Item: TeamSupport
Rating: 9
Author: Ron Johnson

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use the TeamSupport product in two departments of our company. These are two completely separate installations because of the nature of the two functions in our company. The first one is an outward facing customer support portal to a technical/engineering audience. The other installation is an internal use where we manage documents coming into our technical documentation group for publication and revisions. All communication for the second installation is all in house.

Pros and Cons

TeamSupport is great at allowing the user to respond much in the way you can in a rich text e-mail tool. Many solutions we had looked at were strictly text based and are hard to follow. With TeamSupport we can have rich content in our responses including formatted data, tables, graphs, pictures and such.
TeamSupport is very easy to get going with their sandbox environment in that you can get started with a few simple clicks.

We would like to see a structure to the ticket numbering system. In a previous system we had a numbering system like this mmddyy-xxxxxx This was very easy to see when a ticket was created based on just it's number. Currently with TeamSupport they assign a random number to tickets that is not very informative without a created date field.
Reports are nice but lack some rollup capabilities that are needed. Any given report can only work against two data tables at max. This is a limitation that we had to create custom contact fields to get around. They store phone, address and base contact info in separate tables. This makes it impossible with a standard system to create a report of all tickets along with the ticket and contact information in one report. The previous system we were on, allowed you to tie as many related data tables together that was needed to create one high level report.
Need Ability to notify external users of ticket activity in regions. So what I mean is we have FAE's in the field that want to know what their customers are asking for their region. They don't want or need a TeamSupport account but want simple e-mails of activity. This has been a lost feature for us going to a new system. I have to create a manual report each week and forward to the people that want this kind of information.
Ticket Automation rules will only run against a ticket one time. I understand why they did this to prevent uncontrolled loops but it would be nice to be able to set a limit that was greater than one. This limitation often causes us to have to write multiple rules to handle certain ticket cases.

Return on Investment

We spend less time responding to tickets. In our old system anytime we had to include screen shots, graphs and such in our response we had to create a separate document and attach to the ticket. Now with TeamSupport we can do that directly into our response.
The cost of this solution is very affordable when comparing to other offerings in this type of software
Our customers enjoy a better experience when communicating back and forth with our group. This is due to the rich response abilities of the system.

Alternatives Considered

We were running for many years the RightNow solution in a self-hosted type solution. We were being forced to the cloud to get updates to the software which prompted us to evaluate other products. RightNow Cloud and TeamSupport came out on top of our list of features we wanted. The RightNow solution while it is very robust comes at a high cost. Most of the features we were wanting were also available in TeamSupport. The ease of creating a sandbox environment in TeamSupport sealed the deal. We were able to bring up a working system to prove out that the TeamSupport system would work for us. The other two solutions ZenDesk and Desk did not have some of the features we were wanting so they were not in our final decision.

Likelihood to Recommend

We have been overall very happy with TeamSupport. We have also provided lots of feedback on things were we see need for improvement. The tool is constantly evolving and getting better so we hold hopes that some of the things we didn't like will be addressed some day. Overall the tool is extremely good for customer support whether it's for an internal or external customer base.

Users and Roles

10 - 5 people respond to technical questions submitted on our public website.

5 other people use this tool for a internal capacity for technical documentation group

Support Headcount Required

10 - We have five engineers supporting technical discussion/questions from our B2B customers.
Then we have five administrative personnel supporting our technical documentation group's efforts on a internal customer base.

Business Processes Supported

Technical Support tool for customers
FAQ tool for customers
Sales lead tool for follow-up with field FAE's (Field Application Engineers) or sales staff

Innovative Uses

We are using the tool to manage jobs with our technical documentation group. They benefit from the same rich text conversation abilities of tool allowing them to connect to the internal staff and collaborate with multiple engineers on the documentation of our products.

Future Planned Uses

Manage our evaluation board groups work
Manage change orders to sales orders from customers

Likelihood to Renew

Overall we have been very happy with this tool. We look forward to improvements in some areas but the tool has a very good foundation and great features for a relatively new company in this area.

Products Replaced

Yes - Oracle RightNow non-cloud based solution (self-hosted)

Key Differentiators

Price
Product Features
Product Usability
Product Reputation
Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
Third-party Reviews

The most important factor was for the solution to be similar to what we were accustomed to working with along with enhancements that we weren't getting in current tool.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

We evaluated many solutions and only a few rose to a higher level to take a closer look. TeamSupport made this easy with their free trial of a fully functional system.

Implementation Rating

Data import was the most difficult hurdle for us to get over. The mass import was handled through an Excel spreadsheet. TeamSupport doesn't use Microsoft Office products for the most part so they were relying on Google Docs which has limitations over Excel. Special characters and html in import cells can be a issue with importing. When creating a data export from your current system, special care needs to be taken so that the data is able to be processed into TeamSupport without issues.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Yes - We brought up a fully functional system at first that replicated the business we were doing in the current system we were using. We then did a mass import of all our existing data in the current system. Our target was to go live with the new TeamSupport site shortly, after which we did. After going live we forwarded any open cases from our existing system to the system e-mail address of TeamSupport which created new tickets for them so we could continue to work. All in all it was pretty seamless to our end customers.

Change Management Lessons

Change management was minimal - Very little was changed in the way we manage our business. TeamSupport just made it easier to do business.

Implementation Issues

Data Import from our old provider.
Customizing the look and feel of site to match our website.
Creating custom API single sign-on process for our website.
Creating custom API ticket viewer for our sales people and FAE's not working in the tool directly

Support Rating

I submit a question and they are very good at letting me know what is going on and what department the question has been assigned to. They support their customers with the same system that we use to support ours and timely responses are something we measure our self on and it appears that they do too.

TeamSupport Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response	None

Premium Support

No - I don't think that is a option but they have been very responsive to our organization as a whole.

Bug Resolution

Yes - Yes I have reported multiple bugs with the system. They are very responsive on getting updates out to fix the bug within a reasonable amount of time.

Exceptional Examples of TeamSupport Support

We had a lot of problems with our data import from our existing system. I think we supplied 10 times more data than any customer had ever in the past. They worked diligently to best import this data. We had multiple goes at it before it was successful but they didn't give up on it.

Usability

We have been very happy with system and ease of use.

Usability Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar	None

Easy Tasks

Adding rich content into a response to a customer
Managing your open tickets
Creating reports

Difficult Tasks

Advanced reports that require more than 2 data tables to be combined.
No ability to schedule reports to run automatically.

Mobile Interface Availability and Impressions

Yes - It does but only for the admin users. It is very basic. In a pinch I might use it but typically I try to use the full site through a browser on my mobile device. It would be nice if their end user site was responsive for mobile devices. This is stated to be coming soon though.

TeamSupport was great decision for us

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with TeamSupport