Avaya Experience Platform vs. Zendesk Suite

The Avaya Experience Platform is well suited to allow remote working for call center agents. Staff can log in and work from anywhere using Chrome and their user credentials. The technical issues and lack of some features have caused some frustration for our staff and made it difficult to get buy-in for this product across all call center groups. This is difficult because a solution like this is intended to make their work more efficient as opposed to causing frustration.

Incentivized

Inbound messaging it is top notch, it does it well and couldn't imagine anyone's program doing it better. Like I said before been using ZenDesk for over 7 years and absolutely love it. We use the talk feature with the phone very limited so Zen works fine for us, but if I was running an inbound or outbound call center I don't believe Zen has all the functions I would want as a manager. For limited phone use and mostly email, text, and even web chat, ZenDesk works great. Having the iOS App is so great and flexibility with notifications allows my team to be "on call" anytime without unnecessary interruptions

Incentivized

• The app and the ability to use the "office" phone while on the road.
• There's an easy implementation and training process to get everyone on board quickly.
• Flexibility of transferring calls to different mediums - I can switch a phone call to a conference or patch in other parties with ease.

Incentivized

• Reporting and Analytics
• Ease of Agent Training and Use
• Able to add multiple brands with related custom reports and dashboards
• Adding a new brand and basic help center is easy to do without the need of an expert or web team
• Ability of agents and supervisors to see customer history across multiple channels

Incentivized

• One are for improvement for Avaya is the ability to operate behind the VPN. For the virtual employee, this is an issue as we are unable to use it behind the VPN and it must be launched from the remote desktop.
• The color scheme could definitely use some updating. The charcoal gray background of Avaya's windows, coupled with the black font is not very contrasting. I have used Avaya for years and would love to see an update as to its color scheme to better fit the virtual employee.
• Avaya could also improve the way an employee moves within the program by titling the icons seen or expanding the Avaya window to allow for a better understanding of what each con does. For example, the Work History window would go unnoticed, had I not been playing with the software one day. These little items are unknown to many professionals in my industry as they sit in the window with no explanation.

Incentivized

• I think the Graphical User Interface could use a facelift. It not the most aesthetically pleasing platform in my experience.
• Particular things like where the default is when you click on each and every dropdown menu.
• The macro integration could be a little more simplified.

Incentivized

I have always found Avaya's technology and support to be the best in the industry. Even as they worked out financial difficulties and continue to fend off competitors they have adopted and incorporated new technologies. They have done so in a logical and supportive manner and offered all these benefits as they went along. I haven't seen any of their competitors do any of this.

Incentivized

Zendesk is super easy to use and navigate. I really enjoy the sleek layout, the ability to tailor tickets, the macro option, and the quick key guide they have to make your use of time even more effective. My whole team loves working with Zendesk and rarely ever has problems.

Incentivized

I find Avaya easy to use but I am not a beginner. I think it is much more difficult for beginners unless the administrator has some basic programming skills. The system is getting more difficult to use but I enjoy learning and haven't found myself stumped yet.

Incentivized

As an agent it's very simple to use. As an admin it's also easy to use, but sometimes lacks some functionality that would be nice to have such as expanded native 2 way sync functionality for many major apps that are commonly used today like HubSpot and Salesforce. The ability to add followers to tickets to they get updates and are in the know without the customer seeing this agent cc'd is a nice touch. This ensures additional visibility and easily following the communication without having to appear as a CC to the customer, who could accidentally remove that person in a response, thus breaking the visibility

In the past year, I'd say I have only noticed maybe two hours total of downtime in my own usage. Very minimal.

There has been minor performance degradation on a very few days out of the two years I have been using the product.

I give it this rating because the support services of Avaya have proven to be reliable when needed. Great feedback for our queries has always been received from the support agents. 24/7 availability of support, which is very essential as our Call Center department also functions this way, therefore, the knowledge and technical support we require is always available to us.

Every time I contacted them they were not only very responsive and knowledgable, but always seemed to have a positive upbeat attitude. It probably helps that we did not have significant service outages or sev 1 level issues, but even my lower severity issues were quickly answered. And the positive and upbeat attitude really made things feel comfortable.

Zendesk has tons of available material for training - videos, webinars, articles, etc. The only reason this is not a 10 is because it can be hard to figure out how to navigate to these things and find what you are looking for.

No, everything was implemented by Avaya Support

Incentivized

I was very satisfied. They have a free trial for 30 days and I recommend you do that and use it. It is very easy to get started with the basics and the build on over time.

The only thing technically complex was single sign-on and integration to Salesforce.com required some tweaks – otherwise setting up system was very easy

Switched from Polycom to Avaya, although polycom worked well there were too many reoccuring connectivity issues and the turn around time for solving them was also too long. Avaya has fewer connectivity problems and their support is much better too. Pricing wise they were similar so we didn't have much to lose.

Incentivized

If spoken honestly Intercom is a level-par with any nearest competitor, Tools like Zendesk has to catchup with them in speed. However, there is an advantage to Zendesk with its simple and easy-to-get software which falls in every mid and small-size business pocket wherein Intercom is way too expensive and needs a tech admin to customize the product. The kick-starting feature with negligible configuration made Zendesk the ideal choice of our organization + the budget fell under our expenses.

Incentivized

• It does what we need it to do, so we don't heavily invest in this technology but rather into the manufacturing end of our business.
• We believe we have more than achieved the return on our investment for the Avaya phone system and associated equipment.

Incentivized

• The positives weigh more than the negatives here, as it gives us a one-stop portal where we can tend to customer needs using one web app
• It has also helped us identify areas of improvement based on the reporting feature
• The value it provides outweighs any missing or lacking features that I'm sure will be available in the future

Incentivized