Support Ticket resource or what do you use?
- Thread starter surfsup
- Start date
Digital Doctor
Well-known member
Use Simple Forms to create a private support thread.
They would fill out some information about the problem.
The thread gets posted to a Forum that displays under a Tab called tickets.
It could be private if you want or not.
Other people have used Conversations for tickets.
Sim
Well-known member
I currently support 14 different websites (and adding about 1 new site per month), so I needed a solution which would allow me to receive and respond to multiple email addresses on different domains and support multiple helpdesk users and allow some degree of integration with my forums.
After a lot of searching and testing, I settled on HelpSpot: Help Desk Software for Email/Web Customer Service ... it's not cheap (starting at US$239 per seat), but it does almost everything I need and has been instrumental in allowing me to manage such a huge volume of email I receive from my website users. The API and integration capabilities were a critical part of the decision - I didn't want this to be a stand-alone system.
I have a Virtual PA who does most of the basic email support and then I only need to deal with the more difficult tasks that they can't manage and re-assign to me. I will shortly be handing off sales requests to someone else to deal with so that I only need to handle the difficult technical (or management) problems.
Each of my websites has a Google Apps account with three main email addresses (support@, sales@, webmaster@), each of which get managed separately via HelpSpot.
I can easily see requests based on the website they came from, I have custom lookup routines to retrieve usernames and other details from the forum so we know more about the user from within HelpSpot and don't necessarily need to go to the forum to reply to the user (only if we need to actually do admin work on their account). I have similar lookup capabilities to a CRM system (currently Batchbook, but I'm working on my own custom CRM based on a XenForo engine which will be more tightly integrated with the support desk).
I also have a private XenForo based project management forum where I discuss website development work and customisation projects with my staff and contractors. I can "push" a request from HelpSpot to my XenForo project management tool for tracking of to-do jobs or ideas for future consideration.
I'm averaging around 450 support emails a month at the moment, although around 75% of them are either not real requests or are just notifications from various websites or tools and are simply deleted.
Probably overkill for what most people need - but it works for me.
After a lot of searching and testing, I settled on HelpSpot: Help Desk Software for Email/Web Customer Service ... it's not cheap (starting at US$239 per seat), but it does almost everything I need and has been instrumental in allowing me to manage such a huge volume of email I receive from my website users. The API and integration capabilities were a critical part of the decision - I didn't want this to be a stand-alone system.
I have a Virtual PA who does most of the basic email support and then I only need to deal with the more difficult tasks that they can't manage and re-assign to me. I will shortly be handing off sales requests to someone else to deal with so that I only need to handle the difficult technical (or management) problems.
Each of my websites has a Google Apps account with three main email addresses (support@, sales@, webmaster@), each of which get managed separately via HelpSpot.
I can easily see requests based on the website they came from, I have custom lookup routines to retrieve usernames and other details from the forum so we know more about the user from within HelpSpot and don't necessarily need to go to the forum to reply to the user (only if we need to actually do admin work on their account). I have similar lookup capabilities to a CRM system (currently Batchbook, but I'm working on my own custom CRM based on a XenForo engine which will be more tightly integrated with the support desk).
I also have a private XenForo based project management forum where I discuss website development work and customisation projects with my staff and contractors. I can "push" a request from HelpSpot to my XenForo project management tool for tracking of to-do jobs or ideas for future consideration.
I'm averaging around 450 support emails a month at the moment, although around 75% of them are either not real requests or are just notifications from various websites or tools and are simply deleted.
Probably overkill for what most people need - but it works for me.
Digital Doctor
Well-known member
Kayako.com uses Xenforo forums 
Sim
Well-known member
Kayako.com uses Xenforo forums
I haven't spent any time looking at Kayako since I decided to use HelpSpot, but back when I was comparing options, there was a lot of user angst about the current version losing a lot of functionality from earlier versions due to a re-write in the core product which was released before it was function-complete compared to earlier versions. Not sure whether that has improved - but at the time it put me off what was going to be my number 1 choice.
Blackbeard
Well-known member
I really like Kayako, and use it across my sites.
ManagerJosh
Well-known member
No love for DeskPRO? http://deskpro.com
Bubka3
Active member
How about http://arcticdesk.com/ ?
Sim
Well-known member
From what I've seen of DeskPRO (only looking at the feature list on their website), it does not provide a"multi-domain" support system - it is built around the assumption that all emails will be coming to/from a single domain name.
That may be fine for people who run a single site - but if you need true multi-site support, it's not good enough. This is the limitation I found with most of the helpdesk solutions out there, especially those which are cloud-based.
surfsup
Well-known member
Ive ended up just creating another Username on the forum and people can just send a conversation to it while adding attachments.
Seems much easier and no extra cost as well, plus the members doesnt have to RE-SIGN up on any different platform.
I believe this is the best route to go atm.
Seems much easier and no extra cost as well, plus the members doesnt have to RE-SIGN up on any different platform.
I believe this is the best route to go atm.
Sim
Well-known member
From what I can tell, again this is single-domain only. The Twitter and Facebook integration is a nice idea, but again, from what I can tell, you can only support single Twitter and Facebook accounts.
I have a Facebook page for every one of my sites, plus a Twitter account for each of them. I need a true multi-site solution.
CoTweet was a very nice solution with a unified inbox for dealing with Twitter messages and mentions, but that service is no longer operating. Hootsuite is the closest I can find now and I use it daily, but it's not the same - I really liked the unified inbox metaphor that CoTweet used so you have a single place to view all outstanding interactions and can easily manage them without needing to constantly swap between multiple tabs like you do in Hootsuite.
I haven't seen a truely integrated multi-domain multi-social media account solution for support.
ArcticDesk looks like a very new solution too - hardly any discussion in the forums yet. I would be cautious about missing functionality in what looks to be a v1 release. The Executive Director of the company wasn't too supportive of XenForo either in one thread I read.
I also couldn't find any information on whether they support Facebook pages rather than personal profiles. I would hope so, otherwise their Facebook integration is effectively useless.
Bubka3
Active member
Actually, that's my business account, and I am in no way, shape, or form in charge or directly affiliated with ArcticDesk at this time. I'd also like to point out that as a business, I would not recommend XenForo, as stated. As a personal/hobby site, I think XenForo is fantastic. Heck I use it on my own personal site, bubka3.com
Mario Rodriguez
Member
ArcticDesk will have Multi-account Twitter and Facebook support in their next release.
Mario Rodriguez
Member
Ive ended up just creating another Username on the forum and people can just send a conversation to it while adding attachments.
Seems much easier and no extra cost as well, plus the members doesnt have to RE-SIGN up on any different platform.
I believe this is the best route to go atm.
¿How does it work? I'm interested in such a solution
surfsup
Well-known member
Sure I used:¿How does it work? I'm interested in such a solution
Conversation Manager: http://xenforo.com/community/resources/conversation-essentials.275/
and
BD Tag me (to tag members or for ppl to click 'support': http://xenforo.com/community/resources/bd-tag-me.386/
Morgain
Well-known member
Ive ended up just creating another Username on the forum and people can just send a conversation to it while adding attachments.
Seems much easier and no extra cost as well, plus the members doesnt have to RE-SIGN up on any different platform.
I believe this is the best route to go atm.
Ive thought of doing this - with Login As User it would be pretty good.
I'd rather have a forum where they could only see their own threads though. Cuts out the transfer of ID for me.
