• Ease of implementation

• User-friendly interface

Cons

• Users report complexity in creating workflows

• Users express the pricing is too expensive

• Limited customization features in creating fields and forms.

Pricing 

• Starter: $16.55 per user/month(billed annually) or $24.84 per user/month (billed monthly)

• Growth: $42.59 per user/month(billed annually) or $50.87 per user/month (billed monthly)

• Pro: $82.82 per user/month(billed annually) or $101.75 per user/month (billed monthly)

• Enterprise: $104.12 per user/month(billed annually) or $127.78 per user/month (billed monthly)

 HaloITSM

HaloITSM is a tool designed to align with ITIL best practices, which enables organizations to manage IT service delivery and streamline operations. It offers various features for service management, asset management, incident management, and more. 

Key features

• AI Triage: The platform uses AI to analyze sentiments, historical data, and service impact to prioritize tickets based on complexity and urgency. 

• Case summarization: HaloITSM can summarize lengthy conversations or tickets into easy-to-understand summaries, enabling IT teams to resolve tickets quickly. 

• SLA management: The platform allows you to define, monitor, and enforce service commitments to ensure issues are resolved promptly and meet set quality standards. 

Pros

• The platform is efficient in SLA monitoring

• Provides comprehensive reports and analytics for insights

Cons

• Users report that the platform has limited customization options.

• Users state some settings are hard to configure even with the video tutorial available.  

Pricing 

Contact HaloITSM for pricing plans. 

SolarWinds

SolarWinds is a platform that offers a wide range of IT management and monitoring tools to help enterprises manage, troubleshoot, and improve their IT infrastructure. The platform offers various IT support features that your IT team can use to manage and resolve incoming requests effectively. 

Key features

• Ticket creation and assignment: The platform allows employees to submit tickets from multiple platforms. It then categorizes the tickets based on priority level and assigns them to the right IT agent for faster resolution. 

• AI-powered insights: The platform provides comprehensive insights on ticket status and resolved tickets and gives metrics on MTTR, FCR, and more. 

• Custom ticket forms: You can customize the forms and fields to reflect your company’s brand and capture all necessary information to understand the issue. 

Pros 

• Efficiently prioritizes and routes tickets

• The platform provides comprehensive reports

Cons

• The platform lacks advanced customization options for IT ticketing 

• The platform needs improvements in features for mobile devices. 

Pricing

Contact SolarWinds for pricing details.  

ServiceNow 

ServiceNow is a widely known platform that helps enterprises manage their IT operations. It automates repetitive tasks, manages service requests, improves service delivery, and manages company assets.

Key features

• Multichannel ticket creation: The platform allows employees to create tickets via email, website, Slack, or MS Teams. The support agent can view all tickets from one place and speed up resolution. 

• Ticket prioritization: The tool can assign priority levels to tickets based on their impact and urgency. This helps IT teams resolve the most critical issues faster and reduce downtime. 

• Customizable approval workflows: ServiceNow allows you to automate approval workflows for specific requests, such as software updates or password resets. This helps improve self-service capabilities. 

Pros 

• Reduces the agent workload

• Efficient in handling repetitive queries

• Easy to navigate across the platform

Cons

• Users report slow performance when large data is processed.

• Complex integration with legacy systems

• Users report complexity in customization and configurations of the platform

Pricing 

Contact ServiceNow for pricing details.

InvGate

InvGate is a popular company that primarily focuses on two main aspects of IT support: IT asset management and IT service management. It offers many features such as knowledge management, workflow automation, multidepartment setup, and integrations with popular tools. 

Key features

• Ticketing management: InvGate allows users to manage tickets efficiently, prioritizing tasks based on urgency and service level agreements (SLAs).

• Predictive suggestions: The platform leverages AI to analyze ticket content, offering agents recommendations based on historical data for faster, more accurate resolutions.

• Customizable dashboards: Users can create personalized dashboards that display relevant metrics and information at a glance, improving visibility into operations and performance.

Pros

• The solution provides comprehensive management of tickets and requests

• InvGate offers a user-friendly interface 

Cons

• Users express a steep learning curve

• The platform doesn't have integrated remote control tools to streamline support

Pricing 

• Contact InvGate for pricing details.

Happyfox 

Happyfox is software designed to improve customer and IT support across businesses of all sizes. It provides various features, such as ticket management, canned actions, a knowledge base, a satisfaction survey, and help desk reports, that help improve internal IT support. 

Key features:

• Canned actions: To expedite the responses to common queries, Happyfox allows using pre-built replies to employees. This helps IT teams reduce the time taken to respond. 

• Task management: This feature allows IT leaders to create and manage all tasks related to one ticket. Managers can create task templates and reuse them on similar tickets. 

• Ticket creation: Happyfox automatically sorts tickets from multiple channels into custom categories, tags them based on priority, and routes them to the right support agent. 

Pros

• Users say that managing tickets is easy with automation and quick replies

• The platform is efficient in handling repetitive queries

Cons

• The platform offers limited customization in setting workflows and triggers.

• Users express difficulty in configuring the platform settings. 

Pricing 

• Agent-based pricing starts from $9 per agent/month (billed annually)

• Unlimited agents pricing starts from $1,999 per month (billed annually)

Zendesk

Zendesk is a popular solution for customer service and IT service management. It offers a robust internal IT help desk system that allows enterprises to effortlessly create, prioritize, and resolve employee and customer tickets.

Key features

• Ticket triaging and routing: The platform categorizes each ticket based on urgency, query type, and user role and assigns tickets to the appropriate support executive.

• Knowledge base integration: The platform seamlessly integrates with your KB to provide employees with a centralized repository of IT-related documents, FAQs, etc., for better self-service. 

• Centralized ticket tracking: Zendesk collects and organizes IT tickets received via email, chat, phone, Slack, or website in one place. This enables support agents to track and resolve issues efficiently.

Pros 

• Easy to implement

• Offers customizations for automation, sorting tickets, and reporting functionalities.

• Offers smooth integrations with popular enterprise systems. 

Cons

• Support agents can’t preview the attached files on the ticket page. This confuses them as there’s no separate folder or a standard filename for downloading attachments from raised tickets.

• Users state technical limitations and extra costs for advanced features. 

• Users report poor customer support. 

Pricing 

• Suite team: $55 per user/month (billed annually)

• Suite growth: $89 per user/month (billed annually) 

• Suite professional: $115 per user/month (billed annually) 

Suite enterprise:  Contact sales team.

Today, as organizations continue to digitize their operations and a remote work culture becomes prevalent, the role of the internal IT help desk has become more important than ever. Employees are prone to more technical hiccups and expect faster assistance from IT teams.

The integration of workflow automation and AI chatbots into IT help desk software has enabled IT teams to keep up with the increased volume of support requests.

 A study shows that over 90% of employees trust automation solutions to get more done without errors, help them make decisions faster, and improve team collaboration and productivity.

According to a report, the AI chatbots market is projected to reach $22.6 billion by 2031, at a CAGR of 27.8%. This highlights that businesses are truly harnessing the power of generative AI and advanced automation to meet growing demands.

Here’s how the combo of automation and AI chatbots helps your internal IT help desk:

• These tools enhance self-service capabilities by leveraging the power of generative AI. AI chatbots can synthesize large volumes of data to give personalized and accurate answers to your employees. 

• AI chatbots enable you to provide 24/7 IT support. This minimizes the risk of prolonged downtime. 

• Automation tools let you build approval workflows for repetitive tasks such as software installation, password recovery, and account unlocking. This helps deflect repetitive queries through auto-resolution and improves MTTR. 

• Facilitate collaboration through cross-platform integration, such as MS Teams, Slack, Google Workspace, etc. This helps maintain seamless communication and reduces the chances of misunderstanding.

• The tool automatically updates the status of each ticket across all platforms. This capability reduces the manual work of the IT team.

Advancements in AI technology, especially generative AI and LLMs, have shown immense potential for transforming IT support processes. AI can process large amounts of data, synthesize information, perform rapid searches, generate new content, and continuously learn from interactions and data over time. Leveraging these capabilities by integrating AI automation into the IT helpdesk software will help IT teams speed up resolution times, improve information retrieval, and keep up with the growing volume of complex IT issues and rising employee expectations. For businesses, this would mean minimized downtime, improved productivity, seamless business operations, and increased cost savings.

Workativ empowers enterprises to significantly extend the capabilities of their internal IT help desk by organizing tickets in a unified system from all communication channels like MS Teams and Slack. 

Through Slack and MS Teams integrations, Workativ facilitates seamless communications and collaboration for autonomous problem resolutions, as well as ticket management and optimization, all without leaving the platform.

The LLM-powered GenAI chatbot integrates with popular ITSM tools and fetches information to bring to your familiar business comms channels, enhancing IT support efficiency.

The platform requires no coding, and its easy-to-use interface eliminates the need for extensive training. Thus, your employees and IT support agents can handle queries seamlessly.

Let’s have a detailed look at how Workativ helps enterprises build resilient IT support : 

• Automate repetitive tasks: Workativ helps you automate 80% of repetitive tasks, such as password resets and access management, with app workflow automation and triggers. 

• AI-powered self-service: Workativ’s Knowledge AI feature allows enterprises to build an AI knowledge bot that provides human-like responses and helps employees self-resolve their queries. 

• Data-driven insights: The platform provides detailed analytics and reports for IT leaders to review the performance, spot areas for improvement, and make adjustments to improve the efficiency of IT support.

• Omnichannel IT support: Enterprises can deploy the chatbot on channels like Slack, MS Teams, and chat widgets to make IT support more accessible to employees. 

So, no matter which internal help desk software you choose, Workativ will elevate the efficiency of your IT support, enabling you to provide a top-notch employee experience.

Want to know how Workativ can streamline your IT help desk operations? Book a demo now. 

What is the difference between IT help desk and IT service desk?

A help desk focuses on resolving basic technical issues. It is the first point of contact when users need quick assistance with common queries or issues. The main goal of help desk agents is to resolve routine queries with minimal delay so that users can return to being productive at work. Their tasks include basic troubleshooting, answering common technical queries, and unlocking user accounts. 

Compared to the help desk, the service desk goes beyond simple troubleshooting and takes on a more advanced and broader role in IT support. Service desk professionals are trained to handle various user queries, from resolving technical issues to managing IT service inquiries. 

What are the benefits of internal IT help desk software?

The key benefits of internal IT help desk software include a centralized ticketing system, faster response times, data-driven insights, improved team collaboration, and enhanced self-service capabilities.

What is an example of IT help desk software?

Some popular IT help desk tools are Zendesk, Zoho Desk, and Jira Service Management. These tools offer features like ticket management, automated workflows, SLA monitoring, and knowledge base integration, which helps IT support teams track and manage support requests efficiently. 

What is a self-service help desk?

Self-service help desk refers to the support solution that enables employees to resolve queries independently. Many companies deploy AI chatbots to enhance self-service. The self-service help desk includes resources like FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and KB in a centralized place accessible to employees.  What does an IT help desk person do?

An IT help desk agent assists employees with technical issues such as software installation, password reset, network connection, etc. They are the first point of contact for support requests. 

Their responsibility extends to documenting issues and resolutions and escalating unresolved/complex IT queries to higher support levels for faster resolution.