Freshservice – Internal IT For Businesses

Small and medium-size businesses need internal IT support to keep their offices running smoothly, but the costs associated with hiring a full-time team can be too much for many of these organizations to handle. Freshservice offers a middle-of-the-road solution, providing businesses with cloud-based internal IT support.

Freshservice operates under the assumption that IT service help desks don’t have to be boring. The company’s IT service desks are designed to support users, not software. When an issue with your internal software does come up, login to the Freshservice system from any device—Freshservice doesn’t require any installation to begin—and submit a support ticket for your team to handle. Freshservice will categorize, prioritize, and file all issues as they come in, allowing your team to focus on the specific queries that matter most. Service levels and escalations options ensure that your team is working on the right ticket at the right time, sending proactive alerts when an issue hasn’t been resolved within a specified length of time.

Another important part of Freshservice has to do with asset management. Asset management features help managers keep tabs on assets by keeping all configuration items in one place and maintaining a central repository for all of a business’ products. Freshservice is ITIL-ready, allowing businesses to identify and resolve IT problems in real-time as they arise.

Practical Uses:

• Collaborate with your team to resolve support queries
• Ensure that IT admins aren’t adjusting configurations without documenting those changes
• Tie support tickets to specific incidents
• Provide employees with the information they need to resolve their own IT issues

Insider Tips:

• Set Service Level Targets for each ticket priority
• Create a Knowledge Base to share information with employees
• Quickly assign tickets to the appropriate support representative
• Define asset relationships based on how each asset impacts the business

What we liked:

• Freshservice users have no software to install or maintain
• Integrated asset discovery helps users pinpoint who has which assets
• All configuration items, change logs, and relationships are stored in one place
• Pricing plans can be adjusted as a company’s needs change over time

What we didn’t like:

• Freshservice’s incident management features may be too complicated for some small business owners to utilize effectively

Alternatives:

• ServiceNow – http://www.servicenow.com

Company Info:

• Launched: June 2011
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Los Angeles, California
• Founded by: Girish Mathrubootham
• Web site: http://freshservice.com

Costs:

• Sprout plan is free
• Blossom plan is $29 per agent, per month
• Garden plan is $49 per agent, per month