Archive for the 'Service Desk Companies' Category
Zendesk Raises Prices for Help Desk Software
Zendesk, the on-demand help desk software maker, is raising their prices by over 300% for some plans. The help desk company sent the bad news to their customers via email recently which has left some with a bad taste in their mouths. Coincidentally, Zendesk reported crossing the 5k business customer mark right before their drastic price changes.
The price changes:
Before
Single package: $9/month per agent, 1 agent only
Regular package: $19/month per agent, minimum of 3 agents
Plus+ package: $39/month per agent, minimum of 5 agents
After
Starter plan: $9/month per agent, 1 to 3 agents
Regular plan: $29 per month, 3 to 20 agents
Plus+ plan: $59/month, 5 to 100 agents
The help desk vendor is offering what they call ‘Grandfathering Terms’ which will allow current customers to remain on an existing price and feature plan by converting to an annual billing cycle. However, customers are still up in arms over the forced switch to annual payment.
Zendesk has recently faced a huge backlash on their company forum in the wake of the changes. The customers demand to know how the company can justify a 300% price increase for a commonplace commodity. Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane responded by issuing this statement:
“Yes we are raising our prices on two of our plans. We now have three plans at three different price points (starting at $9). This is the first time EVER that we have increased pricing. But we have added new functionality to the service for every week for the last two and half years.
And today we’re launching a lot more functionality for knowledge base and community support Zendesk has gone from a traditional ticket management system to a complete customer engagement platform, supporting 1-to-1, 1-to-many and many-to-many customer conversations and support interactions. Zendesk is investing heavily in new features and our customers will continue to experience great things with Zendesk.
We will deliver on our promise. Are we the cheapest show in town? No. But we do think that we have an excellent offering for almost every budget starting at $9 per agent seat. And we do offer to grandfather our existing customers for one additional year at their current price point with all of their current functionality grandfathered indefinitely.
The price per agent has gone up with $10 and $20 on the Regular and Plus+ plans respectively. That’s a 50% increase. Some customers may experience disproportional price hikes due to earlier introductory discounts, and we will look into these accounts on a case-by-case basis.
Let me finally point out, that we have been completely open and transparent about the price changes. We don’t try to sneak it in.”
Only time will tell if the response will appease the masses or if there will be a mass exodus of Zendesk customers to other help desk platforms.
No commentsParature Customer Support on Facebook Pages
Parature, the on-demand Help Desk Software Vendor, now has a customer support tab on Facebook. Parature is joining Salesforce.com and other customer support services to tap into Facebook’s 400 million consumer base. Accel Partners, backed by Parature, launched the on-demand customer service product for Facebook pages today. Here’s a screenshot of the tab:
Valuable customer conversations are taking place all over Facebook pages. Using Parature’s application, companies can now integrate a branded “support” tab. Customers can post their questions, comments and feedback onto a corporations Facebook Support wall. Parature will take the information and send it to the company as a ticket with the Facebook customer information listed on the ticket.
Leveraging Parature’s technology, companies can include frequently asked questions about their product or brand as well. Customers on Facebook can search for service answers from within a Facebook page. If a query isn’t resolved on the page, the ticket will be sent to the company for follow up.
Parature will also offer customers live chat options with company representatives from the Facebook Fan Page. With immediate customer support available, companies that choose to use the Parature application can foster strong relationships with their customers. Since all of this can be done on Facebook pages, customers will most likely share their positive experience on their Facebook stream as well. Through word of mouth a la Facebook, satisfied customers can drive more traffic or business to businesses.
Parature’s application is paving the way for a new generation of customer service technology. Parature recently added Twitter support as well, reaffirming the fact that social media is the perfect platform for customer service integration. We’re excited to see what other business solutions providers will team up with Facebook to optimize their business processes. Social media platforms are more than just for socializing, and businesses are finally realizing the value of sites like Facebook and Twitter.
No commentsSecureData Upgrades its Service Desk Capabilities
Help Desk systems have played important roles in maintaining and providing high levels of customer service. With expanding companies offering more complex products, the need to provide quick and efficient customer support is now becoming more essential than before.
SecureData, a company that provides information security, was a company who had recently been looking to update its existing help desk software package. In providing a secure network which provides protection and security for customers’ data, they have developed strong relationships with their customers. However, SecureData was still looking on ways to improve on the service it provides its customers.
SecureData had decied upon a comprehensive CRM package called Radical which includes some help desk functionality. SecureData found it necessary to pursue a product that could fully meet the growing requirements of its service desk operations. After browsing through a number of different CRM solutions, they settled upon Radical to provide support for its service desk.
Radical provides SecureData a number of options such as dashboards and reports to see real-time information. Also, customer information can be easily gathered and tracked to ensure consistency and provide accountability for any actions. This should greatly improve the way information is captured and used as employees can efficiently access information and quickly know what to do with it.
In addition to these features, Radical also offers a number of other features that can benefit your help desk facility. For more information about Radical CRM and the features it provides, you can read the full article here.
No commentsFrontRange’s New Help Desk Tool
FrontRange recently released the newest version of its popular help desk software, HEAT. Its newest version, Heat 9.0, features an advanced web interface which improves productivity and increases worker efficiency. This allows companies to maximize the work they get from their workers.
With new tools such as tabbed browsing and message centers, it should greatly improve worker productivity and provide company cost savings in terms of reduced downtime and improved workflow. With the state of the current economy, companies are looking for ways to eliminate existing inefficiencies. Turning to FrontRange to help leverage its help desk functions can go a long way in cutting many costs and increasing productivity.
The advanced features of Heat 9.0 will enable companies to improve upon existing operations. To learn more about FrontRange and its newest offering of Heat, you can read the full article found here.
No commentsNumara Software Welcomes Education Institutions to Customers
Numara Software has been a leader in IT Service Management solutions for a variety of different industries. Numara Software continues to add to its customer base as it announces the addition of thousands of educational organizations to its customer family. Despite the economic downturn, Numara Software is doing better than ever, with a 20% increase in new customers for Numara Software.
Numara Software is pleased with the success they have had among educational institutions and will expand on this by continuing to improve its tool and resources. Their goal is to be able to create a learning environment for the campus where customers do not have to focus on IT related issues. A number of prominent educational institutions have chosen Numara Software. Some of these names include Yale Law School, Wake Forest Business School, and Duquesne University.
With thousands of customers worldwide and a rapidly expanding customer base, the future for Numara Software looks extremely bright. For more information on Numara Software, you can read the full article found here.
No commentsBMC Software Helps Beverage Giant Overhaul its Service Desk
Beverage giant Pernod Ricard Pacific is known for its many famous brands all over the world such as Absolut Voda or Chivas Regal to name a few. With its evergrowing business, Pernod Ricard Pacific was looking for a way to efficiently streamline its help desk processes as well as automate many of its activities. As the number of help desk support tickets continued to increase, Pernod Ricard felt it was only appropriate to begin looking for a solution to improve its service desk capabilities.
Pernod Ricard settled on BMC Software IT Service Desk to help solve its help desk support problems. Prior to implementation of BMC Software, Pernod Ricard faced many issues associated with its ancient help desk system. Now, with BMC Service Desk, Pernod Ricard has improved its response times and simultaneously improved customer satisfaction. Also, new monitoring capabilities make it much easier for Pernod Ricard to track and monitor its services.
For more information on BMC Software’s IT Service Desk, you can read the full article found here.
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No commentsNumara Software receives award from Customer Interaction Magazine
Numara, a leading service management software provider, has announced that its Numara FootPrints 8 has received an award from Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine. Numara FootPrints 8 is a web help desk solution which allow companies to control the number of employees it chooses to hire and improve service desk efficiency.
Numara Footprints 8 is recognized as one of the more flexible and easy to use Service Desk Solutions currently available. This award is in recognition of Numara Software’s committment to technological innovation as well as quality in producing its applications.
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