Parature (Discontinued) vs. TeamSupport

The single element of Parature I've not seen in any other system of this kind is the Download Module. You can post files in the open, or protect them by any number of entitlement methods. The solution is also appealing to those who don't want to manage the back-end/IT needs as it is a hosted solution and has proven to be very reliable.

Incentivized

TeamSupport is a great ticketing/help desk platform for small companies. It gets the job done and allows for multiple teams to manage workloads. It is not best for bigger organizations as there are lots of lacking features (mobile app, integrations, robust Jira/Confluence like system). The support for TeamSupport is great too. They usually get in touch with customers quickly when the system is down and they resolve issues quickly as well.

Incentivized

• Clean/Friendly UI. It was extremely easy to navigate around Parature's menus at a high level, and you could take advantage of the more robust features as you became more comfortable and familiar with how Parature operates!
• Strong Knowledge Base. Writing KB articles or ticket summaries and making use of the search function within Parature allows for expedient recovery of past ticket information. Being able to search for a fix action, or at least a troubleshooting article that can guide you towards a resolution is extremely valuable.
• Enhanced Notation Capability. Being able to send/post internal or external updates to a ticket is great! You can leave the wordy technical details for other employees while making sure to communicate the high-points and fix action to the end-user.

Incentivized

• There were other customer support software companies that I looked into at first, however TeamSupport provided exceptional customer service themselves. I paid close attention to how they handled me as a customer to see if they were a company that would understand my desire to give exceptional customer service to my clients and if they had the tools to make the experience easy. Every interaction with them was very positive.
• Since we needed TeamSupport's software embedded into our software application to give our users easy access to the support tools, the staff at TeamSupport needed to answer many questions and work with our developers to make this possible. They were always willing to take the extra step to ensure a smooth set up.
• As we continue with TeamSupport, I am especially impressed with the sincerity of the CEO, Robert C. Johnson, and his commitment to us so that together we can deliver exceptional customer support.

Incentivized

• Reporting is barebones at best. If you need special reports, we had to go through Parature to have them built.
• The use of frames on a website is very 1990s. It actually impacts usability of the product, especially when combined with how Parature handled sessions. An engineer could only work one ticket at a time which, honestly, isn't very realistic for a busy support team that is working on several issues at a time.
• Support was often unresponsive when contacted for unplanned problems.
• The knowledge base was not very friendly for clients and it provided no real encouragement for it to be used.
• It took several clicks to do something as simple as edit and assign a ticket or to close a ticket.

Incentivized

• We would like to see a structure to the ticket numbering system. In a previous system we had a numbering system like this mmddyy-xxxxxx This was very easy to see when a ticket was created based on just it's number. Currently with TeamSupport they assign a random number to tickets that is not very informative without a created date field.
• Reports are nice but lack some rollup capabilities that are needed. Any given report can only work against two data tables at max. This is a limitation that we had to create custom contact fields to get around. They store phone, address and base contact info in separate tables. This makes it impossible with a standard system to create a report of all tickets along with the ticket and contact information in one report. The previous system we were on, allowed you to tie as many related data tables together that was needed to create one high level report.
• Need Ability to notify external users of ticket activity in regions. So what I mean is we have FAE's in the field that want to know what their customers are asking for their region. They don't want or need a TeamSupport account but want simple e-mails of activity. This has been a lost feature for us going to a new system. I have to create a manual report each week and forward to the people that want this kind of information.
• Ticket Automation rules will only run against a ticket one time. I understand why they did this to prevent uncontrolled loops but it would be nice to be able to set a limit that was greater than one. This limitation often causes us to have to write multiple rules to handle certain ticket cases.

Incentivized

Parature has been the best option for this campus in terms of what we use it for and there is no alternative

Incentivized

We are very likely to renew. We have been using TeamSupport for years and have tested a few other ticketing software solutions. We utilize several project management solutions to date and are always looking for better more efficient ways. Team Support is great at working with us and allows us to report issues well.

Incentivized

It was bulky, cumbersome, and didn't allow us to handle the volume of cases we received on a daily basis. Many of our issues were highly technical in nature and we would often need to work on 2 or 3 at once. The poor design choices prevented this, which was unfortunate.

Incentivized

I think some things could be a little more user-friendly: specifically the dashboard. Although it's fantastic and makes life so much nicer, I'd like to have more control on it's customization. I'd like to be able to default what's collapsed and what's expanded...instead of everything expanding by default each time I load it. But the portal offers great tools and guides on workarounds.

They recently had one very extended outage. It was a data center issue - but they were not diversified enough so in the end the system was down for almost 8 hours. There are also periods of time where for no reason the system simply doesn't respond. This small outages are usually short (just a few minutes), and have in fact been occurring less often, so it appears some corrective actions have been taken.

Incentivized

Again while most of the time I CAN access your server, it's offline enough that I can't count on having the software available to me 24/7

It is a feature heavy web application, thus speed can be compromised sometimes dependent on availability of a quality internet connection

Nothing ever seemed to get resolved

Incentivized

TeamSupport's ease of use and the way it benefited our company overall. From cost improvements, ROI, and overall management of team members it gets high marks. We are better able to support our customer base by providing improved support in a more timely fashion. The End User view of IT Support overall has improved just through using this platform in our company.

Incentivized

Able to get hands on training and ask questions.

Not much training was offered, but it was always provided when we requested it

Data import was the most difficult hurdle for us to get over. The mass import was handled through an Excel spreadsheet. TeamSupport doesn't use Microsoft Office products for the most part so they were relying on Google Docs which has limitations over Excel. Special characters and html in import cells can be a issue with importing. When creating a data export from your current system, special care needs to be taken so that the data is able to be processed into TeamSupport without issues.

Incentivized

There are services that do bits and pieces of what Parature does. We liked the idea of having one service that meets our needs

Incentivized

TeamSupport is a much more modern, intuitive and user-friendly version of NetSuite with many additional bells and whistles. NetSuite has a business only facade with a rather clunky interface and system. TeamSupport compares favorably and meets business needs while being a much more advanced and modern solution.

Incentivized

TS keeps adding new features without making sure the program is reliable as-is. The program is frequently offline which makes for significant frustration on my part

• Parature allows for better Customer Service
• Can follow up automatically for tickets
• Will automatically close tickets that haven't been responded to.
• Allows customers to reopen tickets easily and not allow them to be missed.

Incentivized

• TeamSupport has improved our team's response times. We are able to address all requests within a short time of receiving them.
• TeamSupport allows us to effectively manage workflow.
• The program provides us with a certain level of accountability, and requires that we be meticulous in our work.

Incentivized