Evaluating Kayako - Good or bad?

[Phil Sayers]

Hi all,

Thursday, I will be holding a meeting with several departments to consider the merits of purchasing Kayako for our company.

Technically, it really does seem to be up to the job, but I'm concerned over some of the Support issues that have been posted over the last 12 months. Have there been great strides forwards, or do people consider very little has changed?

A few honest (not hysterical) lines will do, I'm not after starting a war, just a little something to inspire confidence that buying into Kayako and dedicating a lot of internal resource to it is a good thing.

Basically, my reputation is on the line with this....


TIA - Phil

[sureshkumar.mr]

Please go through this Evaluating Kayako? Not fit for all types of Business model, you will find the answer.

eSupport is a stable and good product, you will be really impressed when you first go through the product. I was quite afraid initially after going through many negative feedbacks about their suport in this forum. Believe me I was assured best support by Mr. Raghav Arora (Only assurance).

Till date I am not able to launch more than one department. In our firm, each department have different requirements. To meet their requirement I need to create separate Template group for each department. Incase if I create separate template group, I cannot display all the departments in the deparment list. If I include these departments manually, only default template group will be loaded.

Instant response system will display KB articles from all the departments instead of only from respective department.

There are only few developers and they cannot support you when there is some show stopper bug. Guides are not clear, there is no guide for staff, you need to create one for your staff.

There is no category and tickets will not be assigned automatically to Staff and load balancing among staff are few of the important features that are missing. There is no HTML editor also.

My best advice is to try for few months before owning it.

[jpuff]

I agree with sureshkumar.mr about trying it out a couple months before using as the free trial is not enough time in my opinion.

I've been using esupport in a testing enviroment for more than two months and can say that I do enjoy using it. It is still missing some features that I would like to have, but they are already listed in bugs.kayako.net and am hopeful that they will get deployed.

[Phil Sayers]

Thanks for the feedback - appreciated!

There will be about 5 departments that will need to use the ticket system, one of those will be at another site, but still on our network. It worries me that how departments are setup has been an isssue...

[User Name]

Originally Posted by Phil Sayers

Thanks for the feedback - appreciated!

There will be about 5 departments that will need to use the ticket system, one of those will be at another site, but still on our network. It worries me that how departments are setup has been an isssue...

I would suggest reading through sureshkumar.mr's complaints and decide for yourself whether someone who has any idea whatsoever about what they're doing can properly configure the software. Sure, there are some shortcomings in the software, but thousands of people use it and are satisfied with the development.

[Racked Hosting]

Originally Posted by sureshkumar.mr

Please go through this Evaluating Kayako? Not fit for all types of Business model, you will find the answer.

eSupport is a stable and good product, you will be really impressed when you first go through the product. I was quite afraid initially after going through many negative feedbacks about their suport in this forum. Believe me I was assured best support by Mr. Raghav Arora (Only assurance).

Till date I am not able to launch more than one department. In our firm, each department have different requirements. To meet their requirement I need to create separate Template group for each department. Incase if I create separate template group, I cannot display all the departments in the deparment list. If I include these departments manually, only default template group will be loaded.

Instant response system will display KB articles from all the departments instead of only from respective department.

There are only few developers and they cannot support you when there is some show stopper bug. Guides are not clear, there is no guide for staff, you need to create one for your staff.

There is no category and tickets will not be assigned automatically to Staff and load balancing among staff are few of the important features that are missing. There is no HTML editor also.

My best advice is to try for few months before owning it.

Honestly, you just have some problems and you diss Kayako everywhere around.

As User Name said, there are thousands of people who are satisifed with it. And keep in mind, you can't be 100% satisfied with anything. I know bugs exist but Support Suite is a stable and feature rich software.

[Phil Sayers]

Yes, I understand the point being made. In fact, our engineering department are confident that they have the in-house ability to address most of the problems we may encounter.

It's a big leap of faith bringing any new system into the fold, hence my concern and asking for any comments from what I perceive is a well attended forum. I certainly didn't want to start a bun fight, and nor will I rise to the bait if anyone thinks of starting one

[Racked Hosting]

That wasn't my point. The thread he was pointing to speaks against him anyway. It's just that some people give a very negative impression of kayako.

@topic: Phil have you checked out the various features?

[Phobert]

We've used SupportSuite for nearly a year. We're really happy with the program. We have hosted (which means Kayako is on the hook for making it work on the backend), so many of the configuration issues we don't really see. Its clear there have been issues for some folks.

But I'm really impressed that the company makes itself transparent and allows you to read about (as a prospective customer) the good and bad of the product through these forums. For better or worse, its all out there for everyone to see.

The program is evolving, and for us, its evolving in a way that makes sense for how we deliver support.

[sureshkumar.mr]

Originally Posted by Racked Hosting

The thread he was pointing to speaks against him anyway.

A good product should be flexible enough to suite all the business model. No case studies or whitepapers to evaluate this product.

I am not posting here for some one's support or want to misguide anyone. We are not interested to spoil some one's business also and in the same time they should also keep in mind I recommended their product and my reputation is in stake now. I don't want others to face similar problem.

A simple requirement Kayako has not able to solve for me. I stress, if you have multiple departments with different requirements for each department and if you need to restrict IRS to departments then don't try this product for time being.

We are not interested to modify the code written by Kayako and to update the modified code by us whenever they release new versions. We don't want to keep a separate testing team to test the entire functionality. Its an uphill task, else I would have altered the code long back.

[Phil Sayers]

Hi Swaroop

> @topic: Phil have you checked out the various features?

Yes I have, in fact we are in our 3rd week of trialling it although I wish were could be given longer than 7 days for each trial because it soon passes, and then you have to start over.

Can I ask you a quick question? We're a smallish ISP based in the UK. We want more features than we currently have with the RT/Ticket system we use at present, stats in particular... We'd want the system to be both internal and external facing, and we have no particular quirky way of wanting to do things. Do you think Kayako does pretty much that out of the box, or is there lots of additional work to be done? (I appreciate that dept/users have to be setup etc). I won't hold you to this btw- just an opinion that's all

Phil

[Racked Hosting]

Originally Posted by Phil Sayers

Hi Swaroop

> @topic: Phil have you checked out the various features?

Yes I have, in fact we are in our 3rd week of trialling it although I wish were could be given longer than 7 days for each trial because it soon passes, and then you have to start over.

Can I ask you a quick question? We're a smallish ISP based in the UK. We want more features than we currently have with the RT/Ticket system we use at present, stats in particular... We'd want the system to be both internal and external facing, and we have no particular quirky way of wanting to do things. Do you think Kayako does pretty much that out of the box, or is there lots of additional work to be done? (I appreciate that dept/users have to be setup etc). I won't hold you to this btw- just an opinion that's all

Phil

Well, I don't use some features like work billing, etc but as far as I have tested, it does contain most of the features you will require. The reports are quite good and the way tickets are handled are pretty smooth. They also have additional feature to create phone tickets (to track & log a issue initiated by a call). I also recommend you to go for the Support Suite version than just eSupport to get the full advantage of the solutions.

Also, it won't take much of your time to get used to the system. It's feature rich and they are constantly adding more features and fixing minor bugs if any.

As for the testing, once you a buy a monthly license, you will get a month's discount on yearly and owned license.

[Phil Sayers]

> As for the testing, once you a buy a monthly license, you will get a month's discount on yearly and owned license.

I didn't know that - thanks, very useful !

Would you have a URL to hand that would show exactly Reports can be pulled?

Sorry that's now 2 questions ..

[Racked Hosting]

no problem, we are all here to share and help each other.. here's the location for reports:

Staff CP >> Ticket >> Reports ( you may need to be an admin, I am not sure)

also, there's a mod by SoftAir for a betterreporting system. I will post the thread url when I find it

[Racked Hosting]

Sorry, it was netarus. Though, do have a look at the modifications forum where jc11(SoftAir) has posted some useful mods!

Originally Posted by netarus

Hi chadillac,

I am very interested as well. Feel free to start with mine if it is any help at all.

http://www.netarus.com/products/show...esupportreport

Either way, I would love to find a solution to the lack of reports for eSupport.