Looking to upgrade helpdesk -- What software do you use?

Drake Chambers

I run a technical support hotline and we're looking at upgrading our software and capabilities. Right now our calls ring through via the Cisco Agent Desktop and we log the details of the call in IBM's Rational ClearQuest software (which is not helpdesk software, but we've adopted it as such because it's all we have).

The two main things I want are:

- a call logging / issue tracking system that is integrated with the call management software
- a package that allows agents to receive calls off-site (i.e. work from home)

Cisco Agent can theoretically be set up on my team's home PC's but our Cisco support people have made it sound so difficult and so fraught with issues that I'm looking at other options. Tech support people all over the world work from home now and I want my team to be able to do so as well.

I know there are a number of folks around here who work on helpdesks. Would love to hear what software you've used and what you've found works best.

EclecticGroove

Honestly, this is something you will probably need to contact several vendors for in order for them to look at what you have and what they can offer you. Cisco, Avaya/nortel, BMC remedy, and possibly even IBM and HP may have solutions that could work for you.

The biggest stumbling block for most of these is what you need it to work with, as most existing companies are loath to clear everything out and start from scratch just to get things working.

As for the second bullet point. I see 3 options:
1) They VPN into your network and run a software phone. (Either a full VPN, or a limited connection just for the phone)
2) They run a software phone that connects to an external IP on your network.
3) You forward calls to an external number of theirs (land line, cell, IP phone, etc) that you either pay for directly, or they are allowed to expense related to how much it's used.

amateurhour

We use a combination of AVAYA and Remedy and it seems to get the job done pretty well. Remedy sends the tickets directly to our e-mail address and cell phones as a text (you'd need a good data plan though, it breaks it up into four texts per message which is ridiculous but we can't change it) and we use a web client to close the tickets so we can work off site or on location just the same.

Artereis

My company uses Remedy, but I think they're looking to replace it with ChangePoint in the near-ish future.

Jimmy King

I worked a couple of places in the past (large companies) which used Clarify. One of them was always evaluating a change to Remedy, but never did it.

punk

I can't recommend what to use, but I can recommend what to avoid: BMC Service Desk Express (SDE) - it's an awful piece of shit. I can't speak for their standard Service Desk product (party of the Remedy suite), since I've never used it. And to be honest, SDE may be just fine and it's our implementation of it that's garbage. But at this point, I really don't have much good to say about it.

Tofystedeth

We use LANDesk at our helpdesk.

amateurhour

Tofystedeth wrote:

We use LANDesk at our helpdesk.

We recently had LANDesk give us a tech demo and it's pretty awesome. It's got some great deployment packages to automate basic PC maintenance and a good overall easy to use interface with a shit ton of customization options.

Noquar

I've used HEAT, Track-IT, and LANDesk. Take your pick. LANDEsk is an extremely robust product and might be more than what you need. HEAT and Track-It offer web functionality and are extremely customizable. If you want metrics, you got'em. I would assume a VPN would be in use for agents to access these.

However, I am not quite sure how to deal with your call issue. We were in the middle of attempting to get Cisco Agent up and running on home phones before I moved on. I wish I could help more on the telephony side.

Drake Chambers

Thanks for all the replies. I'm in the process of putting together the RFI now and looking at what all these products offer will help a lot.

Noquar wrote:

I've used HEAT, Track-IT, and LANDesk. Take your pick. LANDEsk is an extremely robust product and might be more than what you need. HEAT and Track-It offer web functionality and are extremely customizable. If you want metrics, you got'em. I would assume a VPN would be in use for agents to access these.

However, I am not quite sure how to deal with your call issue. We were in the middle of attempting to get Cisco Agent up and running on home phones before I moved on. I wish I could help more on the telephony side.

When we asked our Cisco support about making this happen they grudgingly said it was possible but only with a long list of qualifiers, internet connection speed and call sound quality being the big ones. I've had years of experience with government contractors stating outright "Yes, we can do that" and then implementing poorly so I'm extremely cautious when the answer is "Probably, but it will be a challenge".

krishnarc3

If you are looking for a simple solution to manage your inbound tech support, consider Vicidial. I have heard good things about Vicidial for both outbound and inbound setup. You can also integrate that with vtiger CRM all of which are opensource. Vicidial lets your agents to login from their home PC as well. I am sure the issue tracking system is also available for Vicidial. Just lookup in their forum.

I'm considering Zendesk for my startup (http://www.cumult.com) and Zopim for remote login facilities since I couldn't find anything as good in opensource for chat support setup.

Krishna

CroakerBC

For what it's worth, my (large) company uses Remedy. The dev teams hate it, but manage to avoid using it. The Managed Service guys seem to be happy enough using it that I don't think it's going to change. Seems to meet the needs of our customers.

StrifeRaZoR

Jimmy King wrote:

I worked a couple of places in the past (large companies) which used Clarify. One of them was always evaluating a change to Remedy, but never did it.

I've used Clarify in the past as well. I wouldn't recommend it as it's basically 100% java, which was really buggy on our systems. I'm not sure if Jimmy King experienced the same issues, so it may have been an isolated case.