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Help Desk FAQ - Software and Related Tools

The definitive global resource for helpdesks, customer relationship management and technical support.

Related Tools

Note: Many email handling tools started as pure email handling tools, and added basic knowledge base functionality to the system. A few started as knowledge bases and added email handling capabilities. Increasingly, enterprise suites are adding email handling capabilities. Be aware of the history, as it may help you select the right type of tool for what you are looking to do.

Email Handling Tools
Aditi Corporation http://www.talisma.com	Offers Talisma -- an easy-to-use, out-of-the-box customer e-mail and Web-form manager that helps sales and service teams respond quickly and effectively to electronic communications flooding busy aliases, such as info@company.com
Brightware http://www.brightware.com	Provides customer assistance software on the Internet.
eGain http://www.egain.com	Offers the eGain Email Management System
FirePond http://www.firepond.com	Provides customer assistance software on the Internet.
Island Data http://www.islanddata.com	Automates the process of reading and responding to electronic support requests.
Kana Communications http://www.kana.com	Offers the Customer Messaging System that provides robust enterprise-class tools to manage customer e-mail communication.
mailQueue http://www.mailqueue.com	Offers a web-based e-mail management solution allowing companies and their customers access to high performance tools when managing their corporate e-mail.
Calypso Message Center http://www.mcsdallas.com	Is designed to efficiently process, route, track and manage inbound departmentalized e-mail.

Integrated Suites
(sales, marketing etc. -- often called "Customer Relationship" tools)

Continuum Performance Systems has a health care centric product at http://www.ContinuumPerformance.com
Corepoint, an IBM company, at http://www.corepoint.com offers customer relationship management software.
Chordiant Software, at http://www.chordiant.com/ delivers a complete application environment for consumer transactions through call centers, the internet, point-of-sale locations.
Siebel, at http://www.siebel.com/ provides a comprehensive and scalable customer information system.

Inventory Tools

Absolute Software offers Absolute Track that can be integrated into many help desk packages.
http://www.absolute.com
Tally Systems Corp. offers "NetCensus" - a hardware and software inventory product that integrates into many help desk products.
http://www.tallysys.com
Tangram Enterprise Solutions offers "Asset Insight" - a hardware and software inventory product that can integrate into many of the help desk products listed above.
http://www.tesi.com

Knowledge Bases and Self-Help Tools

AnswerFriend http://www.answerfriend.com	Offers systems that enable an organization to intelligently manage their customer, employee, or business partner interactions.
arscognita	Mindmeld - a self-organizing knowledge sharing application that is web-based, multi-platform open architecture, easily integrates with any HD operation and technology, extremely low cost-of-ownership and high return.
AskIt	is an outsourced, web based customer service solution
Colarity	enhances customer support by allowing your customers to collaborate
Courion Corporation http://www.courion.com	Offers Internet-based self-service applets which automate common support tasks -- integrated with help desk systems to track support activity.
eMoxsha http://www.emoxsha.com	Provides a suite of tools that harnesses unstructured knowledge for self-service
Finali http://www.finali.com	Is a managed service provider (MSP) for electronic customer-relationship management (eCRM).
The Haley Group http://www.haley.com/help!cpr.html	Allows you import or create custom case-bases using the CPR C++ class library.
Inference http://www.inference.com	Offers the k-commerce suite of products
Inquira http://www.inquira.com	Search for customer service
Kaidara www.kaidara.com	Advanced troubleshooting
Kana http://www.broadbase.com	Bought out Servicesoft (which was bought out by Broadbase)
Knowledge Broker, Inc. http://www.kbi.com/	Offers "Experience Bases" you can purchase to pre populate your knowledge base.
MetaQuest Software http://www.metaquest.com/	Offers Triage - a diagnostic software environment and Census - a defect tracking system.
NetHelp International http://www.nethelpnow.com	Offers a heuristic ("self-learning") knowledge base, call logging and reporting software.
NoHold http://www.nohold.com	Helps diagnose and resolve issues for customers
NoWonder http://www.nowonder.com (now called ePeople)	Is an online marketplace where computer users and computer experts come together.
Primus http://www.primus.com	Offers a series of knowledge management tools
Qarbon http://www.Qarbon.com	Creates animated demonstrations of software, web sites, browsers, etc. Files are tiny, and no plug-in is needed.
Right Answers http://www.rightanswers.com	Offers hundreds of thousands of solutions to more than 150 off-the-shelf applications. RightAnswers also provides customer-specific knowledge.
Right Now http://www.rightnowtech.com	Has on-line support and information delivery solutions
ServiceWare http://www.serviceware.com	Offers multimedia "Knowledge-Paks" you can purchase to pre-populate your knowledge base.
Simera http://www.simera.co.uk	Offers a suite of tools to help with knowledge management and relationship management.
SolutionSoft http://www.solutionsoft.com/helpdesk.htm	Allows you to easily add context-sensitive help topics to specific dialog boxes and windows in any Windows application.
South Wind Design http://www.swdi.com	Has a web based data collection system that improves the productivity of your technical support staff or call tracking system by using a browser and Active X.
Verity http://www.verity.com	Offers the Knowledge Retrieval Product Suite

Scheduling Software (some for free) (Erlang C and more!)

Auto Schedule
Blue Pumpkin Software (650) 429-6300
Diagnostic Strategies offers EasyEarlang for free.
Frontline Software (770) 446-6265
Global Management Technologies (770) 416-6000
Guia International (770) 926-6085
Innovative Solutions (219) 481-5934
ISC offers a scalable solution called Irene
ServicePower (410) 571 6333
TCS Management Group (615) 221-6800
Lightstone Group (516) 294-7505
IEX Corp. (972) 301-1300
Time Domain (301) 253-7169
Portage Communications (425) 888-5320

Survey Software

Confirmit at http://www.confirmit.com can do a number of types of surveys for you.
CustomerCast at http://www.customercast.com can outsource your entire survey process.
CustomerSat at http://www.customersat.com has some innovative tools and patents to boot.
Decisive Technology at http://www.decisive.com/ has tools to help with web-based surveys.
e-Satisfy at http://www.e-satisfy.com (formerly TARP) has extensive experience with surveys.
JH & Associates at http://www.surveyssay.com/ has tools for surveys.
Procevo offers survey design and analysis software. http://www.procevo.com
SatMetrix at http://www.satmetrix.com has tools for surveys.

Miscellaneous Tools

4Developers LLC http://www.4dev.com/fd/index.htm	offers Support Dog -- a tool that detects and solves software errors on a local or remote Windows PC, by allowing you to retrieve the exact configuration state of that PC.
Apropos Software http://www.apropos.com	Offers Total Interaction Management software to manage multiple interactions simultaneously.
D�cisif Software Solutions http://www.decisif.com/	Provides a suite of CTI applications such as Intelligent Call Routing, Help Desk Automation, Call Tracing and Reporting, Predictive Dialing, Internet Integration and Interactive Voice Response.
Expresto http://www.expresto.com	specializes in delivering visual explanations for support, documentation and training
Journyx http://pnk.com/products.html	Offers a web based time and attendance tracking software product.
MetaQuest Software http://www.metaquest.com/Solutions/	Census bug tracking and defect tracking
MicroHouse http://www.microhouse.com	Offers "Support on Site" and "Support on Site for Networks."
http://www.par3.com	PAR3 Communications' alerting platform allows companies to strengthen their CRM (Customer Relationship Management) programs in their call centers with two-way communication with clients via phone, email, wireless, internet, pager, etc.
P-Synch www.psynch.com/download	P-Synch can be interfaced to any help desk system, so that all call records (problem tickets) are automatically generated or updated. P-Synch can report it's actions to the help desk system, providing a uniform method of logging for different types of incidents, including password problems. Support staff need not enter redundant information about calls as data can be automatically passed between P-Synch and the help desk system.
St. Bernard Software http://www.stbernard.com	Patch management software
Services Management Consulting Group http://www.smcg.com	Offers Staffing Helper, Skills Assessment Helper and Job Descriptions Helper. They are designed as interactive tools that can respond to basic and complex environments alike.
Sterling Software http://www.solve.sterling.com/dip/	Has SOLVE:Diplomat which takes disparate software systems and makes the data logical and easy to use across the entire network enterprise.
Telamon http://www.telamon.com	Has a paging solution called "TelAlert" that runs on UNIX and Windows NT and integrates with popular help desk products.
Tioga Systems http://www.tioga.com	Offers the "Tioga Self Healing System" to eliminates diagnostic guesswork through its ability to automatically identify any application's components and dependencies, spot problems, and repair them.
Visionyze http://www.visionyze.com	Offers a packaged analytic application specifically for the call centers. Works will all major call center packages.
VueChat http://www.customer-service-software.com	Web cam based chat
Xantel http://www.xantel.com/	Offers links between telephony and computers (CTI -- Computer Telephony Integration).