NETTING IT OUT

Desk.com is Salesforce.com’s customer service offering for very-small, small, and mid-sized businesses as well as for small departments in larger organizations. The product is based on technology that came to Salesforce.com in its acquisition of Assistly in September of 2011. To date, we estimate that approximately 25,000 customer accounts have licensed Desk.com.

Desk.com provides case management, account management, and knowledge management capabilities across assisted-service, self-service, and social customer service channels. Customers purchase subscription licenses for Desk.com for cloud-computing deployment using Amazon Web Services.

Desk.com earns a good report card. The product earns Exceeds-Requirements grades in Knowledge Management, Customer Service Integration, and Company Viability. It earns Meets-Requirements grades in Search, UI Content Management, and Product Viability. And it earns a Needs-Improvement grade in Analytic Functionality because it does not instrument or report on self-service activities.

Small and rapidly growing businesses with customer service staffs from one to several dozen should consider Desk.com. The product is easy and fast in its initial deployment and in its ongoing management. It provides broad and deep customer service capabilities and excellent channel support.

Customer service applications help businesses and government organizations deliver answers to their customers’ and their citizens’ questions and solutions to their problems. These are questions and problems about products and services; policies, processes, and practices; or about elements of their relationships such as accounts, bills, orders, and contracts. Customer service products also help create, manage, and resolve cases for customers’ questions that have not yet been answered and customers’ problems that have not yet been solved. Customer service products have case management, knowledge management, account management, and social network management capabilities. They deliver those capabilities across self-service, assisted-service, and social customer service channels.

Desk.com

Desk.com is Salesforce.com’s entry-level customer service application. This offering enables small but fast-growing companies with small customer service staffs and limited customer service budgets to implement essential customer service capabilities across assisted-service, self-service, and social channels quickly and easily.

Desk.com is built on technology that came to Salesforce.com when it acquired Assistly in September 2011. Assistly was founded in 2009 and introduced Assistly.com, Desk.com’s predecessor product, in September 2010. Salesforce.com rebranded Assistly.com to Desk.com in January 2012.

The Desk.com business unit of Salesforce.com develops, maintains, implements, and supports Desk.com. Customers purchase subscription licenses for cloud computing deployment. To date, we estimate that approximately 25,000 customer accounts have licensed and deployed the offering. These customer accounts include companies such as:

• BarkBox
• HotelTonight
• One Kings Lane
• SoundCloud
• Susty Party
• ZenPayroll

Illustration 1 shows the BarkBox Portal, the Desk.com based self-service site. Typical of all Desk.com self-service UIs, the page has a search box at the top and a list of knowledgebase “Articles” that are organized by “Topic” in its body.

BarkBox Portal

© 2014 Bark & Co.

1. We show the BarkBox Portal, the Desk.com based self-service site.

FRAMEWORK FOR EVALUATION CUSTOMER SERVICE PRODUCTS

This report presents our evaluation of the customer service capabilities in Desk.com against our framework for evaluating customer service applications. The framework has these eight top-level evaluation criteria and sets of sub-criteria for each top-level criterion.

• Customer service best fit
• Customer service technologies
  • Knowledge management
  • Search
  • User interfaces
  • Customer service process support
  • Customer service integration
• Analytic functionality
• Product viability
• Company viability

We’ll briefly describe these criteria and their sub-criteria in a little more detail within our evaluation. Then we’ll summarize in our Report Card for Customer Service.

Key Characteristics for Fast Evaluation of Customer Service Products and Services

The Customer Service Best Fit evaluation criterion presents information and analysis that classifies and describes customer service products and services. Customer Service Best Fit speeds evaluation and selection by presenting easy to evaluate characteristics. For example, if you have requirements for supporting process-oriented customer activities like making a healthcare claim or diagnosing and resolving a software problem, then a quick glance at the Customer Service Best Fit table will let you see whether a particular customer service product or service packages support for process-oriented customer activities. Similarly, if you have requirements for cloud deployment, a certain mobile device, or a hard price point, then the Customer Service Best Fit section will let you know if a customer service product or service meets them. If so, then continue to a detailed analysis and evaluation. If not, move on to your next candidate product.

Customer Service Best Fit has these criteria...(more)

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