Microsoft Power BI is a visualization and data discovery tool from Microsoft. It allows users to convert data into visuals and graphics, visually explore and analyze data, collaborate on interactive dashboards and reports, and scale across their organization with built-in governance and security.
$10
per month per user
Zendesk Explore
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Zendesk offers Explore, a business intelligence and customer analytics tool which integrates with the Zendesk suite featuring ticket analytics, custom fields, dashboards, and other features. Zendesk is migrating customers of the BIME analytics product, which is approaching end of support, to Zendesk Explore in 2019.
I selected Zendesk Explore only to provide an easy and quick access for my managers and supervisors regading metrics and volume trends. Is not the most flexible nor complete data visualization tool, but works well for day-to-day follow ups. You need to use another tool if you …
Verified User
Administrative Assistant
Chose Zendesk Explore
N/A - the company had already implemented Zendesk Explore when I was hired.
Has significantly improved collation of data and visualisation especially with business across Europe. Has given me the ability to see the Site availability at the click of a button to see which Site is in the "money" and seize opportunities based on Market data
Zendesk Explore is well suited for tracking ticket flow, agent performance, and customer satisfaction providing valuable insights into response and resolution time, workload and support quality. Particularly useful for monitoring ticket handling for different teams. Helps ensure accountability by tracking how long tickets remain assigned before being reassigned to another group. Drill down capability helps identify support bottlenecks. However, it is less appropriate for real time monitoring as it lacks real time data updates making it unsuitable for instant decision making.
Options for data source connections are immense. Not just which sources, but your options for *how* the data is brought in.
Constant updates (this is both good and bad at times).
User friendliness. I can get the data connections set up and draft some quick visuals, then release to the target audience and let them expand on it how they want to.
Some aspects of Zendesk, in general, are not super intuitive. The same goes for Zendesk Explore. And, while you can google answers and hope you find something helpful, there isn't a great way to learn to get the full potential out of the product unless you want to pay for someone from your team to take a class (which costs several hundred dollars).
To piggyback off the last point, if you would prefer to get help from a Zendesk expert, you'll find that there is almost no customer support available to you. For a company that aims to help other companies help their customers, this has always struck me as odd. Again, Google is your friend and beyond that, you're mostly out of luck.
Microsoft Power BI is an excellent and scalable tool. It has a learning curve, but once you get past that, the sky is the limit and you can build from the most simple to the most complex dashboards. I have built everything from simple reports with only a few data points to complex reports with many pages and advanced filtering.
Automating reporting has reduced manual data processing by 50-70%, freeing up analysts for higher-value tasks. A finance team that previously spent 20+ hours per week on Excel-based reports now does it in minutes with Microsoft Power BI's automated Real-time dashboards have shortened decision cycles by 30-40%, enabling leadership to react quickly to sales trends, operational bottlenecks, and customer behavior.
I rate Zendesk Explore 8 out of 10 for it's overall usability because it offers powerful reporting and analytics with an easy to navigate interface and intuitive dashboards. It helps improve customer satisfaction by providing valuable insights into ticket handling, agent performance and customer satisfaction. Though the complex query builder can be challenging for non technical users.
It is a fantastic tool, you can do almost everything related with data and reports, it is a perfect substitutive of Power Point and Excel with a high evolution and flexibility, and also it is very friendly and easy to share. I think all companies should have Power BI (or other BI tool) in their software package and if they are in the MS Suite, for sure Power BI should be the one due to all the benefits of the MS ecosystem.
Support for all of Zendesk has exceeding my expectations. This company will always get a 10 out of 10 in my book. Any question you have they make sure you have the answer plus a step-by-step guide on how to do each step so you are set up for success!
Microsoft Power BI is free. If I didn't want to create a custom platform (i.e. my organization insisted on an existing platform that I *had* to use), I'd use Microsoft Power BI. For any start-up or SMB, I'd just use Claude & Grok to build it quickly, also for free. Would not pay for Tableau or Sigma anymore. Not worth it at all.
I selected Zendesk Explore only to provide an easy and quick access for my managers and supervisors regading metrics and volume trends. Is not the most flexible nor complete data visualization tool, but works well for day-to-day follow ups. You need to use another tool if you want to see long-term patterns (e.g. month over month volume trends) and you need another platform if you want your interaction metrics to interact with other important factors of the business
