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How Desk.com helped me love my help desk again...after Zendesk made me hate it.
May 16, 2013

How Desk.com helped me love my help desk again...after Zendesk made me hate it.

Vivek Chawla | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction

  • Desk.com is powerful. ===> They have a robust feature set with lots of customization options.
  • Desk.com is beautiful. ===> I'm consistently blown away by how fun and intuitive the User Interface is.
  • Desk.com is fun. ===> The "achievements" feature makes working on cases kinda fun. Crazy, I know!
  • Desk.com is affordable. ===> I LOVE this part about Desk.com. I still can't believe how damn inexpensive they are, ESPECIALLY when compared to other solutions...ones that aren't even half as robust as Desk!
  • There are so many features and options for customization that Desk.com can be a bit overwhelming at first. This fades quickly, though. In my case, it was helped by the "gameified" setup process. I earned "bonus" Flex Hours for each setup task I completed. Silly as it sounds, that actually made me WANT to push through every corner of the setup process, just to get all the Hours! Very cool.
  • Support communication is organized beautifully in one place. This saves time, and time = money for us.
  • Support processes are made more efficient by the Desk.com workflow. Again, a nice time saver.
  • We look more professional to our clients and partners, which strengthens our brand.
I love using Desk.com. They have all the features I need and want. They keep updating and improving their app. And, unbelievably, they are extremely affordable, and practically a steal when compared to other premium systems.

Staying with Desk.com is an absolute no-brainer for me as long as I have any say in the matter.
I don't work for Desk.com. I don't get special deals from them. In fact, it's been almost 1.5 years since I've spoken to a Desk.com employee.

What I am is a guy who put a lot of professional capital on the line recommending Zendesk, and then watched that become a spectacular failure.

I knew that I had to find something better for implementing my own help desk, and thank God I discovered Desk.com. I only wish I would have found them sooner.

If you are considering going with Desk.com as your help desk, support center, or knowledge base, you would have my full, unreserved endorsement of that decision.

Product Usage

3 - We're a small shop, so everyone gets involved with client communication at some point.
1 - I'm the go-to guy for support on this.
  • Track customer support cases and interactions.
  • Helps manage social media channels.
  • Private knowledge base for clients and partners.

Evaluation and Selection

In 2011, I recommended and implemented Zendesk for a client during a long-term contract. I used the product for almost a year during this engagement.
  • Kayako
    • Interesting, but really clunky and unstable at the time.
  • Cerberus Help Desk
    • Oh man, I really like the Cerberus guys. I had done a Cerb implementation way back in the early days at Web.com, so I knew the product well. Unfortunately, their SaaS version at the time was sort of limited. Let me repeat, though: the Cerberus team is really great, and they do have a wonderful product.
  • Salesforce
    • I'm a huge fan of Salesforce, but it was FAR too expensive (and WAY overkill) for what I needed at the time.
  • Zendesk
    • Not so much "short listed" as "will never, ever, ever give these people money again" listed.
I chose to go with Desk.com (called Assistly at the time) because:
  1. Their pricing was awesome.
  2. Their product was gorgeous.
  3. Their APIs and customizations were extensive.
  4. Their UI just made sense, and it worked all the time. This was a huge departure from Zendesk.

Implementation

As I stated earlier, implementation of Desk.com went more smoothly than most. The resources in the "Support Center" are fantastic, and I never ran into anything that left me stumped, angry, or disappointed.
  • Implemented in-house
I did the implementation myself.

Training

  • Self-taught
Super easy to learn. I've implemented help desks from several different vendors, and ramping-up Desk.com was definitely smoother than most. The gameified setup tasks were something I really liked. I wish more companies would do things this way.

Configuration

We started with a pretty vanilla install, with the exception of some customized templates. I've since integrated Desk with our Salesforce CRM, and that went relatively well.

Support

The few times I've had to deal with actual humans at Desk.com were quick and pleasant.

There is a huge amount of support resources available through Desk's "Support Center". Most of my support needs are addressed by what I can find there.
No - We've never needed premium support.

Usability

The UI is clean, well organized, and extremely functional. They don't waste any pixels on fluff and window dressing. When you're in Desk, you're there to Get Stuff Done.

Reliability

We've never had a problem with Desk.com's availability.
Fast, responsive, gorgeous, and fun. It's always run like a thoroughbred for me.

Integration

  • Salesforce CRM
  • No new integrations planned in the near future.

Vendor Relationship

It was super easy to set up my evaluation system back when Desk was still Assistly. I didn't need to talk to anyone from their team to get started.

I had occasion to deal with an Account Executive when I upgraded my account in 2012. The reason I needed help was because I purchased an AppSumo deal which was supposed to be for "new customers" only. I didn't want to have to start up a new help desk and migrate my data just to redeem the deal, so I called Desk.com (still Assistly at that time), and talked to a guy named Sam.

Sam was super friendly. He made sure I got the AppSumo deal without having to abandon my current install and re-create everything. He was awesome. :-)
I've been around Enterprise Software long enough to know that determining price is a "gouge first, negotiate later" sort of process.

Let's be honest, though. The pricing of Desk.com is extremely reasonable. If you're a small business with 1 to 5 full-time agents, it's going to be hard to get a better deal.

If you're bringing more than 5 full-time agents to table, I say it's worth it to push a little to see what kind of breaks you can get.

If you are pushing for a better deal, please do not stop at "discounts" for paying a year's worth of service up front. The vendor is getting more out of that deal than you are! If you're going to push for discounts, you should push for REAL discounts.