Chris Duncan

FINALLY received an answer from ZenDesk as to why you cannot ring everyone's phones at once.  Apparently Zendesk wants to run all of our businesses, and when we don't provide the best service I'm assuming they are going to reimburse us for lost revenue.  

FROM ZENDESK TODAY:

I apologize for the frustration but there is reason for this. There is a best practice advisory for why we dont offer "hunt groups" where a single call rings multiple lines. This is a function of many older telephony systems and the reason behind the best practice of avoiding them is that it creates unequal work distribution on your team. For example. If John is a great agent and always picks up on the first ring then you may have agent Joe that will learn to only pick up on the 3rd or 4th ring because he knows John will pick up as soon as a call comes in. This can create agent burnout and a poor work environment. With Zendesk Talk we seek to avoid this and create agent accountability and transparency so that everyone gets an equal workload. 

My response:

Respectfully, you don’t run my business, I do.  Your position of your software dictating my business is really unbelievable and all the more reason that we will continue to evaluate other solutions.  You have HUNDREDS of customers requesting this, if not THOUSANDS.

There are so many great reports that help us manage the situation and prevent burn out and a poor work environment.  It is our responsibility and our dedication to our team, many of whom I have worked with for over 20 years, to manage our business.  When your software forces each user to interact with their computer, go offline, sign out, whatever just to get up and get a cup of coffee rather than walk away knowing that everyone else’s phone will ring and a call won’t be missed, is the opposite of what your email suggests that Zendesk is doing to “help” us.  We actually missed a call the other day because one of the team left their desk to work out in our company gym (in house, for free) and the call did not ring on anyone else’s system.

I know that we are all just dumb business owners and that we should rely on your best practices, but this response is amazingly short-sighted.  Zendesk should listen to their customers, and there are many, who have asked for you to turn this on.  I believe that you use 8x8 as your telephony host, and I know that their platform can support it.

I would compare this to a knife company only selling dull knives so that dumb people don’t cut themselves.

How do we "vote" aside from ditching Talk for another VOIP product that can do something as simple as ringing all available agents?  I've never owned a PBX or worked with a VOIP provider that couldn't handle such a simple task.