Likelihood to Recommend The single element of Parature I've not seen in any other system of this kind is the Download Module. You can post files in the open, or protect them by any number of entitlement methods. The solution is also appealing to those who don't want to manage the back-end/IT needs as it is a hosted solution and has proven to be very reliable.
Read full review 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
Read full review Pros Clean/Friendly UI. It was extremely easy to navigate around Parature's menus at a high level, and you could take advantage of the more robust features as you became more comfortable and familiar with how Parature operates! Strong Knowledge Base. Writing KB articles or ticket summaries and making use of the search function within Parature allows for expedient recovery of past ticket information. Being able to search for a fix action, or at least a troubleshooting article that can guide you towards a resolution is extremely valuable. Enhanced Notation Capability. Being able to send/post internal or external updates to a ticket is great! You can leave the wordy technical details for other employees while making sure to communicate the high-points and fix action to the end-user. Read full review 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 Read full review Cons Reporting is barebones at best. If you need special reports, we had to go through Parature to have them built. The use of frames on a website is very 1990s. It actually impacts usability of the product, especially when combined with how Parature handled sessions. An engineer could only work one ticket at a time which, honestly, isn't very realistic for a busy support team that is working on several issues at a time. Support was often unresponsive when contacted for unplanned problems. The knowledge base was not very friendly for clients and it provided no real encouragement for it to be used. It took several clicks to do something as simple as edit and assign a ticket or to close a ticket. Read full review 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. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Parature has been the best option for this campus in terms of what we use it for and there is no alternative
Read full review 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.
Read full review Usability It was bulky, cumbersome, and didn't allow us to handle the volume of cases we received on a daily basis. Many of our issues were highly technical in nature and we would often need to work on 2 or 3 at once. The poor design choices prevented this, which was unfortunate.
Read full review 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
Read full review Reliability and Availability They recently had one very extended outage. It was a data center issue - but they were not diversified enough so in the end the system was down for almost 8 hours. There are also periods of time where for no reason the system simply doesn't respond. This small outages are usually short (just a few minutes), and have in fact been occurring less often, so it appears some corrective actions have been taken.
Read full review In the past year, I'd say I have only noticed maybe two hours total of downtime in my own usage. Very minimal.
Read full review Performance There has been minor performance degradation on a very few days out of the two years I have been using the product.
Read full review Support Rating Nothing ever seemed to get resolved
Read full review 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.
Read full review Online Training 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.
Read full review Implementation Rating 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
Read full review Alternatives Considered There are services that do bits and pieces of what Parature does. We liked the idea of having one service that meets our needs
Read full review 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.
Read full review Return on Investment Parature allows for better Customer Service Can follow up automatically for tickets Will automatically close tickets that haven't been responded to. Allows customers to reopen tickets easily and not allow them to be missed. Read full review 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 Read full review ScreenShots Zendesk Suite Screenshots