Salesforce Essentials

So many. Ease of use, trackable for sales cycle, many more.

Good for what I need it for, entering new leads, tracking sales pipeline, looking back and forward on data.

The best advice that I can give to a company considering purchasing Salesforce's Desk.com is to document every single expectation and need regarding a CRM tool. Do not assume any functionality exists, regardless of how simple and standard that functionality may seem. There are definitely features and functionalities that the average person might expect any modern system to offer which it does not.

Examples:
List Views - Cannot sort by most fields, cannot add custom fields to list views, and cannot modify the number of records per page
Reporting - Cannot modify fields displayed in a report, cannot edit criteria for metrics, and cannot include custom fields in reports aside from picklists, and cannot export more than 2500 records at a time
Email - Does not include standard modern emailing functions such as underlining, highlighting, modifying font color, or pasting images/tables

Also, while some more complex workflows and automation can be built in Salesforce to update fields which are then passed back to Desk via Desk Connect (native sync between Desk and Salesforce), I strongly recommend against relying on Desk Connect for any business processes. Desk Connect can and has been turned off by Desk.com for all customers without first ensuring this is okay with the customer, interrupting daily business on a large scale. It is also extremely easy to break or surpass its capabilities of Desk Connect to the point that any modification, regardless of size, made to your Salesforce org must be communicated to Desk to ensure that Desk Connect will continue to function as expected.

If you are a small-scale organization/team with very basic case tracking and reporting requirements capable, Desk may very well be the answer for you. But you still better be prepared with extensive documentation of all requirements and expectations for a tool like Desk, no matter how small or obvious they may be.

I'm still learning how to use Salesforce, but it does have a wealth of features and is clearly an industry leader. It is a complex beast, however, so utilising the training modules is essential.