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Overview of Zendesk

Zendesk is a leading customer service platform designed to make managing customer relationships and communication simpler and more efficient. It offers a wide range of tools like support ticketing, a CRM, a knowledge base, and more that help businesses deliver fast, personalized customer service.

With its powerful analytics and seamless integrations, Zendesk allows teams to manage customer interactions across multiple channels, boosting productivity and offering valuable insights for improving customer satisfaction.

In 2024 and beyond, Zendesk’s interface is still a bit behind the times. It leans heavily on marketplace and custom apps that can add to costs and sometimes create a less streamlined experience. While it promises to support various customer operations, features like a self-service customer portal can cost up to $89 per agent- a significant expense for businesses.

Many of its plans come with added costs for essential features beyond the already higher-than-average base price. For companies looking to build a solid knowledge base or enhance customer engagement, Zendesk offers plenty of options, though it might not be the perfect fit for everyone.

Before diving in, it’s important to consider Zendesk’s pricing and features to ensure they’re a good fit for your needs and budget.

Zendesk’s Product Lineup: Is it right for you?

Zendesk offers a variety of solutions like Zendesk for Service, Zendesk for Sales, and a range of support pricing plans. For many businesses, it seems like a comprehensive option, but is it really the best fit for your needs?

With a complex mix of pricing tiers and feature sets, choosing the right Zendesk plan can be a challenge. If you’re looking for straightforward, essential tools, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the variety of options, especially when balancing the number of agents and required features.

Support Plans:

Support Team: At $19 per agent per month, this entry-level plan includes:

•   A basic ticketing system
•   Support via email, Twitter, and Facebook
•   Simple workflows and reporting tools

Support Professional: For $55 per agent per month, this plan includes everything from the support team plan plus:

•    Business hours management
•    Customer satisfaction surveys (CSATs)
•    SLAs to manage response times

Zendesk Suite Plans:

Suite Team: At $55 per agent per month, you’ll get:

•   Multichannel support (email, chat, voice, social media, and knowledge bases)
•    24/7 basic bots
•    Reporting dashboards and CSATs
•    Preset workflows based on ticket changes  

Suite Growth: Priced at $89 per agent per month, this plan adds:

•   Internal team collaboration tools
•    Multi-language support
•    SLAs and customizable ticket forms

Suite Professional: For $115 per agent per month, this plan expands to include:

•  Advanced reporting and customizable dashboards
•    Collaboration through Slack and email
•    Skill-based ticket routing
•    HIPAA compliance

Suite Enterprise: This customizable plan includes all features of lower tiers, with advanced security and access control options. Pricing depends on specific business needs.

For general businesses, Zendesk provides a robust system with plenty of features. But with its higher costs and reliance on add-ons, it may not always be the most cost-effective or streamlined solution, particularly for smaller teams.

But what about your MSP business?

For Managed Service Providers (MSPs), the game changes. You need more than just a ticketing system—you need solutions tailored to your unique challenges. While Zendesk provides a solid foundation for customer service, it wasn’t built with MSPs in mind. The complexity and pricing can quickly become a burden as your needs grow. MSPs require flexibility, efficiency, and multichannel support without the extra layers of complexity or high costs.

This is where a platform like DeskDay comes in, built specifically for MSPs. It combines chat-based ticketing, multi-ticketing, and seamless integrations that cater directly to your business needs without hidden fees or complicated pricing structures.

For MSPs, it’s worth considering whether Zendesk’s broad approach can truly meet their specialized requirements or if they should look for a solution tailored to them. 

Overview of DeskDay

DeskDay CSA (Conversational Service Automation) is a next-gen PSA solution designed with the modern MSP in mind, focusing on the unmet needs of this industry. DeskDay provides a unified PSA platform where MSPs can manage their entire service desk operations, project management, timesheets, billing, and reporting along with seamless integrations and a user-friendly interface. 

Built to cater to both MSPs and their clients, DeskDay ensures smooth and efficient workflows through its robust chat-based ticketing system, accessible to the end users via MS Teams, mobile apps, and desktop apps (Slack, WhatsApp, and text messaging coming soon). This chat-first approach not only enhances communication between MSPs and their clients but also fosters faster response times and more efficient ticket resolutions.

Beyond its chat-based ticketing, DeskDay CSA encompasses a full range of PSA features, all fine-tuned for the MSP environment. MSPs can take advantage of features like integrated chat-based project management, where tasks and projects are managed and tracked within the same CSA interface. This allows teams to collaborate in real-time, further improving productivity and transparency. 

DeskDay also offers smart customer onboarding through Azure Entra SSO, which simplifies client data integration and ensures that the setup process is quick and hassle-free.

DeskDay also addresses the critical need for timely communication with its multichannel announcement feature, which allows MSPs to notify clients of outages, maintenance schedules, or urgent updates through various channels simultaneously. 

This real-time communication keeps customers informed and reduces the flood of emails, ensuring they are always in the loop. Additionally, DeskDay’s Service Quality dashboard offers MSPs a comprehensive view of their performance metrics, helping them to continually improve service quality and customer satisfaction.

Lastly, DeskDay provides powerful reporting and billing tools, essential for MSPs to manage their financials and performance tracking. The platform’s detailed reports ensure that MSPs have full visibility into their operations, making it easier to identify areas for improvement while keeping their clients satisfied. 

DeskDay CSA is not just a service desk solution; it’s a comprehensive platform built specifically to meet the evolving needs of MSPs of all sizes, enabling them to deliver exceptional IT services while maintaining operational excellence.

Pricing of DeskDay

DeskDay offers a streamlined subscription experience with both annual ($49/tech) and monthly ($59/tech) pricing plans which covers every feature available till now without any tiers, providing flexibility to meet the needs of any organization. The pricing model operates on a per-seat basis, allowing businesses to pay only for the number of users they require, with no minimum seat requirement. 

Whether managing a small team or a larger organization, DeskDay’s adaptable pricing ensures that it aligns seamlessly with varying user counts.

Comparison of DeskDay and Zendesk

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) need tools that go beyond traditional customer service software. To effectively serve clients, MSPs require a platform tailored to their unique workflows, allowing for smooth service desk operations, multi-ticket handling, and seamless communication. 

Below is a feature-by-feature comparison of Zendesk and DeskDay from an MSP perspective, along with the added value each platform provides.

 1. Ticketing System

Zendesk:

General Ticketing System: Offers robust ticketing with a wide range of customization options, allowing businesses to handle customer queries from multiple channels like email, chat, and phone. However, the system is more generalized, designed to cater to a broad set of industries and customer support scenarios.

Flexible Workflows: Provides flexible workflows but often requires additional setup or integrations to fit more complex environments like those managed by MSPs. MSPs may need to rely on third-party tools or custom configurations to handle workflows across different clients efficiently.

Broad Channel: Offers solid collaboration tools like internal notes and customer updates across email and chat. While effective, it often depends on separate apps or add-ons for real-time communication and multi-channel interactions.

Adaptable to Many: While highly adaptable for many industries, it typically requires MSPs to invest more time in customization to meet their specific needs. It may not handle multi-client management or the complexities of MSP workflows as smoothly out of the box.

DeskDay:

MSP-Centric Ticketing System: While offering similar multichannel ticketing capabilities as of Zendesk, DeskDay is specifically built for MSPs. This means it inherently understands the complexities of managing multiple clients and their unique SLAs, offering a more streamlined and MSP-focused ticketing process without requiring extensive customization.

Configured Workflows: DeskDay is pre-configured with MSP-specific workflows, such as managing multiple tickets for various clients simultaneously. Its built-in automation and ticket prioritization features allow for a more seamless experience, reducing the need for external integrations or workflow adjustments.

Conversational Ticketing: Takes a more conversational approach with its chat-based ticketing, designed to handle real-time communication more naturally. MSPs benefit from being able to engage with end-users instantly across multiple tickets and channels, which helps reduce resolution times without relying on additional tools.

MSP-Centric: With its MSP-centric design, DeskDay offers a more tailored experience that adapts to MSP workflows from day one. It requires less configuration and allows for more efficient management of techs, tickets, and clients, making it a better fit for MSPs looking for simplicity and efficiency in their operations.

Value for MSPs: DeskDay’s MSP-focused design gives it a practical advantage. Its optimized workflows for managing multiple clients, tickets, and real-time communication ensure MSPs can deliver faster, more efficient support with less overhead.

 2. Multi-channel Support

Zendesk:

• Broad Channel Support: Zendesk allows you to support customers through email, chat, phone, and social media. Each channel is integrated within the system, but some channels, like social media, require additional configurations or third-party integrations.

• Marketplace Add-ons: Custom integrations are often required for tools like WhatsApp or SMS, leading to additional complexity and cost.

DeskDay:

• Integrated Multi-channel Support: DeskDay seamlessly integrates with MS Teams, desktop apps, and mobile apps without the need for add-ons. Slack, WhatsApp, and text messaging integrations are coming soon, providing direct multi-channel access without extra costs or complexity. This integration makes communication smoother, faster, and more accessible for MSPs and their clients.

Value for MSPs: DeskDay’s built-in multichannel support offers smoother operations without the added overhead of configuring and managing external integrations, ensuring MSPs stay connected to clients across various platforms.

 3. Project Management

Zendesk:

• Limited Project Management: While Zendesk supports ticket management, its project management capabilities are quite limited. For teams looking to track project progress, external tools or custom integrations are typically required.

DeskDay:

•  Chat-based Project Management: DeskDay enables MSPs to manage both tickets and projects within the same platform, fostering real-time collaboration between teams. Tasks can be created, tracked, and updated, providing greater transparency and agility when working on client projects.

Value for MSPs: DeskDay’s integrated project management allows MSPs to manage projects directly within the service desk environment, reducing the need for external tools and enhancing team collaboration, which is especially important for MSPs handling complex, multi-client projects.

 4. Client Onboarding

Zendesk:

• Standard Onboarding: Zendesk offers traditional onboarding features that require manual data entry or integration with third-party CRM systems to sync customer details.

DeskDay:

• Smart Customer Onboarding: DeskDay’s automated onboarding system leverages Azure Entra SSO to quickly onboard clients, drastically reducing the time MSPs spend configuring client accounts. This means MSPs can start delivering services faster, without manual configuration.

Value for MSPs: DeskDay’s smart onboarding accelerates the onboarding process, allowing MSPs to bring clients onboard with minimal effort and reducing the risk of errors during setup.

 5. Service Quality and Reporting

Zendesk:

• Advanced Analytics: Zendesk’s higher-tier plans offer customizable reporting and dashboards, giving businesses insights into ticket volume, agent performance, and customer satisfaction. However, the complexity of these reports can make them challenging for small to midsize MSPs to navigate.

• Custom Reports: More detailed custom reports require expensive add-ons and more technical configuration, limiting their accessibility to smaller MSPs.

DeskDay:

• Service Quality Dashboard: DeskDay’s Service Quality dashboard provides an MSP-specific view of performance metrics, focusing on ticket resolution times, client satisfaction, and service delivery performance. The reports are tailored for MSP operations, giving insights into how techs are handling tickets and projects without overwhelming MSPs with unnecessary data.

Value for MSPs: DeskDay’s focused reporting tools offer relevant, actionable insights for MSPs without needing expensive add-ons. MSPs get immediate access to the metrics they care about, enabling them to make faster, data-driven decisions.

 6. Client Communication and Announcements

Zendesk:

• Custom Communication Channels: While multi-channel support exists, real-time updates like service outages require significant configuration or pre-built contact lists.

DeskDay:

• Multi-channel Announcements: DeskDay allows MSPs to communicate with clients across multiple channels in real time. The multi-channel announcement system is perfect for sending out critical updates (e.g., outages or maintenance) to clients through channels like MS Teams, desktop apps, and mobile app notifications. This ensures clients receive updates immediately, reducing service disruption and preventing a flood of support emails.

Value for MSPs: DeskDay’s real-time multi-channel announcements ensure clients are always informed about service issues, reducing the volume of incoming tickets during outages or maintenance periods. This leads to greater client satisfaction and less strain on support teams.

 7. Pricing Transparency and Flexibility

Zendesk:

• Complex Pricing Tiers: Zendesk’s pricing structure includes multiple tiers, each offering different sets of features. As MSPs scale, they may find themselves needing to move to more expensive plans to access crucial features like advanced reporting, collaboration tools, or SLAs. Hidden costs from add-ons and marketplace apps can quickly inflate the price.

DeskDay:

• All-Inclusive Pricing: DeskDay’s pricing is simple and transparent. At $59 per tech (or $49 with the annual plan), MSPs get access to all features, with no need to worry about add-ons or hidden costs. This predictable pricing ensures that MSPs of all sizes can budget effectively as they scale.

Value for MSPs: DeskDay’s all-in-one pricing structure eliminates the uncertainty of hidden fees and provides a full-featured experience right out of the box, allowing MSPs to grow without worrying about additional costs.

 Conclusion: Tailored Solutions for MSPs

Zendesk is a powerful platform for customer service but lacks the specific focus and features that MSPs need. While it provides excellent multi-channel support and advanced analytics, the complexity and cost of its higher-tier plans and add-ons can make it difficult for MSPs to fully leverage the platform without overspending.

DeskDay, on the other hand, is designed from the ground up for MSPs. Its chat-based ticketing system, multi-ticketing feature, and integrated project management provide the real-time efficiency that MSPs need. 

Additionally, DeskDay’s simplified pricing model ensures MSPs can access all necessary features without hidden costs, making it an ideal, scalable solution for MSPs looking to optimize their service desk operations.

For MSPs, DeskDay offers a more focused, cost-effective solution that directly addresses their day-to-day challenges, allowing them to provide better service to their clients without the complexities of a generalized platform like Zendesk.

If you’re interested to learn more sign up today for a 14-day free trial or book a demo with us.