Customer support is an important part of most businesses these days. In order to provide exceptional support, you need software that supports your support team in the best possible ways. Before selecting software, you must compare it with other options to ensure that you get the best possible deal.
Here is a quick evaluation checklist that will help you compare ManageEngine® SupportCenter Plus with other customer support tools in the market.
Features | SupportCenter Plus | Compare With |
Portal | ||
| Set up unique portals for each customer support division/vertical | ||
| Configure automatic workflows, SLAs, and custom surveys to suit the needs of each portal | ||
| Provide a central request portal | ||
Product management | ||
| Build and manage a catalog of products to help your support reps find relevant product information to provide pre-sales or post-sales support | ||
| Manage product information such as product type, unit price, warranty period, part number, etc. | ||
| Activate/deactivate products based on availability and maintain a record of legacy products | ||
| Create and manage sales by associating products with accounts | ||
Account management | ||
| Filter tickets based on accounts | ||
| Charge customers based on requests/hours worked by support reps | ||
| Associate products to accounts | ||
| Associate support plans to accounts | ||
| View accounts hierarchically and streamline workflow management by creating sub-accounts | ||
| Create SLAs based on support plans | ||
| Generate account-specific reports | ||
Billing | ||
| Create and manage contracts, and associate them to your accounts | ||
| Automatically decide the cost to be charged for requests with condition-based billing rules | ||
| Set up predefined support plans (contract billing) based on hours or fixed plans | ||
| Create time entries, and keep track of support reps' efforts | ||
| Calculate time entries either based on hours spent on each request or total hours worked | ||
| Generate reports for customer billing | ||
Self-service | ||
| Customize the self-service portal for support reps and contacts separately | ||
| Add, delete, rearrange, and resize custom widgets | ||
| Publish a request catalog to create requests | ||
| View announcements and browse the knowledge base | ||
| Automatically suggest related solutions based on the subject of the request during request creation itself | ||
| Automatically mention related announcements based on the subject of the request during ticket creation itself | ||
Request management | ||
Request identification | ||
| Create tickets from emails, web forms, chat messages, or phone calls | ||
Request logging | ||
| Collect relevant information from contacts using custom request templates | ||
| Automate templates with field and form rules that perform condition-based activities like mandating fields, populating fields, and enabling and disabling fields based on ticket criteria during creation or after editing the request | ||
| Provide role-based access to support reps through support groups | ||
| Link, merge, or clone requests to manage multiple tickets | ||
Request categorization | ||
| Create custom categories, sub categories, and items | ||
| Assign categories to tickets based on the ticket parameters | ||
Request assignment | ||
| Assign tickets to support reps automatically with the support rep auto-assign feature based on round-robin or load balancing algorithms | ||
| Assign tickets to specific support rep groups based on ticket parameters like category, priority, and more (using business rules) | ||
| View the available support reps with the support rep availability chart | ||
| Mark support rep unavailability, and set up backup support reps | ||
| Send a broadcast message to all the logged-in support reps to make announcements or notify them of issues | ||
Request prioritization | ||
| Create custom request life cycles on a drag-and-drop canvas with contextual notifications | ||
| Assign service-level agreements (SLAs) automatically based on ticket parameters | ||
Request resolution | ||
| Search the knowledge base for a solution from within a request, and copy the resolution into it | ||
| Separate ticket views and task views | ||
| Create custom filters and list views to find tickets easily | ||
| Collaborate with other support reps and groups by sharing the request | ||
| Gain real-time updates from other support reps working on the same ticket with request collaboration | ||
Request closure | ||
| Mandate fields and mark tasks that need to be completed for request closure | ||
| Create work logs to record the cost, effort, and time taken to resolve the request | ||
| Send user-ticket-specific surveys when the request is closed | ||
| Analyze the time taken for completion, time on hold, time the ticket has been unassigned, and more with time analysis | ||
Request Catalog | ||
Request fulfillment data | ||
| Make the template dynamic with condition-based actions like hiding or showing sections, populating fields, and making fields mandatory in real time based on information given by the contact | ||
| Create and associate tasks to the request template, and create task dependencies to ensure tasks are performed in sequential order | ||
Request Life Cycle | ||
| Define the status flow of your requests, and help guide your support reps | ||
| Ensure all requests go through a predefined status flow with various condition-based actions before, during, and after each transition between request statuses | ||
| Build request life cycles on a graphical drag-and-drop canvas | ||
| Restrict the ability of a support rep to move the request to the next status with roles | ||
| Collect relevant information only if and when required | ||
| Create distinct request life cycles, and associate them to request templates | ||
| Trigger contextual notifications at various points in the requests' life cycles | ||
Knowledge management | ||
| Publish solutions to the knowledge base with an approval process | ||
| Organize solutions under relevant topics | ||
| Restrict the access of solutions based on site and user groups | ||
| Ability to resolve the requests using a particular solution | ||
| Create resolution templates for repeat requests with the same solution | ||
| Set expiration dates for solutions | ||
User surveys | ||
| Create surveys with multiple question types like rating, opinion scale, binary, and radio | ||
| Create general surveys | ||
| Configure when and under what conditions a user survey will be triggered | ||
| Collate data from survey reports for analysis | ||
Reporting | ||
| Pre-built standard reports | ||
| Create custom reports with configurable parameters | ||
| Create query reports | ||
| Create KPI reports | ||
| Customize report dashboards with role-based access permissions | ||
| Create report folders, and organize reports under relevant folders | ||
| Depict reports visually as pie charts, bar charts, line charts, time series charts, area charts, or ring charts | ||
| Export reports into CSV, XLS, HTML, and PDF formats | ||
| Schedule reports, and specify the frequency and the recipient of the report | ||
Integration | ||
ManageEngine products/similar products | ||
| Integrate with Analytics Plus and Zoho Analytics to gain better insights into your customer support interactions | ||
| Integrate with Zoho and Salesforce CRM for automated account and contacts import to SupportCenter Plus | ||
| Integrate with Zoho Assist and Zoom to provide remote assistance | ||
| Computer telephony integration (CTI) | ||
| Track your field staff with the help of Google/Zoho Maps right from the console, and manage your field services effectively | ||
| Integrate with popular products like JIRA | ||
Pricing | ||
| Standard Edition | FREE for up to 5 support reps. Starts at $995 for 10 support reps, annually. | |
| Professional edition | Starts at $275 For 2 support reps, annually. | |
| Enterprise edition | Starts at $355 For 2 support reps, annually. | |