What is our primary use case?
I've implemented it at multiple companies. Currently, our service bot lives in there, and it is able to answer questions for people.
We have the Enterprise plan and the latest version. They're always on the latest. I don't even know how I would prevent that.
How has it helped my organization?
It is a little bit of a sore subject. We were with them because of some of what they had tried to implement in it, but it wasn't the appropriate solution.
In some ways, it has improved the way our organization functions, but anything would do that because we only had Outlook. If you're on the phone for a million minutes a month, you're getting a lot of emails too. For managing that, anything is an improvement from just working through emails. People were working just on distribution lists. It was not even a group email; they had just distribution lists with 50 agents on them. That's impossible.
I met one of their customers at a conference, and they love it for their customer support. That's because their support cases are not like, "Hey, I need to know where everything is in this logistics space right now." Their use case was like, "Hey, I don't like these pants. Can I return them please?" It is a very different use case than we had. So, for retail operations and anything like that, it is a perfect solution.
When it is the appropriate solution, Freshdesk is fantastic. It is a fantastic product for basic customer support use cases, but trying to stretch it, at least a year ago, was just so time-consuming and frustrating. If you have the right use case for it, it is the perfect solution.
What is most valuable?
Their knowledge base is phenomenal. The way that it learns from our users is awesome, and responses are really awesome as well. It does a pretty good job of picking up what's needed. The knowledge bases are great.
Its simplicity is valuable. It is straightforward and very easy for people. When we brought it in and moved from Outlook to ticketing, the concern was that a lot of our teams are older folks. They've been doing the same job for 15, 20 years, and they're not as likely to be as happy about the change. It was interesting to me that the older folks loved it and caught on to it so fast. The old timers, the people who've been there and doing their job, loved it. They never wanted to go to anything else. They absolutely loved it. The younger folks were like, "I wish it did more." When the younger people came into it and they realized that they could actually configure their own custom workflows for their stuff, they loved that. It was a lesson learned for me on what to train them on and what to give them access to because there are really good ways to set it up where it is not putting the system at risk.
What needs improvement?
If Freshdesk had forms in it so that I could go to the portal and fill out a service request, that would improve it immensely and make it more valuable for enterprise customers, but that's not a current functionality. You can't have a certain catalog of any type. You can't be like, "Hey, I want to just go submit a ticket," and then type in. You can't prompt them to ask anything. It is just a blank form.
Their sales team all the time tries to convince you that this is the only product that they have. I don't know why. I really don't get it. I spent a year just being like, "No, we shouldn't be in Freshdesk for this." They were telling my bosses that we should be, and I was like, "I'm telling you that's incorrect. Why are you telling my boss that? You don't even work here?" You don't even go here. What are you doing? They don't even check your circumstances. I am a certified Six Sigma Black Belt. I gave them all of our process maps and everything, and they didn't even read over them. They just kept trying to put us into Freshdesk when Freshservice was a better fit because all we do is move around trucks, trailers, and drive. That's what we do all day long. I would like to know how we would do that without asset management or a portal with forums. They were just constantly trying to get us to implement break fix after break fix after break fix instead of putting us on the right product in the first place. It wasted a year's time and money.
We are using it because the bot can't live in Freshservice. The bot has to live in Freshdesk. I wish the bot could live in Freshservice or be its own thing. If it was its own thing, it would be much easier, but you have to go into Freshdesk and go into the bot builder. It is weird.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is scalable if your use case is appropriate for it. We have some people who are using it, but they're using just a bunch of workarounds in it. Currently, there are only 200 people using it in Operations. So, there is a team that is still using it. It is technically working, but they are moving away from it.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
They were using Outlook. Outlook is really good for emails to and from, but Outlook is not a ticketing system. You can't really compare the two. They just didn't have a solution before.
How was the initial setup?
They had a VP set it up, at which point I was hired to come in and fix it. They just didn't know what the consequences were of, for example, letting every single manager build the enterprise workflow that applied to everybody. So, it was constantly breaking. It just needed going in and just saying, "Hey, you don't need to go do that anymore. We can simplify this." That had to do with the wrong use case.
It is a customer support tool. If you try to do enterprise support or logistics in it, there could be issues. All of my use cases have been B2B, and I've had it work really well. It did work really well at a smaller company with a smaller team where our account managers used it. That worked really well, but recently, I have been just a little bit removed from it. I'm now working on a deployment of it. So, we'll see how that goes in a couple of weeks or months.
What about the implementation team?
In a straightforward use case, one person is fine for deployment. In a not straightforward use case, you need three people or maybe more because it is a lot of custom development.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We use a combination of Freshdesk, Freshservice, and Freshchat. We use the whole suite. Weirdly enough, we pay more for Freshdesk than we do for Freshservice. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of pricing.
You can get different bundles, and you can always move to different plans that are standard. Freshservice can go anywhere from $19 up to $120 per agent, per month. There is such a wide range, and it is very customizable to your needs.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
It was done before my time.
What other advice do I have?
I would advise looking into the suite of products and using the right tool for your job because they all talk to each other really well. They're well built out. There are really good tools for different work functions. So, look into what a product gets used for. For your HR team, it is Freshteam. That's what it's for. So, all of those things exist, and they have really good purpose-built tools to build out a full suite, but trying to just configure something into something that it is not meant for is not a great idea. Just use the product that's meant for your function, and you'll have a much better time. Their sales team just wants to sell Freshdesk, and I don't know why.
It is hard to rate it in a use case where they just kept saying, "No, you need to use this." And we're like, "Why? I don't want to." And they go, "Yes, you should." If somebody is vetting it for customer service, which is what it is for, then I'd rate it high, but if it is not being used for its intended purpose, then it is a very low score.
It wasn't the right use case at my current company, but when I implemented it at another company, it worked great there. I loved working with it. I really enjoyed the product. If you're looking at a customer support function, it is great, but if you're trying to solve problems and use assets and do these other things, then it is not great.
Overall, I would rate it a six out of ten. It is a great product when used correctly.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.