Collaboration across global teams has become seamless and customer behavior is now easier to analyze
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Zendesk is to serve as a CSP, a customer support platform, and to take on a leadership role in the technical support area.
In my day-to-day work, I mainly receive tickets from Zendesk, solve these tickets, and send them back via email or chat to the customer. I also generate dashboards and analytics to further understand customer behavior, SLAs, and related metrics.
I have numerous integrations with HubSpot and Slack to keep informed of specific issues with customers, as well as integration with Jira for escalations with the engineering team. Additionally, I have used Zendesk to create analytics for the director of the customer support department.
What is most valuable?
The collaboration between agents is impressive, and I also use Zendesk Workspace, which provides a seamless experience when communicating through chat and email.
Our team is distributed across different parts of the world, so we maintain different SLAs. We can take this into account and send tickets to people who will be awake or on the job at that time, making it easier to offer a 24/7 experience for our clients. What I appreciate most about Workspace is that I do not have to change views; previously, switching from email to chat involved a context change, but with Workspace, this has improved significantly.
Zendesk is the main tool we use to organize and reach out to customers and to completely understand the main issues, bugs, and concerns of our customers. The analytics capabilities allow us to digest all the information and tickets into practical points that we can improve, which has been key to understanding customer behavior and complaints.
What needs improvement?
I believe Zendesk needs to align more with the current era; for example, there is not a real feature for seamless interaction through Slack or Google Meet. Zendesk is missing an AI aspect that could help provide quick answers based on the knowledge housed within the platform. It would be beneficial to gather all this information and use it through an AI that agents can utilize to better assist customers. Additionally, Zendesk displays data only in the default view, so more freedom in views, such as Kanban or specific customizable views, would align better with current trends.
I find Zendesk great with integrations, but it is missing the ability to offer Slack or Google Meet channels for high-end customers. This would allow key accounts to contact us directly without needing to go through the ticket creation process, which other platforms handle effectively.
The reasons I chose a rating of eight include the lack of excellent support and the rigidity of the platform. Sometimes when I have issues, their support does not offer the best response. Additionally, Zendesk needs to explore new options and provide more freedom in ticket views.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Zendesk for six years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Zendesk is quite stable; we experience major outages only once or twice a year, making it very reliable. The problem arises in support when something goes down, as their responsiveness is not very effective.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Zendesk's scalability is excellent; all the data we collect has been invaluable for improving features and impacting various teams, including product, engineering, and marketing, as we gather information from clients and potential customers.
How are customer service and support?
My experience with Zendesk's customer support has not been positive. When I open a ticket for a bug, it often does not expedite the resolution process. The agents sometimes seem inexperienced, which reflects poorly on the overall support experience. There appears to be a lack of connection between the bot and the agents, making it feel scripted rather than helpful.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before Zendesk, we did not use a different solution. We started with Zendesk because we believed it was the best platform for our needs, but we are currently switching to another option.
What was our ROI?
I cannot share specific return on investment metrics because we have always used Zendesk, and we are now changing to Pylon. However, during the time we used Zendesk, we were able to offer a seamless 24/7 support experience and meet all our SLAs due to the robust nature of the platform.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Zendesk, I only evaluated Intercom.
What other advice do I have?
I advise others looking to use Zendesk to start by setting up strong foundational elements. As you progress, it becomes increasingly difficult to remember to add specific filters or SLAs, so ensuring a solid basic setup from the beginning is crucial for effective reporting and evaluation of the support team.
I believe Zendesk is one of the best platforms available and the standard for customer support agents. However, I have noticed that they seem too large to change effectively. While I have seen improvements, my company has decided to switch to a competitor. Nonetheless, if someone is starting and lacks a clear structure for customer support, Zendesk should be the platform they begin with and use to measure other options. I provided this review with a rating of eight.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Fairly easy to set up, integrate and use. Some minor speed-bumps, but nothing too bad
What do you like best about the product?
it was fairly easy to set up, and I liked that it was able to build some initial KB articles from AI scraping about the industry I'm in. The interface to handle tickets is solid, and easy to set up as well.
adding the chat agent to my website was easy. integrating email with the ticketing system was fairly easy as well.
The capabilities of the support system were solid.
What do you dislike about the product?
It was annoying to get my domain name right.
I had to do significant edits to the KB articles to get them to be accurate, but that's to be expected.
adding my customers as users was a little tedious, but not too bad.
It was somewhat difficult to figure out how to tweak the ticket form to include my custom lists of areas, but I eventually figured it out
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I have customers who have questions about the products I support, and sometimes have bugs or issues they would like resolved. They also want access to a knowledge base that includes useful information about the products in this industry.
Reliable and Straightforward Solution That Just Works
What do you like best about the product?
I like Zendesk because it’s reliable and pretty straightforward. It’s well-established in the industry, has the core features most teams need, and generally just works without much fuss!
What do you dislike about the product?
I’d say the downside is that it can feel a bit rigid at times. Some things are harder to customise than you’d expect, and a few parts still feel like older legacy bits bolted on. It does the job, but there are moments where you wish it was a bit more flexible and modern under the hood.
For example, some of the admin settings feel weirdly buried, and things like setting up more complex workflows or automations can be clunky unless you know exactly where everything lives. The reporting side is also quite limited unless you pay for the higher tiers, and sometimes the interface still has that mix of old and new screens that don’t feel consistent. None of it’s deal-breaking, but it does make the platform feel a bit dated in places.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It basically helps bring all the customer conversations into one place so things don’t get missed. It also gives teams a consistent way of working, which cuts down on faff and makes it a lot easier to track what’s actually going on. For me, the benefit is mainly visibility and speed, you can see who needs help, what’s overdue, and where the bottlenecks are without digging through different systems.
Macros and automation have streamlined workflows and reduced manual effort across support teams
What is our primary use case?
I have not used Zendesk for a few years now, but when I did at TOPs Software, I used it for four years to set up macros, to handle the ticket and user management within there, the customer service and success and onboarding. We used Zendesk for all of it.
The most I have used Zendesk was again with TOPs Software for customer ticket management. All of our SaaS customers and our on-prem solution, the original TOPs, all filtered their support inquiries through Zendesk. That is how our support and product and development and customer success teams managed the tickets and collaborated to merge them for multiple items related to product feature requests and such.
We loved the notifications and the way to build custom views for a specific user's open tickets and to see how long they have been open, how long it was since the last request.
This is in relation to customer ticket management, reporting and integrations, and communication through Zendesk. The customer's replies being directly fed into Zendesk and us being notified of those updates, being able to customize the updates for a specific user.
What is most valuable?
I really loved the macros. It was easy to use. There were some scripts and things that our support manager would have to run sometimes to get it to work right, but otherwise it was a great product.
We would all bring those tickets together under one master ticket. We used the macros a lot to handle processes through automation that we did not have to redo every single time based on what the ticket was about or how we wanted to respond to it.
We loved the notifications and the way to build custom views for a specific user's open tickets and to see how long they have been open, how long it was since the last request. I really liked the ability to merge and notify the associated customers that there had been updates on their tickets.
The reporting and integrations were something we obviously used extensively. We used Open APIs for all of our integrations to TOPs, to our various systems. I feel the views and the prompts and the visibility inside the regular Zendesk interface pretty much give you everything you need at a user and group level without necessarily having to formulate and push a bunch of reports.
All of the outcomes related to better service for customers. Obviously, the response times were faster because everything is real-time. Being able to put response counters on certain tickets and have certain ones that are high priority and have a tighter SLA than lower priority items, being able to categorize them as a question versus an urgent request, and being able to bucket them as feature requests or product enhancements, being able to communicate all of this back to the end user and the customer without having to manually write all of it up. It is all built into the macros, prompts, notifications, or updates that we built into Zendesk.
What needs improvement?
The ability to communicate on the Zendesk ticket through the actual user software, so TOPs, would have been helpful. Somehow seeing a user's ticket history within our app would have been beneficial. That is the only thing that I do not think existed at the time that might have been helpful.
Some people struggled with Zendesk, but it was always easy enough to show them how to use it and what they were missing. The only times we really had people report concerns about it was when they did not understand that it could do that or how to use it in that way.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have not used Zendesk for a few years now, but when I did at TOPs Software, I used it for four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There were no issues at this time regarding the needed improvements to Zendesk or something about the product itself or my experience with updates, support or features.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
From what I recall, the experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Zendesk was quite expensive and that is what prohibited us from expanding usage of it into more users and using more of its capabilities. I did not get directly involved with much of the pricing and negotiations or contracting.
How are customer service and support?
We loved being able to track everything about tickets, including their open times and notifications for users associated with the tickets. It provided better service to customers both internally and to the end users.
All of the outcomes related to better service for customers. The customer's replies being directly fed into Zendesk and us being notified of those updates, being able to customize the updates as a specific user. Obviously the response times were faster because everything is real time.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used a different solution before Zendesk that was something internal and proprietary, but I cannot remember exactly.
How was the initial setup?
We had all of those solutions to deploy Zendesk. Our company was started in 1985. In that time we moved from floppy disk all the way to web-based through Azure.
What was our ROI?
I can tell you that we probably saved at least three employees full-time with the ticket management and the automation and the macros and the user follow-up being built in. I do not have personal ROI details on what was spent versus what was returned, but I can say that the knowledge base build-outs, we had a person dedicated to that, but had she not been able to create knowledge-based materials and replicate those on a routine basis, we would have had to have multiple people do her job whereas Zendesk took care of it as soon as she loaded the materials into the system. I do not have any other metrics besides that.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
From what I recall, the experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Zendesk was quite expensive and that is what prohibited us from expanding usage of it into more users and using more of its capabilities.
What other advice do I have?
The marketing for Zendesk could potentially be improved because I have not used it for years. I feel it could and should be used more. It is one of those systems that you will move through many ticket management systems or proprietary solutions or internal or something built into a system you already use and often it lacks a lot of the functionality that you end up finding you want, such as the response counters or the macros, or the merging of the tickets with the auto notification to everybody tied to that ticket. These are things that may have been improved upon since I last used it, but the marketing could benefit from approaches like webinars similar to what ZoomInfo and those kinds of companies use to promote themselves and keep them top of mind for even people who do not currently use their service. I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.
Organized Workflows That Supercharge Customer Support
What do you like best about the product?
It's organized and helps speed up the customer service process. Automatic workflows help deliver better customer support.
What do you dislike about the product?
I haven't really found something negative that impacts my user experience.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Delivering a fast response that allows users to feel heard, especially for a company like ours, which doesn't have a large workforce.
Effortless Setup and Smooth Launch Experience
What do you like best about the product?
Easy set up, was able to fully launch without any assistance
What do you dislike about the product?
Sometimes a delay of response and alot of back and forth. Would prefer a phone call or immediate reply
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The amount of triggers and automations needed to make things work
Comprehensive Help Center and Documentation Enhance Our Experience
What do you like best about the product?
We appreciate that it includes a help center and internal documentation. The template responses are also very useful.
What do you dislike about the product?
It can require a significant amount of time to set up and get the team fully trained.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Responding to customer from different sources in a timely manner
Centralized Customer Communications for Faster Support
What do you like best about the product?
Zendesk is valuable because it brings all customer communications from different channels into a single workspace, which then allows the support team to respond faster
What do you dislike about the product?
It is complex to setup and the advanced features can get expensive
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Zendesk helps solve issues like slow response times, scattered customer communication to improve service quality
Efficient Ticket Management, But Can Get Cluttered with High Volume
What do you like best about the product?
I like that Zendesk Support Suite brings all customer interactions into one place. It’s easy to use, helps manage tickets efficiently, and makes communication faster and more organized.
What do you dislike about the product?
Sometimes Zendesk can feel a bit slow or cluttered when handling many tickets, and setting up automations or views can take time to get just right.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Zendesk solves the problem of scattered customer communication by centralizing emails, chats, and calls in one platform. It helps me respond faster, stay organized, and deliver a better overall support experience.
Absolutely Love This Software!
What do you like best about the product?
The ease of use is fantastic, you can learn quickly even if you are a new user and customer and it integrates perfectly.
What do you dislike about the product?
To be honest, I haven't found any issues so far. Everything has been perfect up to this point.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The support suite has solved the problem of needing to personally return to client support tasks or having to pay an employee to manage them. Now, I can handle everything directly from my laptop, and the AI can take over as well.
