Desk.com
Desk.com
Salesforce’s Desk.com ($30 per user per month for Standard edition) is one solution that will catch the attention of those looking for a more basic help desk software option. It’s always worth remembering that not every customer needs every bell and whistle. And while a package like our Editor’s Choice winner Vivantio Pro is great for a large organization with complex workflows, there are plenty of businesses, especially in the SMB sector that just need the basics. That’s where Desk.com comes in.
If there is no need to complicate matters and your business needs a more pared down help desk solution, choosing one with a simple approach to customer support, like Desk.com or Freshdesk, might be a better choice. Those looking to outfit a small software development team or a local-only consulring operation are good examples of folks who wouldn’t need enterprise-grade features, and with a decent price for its Standard edition bolstered by an excellent price for its Starter version ($3 per user per month) Desk.com has them covered.
Features
Where Desk.com excels is in its ability to keep things simple. Users won’t find much ITIL support but if that’s what you want stop reading this and checkout Vivantio Pro or Samanage. Desk.com doesn’t set out to do what ITIL service desk applications do; instead, it concentrates on getting tickets raised from email, phone calls and social media while giving agents a decent selection of workflow and processing tools.
The Desk.com onboarding experience is a prime example. The service is configured much like a tablet or smartphone app, with big buttons and dropdown menus that make the interface familiar and less daunting. This makes configuring Desk.com simple and easy. Once configured, agents are presented with a well-designed dashboard-style interface. Opening a ticket brings moves to another well-laid out screen in which it’s easy to see the problem as well as that customer’s entire service history for reference. Desk.com’s rules engine is decent providing support for things like assigning tickets that right priority flags based on keyword. You can even respond to routine requests using macros.
Desk.com also tries to make it easier for customers to answer their own questions, with templates to let businesses build self-help support centers and knowledge bases that allow customers to find the answers they need without waiting for their ticket to get an in-person response. All of this works on desktop and mobile devices, with Desk.com’s interface adjusting accordingly.
Reporting covers the basics and does so in colorful and good-looking text and graphs that let businesses keep tabs on their agents’ performance. It does fall short in terms of customizability, however. Our other Editor’s Choice winner, HappyFox had a great set of custom reporting and exporting tools, but Desk.com didn’t put as much emphasis on such capabilities with a slightly less flexible rules engine, difficulty in sharing reports outside of the Desk.com interface, and a slow console overall.
Pricing
Desk.com has four pricing structures. It covers options for a wide range of budgets and requirements and there is a free trial available.
Once the free trial period is over, you can choose between the Standard, Pro, and Business pricing tiers. The Standard tier costs $30 per month per agent. There is also a Starter package that costs $3 per month per agent. Features such as enterprise-level analytics and developer sandboxes are available in the Pro tier. The Business tier costs $95 per month per agent and offers a comprehensive feature set including improved reporting and room for extra brands.
Interface and workflow
Desk.com’s interface is sparse, flat, colorful, and easy to read. Everything swiftly loads and transitions and that experience translates across devices. Given its ability to receive calls via email, phone calls, or social media, Desk.com doesn’t overcomplicate the way tickets are raised and how they are made visible to agents. Its unified inbox brings all tickets into one view no matter their source, reducing the risk of tickets falling through the cracks.
Keen to keep tickets moving, Desk.com also offers a mobile app that allows agents to collaborate and respond to those tickets. Speaking of tickets, the simple inbox view is where agents will find currently live tickets, listing information such as who they are assigned to and the customer clearly shown. Drilling into a ticket gives you a more in-depth view. To raise a new ticket, just click the big “+” icon on the menu bar.
Interestingly, at this point the next thing required is a customer name. Desk.com will start to auto-fill that field if you are raising a ticket for an existing customer—and new ones can be added from here, too. Once that’s done, the interface shows a timeline that highlights the actions that have been taken on a ticket as well as the notes that have been added. The ticket’s status, priority, description, and subject are all listed in a pane on one side of the screen. Raising and managing a ticket in Desk.com is similar to using a tablet app, which makes it feel familiar. But the lack of information displayed on-screen may be worrisome to some users. There is no immediate indication of a ticket’s expiration time, and I didn’t like the amount of screen that was taken up by the timeline.
Resolving a ticket is simple; just press the green Resolve button. At this point, the ticket disappears, which I didn’t like. I would have preferred the option to add another note at this point or at least be prompted to send some sort of resolution email to the customer. Pressing the Resolution button doesn’t even pause for confirmation, so accidental clicks are likely to be a pain, especially considering the ticket gets moved out of the inbox once resolved.
Due to Desk.com’s singular focus on tickets, that’s generally all agents will see when logged in. The All Cases option shows everything in the system, including resolved tickets and offers a way to find those tickets that don’t show up in the inbox for whatever reason.
The general day-to-day work of a service desk is suited to Desk.com as long as you don’t mind its smaller feature set or its ticket-only focus. But its seeming lack of deadline awareness and its lackluster resolution workflow put me off from recommending it.
malikmuddser