Ask HN: Any integrated e-commerce, CRM and help desk solution out there?
We are going to setup an online shop soon for our products (Actual, physical products). In order to assist our customers better, we need to setup a help-desk solution, which should have an integrated discussion forum and a file download area as well. Also, we would like to use a CRM to manage all our customer relationships, leads, campaigns, etc.
Looking at the available software (free or commercial) we were unable to find any solutions out there which combine all these functions.
What we want to achieve is this: A customer buys a product through our online shop. His contact information is immediately registered in our CRM and also in our Help Desk. He can login to our Help Desk and download supplementary software/documentation about his product. He can also login to the discussion forums with the same credentials that were used during the purchase.
Is this too much to ask? I would appreciate any recommendations. I'd be surprised if SalesForce doesn't either offer something to this effect or provide the tools such that an ISV makes it available. Seems like it would be easy enough. That being said, I will say that I cocked my head at this statement: "He can login to our Help Desk..." Look - no one wants to log in to a help desk. No one. We log in to view our receipts, change preferences, download apps, but no one wants to have to log in multiple times (once to the main site and once to the help desk). Best of luck.