Crossposted using Lemmit.

Original post from /r/sysadmin by /u/Anxious_Reporter on 2023-07-07 02:59:55+00:00.

Freshdesk/Zendesk vs Zoom Phone/Contact Center/Chatbot for inter-organization communication (and ticketing) system?

Could anyone give input on which would be a better setup for the use case of an inter-organization communications and ticketing system? Any key questions or considerations from your experience that could help narrow the variables of this problem?

We currently have Spiceworks hosted locally as the helpdesk ticketing system for our internal org. However, we are expanding operations in such a way that there is going to be a lot of collaboration across organizations (with our org as a kind of a central hub for technical support and certain other coordinating services).

Currently, my org is considering facilitating this communication system via the Zoom ecosystem with a combination of Zoom Phone (ZP), Contact Center (ZCC), and (possibly) AI Chatbot (Zoom Virtual Agent). My gut feeling is that something like Freshdesk/Freshservice, Zendesk, or Sysaid might be a better choice for this, but cannot say with much confidence.

There is a strong emphasis on (aside from costs and data security) communication via mobile phone as the most common medium across these orgs. The current plan is something like using ZCCs routing capabilities to route ticket requests to our internal helpdesk email address that feeds into Spiceworks. (From a Freshdek POV, I fugure people can just log into their user accounts via a Freshdesk Customer Portal on the web from their phones). Management also seems keen on ZP and ZCCs ability to switch users into the Zoom waiting queue for our org’s default IT Zoom room that we are often in --not sure if there is a real reason/conviction here or if it’s because we already had Zoom Rooms and it being a case of “if you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

I also like Freshservice et al for the asset tracking features, given then we are going to have to have some way of tracking equipment provisioned out to other orgs --something I do not see any support for in the Zoom ecosystem.

I’m not totally sure on the pro/cons of each system to be able to really evaluate this situation fully, so any clarifying questions or input on this kind of thing from your own experience would help. Any key questions or considerations from your experience that could help narrow the variables of this problem, so I can draft some kind of better-informed for/against argument?

Thank you.

*This may be better flaired as a General Discussion rather than a Question, but don’t really have my own opinion here and am hoping to draw from the experience of this subreddit