AI share of voice · help desk software · September 2026

When a buyer asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for help desk software, who gets named?

We asked both assistants the twelve questions a buyer types when choosing a vendor — 24 live answers — and counted how often each vendor was named, and which websites the assistants read to decide. No vendor was involved. The numbers are below; the method is at the bottom.

24live answers (12 ChatGPT, 12 Perplexity)
21vendors named at least twice
88%of answers name Freshdesk, the category leader
9sites cited in a fifth or more of answers

Share of answers that name each vendor

Aliases, product names and old names are merged. Percentages are of all 24 answers. Vendors named only once are omitted.

The default answers

Freshdesk88%
Zoho Desk83%
Zendesk79%
Help Scout62%
Jira Service Management62%
Intercom50%

The middle pack

HubSpot Service Hub46%
Salesforce Service Cloud46%
ServiceNow46%
Freshservice33%

Rarely named

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus21%
Gorgias17%
HelpDesk (LiveChat)17%
Spiceworks17%
HaloITSM12%
HelpSpot8%
Ivanti8%
osTicket8%
SolarWinds Service Desk8%
SysAid8%
Zammad8%

The two assistants do not agree

ChatGPT and Perplexity build their answers from different pages, so the same vendor can be a default on one and near-invisible on the other. The largest gaps:

VendorChatGPTPerplexity
HubSpot Service Hub67%25%
Intercom33%67%
HelpDesk (LiveChat)0%33%
ServiceNow58%33%
Zoho Desk75%92%
Freshservice25%42%
Gorgias8%25%
Spiceworks8%25%

What the assistants read to decide

Every answer came with source links. These are the domains cited most across all 24 answers. Presence on the top few (capterra.com, freshworks.com, g2.com, helpdesk.com) determines the category far more than anything on a vendor's own site.

SourceAnswers citing itWhat it is
capterra.com13Review aggregator
freshworks.com13A vendor's own comparison content (Freshdesk, Freshservice)
g2.com11Review aggregator
helpdesk.com11A vendor's own comparison content (HelpDesk by LiveChat)
learn.g2.com10G2's editorial roundups
forbes.com10Forbes Advisor roundup
blog.hubspot.com7HubSpot's tool roundups
desk365.io6A vendor's own comparison content
intercom.com5A vendor's own comparison content
gartner.com4Analyst research (Magic Quadrant, Peer Insights)
cloudtalk.io4A call-centre vendor's roundup
dragapp.com3A vendor's own comparison content
The one thing worth noticing. Being read is not the same as being recommended. helpdesk.com (the HelpDesk product from LiveChat) was cited as a source in 11 of 24 answers, yet HelpDesk itself was named in only 4, all of them Perplexity; ChatGPT read its comparison posts and recommended Freshdesk, Zendesk and Zoho Desk from them. The leader shows the opposite pattern: freshworks.com was cited in 13 answers and Freshdesk is named in 88%. The category is also blurred: “help desk” pulls IT service-desk tools (Jira Service Management 62%, ServiceNow 46%, Freshservice 33%) into answers about customer support, so a customer-support tool is competing with ITSM vendors for the same slots.

Method

The twelve prompts: Best help desk software for startups · Compare the leading help desk software tools. · Recommend a help desk software for a team of 10. · What are the top help desk software options in 2026? · What help desk software do professionals actually recommend? · What is a good alternative to the most popular help desk software? · What is the best help desk software? · What is the most affordable help desk software? · What should I look for when choosing a help desk software? · Which help desk software has the best reviews? · Which help desk software should a small business use? · Who are the leading providers of help desk software?

Each prompt was sent live to ChatGPT and Perplexity (ChatGPT as gpt-5 with web search on; Perplexity as sonar) via the DataForSEO LLM Responses API on 24 September 2026 — 24 answers. Every answer was checked for each vendor name using case-insensitive matching with aliases and old names merged; vendors were drawn from the answers themselves, so a vendor that no answer named does not appear. Source links inside each answer were counted once per domain per answer (up to eight domains per answer, so citation counts are lower bounds). Answers were truncated at 4,000 characters before scoring. Assistants are non-deterministic: a single vendor's share can move several points between runs. Total cost of the data on this page: US$0.59.

We re-run categories monthly. If a vendor on this list wants the per-question breakdown for their brand — which questions they are named for, which they are not, and which sources carried the answers that omit them — it is free; write to audits@agentbuilt.dev. Want it every month, with the month-over-month trend? Brand Watch does that for one brand at $39 a month.

Want this for your own category?

The free AI visibility audit runs the same twelve questions for any brand in any category and sends you the report. No card, no call. Other categories: appointment scheduling software, cold email software, lease accounting software, podcast hosting platform, rank tracking software, social media scheduling tool.