

Zendesk and OpenText Service Management Automation X (SMAX) are prominent players in the service management sphere. Zendesk is preferred for its user-friendly approach and strong customer support, while OpenText SMAX leads in providing a comprehensive set of features.
Features: Zendesk stands out with features like an intuitive ticketing system, seamless integrations, and effective live chat capabilities. OpenText SMAX excels with its robust configuration management, powerful automation tools, and advanced analytics for incident and problem management.
Room for Improvement: Zendesk could enhance its complex ticket handling capabilities, further extend AI-based solutions, and improve customization options. OpenText SMAX would benefit from streamlining its setup process, enhancing its user interface, and expanding its integration with third-party applications.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zendesk offers a straightforward deployment process with reliable customer support, making it suitable for businesses seeking quick implementation. OpenText SMAX requires more time and resources for deployment due to its sophisticated setup, yet it delivers a depth of service management once configured.
Pricing and ROI: Zendesk provides a cost-effective subscription model, promising a quick ROI and manageable expenses. OpenText SMAX demands a higher initial investment but offers significant ROI through its broad feature set and efficiency in operations over time.
I can tell you that we probably saved at least three employees full-time with the ticket management and the automation and the macros and the user follow-up being built in.
Time saved is definitely a benefit because it puts all of our tickets in one spot.
I feel that Zendesk helped us set up our platform for providing support way faster than other platforms due to its easy configuration.
Support for OpenText Service Management (SMAX) is better.
There appears to be a lack of connection between the bot and the agents, making it feel scripted rather than helpful.
The technical support provided by Zendesk has been very satisfactory.
Their support team from Zendesk is excellent, similar to what you have in Freshdesk.
We have not hit a peak or a turn yet that Zendesk has not been able to go with us or been able to grow with us in the process, change or pivot that the company is making.
Zendesk can scale from very small companies to very large ones.
Zendesk's scalability is excellent.
OpenText Service Management (SMAX) has some stability challenges that are crashable and not stable at times.
They are always informing us with a status update and an ETA, and the turnaround time is usually within the same day with no extended downtime that would cause a detriment to our company.
Zendesk is quite stable; we experience major outages only once or twice a year, making it very reliable.
The stability has been quite reliable.
One important thing we think should be included is a module for metrics, similar to Google Analytics, that focuses on the metrics of the tool usage.
The custom reports that were already prepared work fine.
Different scenarios require different workflow configurations.
Zendesk could actually support HTML on the tickets so we could format our text better than the current options such as size, bold, italic, or underscored, because the text processing is too simple.
Zendesk is missing an AI aspect that could help provide quick answers based on the knowledge housed within the platform.
Zendesk is amazing, and because they are always working on a new upgrade or a new integration, they are very forward-thinking from an engineering perspective.
OpenText Service Management (SMAX) is okay, not expensive and not the cheapest.
It is not the cheapest solution nor the most expensive, but it provides value for money.
The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Zendesk was quite expensive.
Our feedback is that because OpenText Service Management (SMAX) portal is very easy to use, we see customers abandoning their legacy ways of reporting like phone calls and emails, concentrating everything on a portal, which provides end users with more visibility of what's happening because they can control the status of their requests, allowing IT a faster way to intervene and solve issues.
Reporting tools and sophisticated customization options are available with different capabilities.
Configuration is available for different scenarios including change request, incident management, and problem management.
It allows us to handle more support cases with fewer people due to its advanced artificial intelligence capabilities.
Zendesk is way cheaper than other ITSM platforms such as ServiceNow, providing a good platform at a lower price so we could offer good support with a low budget for the license.
Being able to put response counters on certain tickets and have certain ones that are high priority and have a tighter SLA than lower priority items, being able to categorize them as a question versus an urgent request, and being able to bucket them as feature requests or product enhancements.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| Zendesk | 4.8% |
| OpenText Service Management (SMAX) | 2.1% |
| Other | 93.1% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 3 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 2 |
| Large Enterprise | 4 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 36 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 21 |
| Large Enterprise | 11 |
OpenText Service Management Automation X delivers efficient service management automation with user-friendly configurability across IT, IoT, HR, and finance sectors. It enhances business processes through integrated incident management and natural language processing with virtual chatbots.
OpenText SMAX blends user-friendly design with broad language support and robust storage. It enables organizations to deploy in both on-premise and cloud environments using Kubernetes. SMAX excels in business process improvement, incident management, and uses intelligent agents for autonomous alerts and issue resolution. However, it requires enhancements in integration capabilities and documentation, third-party product connectivity, and contract management. Users face challenges with process automation and search functionality, demanding greater customization and flexibility.
What are the key features of OpenText SMAX?Banks and telecom companies primarily employ OpenText SMAX for service management automation, leveraging its ESM and ITSM capabilities. Deployed on-premise and via cloud, organizations in regions such as Saudi Arabia focus on integrations and upgrades, using SMAX as an end-user portal for incident management.
Zendesk Support is intuitive, and it's built with support agents in mind. Everything they need lives in a single, dynamic help desk interface so it's easy to be productive and manage customer interactions.
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