Avantages
Zendesk as a tool does what it is supposed to do, and it does it well. We used Support + Guide products, for ticketing for our e-learning business, and also for our Self-Serve support (knowledgebase). It is full-featured, and comprehensive. As far as support rep work goes, it's simple, to the point, and it integrates well with many tool because it is such a large company. It is designed for an enterprise company.
Inconvénients
Because it is so full-featured, it can be years' work to get everything set like you need, and they provide little to no assistance. Some of the basic settings are so deep and so spread out, you'll spend hours reading through Help articles to understand how to customize your ticket form. It is NOT small-business friendly, it is really meant for large companies with someone dedicated to maintaining this software.
Zendesk is an easy-to-use, dynamic, intuitive customer service tool that allows the use of macros to optimize messages to customers.
Zendesk is easy to implement and with adaptable prices. I have recommended this tool to several friends for their organizations
Avantages
Zendesk is an excellent tool for the management of requirements or requests. It facilitates the management within my Support Center.
It allows to automate response to our customers. Also, customize the tool according to the type of company.
From this tool I manage to serve the internal and external clients of my organization. As well as, send satisfaction surveys once the support is finished.
Their specific user roles allowed me to implement the tool in the organization in a short time, even without investing much time in training because it has very good material for users on the web.
What I like most about Zendesk is to be able to automate the responses to clients and macros.
Zendesk has elements for case management, live chat, design a knowledge base, have a panel to the client. Since we included this tool in the company we have improved our response levels in the support tickets and with this to customer service.
I like the flexibility of purchase packages or use of the tool, through payment by users or agents. Also, although we have not configured it for now, it is interesting to integrate with VoIP to take the call from customers or interested parties.
Inconvénients
Zendesk for being a tool for customer service would be interesting to link or customize good practice agreements at the service level and operational.
We as a client can add response times, and define with a category that is requirements or request and that are incidents.
Next, what features Zendesk would need:
* Add response time according to the type of requirements or request.
* Define type of requests and incidents
* Get graphs by type of incidents
* Get graphs with crossings between service agreements and operational agreements. This would allow us to measure the effectiveness of the support center based on agreements with customers
* Have notifications every time you are consuming the time of a ticket, considering the times of agreements at the service or operational level
* Have a video call
ZenDesk really is the best CRM I have ever used, and I was in customer service for 10 years. By far and away the most intuitive, simple and clean user experience you will have for a consumer facing CR interface.
Avantages
My consumer care team went from using another CRM to ZenDesk and it was like night and day! Cluttered to organized! Overwhelming to clean and easy to navigate! The best feature, in my opinion, is the ability to search for tickets by contact, user or subject and merge those tickets into one. That way you don't have to respond to multiple ticket from the same consumer about the same issue, you can clear those all out at once while creating a better consumer experience (one outbound email). Similarly, the ability to mass select tickets and close at the same time either as Will Not Address (which is a great option) or you can mass select and close using one macro/template. This is particularly helpful when your site has experienced a glitch and you've gotten thousands of tickets about the same issue, you can close them all at once when the issue is resolved or if you have an update. Speaking of macros, having an easy place to store your personal templates as well as share the best templates from your team is a game changer. No more keeping templates stored in random docs and then copying/pasting. Overall, I love ZenDesk! It must have been desinged by people who have been in customer facing roles or focused group the pain points for CRMs incredibly well.
Inconvénients
I really do love this product. The only thing to mention that could use improvement is the (seemingly) constant outages. There were some days where we would have to wait hours to get back in to the tool. I will say, though, customer support was always on top of it and super responsive.
Tremendous scaling benefits. Adding more users is not just easy, but we have recourse to ensure that our teams can grow at their own paces without worrying if the software can keep up. Zendesk can absolutely keep it; it does not even flinch.
Avantages
Consistency: Very few service outages and very little change in UI and product structure. Both of these things create a more familiar and consistent workflow.
Robust: Robust is a buzz-phrase I try and avoid using, but honestly the robustness of Zendesk is one of the primary reasons we transitioned to it away from HelpScout in 2017. Everything is fairly robust; reports, ticket indexing, integrations, customizations, admin tools, inbox monitoring, and so on.
Connectedness: Zendesk makes it super easy to have specific teams stay connected with eachother; not just the support team. We can have folks all across our company set up in Zendesk to help with JIRA reports, historical sales information through Salesforce from our Salesforce admins, folks on research teams, EAMs, and so forth. We can all play in this giant Zendesk sandbox together in our own corners with ease.
Inconvénients
Innovation: Zendesk seems to have done all of its innovation years ago as the product has achieved a plateau of functionality of features
Support: I very much dislike Zendesk's support set up. The amount of money you pay them seems to have a significant impact on your ability to get quick support help. Instead, they depend heavily on an open forum system where other Zendesk users try and help support eachother. Often these support threads turn into a bash-fest with poor attitudes.
Zendesk is super easy to use and to communicate with different other teams is very easy.very good customer support and it has 24/7 support .Zendesk has a great job in seriously improving their product listening to their customers and releasing new features to make their customers feel very happy. it is fully featured and comprehensive .
Avantages
Zendesk is most commonly used helpdesk software for more of the business world to understand the customer concerns well and improve business style and it has very great features include it has multi channel support like email,phone,chat and social media support. it has a very great robust reporting and advanced analytics which helps in understanding the customer needs prime focusing on the requirements customer is looking for.Its has very good UI for the customer facing and very user friendly options for navigating across different options and it has flexible ticket management and with automated workflow which helps us better understand the pending issues and what are the better ways is minimizing the issues in future and additions features i like the most are as below:
1)Open API
2)We can export the tickets to view in CSV.
3)Include public and private forms
4)SSO with twitter Facebook
Inconvénients
The least about the software is that this software is getting struck sometimes due to adequate request and on multiple selection and the latest software is now which is working very fine and fast
Avantages
ZenDesk makes it easy to manage your Support/Customer Service queue, offering a user-friendly dashboard, custom modes for communicating with users/customers, and bench marking statistics, both within your team and against industry averages, that help you understand how you stack up against other team members as well as competitors. With such a vast database of industries within their portfolio, ZenDesk has been able to optimize their system, helping businesses across the business spectrum. Have used this software in different industries, and it is responsive to all types of Support communication. Also gives businesses the ability to customize their system, which allows for a great feel/branding opportunity in some cases.
Inconvénients
There are times when the software can be so user-friendly and intuitive that you feel as if you're missing some functionality. While support typically consists of straight-forward communication, there are times when incorporating additional agents in real-time would be helpful in more of a live chat setting as opposed to the "email" template where most communication takes place. That's not to say collaboration in ZenDesk is impossible as that's not the case at all, but it's not always easy to determine whether another agent is acting upon a support request (can only tell when they are viewing a ticket).
Zendesk replaced our legacy ticket system, which was clunky and not cloud-based. With Zendesk being in the cloud, we can access customer information, ticket details, etc. from wherever we are. Perhaps most importantly, it permitted customers to give direct feedback as soon as a ticket is marked closed. This has been an invaluable tool for us in evaluating whether we're providing top-notch support.
Avantages
Zendesk is extremely easy to setup and get started, and once it's up and running, it starts building itself out as a knowledge base. It's extremely easy to search the database, either by ticket #, customer name, application/category, etc. It also produces outstanding reports -- for example, the frequency with which the support staff opens/solves/closes tickets, which customers submit the most/least tickets, etc. In addition, it integrates beautifully with our CRM system (Nutshell) to provide seamless access for sales staff. With this, the sales team can see which customers have open tickets, etc. It's really great! The built-in feedback mechanism is also great, providing customers a chance to review the service received.
Inconvénients
It's almost impossible to find something I dislike about Zendesk. I almost never hear any of the support folks complain about it, nor have I run into any problems using it myself.
Thanks to Zendesk, now everything is optimized and well organized, we can offer more productive and professional services to our customers.
Avantages
The tool is easy to learn and does not require special technological skills. It provides a platform to build efficiency and responsibility quickly within a department. This has been an extremely effective tool for managing the high volume of emails that arrive, specifically for AP. Functions such as "Views" and "Reports" are excellent tools to control current tickets. The built-in spell checker is, in fact, a lifesave, You can easily track the previous ticket history in case you need to refer to a previous problem, you can combine tickets so you can know what to look for and to focus more on creating an answer, We have the macros configured to mark the tickets as spam, deliver them to another team, etc. I have more time to think about my answers and manage our inflow.
Inconvénients
They could benefit greatly from additional email options and customizations, as well as solving some "bug" problems, since some of the features may be somewhat vague. Also, they need to improve notification to personal email because we do not have all of them and, sometimes, I can not see the customer's response on time.
Avantages
Zendesk has always been one of the go-to solutions for helpdesk software, but they've really streamlined their system over the last few years. It's simple and easy to use with straightforward options for even those who are new to using a helpdesk system.
Zendesk is basically an email support system, where all emails sent will be routed to your Zendesk dashboard and show up as support tickets. Tickets are tagged with its own ID and even cross-referenced to see if a particular sender has submitted any tickets prior, so it's easy to check through the support history.
There are also pre-defined responses, allowing for quick and easy replies for typical queries.
Of course, these are actually what you might believe every helpdesk system should provide, but you'll be surprised at how much you have to pay and that some don't even have these options at all. Zendesk is actually very affordable and is easily scalable.
Inconvénients
Zendesk is great when it comes to providing the basic needs for most when it comes to a support system. However, additional useful features come at a higher premium, and certain features like chat support is actually not directly integrated into a single dashboard.
Easy to use Tracks all issues and provides reports Improves efficiency and service quality
I love a ticketing system - and the cost of Zendesk is just right! The functions are endless, even for the basic subscription.
Easy tool to use. Great customer support. It is an easy way to build a helpdesk/knowledgebase system for our clients to rely on.
Quick set up. Easy to begin the process of setting up a help desk system. Nearly immediate results for customer notifications and for internal email notifications.
Avantages
Flexible ticket management with automated workflow
Multi-channel support: email, web, phone, chat, social media
Robust reporting & advanced analytics
Branded customer-facing web interface
Community forums
Over 100 out-of-the-box integrations with 3rd party apps
Multi-brand support with linked accounts
Group rules and macros
Screencasting
Public and private forums
Multi locale (timezone and languages)
REST API
Salesforce & SugarCRM integrations
Real time updates
Open API
Inconvénients
This caused us difficulty with our own customers.
The price structure is developed by some MBA guy. It's an online platform people, get over yourself.
Dropped calls constantly, not an efficient way to keep our team informed about patients, super frustrating when calls were not taken even though their were people available
Zendesk have continued to charge me for months despite having a new paid account Forced to switch to Zendesk from Zopim Zendesk continue to charge my old account 6 months later Wasted many hours on their own online support. Countless emails ignored. Started a dispute with PayPal but still, I cannot elicit a response from Zendesk Their online chat denies that they are charging my account even though I have sent them screenshots of their own transaction emails I find it baffling that even in the face of such overwhelming evidence of unauthorized charges continually being made to my account that zendesk will not respond to me.
Avantages
Zendesk makes it really easy to organize all requests you receive from your in-house team to outside customers. Our team receives hundreds of tickets a week. Since we receive so many tickets, the best features Zendesk has to counter this are Triggers, Automations and Macros. With Triggers, your able to automate activities to happen based on certain criteria. For example, if a ticket gets submitted with the word "Help" in the subject line, you can program Zendesk to assign it to a specific person and to reply to the submitter with a message. Automations function in a similar way but are timed instead of instantaneous. Macros allow you to update a ticket's tags, message, and other information with a click of a button. Zendesk has done a great job to make a ticketing system that increases company efficiency.
It also has a Help Desk (customer forum / QA) section that is available at a specific price tier that could save you time.
Inconvénients
I really wish that time tracking was available for all pricing levels. It's not worth it for most teams to upgrade to the top tier of pricing just for one simple feature.
Also, the reporting feature is not very thorough. This would be extremely useful if more attributes were reported on.
With this program, we have solved the issue of different channels (ticket, chat, telephone) in different platforms which made the agent's work easier as they spend less time swapping from one program to another and the rest of the team as we have a complete database and reports overview
Avantages
I have been working with Zendesk for about 3 years and I am very satisfied as it is very easy to use and to set up every new feature. At the moment we use the ticketing, talk and chat features and they do their job.
In all this time, we had to adapt out features to different business needs and Zendesk is very flexible regarding the customization and integration.
It is also effortless to keep track on agent's activities in all the different channels and monitor the SLA and urgent request.
Inconvénients
Zendesk has a very complete report session that is extremely easy to use but when exporting data from the settings>report tab, it does not allow you to select a starting date for reports in cvs program, so everytime we need a ticket report, we need to extract the data from the past few years which make it a very tedious and time consuming task.
Avantages
I started with Zendesk reluctantly, because I wasn't to thrilled about their design and some features that are a little bit less than obvious, but once you get a hang of it, it's a total life saver.
I got a first year free for my startup thanks to go.co - thanks a bunch! And I've been using it ever since. I'm a huge fan of integrating stuff, and once again, I was able to easily integrate Zendesk using their API into my consoles and keep track of what's what and who's who. I know at a quick glance who's responsible for what task and who's doing what. Paired with Asana, this is the perfect work environment.
Inconvénients
UI could be a bit better... at least for the newcomers. Maybe they could consider introducing additional features over time, I'm not really sure what the solution is, but it is a bit overwhelming at the first glance, which may make some users unwilling to try it out. With options to jump to knowledgebase, chat and other sections that aren't built for tickets, I've heard my coworkers complain that's it's a bit much.
Avantages
Zendesk does a great job at constantly improving their product, listening to their customers, and releasing new features to make their customers job's easier and better. From their basic ticketing support, to live chat, talk, and even guides, they really have it all under one roof. They have good tutorials and a pretty active community to get help from if you need it.
Inconvénients
If you want to have something outside their ecosystem, like your own documentation pages for example, it's really hard or impossible to use their features (like their guide) in conjunction with things of your own. Some of the metrics and reporting tools they use are a bit tough to use too. They partner with GoodData for most of their metrics, but they have their own language they use to create these metrics. While there are lots of pre-made options to get many of the metrics you want, creating your own is really tough. You also cannot change how often data refreshes from once a day, so testing your metrics can be really time consuming to ensure you did it correctly.
Avantages
I love that there is an app, so I can keep up with my support duties even when on the go.
I like being able to report on tickets based on the client to see who needs the most support. This helps us know how we might improve our training.
Being able to set our own Types is very helpful. Generic types just wouldn't do us much good.
You can create macros for those tickets that can be answered with a standard email.
Also, we have it set to respond to the client after a certain number of days if the ticket is pending. That prompts the client to reply and keeps us from having to wade through pending tickets manually and email the client.
There is a lot more than I can learn about using the product which is also a plus!
I have never used the help feature myself, so I cannot really rate that. My coworker has been pleased, though.
Inconvénients
I wish I could set a reminder for tickets that I have claimed, but for which I need to do some more research in order to answer. I'm going to investigate and see if that option already exists and I just haven't found it. I can look trough my tickets but I would really like to set a date/time reminder inside ZenDesk.
Zendesk has been a great help in two specific areas -- solving problems and getting feedback when problems aren't solved (satisfaction surveys). It's been nice to see metrics each month to find out where we can improve.
Avantages
The best part I like about Zendesk is the ability to integrate with other software including APIs, the Zendesk marketplace, things like Zapier, and so on. If the solution doesn't exist in Zendesk itself, there's a way to do it. In my personal opinion, I find the software intuitive, but a bit complex at the same time. Until you've gone through it and understand the layout, it might be unfamiliar if you've experienced a different ticketing system.
Inconvénients
Creating forms in Zendesk has been really terrible in the past. Trying to arrange them and sort was awful, but they did update that part of it. They continue to get better with features, but some feature updates have been present in the community for years; not that this isn't normal for some software companies, but some of the features seem like they should at least be in a 'beta' stage.
We have based our entire support process on Zendesk and have gotten excellent results. It allows for efficient tracking of the new tickets and their progress and integrates with Jira so that we can track any required development work.
We can also track how many tickets an agent has solved and the customers' satisfaction for each one, which is very useful for internal evaluation processes.
Avantages
It allows for a very efficient customization of the ticketing process based on each team's segmentations, permissions, and processes.
The integrated How to articles functionality is very useful
Tagging, custom common replies, automation in terms of assignments are minor things that will improve your ability to scale your team efficiently
Reporting, especially combined with the GoodData integration, is excellent
Inconvénients
For a ticketing / support platform, our support experience has not been great. We have been mainly dependent on the platform's forum
A minor gripe is being able to mention a specific collaborator in an internal ticket comment so that you can work together more efficiently
Avantages
Zendesk has reached a point of product maturity and mass adoption that few competitors can match. Not only is the software highly refined for its purpose, but millions of customer service reps across the world are already familiar and well-versed with the features within. Some of the biggest companies in the world use Zendesk for millions of tickets and instances per year. As a customer, you've likely used Zendesk many times without even knowing it. Zendesk is a cornerstone for preventing customer churn/attrition, keeping customer sentiment positive, and addressing ongoing customer support needs. Given the reasonable licensing fees, I wouldn't use anything else.
Inconvénients
Because it's so popular and common, it's not tailored for any specific industry or product type, so often the features are built in a broad, abstract, and malleable way. This requires you to perform a little tailoring and administration to make Zendesk work well for you.
Avantages
This is a great customer service tool to effectively address customer concerns. Our company published annual feedback of the products we are using for last 4 years and Zendesk was in the first 10. Zendesk introduced the smart ticket changed the old method of answering to tickets by assigning to people manually based on the priority but Zendesk does prioritizing the tickets automatically. History of the supporting agents and the customers will be updated just every hour and the feedback details can be hidden from the support agent to stay confidential. Integration is possible to almost all the products we use at work.
Inconvénients
They updates the graphical user interface without any notification and the users will not be given an option to stay in the old interface if they do not want the new one. The latest update made to the application was just making things little bit complicated. It takes a while to get used to this app for a beginner.
I think Zendesk is a great solution for things like customer support with a lot of different options to fit your needs, such as a social media tool as well. I highly recommend it.
Avantages
I like how easy it is to use and how simple the interface is. The messages will be displayed in chronological order, the internal comments or escalations will be in a different colour to differentiate them; everything is simple but clear. In addition, there are a lot of add-ons that can be added depending to what you want or like (for example, a daily joke section to make the employees smile). Very happy with the use of Zendesk.
Inconvénients
I wish it would have an option to easily verify when an email was received or bounced as this is not within the options and sometimes we do need to check that. In addition, though this is not really about the performance, I wish it could be personalized, meaning that there were themes available to make it look as you like.
Avantages
Having used Zendesk as an alternative to other options, here are my thoughts on it:
1) Zendesk is good at integrating multiple communication channels into one place. Unlike other options, using social media channels is included in the cost. With Zendesk the social media channels are included in the per user cost, so you are only paying for other features like Knowledgebase or Live Chat, or the bundled option.
2) Cost per user is fairly reasonable compared to other solutions we looked at. For us the cost per user was really important because while we may need fancy features, we wanted to make sure we did not end up spending more money for features or services we really didn't need.
3) Third party app support - We were able to choose and integrate with third party tools using the App directory. This helps to add functionality that may not be included in the core Zendesk product.
Inconvénients
1) Not sure why but most companies have very poorly designed mobile apps, Zendesk's apps while ok are still not as good as using the web platform.
2) Using social media channels, you are not able to attach documents or media, you can only respond using tech. This would be ok if you do not need to share documents with potential clients but for sales people its not great since we get a lot of our business from social media channels.
3) Unread Support tickets -Not sure why this is a thing, but for some reason Zendesk will show every administrator/user support tickets as unread even if someone else is responding to a ticket already.
From 2014 to 2016, our company has been used Zendesk for your customer service solution via the Technical support team. We used to manage, assign and distribute all knids of issues via Zendesk which really amazing tool and really saved our valuable time and make faster our regular scheduled working hour and increased productvity. I love Zendek and their smart service including lovely customer support.
Avantages
1. Super easy to use and pretty simple method to finish for initial setup
2. Visualization, Optimization and materialistic design
3. Syncing, connecting with the different team for assigning any ticket and solving with team method is really smart in Zendesk.
4. They have really helpful customer service for 24/7
Inconvénients
1. Distributing and managing any ticket to any specific team is still looks difficult.
2. Admin panel has restrictions for multiple people
3. bugs, slow and not connecting sometimes
4. Suddenly crashed and and need to restarted the broswer which is really bad.
I am really happy since using Zendesk. I actually look forward to getting support tickets!
I develop & sell software to consumers. I use support techs who work out of their home. It's not always easy bringing them up to speed on some of the more complex technical issues.
We used to use straight email. I did not get to see what my employees were telling customers, so I couldn't monitor the quality of service, and give the employees training when required. Now I can see what they are saying, and I can jump in and assist in some of the more complex cases.
When I answer support tickets, I am more motivated to give detailed answers, because I can refer my employees to my replies, and they can learn.
Now that we all share access to the pool of support tickets, we can give more prompt replies, and customers get faster service. Customers are much more forgiving when they see answers in minutes instead of hours or days. When a customer is thinking of buying and sends us a question, he is more likely to buy if the answer comes back in minutes, and he is still in a buying frame of mind.
I love being able to tell at a glance the status of all our outstanding support issues.
The Markdown codes enable us to use typographic features to better lay out out replies, making them clearer and more easy to understand.
I like the email format that Zendesk uses. It is the most natural and convenient way to communicate with customers. I like that customers don't have to sign into a ticket management app if they don't want to.
We tried using a Support Forum so that customers could get access to all past support answers. That did not work out, as some disgruntled customers left nasty and overly negative comments for all to see, which would discourage prospective customers.
I am going to tell all my software developer colleagues about Zendesk.
Now if you could add Tables to the Markdown code, Zendesk would be beyond perfect.
Avantages
The Infusionsoft integration is fantastic. One click and I can tell what my customers are contacting us about. (We make a dozen different products. They think we can read their mind :o)
Inconvénients
Sometimes the Infusionsoft app loses the link. I have to Sign Out & log back in. No big deal.
Helps everyone focus on the work instead of the work order creation process or any other oddities in the work flow that is created by alternative ticketing softwares.
Avantages
It was clean and simple and it allowed you to be as complex as you want on the back-end of the system, while only showing as much info to the end-user as desired. If you needed some special integrations or features, Zendesk most likely had something to offer, but the best part about Zendesk is how simple it is because it makes you really focus on the work and not waste time inside the ticketing system itself or doing any other workflows that may be necessary with alternative software options.
Inconvénients
Zendesk feature request team did not seem to have much power over what features get implemented and which ones do not. Their support was great, but I found dozens (if not hundreds) of simple feature requests that had been open for multiple years.
It solved a lot of business problems for our team. We were able to connect our phone lines to Zendesk so every time a customer would call, the system would automatically create a ticket for us. It allowed us to respond very quickly to our customers since we were able to download Zendesk to all of our devices.
Avantages
What I liked most about Zendesk is the software can be downloaded to multiple devices including a computer, laptop, and iPad. So if you're on the go, don't worry you will still be able to interact with your customers! It is also very easy to use, but learning every functionality of Zendesk could be difficult. Though, they offer online webinars to learn more about how to use it and how to find the data you're looking for.
Inconvénients
The one thing that was frustrating about this software is internal notes can be hard if you have multiple users on the email thread. Sometimes you will be trying to talk internally with your team, and some posts would not show up just internally based on who the user was. It did not happen very often but the chance was still there so we had to be very careful.
Our company has been using Zendesk for 5-7 years. I was not personally around when we onboarded it, but I have worked with it for over 3 years now. We have terrible trouble any time we did need support, for a system problem or a question we couldn't answer ourselves via their expansive maze of KnowledgeBase. The support reps at Zendesk have been accusatory, excuse-ridden, and most of all don't even read the tickets you submit to understand the problem (Zendesk support actually became an office joke. That's about the time we decided we had to look for another tool). When we met with our Account Rep to try to get some of the issues worked out, we were told basically that we weren't even supposed to have gotten the level of support we had received, and proceeded to explain how SaaS works (we're a software company, mind you).
I think Zendesk simply got too big too fast, and somewhere along the way decided that the businesses using their product aren't important anymore. They lost this long-term customer.