Not Quite Front of the Pack: Considering Support/HelpDesk Options
November 28, 2017
Not Quite Front of the Pack: Considering Support/HelpDesk Options
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Front
We use it for customer support for sub-branded websites. We share this responsibility across the Customer Success and Product areas of our business. Front primarily solves the problem of multi-branding of our support needs, as these websites are branded differently from our corporate domain and we do not want our corporate brand to be visible in our responses.
Pros
- The setup for multiple inboxes is simple and flexible -- no additional costs either.
- Their support team is extremely responsive and tries extremely hard to help out should problems arise.
- They took a suggestion and implemented a new feature based upon my input within 6 weeks of initial notification.
Cons
- Front's reliance on being a better way to handle support email rather than a more traditional support ticketing system has its practical limits. For small outfits with low support volumes and relatively simple workflows, Front is probably a good option. I fear that we're outgrowing it quickly.
- It's confusing how to manage ongoing support threads because everything looks like an email and it's not always clear to our agents as to when the issue should be "closed".
- Templated responses and rules are OK, but some of the rules are not easily configured -- there is a learning curve as some settings aren't well documented and/or are not intuitive.
- They don't have any sort of FAQ solution, meaning that canned responses cannot be reused in a knowledgebase or similar resource elsewhere in our solutions -- another reason why we might need to consider other options in the future.
- Very easy to get set up initially and add agents.
- Can become expensive compared to other more full-featured support ticketing solutions on the market, especially when you grow beyond 3-4 agents.
- Lack of more advanced workflow features should be a consideration; you may need to switch down the road.
- Lack of ticketing forms and intelligent FAQ/knowledgebase integrations with canned responses has caused us to invest in other areas (becoming harder to justify long-term).
Zendesk is by far the market leader here and offers a tremendous solution. It is, of course, very expensive -- especially if you require multi-brand support. Many of the other solutions (except Groove) offer some flavor of multi-brand support but they are not as good as Zendesk. For example, the HappyFox multi-brand solution breaks down when it comes to FAQ setup -- the setup is extremely cumbersome and not worth the effort. The other area to watch out is with mobile support. Zendesk offers a clean and intuitive design on any device automatically out-of-the-box. Others, like Cayzu, are solid, but lack mobile support at this level -- probably a deal-breaker for most.
We started using Front before we realized how important a live, robust FAQ resource would be for each site that we support. As we've learned firsthand, it would have been much better to integrate these features from the outset -- and hence we should have chosen something other than Front. If you are just supporting your customers with a single email address and don't have an extensive FAQ or knowledgebase, then Front could be a great option for you.
We started using Front before we realized how important a live, robust FAQ resource would be for each site that we support. As we've learned firsthand, it would have been much better to integrate these features from the outset -- and hence we should have chosen something other than Front. If you are just supporting your customers with a single email address and don't have an extensive FAQ or knowledgebase, then Front could be a great option for you.
Comments
Please log in to join the conversation