Role: Chairman of the Homeowners Association
Period: since October 2023.
There is a compact international community representing Denmark, Poland, Germany, and Russia -12 units overall.
One of the tasks is to improve the management and maintenance process and provide one single entry point for all corresponding requests and information space for homeowners.
After a brief discussion with board members, I’ve come up with the idea of the implementation of the Ticket management system. It didn’t take me long to think about – I’ve formalized the criteria for the product:
1. Free -no need to pay - obligatory.
2. Minimum agents – 2 - obligatory.
3. Has different types of tickets (questions, maintenance, etc) - obligatory.
4. Has Knowledgebase accessed by agents and customers - obligatory.
5. Has a Discussion board or community board (to discuss improvements and other things with all owners) – nice to have.
6. Has workflow and basic automation (rules and SLA) – nice to have.
7. Has private access - user registration should be approved, or user invited only- obligatory.
A brief search by the first criteria (free accounts) gave me a list of around 10 products, 5 were selected to be evaluated according to all 7 criteria.
Final list:
1.
ZohoDesk – I knew this pretty well, since 2015 using it for ticketing in ProActive Software, was my preferred one, but suddenly their cut off the Knowledge base from a free package
Score - 5 of 7 of Requirements – No Discussion board and Knowledge base in the free edition.
2.
Jira Service Management – I had a lot of experience since 2000 as a user and implementor in all of the projects and companies I’ve worked for. Medicata was the last one – Jira and Confluence have been used extensively from Development and Deployment to Legal and Accounting, but not for the help desk, just because it wasn’t as nice and smooth as Zendesk.
Score 6 o7.
3.
FreshDesk – Modern look, up to 10 agents, nice dashboards and knowledge base, workflows, automation, everything looks perfect.
Score 6 of 7
4.
LiveAgent Desk – simple, a bit outdated UI – there are limits of features – no customer lists, no customer portal knowledge base and Discussion board -
Score 5 of 7 of Requirements – No Discussion board and Knowledge base.
5.
HubSpot Service -Nice design, but limited features in the free edition. Every time I evaluated HubSpot, it didn’t fit my requirements somehow, it was the third or fourth time that HubSpot appeared in my evaluation list and lost in the competition.
Score 5 of 7 of Requirements – No Discussion board and Knowledge base.