Start with how your customers contact you
Helpdesk software ranges from simple email ticketing to full suites with chat, phone, social media and a self-service portal. The suites cost more per agent and take longer to set up, so the first question is which channels your team actually handles every day.
For many Indian businesses (travel agencies, distributors, service companies, B2B suppliers) most requests still arrive by email at addresses like support@ and bookings@. If that describes your team, an email-first tool will cover the work at a lower cost than a suite whose other channels you would never switch on.
Pricing in rupees, with a proper GST invoice
Many helpdesk products are priced in US dollars and billed to an international card. The rupee cost then moves with the exchange rate, banks add a foreign-currency markup, and your accounts team may not get an invoice that lets them claim input tax credit.
Ask for the price per agent in rupees, whether GST is included or extra, and whether the invoice carries the vendor’s GSTIN. M-Reply, for example, is ₹300 per agent per month plus 18% GST, invoiced from India.
- Is the price per agent, per seat or per ticket, and is there a minimum number of agents?
- Which features sit only on the higher plans? Assignment rules and reports often do.
- Is there a one-time setup or onboarding fee?
- Can you pay annually for a discount, and what happens to the price at renewal?
Where your customer data lives
A helpdesk stores your customers’ names, email addresses, phone numbers and the full text of their messages. India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 makes the business that collects that data responsible for keeping it safe, so ask each vendor where the data is hosted, who can access it and how it is deleted when you leave.
If your customers or your industry need the data kept in-house, look for a vendor that also offers a licence you can run on your own server. M-Reply offers both: the cloud service, or a one-time licence installed on your own VPS or on-premise server.
How quickly emails become tickets
Some helpdesks check the mailbox on a timer, every 5 to 15 minutes. Every ticket then starts its life that much late, and that delay lands on your first response time. Ask whether the tool uses the push notifications that Microsoft 365 and Gmail provide, which turn an email into a ticket within seconds.
Also ask how the tool connects to the mailbox. Signing in through Microsoft’s or Google’s own consent screen (OAuth) is safer than handing over the mailbox password.
Setup, training and support in your hours
A helpdesk only pays off once the team uses it properly. Check who will connect your mailboxes, set up teams and templates, and train agents and team leaders, and whether support is available during Indian business hours by phone or WhatsApp as well as email.
Test it on your own mailbox before you buy
Demo data always looks tidy. The real test is your own mail: the long supplier threads, the customers who reply to old emails, the spam. Run a trial on one real mailbox with a few agents for two weeks and compare first response time before and after.
The M-Reply free 14-day proof of concept works this way: one live mailbox, up to 5 agents, and no credit card.