How has it helped my organization?
The first time I sued this product, I was working for a fast-growing startup and there was a lot of software. In terms of the service, there were 60% of questions based on issues. We could do a customized answer or handle customized activity to address this. However, 30% to 40% repeated certain questions over and over. We were able to prioritize our design based on these. Knowing what people were asking about gave us a direction. They helped us to prioritize features.
We saw a decrease in the number of tickets. It was at least 25% less. There was an increase in customer satisfaction. And that was due to the fact that this solution helped us see what we needed to see and prioritize based on what most people wanted from the company.
What is most valuable?
What is cool about Zendesk is that they invest a lot in their documentation. If you spend a reasonable amount of hours reading the documentation, you can have a good understanding of how the solution works.
By default, by just using their predefined templates, you can get something very nice.
I like how it works together with support. With Zendesk support we can insert articles in our resolution to close the ticket. Your colleagues can collaborate on everything as well including work and updating an article.
The fact that you can set up an approval process, where everybody can have their own opinion, however, in the end, I was the one that was validating or not.
The insights they provide are great. For example, you can find out what are the most popular articles? What are the articles that are not that popular? What are the keywords that people search? In that case, if they don't find anything or almost nothing, that is a clear trigger for us to write an article or improve a current one about a specific topic based on search trends.
What is cool about Zendesk Guide is how it works together with others Zendesk products. Especially with support and with the analytics. Put those together for a small or medium-sized company and it's a really powerful tool.
What needs improvement?
If I write an article, and I have a team of 30 people, and they all have a Zendesk account, when I write an article, I send them an email. "Hey guys, I just wrote this article. It's one of the most popular topics this month on which we are not covered. Please check it and make sure that you include it in your resolutions".
The issue is, once I send it to those 30 people, and they open it, the next morning, that article is the most popular article. It has 25 to 30 reviews, however, that's not right as 80% of those reviews were by my team, not by the customer. They need to find a way to separate internal link clicks from external ones.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution since 2014. I've used it across two different companies.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution was stable. I never had issues. The scheduled maintenance was announced well in advance and was on the weekend during hours that I wouldn't have considered work anyway.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
If you wanted to scale from ten agents to 1,000 agents, then it's tricky to do it by yourself.
That's the moment when you should go for an implementation partner or something. I tried to do it by myself. I tried scaling from three or five people to 30 people. And the biggest problem is when you have a structure, and you change the structure. I found that when I was doing extracts, I had a lot of data on the previous structure and I didn't have data on the current structure and I had to do a lot of manipulation in Excel. Basically, you are losing a lot of data in analytics at the moment you decide to change the structure of your team.
In my previous company, 30 to 40 people used this product.
How are customer service and support?
Support is not great. Their support is that specific support you get from a big American tech company. For example, instead of help, if you ask something specific, they point to an article with generic information.
That's why, if you don't figure it out by yourself, honestly, you are screwed. They don't help.
I can understand why it's like this. At the end of the day, you pay several hundreds of dollars per month. Only one person in the US is maybe paying $100,000 per year. I can understand why they are trying to optimize things, however, to do this through documentation, I don't know if it's effective. The bottom line is, sometimes when you ask a human question, you would like for them to receive a human answer. To get a human, sometimes it takes three days, sometimes one week.
There seemed to be only one guy handling my ticket. They were based in the US, and if I was trying to chase information about a ticket, it would take a while. They relied far too much on documentation and sharing articles. However, this seems to be a very American approach to technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previous to having Zendesk, my company used a European solution called TOPdesk. We were the mother company, and we forced them to eventually use Zendesk. With this previous solution, we had more flexibility in building fields, however, it was a nightmare to do the integration and transition due to too much flexibility. That's why we switched.
I left the Zendesk world for Salesforce. So I'm not up to date anymore with what they're doing. I stopped using Zendesk almost a year ago. Salesforce was brought in so that we could have everything in one place. We wanted a CRM solution.
How was the initial setup?
In terms of the initial setup, if you spend a reasonable amount of time reading documentation, you can do it by yourself with no issues. There might be one line of code. Not even. You can totally do it with point and click. That's very nice.
What was our ROI?
We were a very small company. If we switched to anything to help make things more efficient, and we immediately saw an ROI. This was true with Zendesk as well.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We found the solution to be a bit expensive. We were using the level just below enterprise grade.
There aren't really any extra costs beyond the standard licensing.
What other advice do I have?
I'd advise those using Zendesk to make sure to connect Guide to analytics and to check what your customers are doing and improve the content according to their needs. This is the most important thing you can do.
I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Hi
Just like other cloudbased systems Zendesk only got a training program for their Enterprise customers - Other than that there are actually only 2 ways to gain knowledge on best practices and how to's: Their great forum with loads of great articles and guides or contact one of their local resellers that has good knowledge of Zendesk.
Have fun moving forward with Zendesk - I am sure it will help you achieve your CS goals!