Zenith Trial (and CommitCRM)-Advice from the wise?

[DavidW]

Hi Folks!

We are about to sign up for a trial of Zenith MSP and wondered if other CommitCRM users have any 'words from the wise'.

What should we do/be sure to test during the trial, besides the obvious (like trying to get the CommitCRM email parser working reliably to take Zenith alert emails and automagically convert them into tix in Commit)? We plan to install the Zenith agents on a test system here, then trigger alerts etc.

Think about what you KNOW NOW as a Zenith + CommitCRM user and then think back to when you were trialling Zenith - and what you WISH YOU HAD KNOWN THEN:-)!

Would you share with us those insight 'gems'. TIA!

/dwv
David W. Vaughan
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[AN-Tech]

We went though a 60 day trial with them earlier this year. Their program was decent and they offered some nice bonus's (cheap AV and free LogMeIn IT Reach) but Kaseya, N-Able, and Labtech are much more feature rich.

Best advice I can give you is to be sure you satisfied with communicating with Zenith. The NOC can be extremely frustrating at times and I would never allow a client to speak with them directly. But my biggest complaint was with dealing with the non-support contacts. Trying to work with our account managers was a nightmare. They would be extremely slow to respond to questions and concerns (days or weeks), change their answers on things, and make up excuses for the NOC. Also good luck trying to work with their accounting department.

They will need to make some serious changes before we would ever consider them. I would highly recommend that you try out Kaseya and Labtech.

Good luck.

[ajgyomber]

There is one thing that I've heard from two people that use Zenith's NOC service. When they fix a problem, they don't document it in the ticket. They simply resolve the ticket. I do not use Zenith but for me that would be a problem.

[AN-Tech]

I had that as well with them not documenting what they did, just that it is resolved. When I would ask for details they would not respond. I would ask several times and still be ignored. Serious lack of communication there.

[DavidW]

Thanx ascendnet and ajgyomber.

These are NOT ringing endorsements so I sure hope OUR mileage differs during our trial!

Thanx for taking the time to give us your feedback.

/dwv

[FunctionOne]

Hi David,

We've used Zenith for a year and a half now and would agree with all of the complaints above. However, I urge you to spend the time with the toolset that it warrants. We've found it to be much more flexible in ways - and advantageous in ways, that the aforementioned competitors - especially when it comes to price. Sometimes complexity is not a benefit.

Not saying these other tools aren't worth it - and I am acknowledging the issues above - but we've had a successful relationship to date.

With the NOC not detailing solutions - make sure that you request this in the ticket when opening it. I've had 100% success with them responding with detailed solutions when I asked right up front and not after the fact. This made it very easy for me to turn around and bill or reflect work done to a customer with great detail and support.

Account Managers in the past were atrocious in their lack of communication skills. Though, to be fair, we know Zenith was overworking these guys heavily.

In recent months this has changed dramatically and now our Account Manager is proactively seeking us out for feedback, making calls to see how she can help our business make better use of the provided tools and materials and so on. This is a huge about face and has been quite welcome. But as I noted - this is a recent change so most likely the guys above got out when it was still bad.