Thread: SupportTrio, Kayako, or Cerberus?

Originally Posted by TITAN

Andrew - who's the new player - are they out yet ?

I don't know if this is what Andrew's referring to, but it's fairly new:
http://auraclesupport.com/

I'm still a believer in Cerberus, it scales nicely and the new Cerberus Workstation and Cerberus 3.0 are looking good.

Oh I dunno - the whole thing gives me a headache.

I'm a firm believer in that you get what you pay for so I have to wonder how these guys are making a living when they only charge a couple of hundred bucks for software.

I need something established that *works*.

As an example - I moved over to using cacti for stats/graphing a fair while back. Its the same old open-source story of woe - each upgrade is two steps forward one step back.

For us - certain key systems are a lifeline - an absolute critical part of the process. I can't afford any ****ups

We use Kayako eSupport v2.3.5. Its a nice simple helpdesk with SMS capabilty.

I did upgrade to the new v3 suite as a test but it seemed alot more complex and there was what felt like a million clicks to do a simple operation. That, and i'm too lazy to re-do the integration into our website.

We started with our own support app which was fine - we wanted to add certain features to it which was no problem, but it was cheaper to just buy Kayako instead which already did most of what we wanted, so that's what we did on V2 and are now using V3 suite - it's fine it does what we want it to most of the time, as most of the source is open you can make changes to it as well, and it looks quite nice straight out of the box.

On another note - I have also written a ticket system that is used by BT and O2 (and other companies) both on internal and external help desks - it is very basic compared to the likes of Kayako etc, but it does exactly what they need and is very simple for the support staff to use.

So I'd say maybe buy Kayako and see how you like it, it doesn't cost much especially compared to RightNow, or maybe consider writing your own software to do exactly what you want - would probably cost less than "RightNow" as well.

Cheers,
Sean

I have to agree - Kayako is quite simply throwaway money ! Our accountant would list it under sundries....so we could try it as an experiment. It would be quite a farce to be paying < £500 for a company's core support system !

I do have to wonder just how much better RightNow and Siebel (the other biggie) are to justify tens of thousands of pounds. The demos we've had are good but I have to wonder if you need to run a callcentre with hundreds of staff to really get their benefits. Out of interest how many support guys do you people have working for you ?

We have considered writing our own and I even got as far as writing an email->ticket filter but when you look at someone else's pre-written app you just think "Whats the point", reinvention of wheels and all that...

We currently rent Kayako supportsuite v3.00.32... works perfectly. For the money, I don't think its worth spending the time making your own

Why not try Cerberus free version Lee? It's a 1 mailbox version of the full Cerberus package (only allows email to one-alias@one-domain.com, but allows you to experience Cerberus fully) ... I also suspect if you have any feature-request the developers will be glad to respond, they've very responsive to us and we've been with them since the $99/license days (currently approx $700 I think).

Having had a look at some of the others (and talked to their reps) I think we're still going to have to go with RightNow to get the features we want.

their client list is impressive. Iomega / Pioneer / VMWare / BT / BA / Adaptec cripes you could go on and on. They are ranked by Gartner as No1 for CRM based products.

I asked their guys why anyone should consider their offerings over a competitors. The answer was a simple one - its proven. Proven to vastly reduce incoming calls/emails and effectively manage your support.

I guess if you consider that £20k in software is cheaper than a single support guy, the ROI is pretty good.

Lee,

When you get RightNow setup could you post back letting us know what it's like, and what you think of it etc - would be interesting to hear.

What do you use at the moment to compare with?

Cheers,
Sean

I certainly will.

RightNow have a (recommended) pilot scheme. It costs around 3k and runs for a month. The reason it costs is because their implementors come onsite to discuss/setup/tune and they monitor the whole thing to ensure you get the most out of it - ie get it working for you. Better off spending 3k and walking away instead of 20k....although they reckon no-one has ever walked away !

Apart from the noddiest of all noddy ticket systems that I built some 4 years ago, we don't have a ticketing system. Phonecalls are dealt with there and then, similarly emails into support are answered instantly and anyone logging tickets is answered straight away. Clearly we don't need a ticketing system because of backlogs !!

However, things I can't do...

1. See how many calls/emails we're taking each month (not accurately anyway)
2. See management based information ie staff performance, overcall call response time, (I nearly said customer satisfaction - but I know the answer to that already)
3. Report back analysis based on SLAs
4. Provide complete tracking of a "ticket" - whether raised or replied to by phone/email/livechat, customer or staff
5. and probably lots more I can't think of.

rightnow also provides the self-tuning knowledgebase and the ability to enter logged issues into the KB for later searching. Oh its also the only one I've found that runs on Oracle which is kinda handy since its what we use.

Have you looked at it ?

I haven't looked at it - But I think I *may* have used it from a client knowledgebase POV.

The one I wrote for BT was totally Oracle based - the entire app was written in PL/SQL - and it is used to get those sorts of stat's out on call response time, time on call, 1st/2nd line passbacks, re-eopening of tickets etc etc - doesn't have any useful type of KB though, SLA's are worked out from the stats rather than built in to the app.

I believe Cerberus will be available on Oracle soon if that's of interest to you. Sure RightNow will have some neat features with that price tag, but (with the exception of integrated livechat) Cerberus can offer all the other features and is perhaps all you need? And I'd imagine if you waved more money than offered as standard to Cerberus/Kayako/etc. dev's they'll be willing to tailor it more closely towards your requirements?