Item: Desk.com (discontinued)
Rating: 3
Author: Katie Nix

Overall Satisfaction with Desk.com

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our primary CRM tool for customer support, and our primary CMS tool for customer-facing knowledge. We use it to handle email tickets and live chat, including some automated routing and custom filters. We also use the built-in customer satisfaction tool to track customer health and agent performance. We use the built-in CMS knowledgebase tool as well, for an external (customer-facing) knowledgebase and an internal support staff knowledgebase. Having a CRM allows our support team to be more efficient and transparent, but Desk isn't a particularly great tool considering others on the market.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Case filtering based on custom parameters (labels, assignments, time rules) is easy to set up and manage
Basic case handling (responding to emails, adding notes)
Customized / branded outbound email templates
Knoweldgebase tools included in the price of the software

Cons

Internal knowledge tools are clunky and annoying to access, outside the regular workflow of everyday staff
Arbitrary and confusing limitations in business rules and custom fields
Arbitrary and confusing limitations in case handling - for example, if you begin a case as a phone call you CANNOT email the customer from the case. As though no one working at Desk has ever sent a follow-up email...?
Not very good for B2B, mid-to-large businesses. Difficult to set business rules based on company information (for example, service level/tier) and nearly impossible to track key stakeholders and get clear insight into the relationship at a high level
Reporting tools are clunky, slow, and just all-around pretty useless

Return on Investment

Fast response time to cases
Case macros cut down on agent time spent handling each case
Knowledge tools allow introduction of self-support center & increased ROI from support area

Alternatives Considered

Zendesk and Salesforce.com

Lower pricing per user. That's about it! Other companies have all-around better features and easier user interfaces, but Desk can beat them on pricing even at higher account tiers. Included knowledgebase tools are a plus, and fairly easy to manage.

Other Software Used

Domo

Likelihood to Recommend

Seems well suited to high-volume B2C businesses (unfortunately, we are not that!) Complex B2B businesses will run into trouble at every corner. Low price compared with competitors and you definitely get what you pay for. Good for having insight and transparency across teams (easy handoff from customer support to escalation teams with full case & customer history) but difficult to integrate with other systems if your teams aren't all in Desk (for example, if CSM or other teams work primarily out of Salesforce).

Comments

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