Why and How we have switched from Zendesk to WSDesk WordPress HelpDesk Plugin

When you consider a business support desk, it should be complementing the core competencies of a business. If support management costs are getting out of hand, then it is time to reconsider your choices. A support helpdesk plugin ensures that all your helpdesk activities are in sync and in a much more organized form. Choose an ideal WordPress helpdesk plugin to streamline all your support processes and in a way augment your business competencies.

Overview

If businesses have to choose which plugin will support them to enhance their helpdesk system, it is important to consider a few basic points like :

• Cost
• Compatibility
• Ease of use.
• Portability
• Easy integration with existing features.
• Better customization as per need.
• Data security.

Even though WordPress helpdesk plugins Zendesk and WSDesk serve the same purpose, there are many differences that make them comparable. Here we take a look at the quite valid reasons that led us to switch from SaaS-based Zendesk helpdesk to WSDesk WordPress helpdesk plugin.

To begin with:

Price

The primary reason to consider using a helpdesk plugin is to leverage the helpdesk services in a much better way at a reasonable cost and aiming at increasing the overall productivity. When the management and the cost incurred in using a helpdesk is uncontrollable, it is better to switch from one to the better one.

For example, consider a business with a support team the size of 4 or more. When using Zendesk as a helpdesk plugin, there might be several issues to ponder. Look at the pricing plan for Zendesk.
When you consider the basic plan, the plan costs $5 per agent per month. So when you consider adding more agents to the group of support desk, your cost is just increasing. The pricing for any Zendesk plan is relatively high to consider for any small enterprise. At the same time, when considering WSDesk, the pricing is relatively low with unlimited agents and unlimited tickets.

Support is an unavoidable aspect of any business, hence keeping the cost at a proper margin to invest rightly into the business is important. Moreover, the recurring costs for other features like Triggers, automation or even canned responses are high. The considerable cost of adding more agents will also incur a few charges. So when you consider the overall price, it becomes costlier. So when considering your overall estimated price with Zendesk on account of the features provided, the cost was pretty high.

Data Privacy – a serious concern

When you rely on a third party to store and process your data – what is the first thing that matters to you?
It would be the privacy of your data. Every now and then you hear about data breaches, which is a serious issue when you consider businesses. What if one day, you want to retrieve all the information you have given to the third-party software? It is important to consider these factors when choosing a plugin to support your business.

Zendesk being a SaaS-based helpdesk, the complete control of the data is with them. Being a third party to the business, it does not leverage complete authority over the data. Everything from tickets to knowledge base is stored in their servers, which is indeed a limitation to consider if we consider privacy as a concern. SaaS-based platforms when taking our data, store it in their servers, which is a downside when considering data privacy. Further, even if the deletion of the account happens, the data is still retained. It is an alarming thought to consider while switching from Zendesk to WSDesk.

In the case of WSDesk, the major feature that makes it worth is that complete privacy is assured. WSDesk, unlike other SaaS-based products, stores your data on your system. You own the complete data and no privacy concerns will bother you. WSDesk is installed on your WordPress account in your domain or subdomain. It will help you connect with the knowledge base easily. You are the owner of your data, hence you get to choose when to remove your data or even do updates on your data. Hence data privacy is the least concerned part in the case of WSDesk.

Limitations on Data export

Data is important when you consider a business. A proper analysis of data helps to understand exactly where a business stands and how far it has grown.

Zendesk has a great limitation when considering data export. Zendesk has no such feature, wherein we can export the data to a file in CSV or JSON form, hence clear analysis is a difficult task. Also to get the data, we need to seek the assistance of a developer. It is basically because to retrieve the data from Zendesk API, you need to write the code. Whereas WSDesk, on the other hand, gives you the option to export the data from their plugin in the CSV format-all in just one click.

Doesn’t it sound easier with WSDesk?

WSDesk eases much of the task, which seems to be the most challenging in Zendesk.

Zendesk Integration with WordPress is incoherent

WordPress is one of the prominent websites used in eCommerce. If you want to run your eCommerce business successfully without any difficulties, you need an excellent WordPress helpdesk plugin that supports your business coherently. WooCommerce is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms used by eCommerce businesses. Zendesk technically had serious integration problems when considering WordPress.WSDesk, on the other hand, integrates with WordPress seamlessly. In terms of customization according to individual business needs, it is possible with WSDesk.

When WSDesk is installed in WordPress, it will automatically fetch all your products from your WooCommerce platform and help you customize it accordingly.

When you have a WooCommerce store with multiple vendors, WSDesk lets you define the roles with respect to the multiple vendors in the platform to deal with their own tickets and support issues individually. In this way, the vendor need not wait for long queues to get their queries replied regarding their products. Here is how you can customize WSDesk with respect to Mulitple vendors.

Form Customization

Zendesk has customization options, but only with Professional and Enterprise editions which were again of higher cost. Also, designing the contact form with respect to the user and the business was arduous when using Zendesk. Far less customization options were available, which seemed too low for the cost charged. WSDesk offers many more customization options on custom forms according to business needs.

Design your ticket page as you prefer using the Ticket Page configuration in WSDesk.

Design your support form from the back-end easily, making it much more user-friendly.

WSDesk met all the expectations when considering customization of a support desk, where Zendesk took a backseat in such functionalities.

Third-Party Ticket Creating Integration

ZenDesk has tedious integration with third-party API calls. With WSDesk, using API calls is much simpler. WSDesk allows users to use various other plugins for submitting tickets. It also consists of testing the API using Postman tool and shows how to create a support ticket using a simple HTML form and integration to third-party contact forms like Contact Form 7 and Gravity Forms. One can set up API calls to perform ticket creation from third-party contact forms and then convert them to a ticket.

All you have to do is provide this API key to the plugin and WSDesk will work on the ticket submitted through that plugin. Read more about integrating with third-party forms and plugins here.

Create and Manage an Independent Support desk

Owning a support desk that can be independently managed is beneficial. When you have a big business it is ideal that your website performance must be quite responsive and fast. When you keep your support desk in your own domain, there are chances that with increasing queries from customers, your website might become slower. To keep a standard performance, it is ideal to keep your support desk on a subdomain and then manage it independently.

Zendesk does not have such flexibility when you consider operating a support desk from a subdomain. WSDesk does have greater flexibility when considering managing a support desk independently. You can easily install WSDesk on a subdomain and manage all your support business without hampering the quality of your main domain which is your eCommerce selling platform.

Read about how you can independently manage a WordPress helpdesk using WSDesk. 

Portability

Being a SaaS-based portal Zendesk contains all our data including the knowledge-base. When you decide to move your data completely from Zendesk to WSDesk platform, the task is simplified as WSDesk is quite compatible with it. With just one click, you can import all the data from Zendesk to WSDesk easily without hampering the quality of data.

Find out how you can easily import all your Zendesk data into your WSDesk easily. 

Server Dependency

With SaaS-based platforms like Zendesk, your data is completely in the hands of a third-party. In this case, when the Zendesk server is down anytime, your complete data is locked and cannot be retrieved. Whereas in the case WSDesk, you own the data and you govern it completely. Hence it is ideal to choose to host your data server on your system using WordPress helpdesk plugins like WSDesk rather than depending on SaaS-based platforms.

Customise as per your Business Need

As WSDesk is installed on your servers it is easy to get it customized as per business need. When you install WSDesk on your server, you can always seek the assistance of developers at Elextensions and get it customized as per business need. Unlike SaaS-based, WordPress helpdesk plugins, WSDesk offers extensive customization

Know more about the customizations provided by Elextensions.

To Conclude :

Overall when considered, WSDesk has better features that suit the needs of any small scale to large scale businesses as compared to  Zendesk.