Service Cloud is a customer service platform that helps businesses manage and resolve customer inquiries and issues. It provides tools for case management, knowledge base, omni-channel support, automation, and analytics, enabling companies to deliver exceptional customer service experiences.
$25
per month
SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds
Web Help Desk is ticketing and IT asset management software. It is designed to
simplify help desk management. This solution includes built-in ticketing
management, asset management, change management, and knowledge base
capabilities.
This is great for cold calling and starting clients from scratch. A lot of entry is required to build a customer profile, but if you are diligent in entering this information, then it can be extremely useful, and you will thank yourself down the road for having an organized database with as many or few details stored. It is a little more challenging for existing customers who have a wealth of information on their files because the transfer of information can be quite tedious.
SolarWinds WHD is well suited if you have a limited budget, as it costs less than many help desk software packages that are more full featured and modern in their design. It is not well suited to an environment where you want to manage inventory, users, purchases and tickets all in one package. It has an asset feature that we don't use but that looks quite limited. We track our assets and users separately from this.
Customized reporting allows us to track our service and support better, and find where we need improvements. This allows us to constantly upgrade our service levels and keep the customers happy.
Detailed tracking and response to the end users have led to quicker remediation of tickets. We are able to see where we need a better response or where to add additional resources for support.
Overall metrics allow us to staff properly for our tickets by location and remote users.
Because of AD integration, users sometimes try logging in with their email address and not AD credentials. The user then calls stating they can't put a ticket in, it would be nice if there was a method of matching the AD Email field with a login.
Setting up new techs with the building they are responsible for can be a little messy
Professional edition works best for a small company with lower call volumes and is very useful but as you grow exponetially I think it has limited ability to do all the things we want to - SLA management, defect, release management to name a few. Reports and dashboards being available in real time.
We are definitely going to be sticking with Web Help Desk for the foreseeable future since the product is very inexpensive for the features that it provides, the integration that it has with our existing systems, and the ease for managing users, assets, locations, and tickets. Web Help Desk is a great product that is backed by even better support, which is well worth looking into if you are considering moving to a new ticketing system.
I had Salesforce experience prior to using Service Cloud which made it a little easier to learn and navigate, but overall my team (some who had no Salesforce experience) caught on very quickly and found Service Cloud to be easy to use.
The system has time and time again proven to be much easier to use and setup for both technicians and end users. It is simple enough to enter a ticket for end users, and even easier to communicate with logging back and forth because you can reply to the ticket emails to enter comments on the tickets. The technician side is a little clunky at first, but after looking at it for a few minutes it's very clear to see what you need to do to accomplish the goals. The mobile interface is snappy and responsive. It's a great product overall.
Salesforce has a more than 99% uptime rate and Salesforce Service Cloud is no exception. I have never had any issues experiencing outages or service degradation when it comes to using the Service Cloud product (that I can remember). Always reliable and easy to use, I would recommend this product as your go-to for helpdesk, service desk, incident management, call center, and other business process needs.
There are issues with page load performance and database performance for sure, but we are a very complex setup with a lot of automation and processing for 2000+ users so this is not surprising. We are also global, so the issue with distance from the regional servers is a problem.
It depends on what support package you buy from Salesforce. That can be good or bad. It's highly flexible to your needs pricing wise. If you have devs on staff then don't buy support. If you don't, then sfdc offers support for a cost.
SolarWinds is a great customizable and affordable ticketing system. We use SolarWinds Web Help Desk for IT and Software Development trouble ticket tracking and resolution. The reporting that SolarWinds provides is great since it helps us discover problem areas and fix those areas so they don't keep reoccurring
Take the time to roll out a test VM to configure and make changes to before doing a live deployment, this way you don't end up with a VM that has been tweaked and re-tweaked until it's perfect and instead end up with a final, polished product. I would also recommend taking the time to read through the support forums for figuring out minor issues that may pop up, chances are that you aren't going to be the first one to encounter them. When all is said and done, SolarWinds Support is VERY responsive and you shouldn't hesitate to contact them.
Salesforce service cloud is more configurable than Zendesk and Freshdesk. It has its own inbuilt AI chatbot also which further improves service agent efficiency. Salesforce is more integration agnostic and has pre-built connectors with multiple 3rd party systems. However, in terms of pricing it is priced at a premium compared to the other solutions
Web Help Desk is definitely lacking in the UI/UX department compared to most other ticketing systems I have used int he past. It's very utilitarian; however, what it lacks in UI it makes up for in extensibility and customization. The main issue that the developers need to address is the use of a Web Objects back-end.
Because this is a cloud service, the security, implementation framework and feature list is very mature and you don't have to develop these during implementation.
The larger the implementation programme the better the licensing arrangements
Free developer toolkit for proof of concepts or showcasing features
