Third-party support / help desk services?

[DogAndPony]

Hey, gang...

I'm looking for recommendations for a third-party support / help desk service... or person.

I'm not reselling packages; I'm one of those web designers who provide the whole schmeer... Clients are on my FQ account number, and have no access to the CNC.

I've acquired a new client who plans on offering web sites to resellers, co-branders and program administrators for their products and services.

While I've generally designed and hosted sites for technically semi-literate folks in the past, many of these new "sub-clients" will be no-tech types, and will need a fair amount of help.

I can see that I/we will need to hire a service or person to do support. I'm anticipating (a wild guess) about 6 to 10 tickets for the first month, then an additional dozen or so every month for about 6 to 12 months... so, I dunno, maybe 75 to 150 tickets a month after a year.... possibly lighter.

We could also need two kinds of support. One will be to answer questions about web site and email use, and we might also need someone to answer simple questions (scripted answers) regarding the products and services.

No offshore services, please...

Anyone have an idea as to what can I expect to pay per ticket or per month for a freelancer or a service?

Particular services you've had good experience with?

[Edit: Forgot to mention that virtually all of the tickets would be handled via email, but that a few phone calls might be necessary now and then; or maybe we'll just handle the phone stuff ourselves. No live chat work.]

Thanks!

...Bob

Bob West

[johnfl68]

Bob:

If you chose to have web based help desk interface, for both your tech support and clients to keep track of trouble tickets, etc., I would recomend Cerberus Helpdesk:

http://www.cerberusweb.com

I have used this in the past on FQ servers, and it has a nice interface to help manage this process.

Of course this is not a Help Desk service, but I thought it may be relevent.

John

[DogAndPony]

Originally Posted by eventcastusa

If you chose to have web based help desk interface, for both your tech support and clients to keep track of trouble tickets, etc., I would recomend Cerberus Helpdesk ... Of course this is not a Help Desk service, but I thought it may be relevent.

You thought right!

I've only looked at a couple of help desk packages, but this one looks amazingly full-featured and smart.

Customizable interface/multiple interfaces per client; and an integrated knowledgebase is what I wanted, but the automatic Fetch & Retrieve is a major plus. Schedules, SLA priorities... Wow... Look at all that configurable stuff!

(Is there any other package that's comparable?)

And I love the fact that I can get a free key for a single support address at each domain... It's like having the price advantage of an open source package, with the ability to upgrade to higher-level product support.

Very, very nice... thanks, John!

Now all I need is someone to operate it!

...Bob

Bob West