Comparing Help Desk Applications: ZenDesk, HelpDeskPilot, Ticketish, and Helperoo

In a business climate where costs are rising and there is an increasing reliance on the web it is not surprising that companies are finding that web 2.0 applications for departments such as help desks are a cost efficient way to keep satisfaction high and alert them to potential product flaws.

This week we took a look at some of the help desk applications on the web. Each offered customers the opportunity to submit help tickets and businesses the chance to manage them. Email was the primary method for this interaction, though each of the applications allowed agents handling the tickets to enter in tickets manually. We evaluated the applications on the ease of use, the options available, and whether the applications were suited to heavy or light users. The chart below gives a break down of major features, and we’ll talk about the applications following the chart. For a full writeup, click on the logos on the bottom of the review.

Helperoo was the simplest of the applications, but there are advantages to the email handler Helperoo. For light users, or companies looking for a low cost email handler, Helperoo’s single panel interface could be what they are looking for. After setting up the account an unique email address will be generated to forward all of your tickets. The tickets come into Helperoo (yourname.helperoo.com) and are in your box. Prefixes can be assigned to the tickets through the settings, and you can leave replies for the customer through the ticket screen. Customers need only sign in to see their ticket, and can reply to the thread.

The problem with Helperoo is that it is so basic and lacking features that it will appear crude to heavy users, but for businesses that already see tickets as only open and closed any more complexity is not needed.

HelpDeskPilot is a more complex application, and one that requires an installation on your company’s servers, but once installed, the experience is entirely web-based. HelpDeskPilot uses tabs to separate the functions of its help desk, categorizing the major areas as Tickets, Statistics, News, Manage, and Knowledge Base. Under each of these headers are links to specific functions and settings. Within the Tickets category users can see the various types of tickets (all, open, closed, spam, and so on) listed with the client, age, status, and update. Links for replies and change of status can be done quickly from any of these dashboards, as can assigning a ticket to yourself. The unique feature of this page is the ability to create a custom view (under the link Custom), filtering by date, status, or priority. Custom fields for tickets, under the Manage tab, can also be assigned.

Managers will like that every page in HelpDeskPilot will tell you if anyone else is online to handle an incoming ticket, and will also like the breakdowns under the Statistics tab to help assess effectiveness. Reports can be generated by tickets, clients, departments, staff, date, and history. Under the News tab, agents and managers alike can see and put in announcements for the team, and departments can be given a prefix for easier sorting (Manage tab). A knowledge base, under its own tab, can be created to publish articles for either the company (private) or customers (public).

HelpDeskPilot is a versatile application which has an extended feature set that could work well for heavy users and product oriented companies. Language support for 10 languages, a time log, and branding help make HelpDeskPilot a versatile program. The downside to it is that the plugins, which include Knowledge Base, SLA Management, LDAP Management, Branding Free, Notice Manager, and Spam Prevention are available only for a separate fee. That said, the email templates, reports, and options available in HelpDeskPilot make it worth a closer look for enterprise users.

Ticketish is a help desk that gives each product or service a dedicated mail and breaks the help desk into tabs. Customers submitting tickets can send comments through a portal, see responses from agents, and get an RSS feed to their ticket so they can see the response. Ticketish also offers RSS to agents for every type of ticket it has a tab for (unassigned, assigned, closed, your, but not spam), and for agents or managers a time log, where they can enter in time spent on a ticket and a note.

The advantage of Ticketish is in the simple way it has laid out the help desk — it is easy to understand, intuitive, and without distraction. RSS allows employees to monitor tickets from afar, and time log helps agents understand the complexity of the ticket. The disadvantage of Ticketish is that it lacks the features that businesses with a heavy ticket load require. There are no FAQs or knowledge bases, no prioritization of tickets, nor reports. This in mind, Ticketish is another simple help desk application that could be a resource for businesses with a light load of tickets, or who want a simple bug tracking platform.

Of the applications, the most flexible was ZenDesk, which not only lays out help desk management in an easy to intuit interface, but offers an impressive range of options within the application. From a mail and application API to the ability to tag tickets with keywords, ZenDesk has features for any size of help desk. Much like the other applications (except Helperoo) management of the help desk has been broken into tabs with additional options under the heading. Personalized views, or options to see the tickets in a tag cloud, list, or table are in the first tab, Home, as are macros, where users can create preformed responses to customers or conditions.

One of the interesting features of ZenDesk is their nuanced ranking; rather than a simple high to low priority, several factors are integrated into a priority score. Combining the fields Priority, Type (Question, Incident, Problem, Task), and Status (New, Open, Pending, Solved), and age, ZenDesk creates a score that places that ticket in order. For high volume businesses, this is an useful feature, ensuring that important tickets are handled first. Another feature to ZenDesk is the included widgets which allow you to integrate data from outside the help desk (under the Manage tab).

The drawback to ZenDesk would be the cost - at $95 a month for 5 agents (there are plans for 1 and 2 users as well) it would outprice HelpDeskPilot in a few months, but HelpDeskPilot has the hidden cost of servers and server maintenance, which points out the difference between the two. For businesses with a need for a feature rich help desk with mobility, ZenDesk is an excellent choice, both scalable and free of the support issues associated with maintaining servers. For companies that have that infrastructure already, HelpDeskPilot is an option for a feature rich help desk.

For light users, or businesses operating on a budget Ticketish and Helperoo are both options, offering basic help desk function with a low cost. Ticketish offers a free account (1 project, 1 user) and a starting price of $10, comparing well to Helperoo who also has a free account but whose starting paid account is $12.

If you would like to read more about these applications, the full review is accessable through their logos below, and if you are looking for similar applications, they can be found with the Listio search: business+helpdesk.

New to Listio? Our tag cloud search offers an easy way to narrow your hunt for the perfect web application or service. No more second guessing of search terms. Just click on one tag, then as many more as you'd like to narrow your search results. It's easy and ensures you get to the listing you want. Finding web 2.0 was never so easy.

Tags: business, email, helpdesk, manage, organize, rss
Posted in: Help Desk, Product Comparisons | Respond
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