Zendesk

Having worked various service desks in my career, I have used a lot of Help Desk/Ticketing systems. From Bugzilla to Remedy, from Royal Blue’s offering to CA-Unicenter’s AHD software. I also have been to many mind numbing demos, and shown new wizzy bits’n'bobs that the sales guy’s software can do, and I can honestly say, without exception that yes, they do in fact work…. but do I really need all this?    Do I really need to spend serious chunks of my life configuring and integrating this system, then re-training my guys to use this piece of software? Are my customers going to use it, and get what they want out of it easily, or do they need to be a techie of geek proportions to even log an issue with us?  

Like most people in ICT I guess, I suffer from the ‘Hey, did you know, you can do this..?’ and promptly go off and do it, never actually stopping and asking the question, ‘Yes, I can do this, but should I, what are the benefits to either myself, my team, or indeed my customer?’. Had I known then, what I do now, then maybe I wouldn’t have wasted so much of my time and effort with these other bloated applications, when all I really want is an easy way for my customers to interact with us, and get the help and support they need.

But, ZenDesk IS different. It does what it say’s it does, with the minimum of fuss and fanfare. With a few tweaks here and there, it can fit in with any corporate scheme – even ours!

Like all evolving software there are always things that you want, or would like, but need? I don’t believe there is anything missing from this package that we actually need. With the addition of widgets, and a bit of back end coding of php pages on our own web server, I have even manegd to get our telephony details showing on all agents pages, so they now know who is logged in, available, and what the abandoned rate is. They even know how many calls each of them is fielding, a bonus that proves itself time and again in call centers, with agents competing for that top spot.

I am about at the end of the trial period now, and am definately continuing with this product. For now, just the 5 agents (downer..), but when our existing contracted software runs out, very soon, we’re going for the full 25 agent offering. I have already got buy in from the exec, and have another department wanting to use the system internally, so we will probably end up running a couple of instances of this one.

Well done ZenDesk … I do ‘love your helpdesk’, and am beginning to love mine too!

~Mark~