What's a good help ticket system?

August 3, 2005 3:19 PM

I'm looking for a recommendation for a customer-facing help ticket system to implement at work.

We have lots clients--more each week--and I want to get ahead of the curve and implement a help ticket system so that we can route certain types of requests (eg "site doesn't work" v "I need some consulting time") to the right internal people, monitor the status of all requests so we make sure we have happy clients, and be able to pull out metrics so we can analyze inbound requests and, for example, let the data help us decide how we expand our staff.

I like the systems implemented by SixApart and SpeakEasy as an example of what I'm aiming for. We use SalesForce.com for our sales team and something that integrates with this would rock (we're investigating if they have a decent module). Our IT infrastructure (I'm not the IT guy) is largely .NET/ASP/SQL.

Any Ideas?

posted by donovan to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

I don't know of anything that integrates with SalesForce.com. I suspect that's a bit of a stretch. SpeakEasy used to use RightNow, but may have changed. Their web site looks dopey anyway, and I never really liked their UI that much. My company uses it too, and I find it to be too simplistic.

I have friends who are huge fans of Request Tracker. Old versions of it were a bloody nightmare to install but worked nicely once they were up and running. I hear that now it's much much easier to set up, and even more flexible and featureful than it was. If it were me, I'd give this a try.
posted by autojack at 4:02 PM on August 3, 2005

seconding Request Tracker.
posted by boo_radley at 4:09 PM on August 3, 2005

Consider contacting Salesforce.com directly and ask them if they know of such products. If they exist they likely get referral bonuses and will be happy to tell you who to use.

If they don't exist there are many opensource options out there for you. Check sourceforge.net.
posted by FlamingBore at 4:11 PM on August 3, 2005

We use Jira, and have been very pleased with it.

Also worth looking at is FogBugz.

I prefer Jira's licensing (per-server rather than per-user) and the Jira user interface. FogBugz does have some great features for managing incoming email requests though.
posted by kaefer at 4:38 PM on August 3, 2005

Thirding Request Tracker, but if you have experience with Mod Perl + general linux skills, it won't go astray with this opensource software.

I built a highly customised RT platform which was kind of a bear. Out of the box it's great. Modification requires Mad Skillz.
posted by Dag Maggot at 7:29 PM on August 3, 2005

Response by poster: We use FogBugz for dev and it's just great. Been looking for something a little more oriented to a client services model. The multiple nods to Request Tracker have put that on my radar (hadn't founf it in my googling). An d yes, we're waitn' to hear what Salesforce.com has to say.

Thanks and keep the advice coming.
posted by donovan at 9:31 PM on August 3, 2005

eventum
otrs
posted by jimw at 4:07 PM on August 5, 2005