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Zendesk and the Art of Trademark Trolling

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Re: Zendesk and the Art of Trademark Trolling

#11

Post by haikuginger »

tzaman wrote: post #10
Artemis2 wrote: post #4

Quick question, what would be a good alternative to Zendesk? We've initially chosen it because it seemed pretty standard, but it looks designed for much larger companies. We avoid using it (!) because the UI is confusing, and it's very pricey for what it does (especially that some basic features are locked in the higher-priced tiers). This article doesn't help either.

Intercom, hands down. We switched what now seems a long time ago, and the pricing is like 3x of what we paid for Zendesk, but the UX feels so much more natural and UI unobstructive that we gladly pay $600/mo for it. Plus the additional features make it a non brainer (true, it also lacks some that Zendesk has)

We used Intercom for a while and found it didn't fit our use-case; our tickets tend to be longer and more technically in-depth, and the Intercom UI/API didn't perform very well in those constraints.

Additionally, the chat-based interface gave our customers the expectation that they'd always get an immediate response, which just wasn't always possible.

We still have it and use it for some features like usage analytics, but it's not our primary support tool.

Re: Zendesk and the Art of Trademark Trolling

#12

Post by tyre »

When I was at ZenPayroll we received a notice early on (2013) from ZenDesk about name conflict.

The rebrand which ended up as Gusto was, in part, caused by this.

To be fair to ZenDesk, we had a similar target market and did get questions about whether we were the same company.

To be fair to ZenPayroll, they pivoted mid-YC from a company called Switchboard Labs so didn't put a lot of long-term thought into the name.

Naming things is hard, but at least establish your own name-space.

Re: Zendesk and the Art of Trademark Trolling

#13

Post by braum »

Artemis2 wrote: post #4

Quick question, what would be a good alternative to Zendesk? We've initially chosen it because it seemed pretty standard, but it looks designed for much larger companies. We avoid using it (!) because the UI is confusing, and it's very pricey for what it does (especially that some basic features are locked in the higher-priced tiers). This article doesn't help either.

about 3 years ago we switched to desk.com and have been very happy with it. there are a few things we would like them to fix/upgrade but mostly it gets the job done and doesn't cost us a lot.

Re: Zendesk and the Art of Trademark Trolling

#15

Post by greglindahl »

minimaxir wrote: post #5
jessaustin wrote: post #2

TFA "may increase the chance of confusion" between Zendesk and other assholes like Kik.

The Kik case was different. In that case, Kik was a) a word which had no other usage outside the startup that it represents it/no historical prior use, and b) the existing npm package held by another developer was an exact name match.

kik.com in 1998: https://web.archive.org/web/19980115104316/http://kik.com

List of KIK used as a TLA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kik

Re: Zendesk and the Art of Trademark Trolling

#17

Post by franciscop »

Artemis2 wrote: post #4

Quick question, what would be a good alternative to Zendesk? We've initially chosen it because it seemed pretty standard, but it looks designed for much larger companies. We avoid using it (!) because the UI is confusing, and it's very pricey for what it does (especially that some basic features are locked in the higher-priced tiers). This article doesn't help either.

I've been following https://www.groovehq.com/ startup blog for some time and it's quite interesting.

Re: Zendesk and the Art of Trademark Trolling

#18

Post by codezero »

Artemis2 wrote: post #4

Quick question, what would be a good alternative to Zendesk? We've initially chosen it because it seemed pretty standard, but it looks designed for much larger companies. We avoid using it (!) because the UI is confusing, and it's very pricey for what it does (especially that some basic features are locked in the higher-priced tiers). This article doesn't help either.

How big is your team?

For smaller teams, I love Front.

In looking for things that will likely work better for larger teams (10-15+) Help Scout and Groove are both pretty appealing.

Desk.com is like Zendesk in that it tries to "do everything."

I haven't evaluated it fully, but a lot of people love Intercom as well if you want to do in-app/on-site support.

Re: Zendesk and the Art of Trademark Trolling

#19

Post by walrus01 »

This is a fine reason to use OSTicket or Request Tracker, both of which are free, open source and (with their various dependencies and modules) composed of entirely GPL, BSD and Apache licensed software.

Disregard Zendesk, acquire RT.

RT has been around for 15 years but it's continually developed and kept up to date. It's used by a large percentage of the 50 largest ISPs in the world for their back-end OSS/NOC ticketing.

Wait until they go after everything that's pronounced verbally like Zen. Most people I know if speaking about the Xen hypervisor will say "zen", not pronounce it as if it were a Chinese family name (Chen or how the X in Xiaoming is pronounced).

Re: Zendesk and the Art of Trademark Trolling

#20

Post by theblueprint »

Artemis2 wrote: post #4

Quick question, what would be a good alternative to Zendesk? We've initially chosen it because it seemed pretty standard, but it looks designed for much larger companies. We avoid using it (!) because the UI is confusing, and it's very pricey for what it does (especially that some basic features are locked in the higher-priced tiers). This article doesn't help either.

Also consider Freshdesk (https://freshdesk.com)
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