Jira Service Desk Expert Review, Pricing, Alternatives - 2023

Atlassian created Jira Service Management to be the most versatile customer service solution. The platform offers thousands of integrations with third-party apps, ensuring it fits well in any tech stack, including yours.

Jira Service Management — previously called Jira Service Desk — is Atlassian's IT help desk solution to streamline customer service and support activities.

The name change was symbolic of the platform offering more in-depth features. For example, Jira Service Management now allows customers to pick the primary focus they want the software to address, whether it’s providing internal IT support to IT departments, marketing content, streamlining management, or software development. That’s not it — Jira considers each area of focus as a project and comes from a customer-defined entity or pre-defined list.

You can use Jira to create a self-service portal for customers, allowing them to immediately find solutions to their queries and deflect unnecessary support tickets. Moreover, thanks to Jira Service Management’s machine learning capabilities, both employees and customers can easily look up knowledge articles and resolve issues at their own pace.

Automation facilities help lighten up agent workload, allowing them to focus on the important stuff. You can also choose between a set of innovative reports or customize your own to track specific metrics (for example, SLA success rates and time to resolution). Jira Service Management also extends multilanguage support, where you can add additional languages to your service projects to meet your customer’s language preferences.

What’s more, Atlassian has teased releasing its chat feature for the free plan, which will create a two-way sync between conversations in Microsoft Teams or Slack and your Jira Service Management issues.

Jira Service Management isn't the best fit for companies that aren't in the tech space. Seeing how the majority of its users are software companies, using it as a means of tracking feature development, releases and bug fixes. While it can be used for customer support purposes, the platform offers a lot more than that which can be overwhelming for companies, especially SMBs that aren't in the tech space.

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• No-code/low-code form builder: Create dynamic and user-friendly forms to collect helpful data for providing customer outstanding customer service at lightning-fast speed.
• Email notifications: Set up a system where your agents and customers get email notifications about activity on requests based on their role and how they’ve interacted with the request. With Jira Service Management's Free plan, you can send a maximum of 100 emails per day after which the email notifications will be paused until the following day.
• Self-service portal: An intelligent, intuitive portal makes it easier for employees or customers to submit requests or search through your knowledge base.
• Configurable workflows: Configure request forms and associated workflows using the drag-and-drop fields.
• Embedded knowledge base: Create, update, and delete knowledge articles directly within Jira Service Management, centralizing useful information. You can also leverage knowledge-base reporting to know how your articles are performing using metrics like requests deflected and requests resolved.
• Incident escalation: Build an incident management process to identify affected services, track related issues, and escalate to the right team.
• Automation: Set up automation rules to have your agents focus on solving important matters and help lighten the workload.
• SLA management: Prepare effective Service Level Agreements so agents focus on completing the important things first. Configure and get started within minutes.
• Reporting & analytics: Better understand what’s happening in your service project. You can either use the premade project template or make reports from scratch based on your requirements.
• Mobile app: Receive important notifications on the go.

Jira Service Management's ​rich APIs​ and integrating with over 1,000 trusted third-party tools on Atlassian's Marketplace, including Zapier, Power BI, Slack, and Google Sheets, give you the flexibility to build custom workflows. You can also integrate the software seamlessly with Confluence, Atlassian's own knowledge management solution, to provide customers and agents 24/7 access to help articles and documentation.

Jira Service Management currently offers four subscription plans:

• Free – This plan is always free for up to three agents and lets you handle unlimited customers.
• Standard – This costs $20 per agent and gives you access to everything in the Free plan. Standard-exclusive features include suitability for up to 5,000 agents, 250 GB file storage, and unlimited email notifications, among others.
• Premium – This costs $45 per agent and gives you access to everything in the Standard plan. Premium-exclusive features include advanced incident management, unlimited file storage, and asset and configuration management, among others.‍
• Enterprise – You'll have to request a quote. Expect everything in the Premium plan, along with other features like enhanced data and analytics, centralized security and administration, and 24/7 dedicated senior agent support.

Jira Service Management is designed for teams who create requests through the customer portal or by email, but its free plan will perfectly cater to the needs of smaller teams, helping them plan and track work more efficiently.

Implementing the cloud-based Jira Service Desk is super easy and straightforward. Open its website, and click on the 'Try it Free' button on the top right-hand side of your screen. From there, you'll simply have to sign up and create your account to start using the platform. A product guide is also available, helping new users learn how to get started with Jira Service Management.

Jira has a comprehensive help center with articles, tutorials and technical documentation for customers who prefer self-service. In case you want hands-on support, that's possible too — simply submit a support request and Jira reps will get back to you.

University friends, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, founded Atlassian in 2002. The duo bootstrapped the startup for several years, financing it with $10,000 in credit card debt and went on to release its flagship product, Jira – a project and issue tracker. Then 2004 came Confluence, a team collaboration platform that makes it easier for users to collaborate and work together.

Jira Service Management, the next generation of Jira Service Desk, came into the picture years later in 2020. The company has posted an interactive timeline on its website, breaking down its phenomenal journey to becoming Australia's first unicorn company.

- What does Jira Service Management do?

With Jira Service Management, you can provide your customers effective and prompt service, improve visibility into workflows, and streamline the flow of work between IT, dev, and business teams.

- Can Jira be used as an ITSM tool?

Jira Service Management helps customer support teams get started with ITSM practices like request, incident, problem, change, and configuration management.

- Can I try Jira Service Management for free?

Besides the free Jira Service Management plan for up to three agents or ten users, you can sign up for a 7-day free trial of the Standard or Premium plan.