What is our primary use case?
We are in support. Zendesk is being used by the IT group help desk and also by our team. We are an internal team that supports SharePoint, Salesforce, and Tableau. We use it for tickets for customer issues. We also use it for a help desk for everyone else internally.
What is most valuable?
The product offers very good management. It has a great ability to assign tickets based on content.
There is multi-channel support and a self-service portal.
The product integrates well with Salesforce.
The product features as we were currently using them are fantastic.
The solution offers a very good SLA.
What needs improvement?
We concerned with and want to understand more about the change management features of the solution.
The solution itself wasn't easy to set up.
We're only using a third of all of the features, and we wanted something that was more simple to configure and set up. We don't have anyone who has the skill set to do the configuration. On top of that, the way the service model is, we have a team that are practicing within our organization. We would like to have the expertise internally instead of relying on a vendor for support.
Anything that's related to the HelpDesk, where they're tracking, your device, your phone, that kind of stuff, would be nice if it was included.
The solution should offer API connections to make it easier to integrate between other solutions.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been dealing with the product for about three years at this point.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution has been very stable. IT's why I was curious as to why we were considering switching. However, apparently, there are other features that we want that ServiceNow offers and Zendesk doesn't offer.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We didn't really talk about scalability previously. That wasn't even something that was considered as there were so many things that ServiceNow does that Zendesk doesn't from an IT infrastructure perspective. We're looking at those features for the future in terms of our roadmap, security, asset management, and so forth.
Currently, we have about 24 people on the solution. They are admins or developers, for the most part.
At this point, we don't intend to increase usage.
How are customer service and support?
I've never been in touch with Zendesk technical support. I met with the vendor and they were very, very helpful. We were going to use one of them to expand on some of the features, however, we now have plans looking at something else.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We are a service IT company. We have Zendesk for our employees internally and ServiceNow being used as a practice for external customers. They also have a practice at ProKarma and they are using it. Now we are experts and can set up whatever we need. We're trying to decide between Zendesk and ServiceNow.
How was the initial setup?
Our IT director set it up. He set up something that was very simple, and basic, and it's working for him. However, he knew that there were more features that he should be using, however, he didn't know how to use those features. Then we found out from the vendor, that there were a lot of features that were grandfathered in, and we're not even utilizing those either. At that point he made a decision that from an infrastructure standpoint, there are other features that he wanted that ServiceNow provides however, it was more on the infrastructure and security side. Therefore, we may be moving away from the product.
We are still in a contract with Zendesk until the end of the year. And then they will make the decision whether to switch or extend the contract. Nothing has been decided at this point.
The solution originally took less than three months to set up. If I recall correctly, deployment took about eight weeks. We don't have anyone assigned to regular maintenance.
What about the implementation team?
We had the solution set up in house using our own resources. We didn't require any outside assistance.
What was our ROI?
I'm not sure if we can really point to an exact ROI, however, it would be a good item to watch in the future.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We pay for the solution on a yearly basis and my understanding is that the cost is about $30,000. That's the cost for 24 to 25 agents. There are no other fees. Many items were actually grandfathered in. We have Zendesk Guide Professional, Zendesk Explore Professional, Zendesk Gather Professional and Zendesk Sunshine Lite. All of these things are not being leveraged as of today. It looks like we were using just Zendesk Support Enterprise, and the vendor was sharing that with us.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at Service Cloud. They have a help desk on it, however, it came with a cost. You had to pay for every user who actually wanted to use it. We have 3000 or 4000 employees. We would have to have some type of restricted user license. That can be very expensive if the company is growing.
What other advice do I have?
We're using the Core Optimization package. We also have Zendesk Explore Professional, even though we're not really using it as well as the Zendesk Sunshine Lite. I'm not sure of the exact versions of the solution we're using.
You really need to know how you are trying to service your customers to make a decision of whether or not to go with a particular solution. We were looking at three products. We were looking at ServiceNow, Zendesk, and also Service Cloud. You really need to know what are your requirements? What are your needs? And what your future roadmap? Those should have been the driving factors for making a decision.
Zendesk is a very good product. I didn't understand why we were moving to something else when we weren't using all of the features. Usually, you use everything and then you outgrow that solution and you're looking for a new solution. To me, that wasn't the case.
Overall, I would rate the solution seven out of ten. I would give it higher marks if they were offering some more features like asset management or if they were more integrated like Service Cloud.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
*Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.