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Resolved Question

customer service software advice needed

May 21, 2015 4:21AM PDT

I have a question regarding customer service software options and thought this was the correct place to post. If another website or forum is a better place for me to post please let me know.
My company, which is a small automotive supplier, is starting to require metrics from the Customer Service department but at the moment they have no such tracking system whatsoever. They currently handle requests from OEMs such as Ford, GM, etc. as well as aftermarket (think pep boys) and industrial sectors (think john deer) as well. The main metric they want to track would be the length of time it takes to complete a customer request (ticket).
The customer service department is basically looking for a software package that we can use out of the box for a reasonable one-time or monthly cost. They would need the ability to open personal tickets, and within those tickets add entries or just notes about the progress of answering the customers request. Once answered they could close the ticket out notifying the system that it was resolved. The big thing here is the date stamps of the opening and closing of the tickets and the notes or entries associated with the ticket. Other than that they do not need much more functionality. They are not looking for a software that interfaces with customers; basically for internal use only. It's possible another type of software would suit our needs better so feel free to suggest something. They want something simple and user friendly that can also produce excel reports based on the list of closed or open tickets that can be sorted by time that the ticket was/is open.
I've already looked into sites like softwareadvice.com but most of the software there looks to be more than what we are looking for and would be over-solving the problem in my mind.
I am open to suggestions as software evaluation or whatever is not something I'm experienced in at all. I just somehow got handed this project. If anyone has personal experience with something like this please let post your experience and the name of the software, and ill look into it.
Note: We are not interested in third-party software development contract work, just available software packages even if that means getting a package with a little extra functionality.

Discussion is locked

Kozlow37 has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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So, another ticket system?
May 21, 2015 4:24AM PDT

There are open source FREE ones like http://osticket.com/ so cost is never an issue. However I do bump into companies that have no IT or programmers. They usually blow up or bail. I can't tell why.

I think it's the new folk that are so used to instant gratification.
Bob

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Answer
customer service software advice needed
May 29, 2015 10:44PM PDT

If you want a community as part of your help desk - give Helprace a good look. I think combining a help desk with a community is the missing link that many help desk vendors overlook.

There is immense value however: agents are already dealing with support tickets in the help desk and publishing knowledge base articles for the user base. Naturally, these agents can help deflect tickets by monitoring community discussions from the admin panel.