CRM tools?

February 5, 2007 11:16 AM

How can I connect support cases with end user documentation?

I manage a tech support team at a small company where we develop software for use by consultants within our company. We receive requests for support by internal users of the software. We have an internally developed ticketing system that we plan on getting rid of soon. I’ve been asked by my boss to research other tools that we can use that would allow us to track tickets adequately as well as post solutions to a searchable documentation database to allow for user self help. He’s recommending Salesforce. I want to know if there other tools that will provide us an all in one solution or if this is my best bet. I’m really just starting to research this and any recommendations would be great.

posted by mamaquita to technology (4 comments total)

There's Trac. Here's an example of it in use.
posted by jamaro at 11:20 AM on February 5, 2007

SalesForce can get pretty expensive per-seat.
Please consider JIRA. I looked for just such software and this is it. Here it is online to fiddle with. It has a 30-day fully functional demo here. It's not free, but it's pretty reasonable for software of its kind.
posted by nj_subgenius at 12:15 PM on February 5, 2007

Yeah, we looked at some CRM solutions at my previous company and I'll also say -1 for SalesForce (I wouldn't use it even if it were free). Also, although I was impressed initially by NetSuite (and we bought it), 3 months later we were continually banging our heads into poor design decisions and an over-engineered security model. We ended up terminating our contract with them before year one was done.

You might want to take a look at FogBugz. It's an integrated support management app that seems to slip under the radar of a lot of small companies.
posted by notpeter at 12:37 PM on February 5, 2007

I've used Sysman from a company in Australia for ticketing, and it was easy to implement & use, as well as affordable. We used the inventory, but not the knowledge base.

RT is an open source ticketing program. It's okay, the knowledge base is unloved by those here who have tested it. I usually drop useful resolutions into a text file, and put them in the Documentation folder on a network drive. I do try to title requests appropriately for future searching, and put keywords into resolutions for the same reason.
posted by theora55 at 2:14 PM on February 5, 2007