Freshdesk launches FreshPlugs for real-time information from third-party services

Cloud-based customer support platform Freshdesk, is continuing to hone its offerings with the launch of FreshPlugs.

FreshPlugs is a customizable support solution where service departments can integrate data from any third-party tools, databases, legacy systems or applications.

Bringing different data sources together should provide ways for support teams to find better solutions as well as being able to monitor specific areas for a better insight into the context behind a situation and customer habits.

For example, a support team could pull the location on a product issue through Google Maps right inside a ticket, making it easy for a field technician to be sent to the location and solve the problem or when processing a refund claim, insights like loyalty points and refund history of a customer can be pulled directly into the support ticket from a legacy system.

Interestingly, FreshPlugs doesn’t just pull information from third parties, but it can also be used to push information from the helpdesk back into these systems. This means that operations can be informed by customer history, loyalty or past actions relating to an issue.

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Along with FreshPlugs, the company has also integrated LogMeIn Rescue screen so that customer support agents can see the same problem on their screen to work out a solution.

Support representatives can initiate a LogMeIn session directly from within Freshdesk. Agents can share the customer’s screen and walk them through troubleshooting steps, seeing exactly what they see, or take control of the screen directly to resolve the issue. After the session, a complete transcript, including any chat conversations, is added as a note in the ticket.

FreshDesk seems to work hard at making the life of a customer support rep a bit easier. Getting calls or tickets all day relating to complaints and issues is not always fun, even if it can be satisfying to find solutions.

Last month, the company announced the introduction of Freshdesk Arcade, the gamified customer support platform, built to tackle the problem of keeping agents engaged in a tedious support environment. Earlier in the year it introduced its HTML5 app and tools for Google users.

The customer support arena is becoming somewhat crowded with the recent launch of Helpmint and Helpshift pushing mobile and social boundaries, while Zendesk also expands in Europe to provide a broad suite of solutions.

At least with so many options for customer support services, those who have an issue to raise can at least be assured that work is being done to find the right way of working things out, one way or another.

Image Credit: The Ewan / Flickr