Wix Answers (which begins at $11 per user per month) is scalable helpdesk software aimed primarily at small to midsize businesses (SMBs) that is easy to set up. Just like Wix’s other products, Wix Answers is deployed as a cloud service, which helps the company deliver a helpdesk solution that’s almost as easy to use as its flagship website builder. That product, named simply Wix, lets non-technical users get a website up and running quickly, a mission that Wix Answers seems to embrace for helpdesks, too. While it succeeds for the most part, it’s so easy that it winds up lacking some of the features found in our helpdesk Editors’ Choice winners Zoho Desk and the similiarly simple-to-use Freshdesk.
On the other hand, if you’re a smaller business looking to get a serviceable helpdesk up and running easily, then Wix Answers not only helps but it can even use data about customer interactions for business intelligence (BI) operations. This means you’ll not only get a fast helpdesk from Wix Answers but new insights into your customers, too.
Wix began as a popular browser-based website builder and has grown into a leading solution for first-time website owners. The company also released Wix Stores, a similarly easy-to-use e-commerce solution. Wix has applied this focus on sleekly designed, do-it-yourself (DIY) solutions to Wix Answers through a wide range of customizable templates and drag-and-drop creation tools that gets users to a functioning helpdesk quickly. Wix Answers is a competitive option for any business looking at Freshdesk, Happy Fox, or Zoho Desk.
Pricing and Plans
Wix Answers has an SMB-oriented approach to pricing that is both friendly and transparent. The Call Center, Live Chat, and Ticketing System components each cost $11 per user per month. The Knowledge Base (KB) component begins at $19 per user per month. You can also subscribe to all of the above for $30 per user per month. This is the most sensible option for businesses that are still determining their needs. Enrolling in a prepaid yearly subscription costs $360, saving businesses $72 per year. Wix Answers offers a 14-day trial period but offers no free plan.
Depending on a company’s needs, the pricing of the various components will adjust depending on the number of users or support agents using the service; adding users and components will drive up the price. Once a business needs more than 101 agents, however, it must upgrade to Wix Answers for Large Businesses, which is a tailored offering for enterprise.
Setup and Getting Started
Like its other solutions, including the aforementioned website builder Wix and e-commerce solution Wix Stores, setting up Wix Answers begins by filling out basic information about your company and its helpdesk requirements. This includes company name, URL, primary language, and phone number. Users then need to select the services they want as well as the number of team members they want to add to the subscription. For my review, I chose to try all of the components in the $30-per-month-per-user tier for a complete experience.
Once you’re facing your default management view, you’ll see that Wix Answers has a long, left-hand rail menu in an attractive, slate-blue color. That’s a popular user interface (UI) convention you’ll find in other helpdesk competitors as well, including Freshdesk and Zoho Desk. Moving your mouse to this highlighted area expands the rail to reveal access to the Article, Call Center, Chat, Insights, and Tickets menus.
The lower portion of this rail leads to the Call Credits, Invite Team Members, Settings, View Help Center, What’s New, and Wix Answers Guide menus. The dynamic layout of the rail menu instantly reveals more options as you mouse over certain sections. For example, hovering over the Call Center menu gives you one-click access to Agents, Calls, and Queues.
Overall, the system is designed for non-technical users, and does a decent job of placing features in logical places to avoid a lengthy training process. But for users who still need help or want to dig deeper, the dashboard is loaded with how-to videos that serve as walkthroughs for particularly important features. Even so, expect some trial and error when learning the system.
Better-Branded Templates
Customization has been Wix’s calling card, and Wix Answers delivers with template-creation tools that simplify adding logos and branding. There’s also support for 11 languages, which is beneficial for helpdesks that require localization. The WYSIWYG Content Editor makes adding photos, videos, and graphics quick and easy. For a company’s logo and graphics to look good, they need to be able to scale on both desktop and mobile browsers. Wix Answers provides a way to preview the content users create in desktop and mobile browsers.
Creating a Help Center begins with three main templates ranging from a visual and icon-focused template that’s better for mobile devices to a text-heavy and list-based design that works better on a desktop PC. There are sections specific to Advanced, Design & Text, Tickets, and Domain & SEO [Search Engine Optimization]. It’s easy to preview the content as a desktop website or as a mobile page.
The available templates should satisfy the branding needs of companies that can work within the Wix framework. But any company needing specialized design or specific components will find Wix Answers limiting since there’s no way to add features or components not offered by the template.
Helping Customers to Help Themselves
According to the Harvard Business Review, 81 percent of all customers attempt to take care of matters themselves before reaching out to a company representative. Wix Answers, which evolved from Wix’s own customer helpdesk, is designed around this self-serve ideal.
Wix Answers provides a range of tools to create an engaging and intuitive customer KB. A machine learning (ML) component can parse through open support tickets and analyze popular search terms. This information can be used by call center agents to improve how they organize helpdesk articles.
A What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG) text editor makes writing, formatting, and updating helpdesk documents straightforward and is the crown jewel of the Wix Answers solution. Developing the KB with Wix Answers, however, will be an ongoing and iterative process. This process will evolve and improve the more customers use it and as managers calibrate the content to better target user’s needs.
The KB component of Wix Answers is elegantly designed for companies to create articles, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), and white papers that customers can use to solve their issues or answer questions. For a self-serve KB and helpdesk to be effective, it has to be populated with easy-to-find answers and solutions, which could be a challenge for smaller companies starting up their helpdesk efforts.
Ticket Tracking and Collaboration
Wix Answers can manage and track support tickets from multiple channels including contact forms, email, the Help widget, and even a Facebook page. Tickets from all of these channels can be seen in one place.
Facebook integration is a plus for companies that may use the social network as their main contact point with customers. Once set up, any comment posted on the company’s Facebook timeline or direct message (DM) gets sent to Wix Answers as a ticket. Tickets that arrive from various channels can be assigned to an agent. Team members can be invited to join a ticket right from the dashboard in a few steps.
Tracking these support tickets in one stream makes it easy to respond by sending articles from the KB or by providing article reccomendations. It is possible to add custom fields to contact forms to gather more information about the customer and their issues.
Collaboration tools within Wix Answers are also quite extensive. Team members can send internal notes to individuals or teams from within the UI. Managers can also send broadcast announcements to the entire team. Agents will also get instant notifications whenever they’re mentioned in a ticket so that they can take action. Wix Answers can help managers track their team’s performance by seeing how many tickets they have handled and closed as well as their ticket response times and customer rating.
Final Thoughts
Wix Answers feels very new. During my testing period, new feature updates were being added, including the ability integrate with Jira Service Desk to let agents view and create Jira issues directly on tickets.
Pricing is costlier than some more established and integrated competitors once you add multiple users. Companies that may need more detailed reporting or custom solutions will not be able to add these freely to the template-based system. The lack of some enterprise-focused features and advanced analytics may also be limiting for some businesses’ needs.
All in all, Wix Answers is a robust and versatile helpdesk solution anchored on its ease of use. It will appeal to any SMB that needs to get a helpdesk solution online quickly. Creating a comprehensive KB is a good strategy to help customers help themselves. The availability of multi-channel ticket tracking can get agents to handle tickets more conveniently from one dashboard.
The option to choose from standalone Call Center, Live Chat, Ticketing, and KB components is attractive for companies just starting to build their helpdesks or that might not need all of the bells and whistles. Wix Answer’s WYSIWYG ease of use makes it possible for anyone to learn, but I recommend diving into the trial version to see if it covers all of your businesses’ needs first before committing.