Callcenter Ticketing System?

paradigm

paradigm

paradigm

Caporegime
Joined
26 Aug 2003
Posts
37,508
Location
Leafy Cheshire
We've fallen upon the need for a ticketing and response system for our Customer Services department. We're essentially looking for something that utilises AD/LDAP integration, and can utilise Exchange to send out it's email responses, both at a system level (for auto response), and at a user level (for once a call/ticket has been assigned).

Ideally I'd prefer for this to be client/server based with typical "microsoft" interface, but web-based would be "ok", so long as the interface is easily recognisable and easy to follow.

Any suggestions? Bearing in mind I don't want this systemt to be in any way IT oriented (so products like Ilient SysAid, Spiceworks etc need not apply).
 
Are you maybe looking at some sort of CRM or contact management system?

Do you want to integrate it with your PBX?
 
Not really looking for PBX integration, it's a bit beyond what they require.

Simply it's to replace them having to use outlook and recording communication transaction logs in spreadsheets. Something that can timestamp and audit customer interaction, and give reporting based on such data.
 
Looking for free/open source or is there a decent budget?

SugarCRM might do it out the box, or look at building the workflows yourself with Processmaker. The latter is a brilliant tool
 
We use a web based system called service now for call logging, no idea how much it costs but is pretty simple.

It can be integrated with AD and can do email stuff as well.
 
We use Mantis. It runs on a Linux box but uses AD authentication. Users can raise tickets, and then we assign them to people to respond to (or you can view a list of open tickets and assign to yourself the ones you want to work on).

It's browser based but works pretty well.
 
I've recently implemented OTRS where I work. You can view a live demo from the following website to give you an idea of its look and feel : http://otrs.org/demo/

I've integrated it with an AD backend for agent/customer authentication and data store (for looking up e-mail addresses etc). I've got it running on a Linux box but they have also released a windows binary (but its a bit rough around the edges). Overall I'd highly recommend it. There is no easy GUI to configure the AD authentication as you have to edit a config file, but if you decided to go down this route I can always give you a hand with configuring it (It's not that difficult, and the online documentation for its configuration is quite helpful.

Customers can log onto their own interface to view/add notes to and close their own tickets and I've found the event-based notifications section very flexible. I've also made use of the FAQ section which comes in very handy to address commonly asked questions in my work place.

E-mail wise it can use its own internal mailing system (sendmail) or point to a SMTP server (which is what I've done with Exchange).
 
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One thing we really want the system to do is round-robin auto assigning of inbound requests to our customer services agents (trying to offload some of the menial tasks that the managers currently have to deal with). Unfortunately, leaving it up to the agents themselves to assign calls/tickets usually ends up in people cherry-picking, avoiding tickets, or just not doing anything at all.

We've looked at OTRS, and it's absolutely awful. We've also looked at things like kayako, but it doesn't integrate with AD to supply a single sign-on.

Anything that needs to run on a linux box is out of the question.

And yes, there is a spend available, so open-source certainly isn't a must.

I'll look into Service Now and SugarCRM.

Cheers.
 
We use a system by

HornBill - Supportworks, the verison we are on is a little iffy in places and we are hoping to upgrade to the latest which has much better support and features. It has program based and webbased.

The latest verison also is AD Single Sign-On.
 
Service Now probably not going to be that great then I reckon, it's mostly an itil based IT system. :( Probably got 'too much' it stuff in there, you'd be paying for things you don't need.

However I can see how you could use it for other stuff quite easily, there's quite a bit of workflow/automation you can build in.
 
There's always RT, if you want to customize it it'll do most things...

On the paid for side, MS CRM (whatever they've renamed it to now actually) is actually pretty good on the helpdesk side, used to be too focused on physical products but it's more rounded now.
 
bigredshark said:
On the paid for side, MS CRM (whatever they've renamed it to now actually) is actually pretty good on the helpdesk side, used to be too focused on physical products but it's more rounded now.
Click to expand...

Probably be the one I'd choose to be honest - I've come across Agresso CRM before and though it was OK then realised it was just a re-skinned version of the MS one, which actually looks better. It certainly integrates with Exchange beautifully.
 
I'm having a play with Dynamics CRM 4.0 (unfortunately 5.0 isn't out until sometime in late 2010, and it does appear to do much of what we'd like.

God only knows why I didn't try our MSDN subscription first.
 
Indeed, it is surprisingly good, particularly considering Microsoft don't have a huge pedigree in this area and the first couple of attempts were rather limited...
 
paradigm said:
God only knows why I didn't try our MSDN subscription first.
Click to expand...

:D To be fair, it's not exactly what MS are known for..... To give you an idea, the last one I saw was being used to track/manage potential (non-IT) customer leads etc, the team using it seemed to love it.
 
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