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WSDesk vs WPHelpDesk: A Comparison between WordPress HelpDesk
Today, customer satisfaction defines how well a company is doing. To ensure that you have a loyal and satisfied customer base, you need to invest more time and money to provide great support to your customers.
This article will help you in choosing an outstanding helpdesk for your online store. Here we will compare two WordPress plugins to see where they stand against each other.
WSDesk- WordPress HelpDesk & Support Ticket System
WPHelpDesk
We have prepared a list of factors that will help you choose among these plugins.
- Ease Of Use: How easily can a support agent use these plugins?
- Automation: Do these plugins perform tasks automatically?
- Knowledgebase: How well these plugins make use of a knowledge base?
- Reports & Performance: Can you monitor timely performance reports and satisfaction ratings?
- Cost Effectiveness: Are these plugins worth the price-tag?
So let us start with the comparison.
Ease of use
Support Agents will be using these plugins on a daily basis. While receiving and solving hundreds of tickets every day, Support Agents need a system which is easy to use and saves a lot of time too.
WSDesk’s AJAX based design makes it easier for a support agent to use the whole interface without reloading the page. Every ticket update is reflected seamlessly without the need for reloading. The Multi-tab ticket view helps in accessing multiple tickets on the same page in the form of tabs. Further, the option to quickly peek into the latest updated ticket-response without opening the whole ticket takes WSDesk to a whole new level in terms of time-saving.
WPHelpDesk follows a traditional approach. With a design similar to WordPress itself, it may be suitable only for the agents who are comfortable with WordPress. Further, the absence of AJAX makes it less responsive and slow. Page reloads every time while working with tickets, which again doesn’t go well when we think about ease of use.
Automation
While working with customers, there is no room for error. Also, you need to make sure customers are not kept waiting.
Automation can prove very useful at times like these. With fast and accurate results, automation has changed the way customer support works.
WSDesk is a beast when it comes to automation. Functionalities like auto-triggering, auto-tagging, custom views etc. make WSDesk stand alone as an automation based helpdesk. Be it automatic ticket assigning to the agents or creating dedicated views for every agent or supervisor, WSDesk performs every task accurately. Then comes the WooCommerce integration. It automatically lets agents know about the customer purchase history and while adding products, lists all the products from your online store.
Read more about how automation can be achieved using WSDesk.
WPHelpDesk doesn’t involve automation that much. The only thing close to automation is WPHelpDesk’s Easy Digital Download and WooCommerce integration which allows agents to see the customer purchase history, just like WSDesk.
Knowledge Base
A knowledge base is a collection of articles or well-documented posts which helps customers to find solutions to their queries. With a knowledge base, it is very easy to manage a large number of tickets. It also helps in decreasing the support tickets, if used in a proper way.
WSDesk has the ability to make full use of your knowledge base. With advanced features such as Auto-Suggestion, WSDesk searches through the knowledge base and provides a solution to customers even before ticket submission.
Read more about how WSDesk makes use of a knowledge base to reduce support tickets.
WPHelpDesk also allows customers and Support Agents to create “forum of tickets” which uses public tickets as a knowledge base. The only issue is that the process of creating a public ticket and searching for the right solution is a manual task.
Reports & Performance
Analyzing the performance of your support staff is a key factor when it comes to online business management. The analysis includes Periodic Reports based on agent’s performance, Customer Review and Agent’s Satisfaction Ratings.
WSDesk allows customers to rate the Support Agent based on their satisfaction. Customers can also write feedback regarding the service they received. This rating along with the feedback can be a real boost for the agents.
WSDesk gets to another level with the ability to analyze Support Agent’s performance with weekly reports based on the number of tickets assigned and resolved by the agent.
WPHelpDesk is yet to step foot in this field. So far, WPHelpDesk has not introduced anything that can help analyze the service provided by support staff.
Cost-effectiveness
The cost-effectiveness of a product is how well its performance justifies the price-tag. A client paying for a helpdesk system for his store will have high expectations from the system. If the helpdesk exceeds or even matches those expectations, then only it is considered cost-effective.
WSDesk packs all the features for $89. You can see the whole list of features here. There are no monthly charges or hidden cost involved. The cost covers free support and updates for a whole year. You can renew it after the first premium year for a 50% discount.
There is also a 30 days refund policy if the product doesn’t meet the client’s business case requirements.
WPHelpDesk’s Business plan costs $99. It comes with one year of priority support and updates. But it doesn’t have a refund policy which may be a letdown.
It is worth noticing that WPHelpDesk’s Personal license lacks even the basic features like Email piping. It was no match for even the free version of WSDesk.
So this is how these two plugins stand against each other. Hope this comparison helps you choose the better plugin according to your business needs.
But if you are still not sure, you can check out some more WordPress HelpDesk plugins which are efficient and cheap, here.
To explore more details about the plugins, go check out WSDesk – WordPress Helpdesk Plugin.
Read the product setting up article to understand the plugin, in detail. Or check out the product documentation section for more related articles.
You can also check out other WordPress and WooCommerce plugins in ELEX.