Help Desk or Call center Software

All:

I am looking for suggestions and recommendations for software used for tracking support calls. You know, the typical user, technician, call time, problem resolution tracking type stuff. We have been using custom web based software developed in-house but I am personally not fond of it. I've seen or heard of a couple such programs like Blue Ocean's Track-IT but have never used any of them. A google search turns up tons of stuff, so I would like to get some input from folks who have opinions and experience with any of it - good and bad.

Thanks!

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Comments

Orion82698

Well, if your phone system is Nortel, you could use Symposium Call center CLIENT/SERVER. We use that where I'm at, and it works great!

sthomas

http://www.inet-sciences.com/

sprkymrk

orion82698 wrote:

Well, if your phone system is Nortel, you could use Symposium Call center CLIENT/SERVER. We use that where I'm at, and it works great!

Why does it have to be Nortel phones? Integrated? I'm just looking for tech support call tracking stuff. I may have worded my post poorly.

Orion82698

Yup. That tracking service works only with Nortel systems. It's the only one I know of.

sprkymrk

sthomas wrote:

http://www.inet-sciences.com/

Thanks sthomas. Can you briefly describe what you like about it? I'd appreciate your insight on it.

I'm really looking for input from fellow techs on how good or bad something is. I can do a google search and read all the marketing crud, but I was hoping for some "I use this and like/dislike it because" to get a perspective from real users, not filtered customer comments that may or may not be real.

Thanks!

sthomas

sthomas wrote:
http://www.inet-sciences.com/

Thanks sthomas. Can you briefly describe what you like about it? I'd appreciate your insight on it.

I'm really looking for input from fellow techs on how good or bad something is. I can do a google search and read all the marketing crud, but I was hoping for some "I use this and like/dislike it because" to get a perspective from real users, not filtered customer comments that may or may not be real.

Thanks!

That is what we use where I work. We started with the free 3 Tech version but since we just hired a 4th Tech we purchased the 4 Tech version. My boss set it up and he said it is easy to setup and customize since it is web based. I use it everyday and it works good. Also, if you work for a School you get a 30% discount. Here is a link to the pricing.

http://www.inet-sciences.com/pricing.html

sprkymrk

Thanks sthomas, I'll check it out.

malcybood

sparkymrk
The best ones I have used are

Track-it
http://www.numarasoftware.com/default.asp

and

Assyst 6.5 (currently use)
http://www.axiossystems.com/six/en/products/helpdesk_incident_management/

Both are available in fat or thin web based client as far as I know. These are the UK based websites but you can navigate to the US one and the product range is the same.

With Assyst you can do some funky stuff that integrates with palm and windows mobile devices so engineers can update calls on the run - cool stuff

p.s. I have replied to your pm but the messges are stuck in outbox....maybe I'm barred from pm'ing now

Ricka182

Both my last company, and the one I work for now use Remedy...I don't know much about it myself, I just get ticket numbers, etc....but most people say it works well...

sprkymrk

malcybood wrote:

sparkymrk
The best ones I have used are

Track-it
http://www.numarasoftware.com/default.asp

and

Assyst 6.5 (currently use)
http://www.axiossystems.com/six/en/products/helpdesk_incident_management/

Both are available in fat or thin web based client as far as I know. These are the UK based websites but you can navigate to the US one and the product range is the same.

With Assyst you can do some funky stuff that integrates with palm and windows mobile devices so engineers can update calls on the run - cool stuff

p.s. I have replied to your pm but the messges are stuck in outbox....maybe I'm barred from pm'ing now

Thanks malcybood. I've seen the demo of Track-IT. I'll check out the other.

I got your PM. Thanks.

RussS

We use something we have written ourselves - we call it Jobtrack.

Basically it is used as our client/job database and has our stock system built in. When a client calls we log a job and it can either be assigned to a client or go in an unassigned queue. When we talk with a client on the phone we fill out the start time and time engaged, or sometimes use our outlook calendar to note this and then transfer it to the job. There is a tab for stock and we can either make an order request to get something from a supplier or take it from the stock room and put it on the job. When an ordered item comes in it is automatically added to the job using the job number. On the labour tab you can either set the rate for in-house work or on-site as required and there are fields for mileage, parking, courier and misc.
At the front office they can import directly from here into MYOB and generate an invoice for the client ... quick and easy.

Sometimes I wish we would hire someone to transfer this and rewrite it to enable us to sell it to clients. Some of the end user software I see out there is crap

Chivalry1

ISIS Helpdesk software is very good.

sprkymrk

Chivalry1 wrote:

ISIS Helpdesk software is very good.

Thanks. Added it to my "research" list.

blargoe

HEAT is very nice particularly if you have a larger department. I "think" it has a pretty large market share for bigger companies.

sprkymrk

blargoe wrote:

HEAT is very nice particularly if you have a larger department. I "think" it has a pretty large market share for bigger companies.

Added to my list. Thanks blargoe.

LukeQuake

We use an asset management solution called xAssets (http://www.xassets.com/). Its a very powerful piece of software that logs every machine within your domain via a EXE which you can run as part of a logon script. It also has a very easy to use call management area. You can log calls against any of the assets and therefore quickly refer back to an assets call history.

5uperM4n

Open source Ticket Request System (OTRS)

(http://www.otrs.org/)

sprkymrk

LukeQuake wrote:

We use an asset management solution called xAssets (http://www.xassets.com/). Its a very powerful piece of software that logs every machine within your domain via a EXE which you can run as part of a logon script. It also has a very easy to use call management area. You can log calls against any of the assets and therefore quickly refer back to an assets call history.

Thank you, I'll check it out.

sprkymrk

5uperM4n wrote:

Open source Ticket Request System (OTRS)

(http://www.otrs.org/)

I was about to dismiss this one thinking it was only for linux systems, but I saw it will run on Windows. Nothing against linux, I personally like the various Red Hat based distros, but at work we are an all Windows environment.

What are your impressions/opinions/likes/dislikes on this particular piece of software. As mentioned, I would rather hear your personal experience with it rather than rely on what they say about themselves.

Thanks!

TechJunky

I have used Remedy as well at past employers and it seems like a great ticketing software.

I have used a call center program called Quintus in the past. It was basically a software program on your PC that tied in with your digital handset to keep track of how many calls you took in a day, and the length of the call average etc. It also integrated with our ticketing software at the time that was called Dashboard.

I think the software Quintus has a new name. It seemed to work very well for what it was.

LukeQuake

Study ? :d

Slowhand

In the past, I've come across a couple of different systems. When I was at CompUSA, we used Siebel as our ticketing system. It was a little buggy, the learning curve was tremendous, but it worked. After that, I worked at Kaiser and they used Remedy. I didn't get a chance to really use that, but the permanent staff seemed to like it. These days, at my current job, we use Autotask, which is a web-based service. I like Autotask best, so far, seeing as how it's relatively easy to use and comes with a lot of features.

TheShadow

sprkymrk if you are starting to look at free solutions then you might check this one out also http://www.liberum.org . I don't do this kind of thing anymore so no personal comments on it, just have it in my "just in case" file. However they seem to have a fairly active users forum so you can see what they say there. HTML and IIS based, code is GPL licensed.

sprkymrk

Thanks everyone.

I think unless someone has something they are fanatic about I have enough to go on here. I have to weed them out by matching their features against my requirements first. The big one for anything web based is that it must support Smart Card authentication rather than user name/passwords. The ones that have a client piece to install are probably going to be more than what I am looking for. We already have inventory/software management and I don't really want to add another piece of software to my clients. I know in some ways it's nice to integrate that with your Call Tracking software, but I find that it adds complexity over and above the added benefits. However, I do appreciate all your suggestions and I am going to check them all out, so thanks again.