Plumsail HelpDesk vs. Crow Canyon IT help desk
Probably, you just began your journey into the finding the right customer support tool. We want to make your choice a little easier, so we have created a series of articles where we compare different support tools to Plumsail HelpDesk. So, this is the very first article and we will take a look at Plumsail HelpDesk as CrowCanyon HelpDesk alternative.
Queries of complaints and questions can not be handled by standard email systems. Apps like Plumsail HelpDesk and Crow Canyon IT help desk are add-ons to traditional email built on top of SharePoint and Office 365. They organize your emails in a way that’s more applicable to customer service and they will help your team to communicate with customers more efficiently.
Hope this helps!
Installation
You can’t really find out how to install Crow Canyon help desk because it requires guidance by someone from their support team. The main thing about Plumsail help desk that it only takes 15 minutes to be up and running. Just download and run setup file, specify the URL where a HelpDesk instance will be created, provide credentials, wait until the end of installation and start forwarding support emails to your new help desk. That’s it.
Simplicity
For those who are tired of complexity of ticketing systems, Plumsail HelpDesk will be a huge relief. It’s really simple and intuitive — all your emails are coming in directly to HelpDesk. Just assign and resolve tickets. You don’t need any fancy staff training to start providing a great support.
For example, let’s take a look at Agent’s working space. In Plumsail system, all your personal tickets could be found on ‘My tickets’ view, unread tickets are bold and all overdue tickets are highlighted in red. If Agent is a part of some agent’s group, s/he can find all group tickets in ‘Group tickets’ view. Pretty neat and simple.
In Crow Canyon solution, Agents have two views for unresolved tickets on the same page, it’s ‘My overdue tickets’ and ‘My assigned tickets’. Additionally, Agent observe personal chart and tasks.
The process of working with ticket is quite similar in both systems — ticket could be created via interface of help desk or via email while external users have a special interface for submitting a ticket.
Notice that all forms in Plumsail HelpDesk are customizable, you can add or remove fields with built-in tool called Plumsail Forms.
Both systems are about “ticket-style” emails and both of them allow you to categorize, prioritize and assign tickets automatically, so you can put your helpdesk on autopilot.
But there are some other minor differences in user experience, for example, in Plumsail HelpDesk, you can easily attach files to your answers and even paste images directly to the text editor from the clipboard while in Crow Canyon you have to share links.
And what if you have some clients sending you 20 emails per day with different subjects but still all related to one question? In Plumsail HelpDesk, you can merge or split tickets, while in Crow Canyon you can create sub themes for your ticket. Which one do you prefer better?
Pricing
Plumsail’s pricing offers you simple but flexible options with 3 plans ranging from $39 — $129 per month for all features we have, including SLA, triggers. Unlimited number of help desk instances are available even in the cheapest plan. The only limit is the number of agents and comments. We don’t offer a free plan, but you can get a 30-day free trial of all-included-package. And one more thing — all updates are free! You don’t need to buy extra hours of support to stay up to date with all features: one click and you have it all.
Crow Canyon will cost a fortune — 3 type of plans with a different set of features starting from $3,995 for the application with optional annual renewal. But this price apply only for one site collection.
Integration
One of the perks of using Plumsail HelpDesk and Crow Canyon help desk that they are fully integrated into SharePoint and Office 365 suits. That means that you get all power of SharePoint within your ticketing system. But HelpDesk allows you to integrate your help desk with other business apps with help of Microsoft Flow. Microsoft Flow is an online workflow service that enables you to work smarter and more efficiently by automating workflows across the most common apps and services. These integrations, which you pick and choose from, are what make your help desk more powerful and relevant.
For example, you can send SMS notifications from help desk with Microsoft Flow and Twilio.
Mobile
Plumsail HelpDesk ticket views are fully mobile responsive, so you can work on your tickets straight on your smartphone. Crow Canyon system has the ability to set up custom mobile views of lists and tickets so that just the information your mobile users need is available on the mobile device.
Actions, like creating a new ticket, modifying it or closing the ticket, can be made on the device in both systems. But in Plumsail HelpDesk you can configure triggers, so you will be able to resolve or modify ticket right in your email box.
External user’s interaction
Quite essential that your customers need to interact with your support team and it’s great when they have an interface for that. In Plumsail HelpDesk people outside your organization can create tickets, view and modify them, and see all information about submitted tickets with the Widget that can be placed at any web site. Crow Canyon suggests a similar solution called The Customer Portal. It is a configurable interface for external users as well but available only for professional plan.
Triggers
Triggers are a utility designed to drive your help desk more efficiently and implementation of these allow you to simplify work on repeated tasks. In Plumsail HelpDesk, triggers allow you to set up automatic execution of sets of actions based on events and conditions. A bunch of triggers is already designed for sending notifications but you can customize according to your needs. For example, you can assign ticket to a first agent who replies or add new email notification.
Crow Canyon offers a less powerful but still handy solution — in IT help desk, you can define actions on the ticket which can be triggered with a click of a button when an agent works on the ticket. These actions can include reassigning the ticket or sending notifications.
SLA
You cannot provide a great customer service without a clear definition of rules when a ticket should be responded and when the case should be resolved. That’s why Service Level Agreement could give you all the power to control queues of tickets.
Both systems have a great SLA policy tool — you can configure rules based on certain fields of the incoming ticket, such as category, user or you name it. If these rules are violated, you can choose any action like sending a notification to an agent, escalating the ticket, reassigning it or any other action.
In Plumsail HelpDesk, SLA is included in all plans, Crow Canyon offers it only in Professional and Premium plans.
Dashboard
Reporting can help companies to ask the right questions about their work, so in Plumsail HelpDesk and in Crow Canyon It help desk, you can find reports section and in both systems, dashboards provide real-time views of ticket activity.
In Plumsail solution, you can track tickets by state, customers’ satisfaction, tickets by category, active requesters and tickets by agents. If it’s not enough for your needs, you can use our additional solution Dashboard Designer to customize charts.
In Crow Canyon, the standard edition includes graphs and charts that you can manage through Reporting web part, other editions have a more comprehensive reports center. The nice thing about reporting in Crow Canyon is that all reports can be saved, printed out, or emailed.
Support
If you are looking for 24/7 support via any accessible channel — Crow Canyon will be a perfect match for you. In Plumsail, we guarantee that you will get an answer within one working day but this support will be really personal.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in comments or just drop us a line — support@plumsail.com.
