Verified purchaser
Great potential but lacking important features
I think Paldesk is great and it comes with great features.
I was searching for a replacement for my current chat service but I was missing some crucial features.
Full video walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X55ET41SIeI
First of all, the reason why I bought this deal is because I wanted to replace my current chat service with a chat service that also supports automated bot replies. I get a lot of similar questions on my website which could be answered perfectly by a chatbot which saves me valuable time.
Paldesk looked promising because it comes with a bot builder. Without thinking about it I bought this deal and started playing with it.
The chat widget looks really nice. You can change the icon but also a custom trigger based on time. It looks very modern and really like it.
However, after testing I bumped into things that could be handled much better within the application.
I'll write a list of what I like and what I don't like.
Here is what I like:
- The layout of the chat widget
- The automated bot messages
- No limits in visitors
- Support Tickets section
- Turn chats into support tickets
- Easy popup notifications on your website (nice extra feature)
- Feedback widget on your website (nice extra feature)
- Set up a knowledge base for your customers
- Probably a bunch more
- Support is outstanding (they helped me out quickly)
Here is a list of things I didn't like.
- When you click the push notification, you'll be redirected to the main website which is annoying. It should redirect to the incoming chat.
- You first need to accept a chat and once you have accepted it's gone. you need to browse to a different menu to pick up the chat again. Very annoying.
- When visitors leave the chat you can continuing chatting. The visitors will not be notified.
- You need to connect your email as a forwarder to Paldesk to be able to email with the system.
- ALL emails that you send with the system land in the SPAM box!
- You are not able to see on which page your visitors are. You need to go to other menus to see where they are.
- The desktop app is similar to the browser version.
My overall thoughts:
This app has great potential, it looks great and has some great features.
Unfortunately, this will not replace my current chat service.
The main reasons are that every email I've sent with the system (also the chat transcripts and their confirmation emails) went straight to my spam box. This is unworkable. Also, It takes too many steps to answer an incoming chat. There are many more reasons, like not sending automated emails to visitors who leave the website and not being able to see on which page the visitors are.
I really hoped this deal would be a keeper as I'm looking for a bot/chat service.
Best of luck, your support is great and I'm sure you'll heading in the right direction.
Ivan_Paldesk
May 14, 20243. Paldesk offers 4 different authentification mechanism for clients and some of them do not include required email address. During the chat conversation, and after the client left your site, if you have client's email address you can send him email (or transcript). We experimented with this option to send automatically all responses to client if he is offline but it appeard that some visitors are browsing around (going on and off), some of them are on mobile devices (again on and off) etc. and that resulted in sending email responses in situations when client will be back in just few moments after email was sent. We decided to separate chat and email response forms and agent should be aware that client left and then send him email (if there is email address).
This also relates to your remark that you can continue chatting even if the client is offline. Yes, we deliberately made this, because if client returns (in few moments or next day) he'll get your messages (unless he is coming from different device etc.).
4. To integrate email (receive and send) you have several options (SMTP, IMAP, forwarding etc.). We had SMTP/IMAP but beside security issues (and other account related issues, like password policy) there were other problems, Paldesk collected all the emails. Our customers wanted to filter email messages going to Paldesk contact center agent. Forwarding is maybe the easiest (and safest) way to integrate email and you can controll what and when is routed to agents. We haven't had complains about this type of integration, but I can see that maybe you are looking for solution that has IMAP client.
5. We had security issue with service that we use for sending emails (issue was on our side) few days ago that resulted in some spam mails and we ended up on a few spam lists. We are working to get that resolved, we already managed to increase our reputation, but it will need a couple more days to get back as it was before
6. We have visitor overview, a list of your visitors with urls where they are (on your site). You are correct that isn't visible during the chat, and it can be very helpful. This feature is in our roadmap.
7. Yes it is, actually it is web version packed for desktop devices. This is common practice these days, you don't need to search Paldesk among hundreds different browser tabs, you have desktop application. We haven't had complains about this so far.
Sorry for the long response, but I just wanted to explain some of the thing I think we (Paldesk) didn't explain good enough and that could lead to misunderstandings.
Thank you for your time to make Paldesk review I hope you'll try it once again after we sort this issues.