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Zendesk is a cloud-based software solution that offers help desk ticketing, issue tracking, and customer service support. It integrates with dozens of content management systems, customer relationship management tools, and web apps. Features include hosted support email-ticket integration, online forums, RSS and widgets. Pricing starts at $1 per agent, monthly, featuring email ticketing and a knowledge base. The $25 Regular edition includes communities and surveys, and a custom domain. The recommended $59 per agent, per month Plus edition includes time tracking, custom reporting and dashboards, and an additional internal knowledge base; this edition's features represent the free trial configuration. Beyond this, the $125 Enterprise and $195 Enterprise Elite (per agent, per month) feature support and training, multibrand support, and other perks. Zendesk, Inc in San Francisco was bootstrapped from its founding in 2007 to June, 2008, when it received its first round of funding. In May 2014 Zendesk went public. The company now employs over 800 people and supports over 51,000 customer accounts.https://dudodiprj2sv7.cloudfront.net/product-logos/uP/79/M1ENTDBQMJ5X.PNGgood ticket management option; pricey and somewhat clutteredWe use Zendesk as customer success framework. Communication with customers starts, and usually ends, there. Customers open tickets, describe their issues, and so on. Than a customer success rep. takes it from there - he either helps them or routes the issue to an R&D member for further classification or observation.,Nice GUI Easy filtering Easy to see how a certain issue was handled and communicated to the customer,I'd like to immediately see "my issues" on top i'd like it to auto-remember where I left it GUI still little clustered.,7,it allows for professional customer communication management it helps the perception of good customer success team, which customers love and rely on,JIRA Service Desk,Atlassian ConfluenceBest scalable support solutionIt is used as the primary form of support for our publishing platform. It appears on all of our pages and we get a wide range of questions from publishing to overall use of the site. It is also used to uncover bugs found by our internal team.,Ease of use Ease of integration Ticketing system,Navigation in the web view is a little tricky Customization of FAQ section Feature for auto-replies based on keyword search of question,10,I like the rollup each month on how our response rate is going It pushes us to keep response time low We like to clear the ticket queue out each day,Desk.com,SendGrid Marketing Email, Pivotal TrackerZendesk top contender for your business![Zendesk is being used] In order to support 3 million active users of a classified system. Originally all support was done through email or phone calls and things would get lost and not followed up on. It was also impossible to have any type of SLA. Using Zendesk gave the group the ability to track all customer inquiries, added accountability and gave our customers a more reliable way to see where their requests were and what was happening. It also gave us the ability to grow our team and meet the of ever-growing demands of our customers.,Organize help tickets Keep customer up-to-date Allow experts in different fields to handle certain clients,Integration into SFDC could be better While you could have canned responses the ability to easily share was not clear at the beginning in order to share best practices if they were personal responses vs. public.,8,Allowed to create a service group from "scratch" and put more organization around supporting our customers,Zoho Desk,Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, Zoho CampaignsZendesk helps!We use it to do service requests such as updating data sheets, gathering data, technology issues, and changes needed to Salesforce etc. The whole organization uses it and it is something that is becoming the way we can get things fixed through our HQ. Since we work at regional sites--it's hard to get answers right away from HQ. Zendesk helps with the requests that HQ can help with.,Clear platform Sends a direct email when you create one Has drop down menus,Mobile device The emails with replies can be hard to understand Amount of emails,9,Positive because it helps to get requests from HQ We make requests to our operations managers--it keeps a paper trail for them,Great Introduction for anyone with an online Retail StoreWe used it as an order management system for a retail clothing brand. We also used it to keep up with requests from customers.,It worked seamlessly with my email account. I was able to mark whether or not an order was fulfilled or pending. I was previously only handling requests via email, Zendesk helped put things in order for me.,Notification feature to your email when something hasn’t been addressed that you may have missed. The support ticketing can sometimes get confusing at first glance if you are new to a this kind of program. I do not enjoy when others in the organization were able to interrupt or answer a customer. I think roles should be able to be assigned and only designated to the person who is helping accisplercumless otherwise said.,9,As I was not the business own this may not have pertained to me, however I saw a huge improvement with our customers satisfaction. Before Zendesk there were plenty of request that that were overlooked because of the volume in which we would receive requests. I believe the integration with other applications worked very well. Not only this but it was easy to teach others on the team about the intervention or notice when something was not correct. I really enjoy the mobile app. It helped a whole lot when I could not get into the office and had to answer a urgent question from a customer.,
  3. Zendesk Reviews
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Zendesk
375 Ratings
Score 8.2 out of 101
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Zendesk Reviews

Zendesk
375 Ratings
Score 8.2 out of 101
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July 16, 2018

Zendesk Review: "good ticket management option; pricey and somewhat cluttered"

Yaron Lavi
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use Zendesk as customer success framework. Communication with customers starts, and usually ends, there. Customers open tickets, describe their issues, and so on. Than a customer success rep. takes it from there - he either helps them or routes the issue to an R&D member for further classification or observation.
  • Nice GUI
  • Easy filtering
  • Easy to see how a certain issue was handled and communicated to the customer
  • I'd like to immediately see "my issues" on top
  • i'd like it to auto-remember where I left it
  • GUI still little clustered.
Zendesk is a good at collecting issues from customers, and handling them as conversations.
it's less good in helping you focus on new items, or only "your" cases.
Read Yaron Lavi's full review
July 13, 2018

Zendesk Review: "Best scalable support solution"

Chris Barretto
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
It is used as the primary form of support for our publishing platform. It appears on all of our pages and we get a wide range of questions from publishing to overall use of the site. It is also used to uncover bugs found by our internal team.
  • Ease of use
  • Ease of integration
  • Ticketing system
  • Navigation in the web view is a little tricky
  • Customization of FAQ section
  • Feature for auto-replies based on keyword search of question
I think this fits for any small or large company. It fulfills the need for support without much development on the application. It scales well with the size of the business and is easy to add/remove agents.
Read Chris Barretto's full review
July 10, 2018

Review: "Zendesk top contender for your business!"

Daniel Coburn
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
[Zendesk is being used] In order to support 3 million active users of a classified system. Originally all support was done through email or phone calls and things would get lost and not followed up on. It was also impossible to have any type of SLA. Using Zendesk gave the group the ability to track all customer inquiries, added accountability and gave our customers a more reliable way to see where their requests were and what was happening. It also gave us the ability to grow our team and meet the of ever-growing demands of our customers.
  • Organize help tickets
  • Keep customer up-to-date
  • Allow experts in different fields to handle certain clients
  • Integration into SFDC could be better
  • While you could have canned responses the ability to easily share was not clear at the beginning in order to share best practices if they were personal responses vs. public.
Larger support organizations can benefit from Zendesk. But for many something like Zoho One with their help desk solution would suffice. If you are a larger business and want a dedicated help desk solution Zendesk is a must look at option for you. If you are a smaller startup or just getting started with CRM etc., look at Zoho One as well.
Read Daniel Coburn's full review
May 11, 2018

User Review: "Zendesk helps!"

Farah Noor
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use it to do service requests such as updating data sheets, gathering data, technology issues, and changes needed to Salesforce etc. The whole organization uses it and it is something that is becoming the way we can get things fixed through our HQ. Since we work at regional sites--it's hard to get answers right away from HQ. Zendesk helps with the requests that HQ can help with.
  • Clear platform
  • Sends a direct email when you create one
  • Has drop down menus
  • Mobile device
  • The emails with replies can be hard to understand
  • Amount of emails
It is well suited when you are working at an organization that has sites across America. It helps because our HQ houses the main data technology people and so when we have requests it can streamline the way we get our requests answered. I feel like it would not be suited for an organization that does not have many people or where it's so small that you can just talk to the person who can help you.
Read Farah Noor's full review
July 13, 2018

Zendesk Review: "Great Introduction for anyone with an online Retail Store"

Jamin McBain
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We used it as an order management system for a retail clothing brand. We also used it to keep up with requests from customers.
  • It worked seamlessly with my email account.
  • I was able to mark whether or not an order was fulfilled or pending.
  • I was previously only handling requests via email, Zendesk helped put things in order for me.
  • Notification feature to your email when something hasn’t been addressed that you may have missed.
  • The support ticketing can sometimes get confusing at first glance if you are new to a this kind of program.
  • I do not enjoy when others in the organization were able to interrupt or answer a customer. I think roles should be able to be assigned and only designated to the person who is helping accisplercumless otherwise said.
As far as setup, Zendesk is very user friendly. If this is the first program to use as an administrator I do not forsee you running into much trouble roc set your team up with an account & teaching them best practices.
Read Jamin McBain's full review
February 28, 2018

Zendesk Review: "The best tool on the market... for a reason."

Alexander Bekhterev
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use Zendesk to raise internal tickets for the tech team as well as give access to our customers to raise support tickets on their own. It is used by the service and tech support teams. It is a very convenient tool to track incoming support requests and manage them until they're resolved.
  • Incoming request tracking and assignment via multiple channels
  • Ticket processing and communication, macros, workflows
  • Categorization and reporting
  • User management
  • Lots of integrations + API
  • Slow UI
  • Not easy or intuitive to learn, requires significant training time
  • Mobile apps contain some bugs
Zendesk is really great and I've been using it for a few years now. It helps us communicate with clients and internally to solve technical requests and it works with multiple channels. It's easy to brand with your company's styles and it has mobile apps to resolve tickets on the go. It may not be the best to handle project management tasks but it was not built to do that.
Read Alexander Bekhterev's full review
January 30, 2018

Zendesk Review: "Versatile Customer Support Solution"

Greg Larsen
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
At Lingotek, we use Zendesk to handle all of our customer support tickets across the company. Our customer support department is the main department that uses it, but we have some of our product team and sales support team using it as well. The biggest problems that Zendesk is solving compared to our previous provider is to be able to have all of our ticket information stored within Salesforce so that the sales side of our company can see what is going on with their accounts.
  • Ease of use for end users
  • Help/Self-Service support page is a lifesaver for our support team and clients
  • Integrations into Salesforce, JIRA, and other software is a breeze
  • The integration with the Knowledge Base and Confluence was a little tricky
  • More customer support through the onboarding process
Zendesk is well suited for companies that are looking for an intuitive way to handle customer support and ticketing requests with their external customers as well as internal tickets within their organization. It is able to be adapted, configured, and customized with both the look and feel as well as the functionality of the software. We have found more and more use cases for Zendesk as we have continued to use it.
Read Greg Larsen's full review
March 30, 2018

User Review: "Zendesk- the rockstar of ticketing!"

Verified User
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Zendesk is used by our organization strictly on the sales side of things as well as with our customer services team. The great thing about using Zendesk internally is that it allows our company to keep all information about our customers in one place that we can constantly review and update accordingly.
  • It is very flexible and customizable. Very fast and easy to use.
  • The support levels are fantastic. Easy to submit support tickets and get help when needed.
  • User experience is clean and intuitive. Does not require a lot of prior knowledge in order to set up and run effectively. The platform is very smart and dynamic.
  • The mobile experience is not great. Would love to see a revamped experience that is more mobile friendly and responsive
  • It is a pretty expensive solution. While it is worth the cost it doesn't come at a cheap price tag
Zendesk is a must-have solution for any organization that has a sales team of a customer service team that will be supporting their current clients. It is great for tracking, submitting tickets and overall management of clients and customer population. Less appropriate for companies who do not sell a product that other people buy.
Read this authenticated review
July 13, 2018

User Review: "Zendesk"

Verified User
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Zendesk is our primary mode of communication with our customers. We use it mostly for email but have a few other uses for it as well. We plan to eventually use it for phone and/or chat support.
  • It's a great tool for ticketing and tracking customer interactions.
  • It has a huge amount of customizability. Almost too much in some cases.
  • Because every business needs to use Zendesk in their own context, the tool isn't immediately understandable. It's quite complicated in many ways.
  • The biggest area for improvement would be analytics. The current Zendesk analytics platform is quite bad.
I'm a fan but have a few reservations. I would like to try something like Intercom in the future to see if that works better for our company needs.
Read this authenticated review
September 21, 2017

User Review: "Relax with Zendesk"

Kevin Pearce
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use Zendesk specifically for technical support ticket tracking and communication with clients. It is not being used by the sales or development team although we do have integrations into the CRM (Salesforce) and defect tracking (JIRA) systems.
  • Simple clean interface that is very easy to pick up and learn.
  • Low administrative overhead which can be setup and managed without a lot of time or expense invested
  • Excellent support staff that has been very responsive to questions.
  • Does not have the level of customization or workflow automation that something like Salesforce cases has.
  • The integration to Salesforce was not clean or simple
  • As a contact management system, it is very rudimentary and that is clearly not its strength
I think Zendesk works great for a small support team or an organization just getting started. The triggers and automation is easy to setup so a few folks can quickly and efficiently dispatch a reasonably high number of tickets without much overhead.

I think Zendesk would probably come up short compared to something like Salesforce in a large, cross functional role where it was being used by sales, marketing, etc. It would also probably be short on features in large scale issue trend analysis. I have not attempted to use it for any of those scenarios, but it does not seem well suited to that.
Read Kevin Pearce's full review
December 20, 2017

Review: "Zendesk Provides Product Teams With Design Transparency"

Adam Hanneman
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Zendesk is on the front line for our company. It helps us to manage our customer's tickets and chats with the company. It gives us visibility into the types of issues that our customers are running into and it allows our support team to organize themselves. We use the platform on our support team and across all customer-facing departments including sales and customer success.
  • Zendesk allows us to see the life cycle of a specific customer and all of the issues they have run into.
  • It enables us to quantify the issues that our customers are running into so that we can create better training materials going forward.
  • The live chat option inside of Zendesk makes it easy for us to manage the conversations with our paying customers.
  • The customer facing chat application is not very "pretty". I think that it could be improved upon immensely.
  • Zendesk's integration with Salesforce is not very straightforward and requires a solid amount of work to set up.
  • It would be great to be able to tie inquires into the company that aren't necessarily support related. For example a sales conversation request.
Zendesk is very well suited for organizations that are going to encounter a large number of support requests. If your product is somewhat straightforward and it is important to track the issues that they are having, it will help you organize all of this data well. If you have an "app" or something that is easier to use then Zendesk may not make sense for you. It also may not make sense if you need to track marketing data.
Read Adam Hanneman's full review
December 13, 2017

Zendesk Review: "A must have for any company serious about support their customer base"

Debbie Marshall
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use Zendesk to deliver support to our customers who use our product. The customer support team use the software to answer questions or respond to issues that our customers have with our product.
  • Allows us to create separate access for all the different organisations we have as customers
  • Provides a place for us to display FAQs and tutorials videos which can be locked down to be client specific
  • Allows us to set SLA response times per client that we can easily monitor
  • Standard reports as well as allowing you to build you on reports
  • Out or hours set up, allows us to plug in our working hours
  • Having a customer friendly app, currently, only agents can use the app
  • More levels of admin access can be quite restraining
  • CMS could be easier to use
  • When updates are made some cause issues with macros that are set up to respond to tickets
Ideally suited for a company that has a lot of customers. Can be locked down to organisation and product specific. Agents can be locked down to specific customers.
Read Debbie Marshall's full review
December 12, 2017

Review: "Zendesk is an everyday tool in our company"

Vitalija Golceva
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Zendesk is being used by the support department. It is the main tool for customer service and support analytics.
  • Easy to use. It helps to save time when solving customer tickets.
  • Great integration possibilities. There are lots of ways to expand Zendesk functionality with other tools or connecting with a CRM.
  • Powerful analytics.
  • Reporting part is a bit slow.
Zendesk is well suited for any company who has more than 1 person supporting customers. I have already recommended Zendesk to other companies and they are successfully using it.
Read Vitalija Golceva's full review
November 30, 2017

Zendesk Review: "Best chat service for your organization!"

Dérick St-Hilaire
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We used it to communicate with customers on our website. We used it for support AND sales.
  • Chat window directly on our website.
  • Easy to use, aesthetic and moreover affordable
  • Automatic message to facilitate recurrent questions
  • Sometimes when you log out it doesn't work. The service stays available on the site web even though nobody is there to answer
If you want a chat on your website it's the best option! A chat window is perfect to be close to your customers. Instant response to their problem is important to offer great service.
Read Dérick St-Hilaire's full review
December 18, 2017

Zendesk Review: "Helping to create happy customers!"

Verified User
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Zendesk is currently being used by multiple departments across the business, customer support being the heaviest user. We use Zendesk as our primary ticketing system for customers as well as internal requests.
  • Automated rules and routing to ensure the right people get the right information at the right time.
  • Analytics offering allows us to track data over time and gives us extremely customizable data points to tie in with different areas of the business.
  • Zendesk has multiple integrations that allow us to plug into different areas of our tech stack.
  • Zendesk support hasn't always been the timeliest in follow up, or finding a resolution.
  • The Community offering is extremely limited and lacks the level of customization that is present in other areas of the platform.
  • The analytics might be too flexible. Can be tricky to pin point what it is exactly that you're trying to report on.
Zendesk is great as a customer support ticketing system. It has a ton of integrations that allow you to seamlessly plug into different platforms that the business is using. A high level of customization and flexibility are present; this allows you to set up multiple rules and routing so that no matter your hours of operation/business model, you can easily and seamlessly get to all of your customers.

Zendesk can also be used for multiple internal request scenarios. That being said if you need to go beyond a request and resolution system you may need to work elsewhere as the collaboration efforts may not suit your need.
Read this authenticated review
December 12, 2017

User Review: "Zendesk CRM - How Great is it?"

Verified User
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use Zendesk in multiple departments at this company. We use it as a customer relationship management tool mainly for its chat and email to ticket capabilities to enhance our customer support processes. We also utilize its Communities and Help Center.
  • Ease of system administration and set up. It's easy for administrators to set up and support Zendesk to meet the majority of business needs.
  • Customer support. Zendesk provides easy accessibility and quick support when we need them the most.
  • Enhancements - Zendesk is continually improving their system which gives you hope for new functionality to help and enhance your current support processes.
  • Limited functionality - Compared to some of the competitors out there, Zendesk has a long way to go, offering limited functionality such as advanced trigger logic, the limited use of the CC field, and the lack of integration between their chat and ticket reporting.
  • Analytics - Reporting is only based off of ticket fields and hardly anything else. This makes it hard to really track agent productivity and more importantly, it is hard to integrate into your business intelligent systems.
  • Roles and Permissions - Creating roles and permissions is very limited. I would like to have more control over what users can and cannot see within the user interface as well as access to functionality.
Zendesk is well suited for smaller support groups or companies. They can definitely leverage the efficiency gained by the business automations, macros, and custom integrations that Zendesk is great at providing.

Due to the customizing limitations of permissions/roles, and the lesser flexibility of this system compared to some of the major players such as Salesforce, it's harder to implement for a larger organization that needs very specific configuration and individualization for their use-case/department.

Lastly, analytics isn't a strong point, and this is crucial to the success of your business when looking at ROI for utilizing this system.
Read this authenticated review
June 28, 2017

Review: "Zendesk is best customer service platform"

Brendan Farrar-Foley
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Our company, Regent Solutions, is the only Premier Partner for Zendesk right now. In that capacity, we have helped dozens of companies using Zendesk optimize their customer service setup, migrate from other products to Zendesk, build custom solutions for agent efficiency, integration, or other tasks.

We have built and optimized Zendesk instances for small departments within large companies, small business, large companies with hundreds of agents, and one of the largest Zendesk instances in existence! We helped get 80% of government Zendesk instances up and running or improved their use of the tool.
  • Ticketing and Viewing tickets -- Zendesk has easy to create views which allow agents to see the tickets they need to complete their workflows. These are easily built by non-technical users and agents themselves so there is no bottleneck for IT to help when changes are needed.
  • Knowledge Base -- Zendesk provides a comprehensive knowledge base tool called Guide (formerly Help Center). This allows posting of articles for customers but is also the basis of tools such as AnswerBot which attempt to deflect tickets by automatically providing customers with articles that may solve their ticket.
  • API -- Zendesk has, hands down, the best API of any customer support provider, and it's right up there with the best APIs anywhere. The APIs are extremely well documented, comprehensive, and provide access to every piece of data in the Zendesk system without restriction. I'm sorry to say I can't say the same for Parature (Microsoft), Salesforce, QuickDesk, FreshDesk, or frankly ANY of the other tools we have migrated clients out of and into Zendesk.
  • Advanced automation is lacking. Many functions, such as actions based on the contents of a text field, are not available in the built in automation tools. This is often a surprise to users who consider this basic functionality. Instead, custom scripts must be built to accommodate fairly simple actions.
  • License cost -- many clients complain of higher licensing cost vs. competitors.
Zendesk is well suited for large and small helpdesk and customer service teams.

Zendesk is well suited for companies who handle primarily email and voice intake. It is not as robust for chat and social media interaction as some competitors, however, they offer all of these. If integration across all intake points is important it is worth considering. Zendesk is not well suited for heavy integration with other enterprise systems where data exchange needs to be two (or multi) directional and in real time.
Read Brendan Farrar-Foley's full review
August 16, 2016

User Review: "Is Zendesk Right for you?"

Ellis Smith
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Zendesk helps businesses organize and expedite the flow of customer support inquiries utilizing a proprietary cloud-based ticketing system. Support agents can work remotely using any computer or phone with Zendesk being a cloud-based system, which is an asset to any organization that wishes to keep up with the quick start-up nature of the current environment. Transparency via custom reporting also allows the upper echelons of management to see how well their agents are performing with the ability to monitor average response times, satisfaction ratings, and breakdowns of ticket types. Zendesk is highly recommended to all organizations wishing to bolster their customer service efforts.
  • A cloud-based system means agents can work from anywhere.
  • Custom reporting allows for full transparency of customer service activities and metrics.
  • The ability to handle emails and customer service calls without the need of physical help center equipment helps keep overhead costs to a minimum.
  • Zendesk occasionally will fail to make outbound calls inexplicably. This can be rectified by logging out and back in to the system.
  • Zendesk Voice does not have the standard ability to transfer calls. This makes passing calls between departments cumbersome.
  • The standard ticket statuses are limiting. The ability to customize ticket types beyond Open, On-Hold, and Pending would be welcome in maintaining an organized environment.
In any environment where a business handles customer service inquiries, Zendesk is a welcome asset. Even though Zendesk has the ability to receive inbound calls, and perform outbound calls, Zendesk is not optimal for a sales team. This is because, unlike a full CRM, Zendesk does not capture lead information in a way that is helpful to maintaining organization within a standard sales team.
Read Ellis Smith's full review
August 16, 2016

User Review: "Zendesk, a Startups Best Friend"

Verified User
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
I supported a customer base of about 50 clients using zendesk as our primary engagement and support tool. This was used only in my department, other CRM tools were utilized in other departments.
  • They provide a low cost solution for moderate amounts of ticket traffic.
  • Macro functionality offers a quick way to set up and utilize FAQ responses.
  • Trigger functionality offers a pretty straight forward basic automation for moderate amounts of tickets.
  • Companies with a large amount of ticket traffic will see some performance issues, hanging browser and hard refreshes needed on occasion.
  • Feedback mechanism is limited and cannot be customized.
  • No back-end interface to write custom reporting such as a SQL shell.
Small volume companies that are looking to get a customer facing support site up quickly will get good ROI out of this CRM. If your requirements are extreme ticket volumes and very detailed customer reporting, there are some limitations you are going to experience with Zendesk.
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May 03, 2016

User Review: "Zendesk"

Amy Hardeman
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Zendesk is being used campus wide in all departments. All work related Help Desk requests now go through Zendesk. Zendesk helps in a wide variety of ways. It makes getting reports to our CIO regarding technology requests and many other requests. It helps aid IT on how well their response times are, how much time they spend on average per ticket, and feedback from users as they can rate the technician.
  • It is designed for ease of use. Not much training has to be done for users on how to use it.
  • Maintains records of each ticket worked, so technicians can easily search for previous tickets to see what the solve was and even has the ability to link that ticket to a new ticket giving the user the solution without a technician actually having to go do a hands on.
  • All departments can be incorporated into Zendesk to use it also. Example: Maintenance Department can use it, the print shop, Distance Learning, Web services etc.
  • A drop down menu for the user to pick from as to what area their problem is with - hardware, password, WiFi, software, virus, etc.
Read Amy Hardeman's full review
October 06, 2015

Review: "Zendesk has proven itself to be extremely valuable"

Trevor Gerzen
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We are currently using Zendesk to support all of our teachers and staff at our elementary school. That is from toddlers all the way up to sixth grade. We are a one-to-one school from grades 3-6 who utilize Google Apps for Education and Microsoft Office 365 for students and staff. Being the only IT staff I use Zendesk with the assistant head of school and our technology teacher to track not only what the current problems are, but what issues are arising based on the data we're collecting. Things that maybe weren't apparent when it was just emails that were being sent back and forth. One basic example that Zendesk showed us is that our response time was between 30-40 hours. Now I am able to work on responding in helpful ways even if I can't get to the problem immediately.
  • Zendesk gives everyone involved simple, clear data to track and manage issues or projects. For me the greatest help has been this repository of tasks I can come to everyday without worrying about whether I've forgotten something or not.
  • The basic bits of data have proven very valuable. Leveraging even the most basic data about response times, tickets all related to one specific issue, recurring areas of trouble has been and is continuing to be very encouraging.
  • Being able to give our staff direction on how they can get support helps everyone feel better about how our time is being used. Going from nothing to Zendesk has taken a lot of stress off of my plate, even with the lowest package, Starter.
  • The main functionality of Zendesk that has been apparently lacking to me is when a user creates a new ticket its not clear enough how they can follow along with that ticket specifically. I could see the default automated ticket creation response being focused more on allowing the creator to view that ticket online. A few users will send a new email, thus creating new tickets, before I get a chance to respond to their original ticket.
  • The app feels more limited than the website. I'm not sure that it actually is, but because it seems more focused on viewing than taking action I don't use it as much. I do find that when I want to do something from the app it's usually possible, I just feel that it could be simplified in terms of common actions being forefront. More so than the standard tab bar iOS UX/UI mechanism.
  • I'm not sure how you would implement this, but intercepting other support members chiming in on completed tickets or adding redundant comments.
How are your users most likely to use Zendesk? In my experience the users could use Zendesk entirely through email and be fine. Does your organization rely heavily on email and do you want them to rely heavily on email would be my first question. Having a lot of support staff and little to no management of Zendesk sounds like it would be a nightmare. It should be a tool that has clear use case examples set by the team implementing and communicated clearly to all being supported.
Read Trevor Gerzen's full review
September 21, 2015

Review: "ZenDesk - A Great Tool for the IT Director to Stay on Top of Client Support"

David Drinnon
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use Zendesk as our internal IT help desk application to support over 1,000 employees and to support users of our public facing website. Zendesk has significantly improved our communications as an IT team. Specifically, it streamlines the escalation of issues, hand offs to other staff for resolution, and more importantly...it provides me as the IT Director a view into the issues that are trending within our organization.
  • Integration with third party applications - We love that ZenDesk integrates with so many other tools we use as an IT Support Team. This helps us readily access everything we need from one vantage point.
  • Workflow. IT help desk lives and dies by how well you can manage the workflow of issues. Both the desktop app and mobile app are extremely easy to use....allowing our staff to access and respond to issues efficiently. ZenDesk also allows us to capture 'internal' comments between our staff without exposing those to the end-user. We love keeping all of our notes together in one place.
  • Automation - ZenDesk has some incredible tools to automate workflow. Both their automations and triggers help us to route and escalate certain types of issues based on the contents of the emails coming in from end users.
  • ZenDesk does offer a knowledge base tool, but it is very limited. It would be great if you could lock down the knowledge base site based on incoming IP address so it could be used as an internal knowledge base without requiring your staff to login. It would also be great if ZenDesk had lower cost user license just for the knowledge base so it could be used for other purposes beyond the ticketing system.
  • At the 'Regular' account level, some reports are available, but they are awkward and very limited.
  • It's a little pricey.
For non-profits the pricing may be a challenge for some. However, ZenDesk is a great product. If you are looking for a solution that marries your support tickets with project management, then this solution may not be the one for you. Integrations are available with some third party project management solutions, but they are very limited. While ZenDesk is A+ on tickets/tasks and workflow, it does not have the features to make it a project management solution (though it wouldn't take much effort for them since they are so close in functionality).
Read David Drinnon's full review
December 28, 2015

Zendesk Review: "Zen works great for us"

Jeff Oreilly
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use Zendesk to support our support process across the entire organization. It has significantly cut our overhead on managing tickets. It is email based so the user just responds to the email and everything is automatically logged.
  • Usability.
  • When you need a new feature, it is already there.
  • Lots of people that you hire have already used it so they are quickly up to speed.
I don't know if it would work well if the customers aren't internet based users. For example, if you had support tickets for a plant.
Read Jeff Oreilly's full review
September 30, 2015

User Review: "Zendesk excels as internal helpdesk"

Will Scarbrough
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
  • A full feature set and the right automation and integration features, enough to support support staff so that the system is used to capture everything. This is a key difference: a product that gains a positive feedback loop versus one that slowly fades out of proper usage.
  • Automation and customization settings and user interface.
  • Mobile app.
  • Email integration - the feature to forward an email into Zendesk and have it pick up the requestor from the FWD is a key enabling feature when used as an internal helpdesk.
  • A broad set of integrations.
  • Reporting and tracking of metrics.
  • The agent user interface is good, but still needs work: there are two versions of the UI - the older version is fairly static and has too many clicks often to get common tasks done. The new interface has "tabs" inside the interface instead of taking advantage of browser tabs, and the back button cannot be used in many situations.
  • The knowledge base is good, but not great: the interface is a bit clunky, more so than the other areas of the interface. Also, when using it for an internal helpdesk on a Plus account only "agent" accounts can edit articles, so internal users cannot collaborate well on knowledge-base articles.
We have successfully integrated Zendesk with Active Directory (indirectly via their SSO script), Google Apps (SSO outside the firewall), our internal search engine (The knowledge-base is indexed via the API, and an "app" inside of Zendesk that builds a custom URL), and various iframe integrations inside the knowledge-base.
Read Will Scarbrough's full review
June 03, 2015

User Review: "Zendesk is ok"

Jonathan Justin Lewis
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

We transferred from a highly customized front end ticketing system based on dynamics CRM 2007 to Zendesk this year. This is used by our support department /R&D/Sales to support our customers. IT allows us to service our customers and support them in the way that was needed.


  • Customer contacts: can import from Salesforce
  • Mobile app: excellent and easy to use
  • UI: easy and intuitive to use
  • Salesforce side of the app causes issues and we need to turn it off to deploy
  • No easy import function: I.E no csv import, you must use the api to import and the APi only accepts one import per call.
  • Due to the complication in rendering our old cases into JSON and then looping through each case individually what should have taken a few hours took 2 months,
  • Need to use api's for anything fancy
Do you want your customer support info on the cloud? IF you are concerned about your support information being accessible to the cloud and Zendesk employees then look for an onsite ticketing solution. If your support case information is not that sensitive then go for it.
Read Jonathan Justin Lewis's full review

Zendesk Scorecard Summary

Likelihood to Recommend (375)
8.2
Likelihood to Renew (36)
9.9
Usability (12)
9.0
Availability (13)
8.6
Performance (10)
8.0
Support (17)
10.0
In-Person Training (1)
10.0
Online Training (9)
7.9
Implementation (17)
9.0

Feature Scorecard Summary

Organize and prioritize service tickets (23)
8.9
Expert directory (16)
7.4
Subscription-based notifications (17)
7.6
ITSM collaboration and documentation (19)
6.9
Ticket creation and submission (23)
9.3
Ticket response (23)
9.2
External knowledge base (19)
8.2
Internal knowledge base (17)
7.2
Customer portal (19)
8.2
IVR (7)
7.2
Social integration (12)
7.6
Email support (22)
9.1
Help Desk CRM integration (16)
7.9

About Zendesk

Zendesk is a cloud-based software solution that offers help desk ticketing, issue tracking, and customer service support. It integrates with dozens of content management systems, customer relationship management tools, and web apps. Features include hosted support email-ticket integration, online forums, RSS and widgets.

Pricing starts at $1 per agent, monthly, featuring email ticketing and a knowledge base. The $25 Regular edition includes communities and surveys, and a custom domain. The recommended $59 per agent, per month Plus edition includes time tracking, custom reporting and dashboards, and an additional internal knowledge base; this edition's features represent the free trial configuration. Beyond this, the $125 Enterprise and $195 Enterprise Elite (per agent, per month) feature support and training, multibrand support, and other perks.

Zendesk, Inc in San Francisco was bootstrapped from its founding in 2007 to June, 2008, when it received its first round of funding. In May 2014 Zendesk went public. The company now employs over 800 people and supports over 51,000 customer accounts.

Categories:  Customer Experience Management,  Help Desk

Zendesk Integrations

Zendesk Competitors

Pricing

Has featureFree Trial Available?Yes
Does not have featureFree or Freemium Version Available?No
Does not have featurePremium Consulting/Integration Services Available?No
Entry-level set up fee?No

Zendesk Technical Details

Operating Systems: Unspecified
Mobile Application:No