Agorapulse vs. Verint Channel Automation

Agorapulse has been a huge benefit to us as a business and is the most comprehensive platform we've used, having previously been with Hootsuite and ContentCal. It is likely to be better for companies that are managing multiple social profiles and want to consolidate these into one manageable platform. Given the amount of features it provides, it might not be suitable for individuals. The reporting is a fantastic part of the platform, which includes brand awareness for certain profiles, the best time to post for engagement, and details that all help with strategising. The inbuilt link shortening and tracking is useful, we've set this up and need to explore its capabilities further. Overall, we would recommend Agorapulse and it's a great asset to our business.

Incentivized

From experience, you may ask the Conversocial team to make recommendations on licenses for larger vs. smaller social customer service teams. The need for support and the amount of usage you may get from the tool's robust offering may differ as a result of those precedents. The tool is adaptable in both scenarios it would seem.

• Calendar sharing - great for internal and external approval
• Community management - it means we can keep on top of engagement for all of our clients in one place
• Report - it's really useful for us to be able to create such in depth reports that we can use internally but also share with clients so they can see the results of what we are doing

Incentivized

• Previous conversations: This is one of the main reasons why I personally love Conversocial over Hootsuite and other social media engagement tools. Conversocial pulls in all previous interactions we've had with community members and it helps us identify if we've already addressed their problem, if they are a detractor/advocate, and so much more. With other engagement tools, it's frustrating as a community member may repost the same thing over and over again, but at different time periods. If you're unable to see what someone has said in the past, we may waste our time replying to the same thing multiple times, or we also risk responding with the same general advice, when we could try a different approach.
• Tags and filters: Conversocials use of tags and filters are extremely simple to use. They have shortcuts which help you easily assign a tag to an item and then you can easily pull up each of those tags within Conversocial itself or your can open up an external report. If my team is in a hurry and wants to quickly see a certain tag, we can use the filter option and within seconds we have all the information we need.
• Simple shortcuts: Conversocial has several shortcuts that save my team a lot of time. One single button on my keyboard can apply sentiment and archive something so it's out of my way. I can also use shortcuts to apply a tag, assign an item, and do other tasks. It may seem like a small benefit but each second saved really adds up throughout each day and week.
• Communication: As we know, technology has issues and every tech issue Conversocial has experiences has been handled extremely well. I've never encountered any issues contacting Conversocial, we're always notified when they are working on a solution and once the problem has been fixed. We also receive random pop-ups within Conversocial to notify us of known issues before our team experiences them, and when there is a new feature that we should be aware of. Their communication is always on point and it's great to know that we can always rely on them.

Incentivized

• Would love to have a draft feature. We often don't schedule things until the assets are ready, or use a placeholder image and swap them afterwards
• Editing posts intended for multiple channels is not as easy as scheduling them in the first place. I would love to edit and have the same menu I do as when I'm scheduling where I have my base text and then the adjusted text for each social media. It's rare that something I've planned to be a similar post across channels, needs editing, but only for one of those channels. e.g. Correcting mistakes or changing strategies.
• Currently, I export the analytics and put it in a Google Sheet where I have more control over the data, which I love. For me to use the Agora Reports system, I would need substantial features like comparing metrics in the same charts, using direct line charts instead of smoothed (smoothed charts look nice, but just obfuscate data), separating out paid growth, etc. It's probably too large an ask for what Agora is trying to provide, which is why the export tool is very useful.
• While I'm talking about it, a slight bug with the export tool is that when you export two things in quick succession, it just sends a duplicate of the first report via email. I'll export a CSV of Global data and then a CSV of Content, and if I do it too quickly, it doubles up the Global data and I don't get the Content until I resend.
• More specific filtering for listening. Sometimes someone has our brand in their name and we get ALL of their content. We have to add each user like this to the filter instead of being able to filter out usernames that contain it.

Incentivized

• I would like to see an improvement in the reporting dashboard which is something I mentioned to Josh (the CEO) on a call back in April. He said that it is something they are working on but to remember that this is truly a customer service social media platform so some of the features that I would like to see may not fit well with the users of the product.

Incentivized

The decision has been made. It's time to get to work--no steps back. I feel confident this product is well suited to help me make progress. I want to get down business and utilize the functionality of this product to meet my marketing goals. I feel very comfortable with the choice I have made.

Incentivized

The only two reasons we would not continue using Conversocial are it's lack of comprehensive analytics and its lack of Radian6's categorization tools. Tags make up for the categorization pretty well, however, and we're considering switching everything over to this now that we've tested tags for a couple months within Conversocial. (I previously wrote that Conversocial lacks support for some social channels like Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, but they have now added Instagram and YouTube.)

Any time I onboard a new team member, they are very quick to adapt to Agora's user interface and therefore require a very quick onboarding process from me, which is a massive plus. While I think having an all-in-one platform would be ideal, there is something to be said about only having a few bells and whistle so that my team can focus on what is most important to us and our clients, content

Incentivized

Because of the number of features it offers and the manner in which they're presented. I've explored a number of other tools that just don't do it as well. When sorting through and responding to hundreds of social media messages each day, the number of clicks it takes to do something really matters. Conversocial does a great job of minimizing clicks and presenting the data we need without having to click to find it

Agorapulse occasionally has outages or shuts down. It never interferes with my use of the application or any of my posts

Incentivized

Downtime is very rare, and the occasional occurrences are typically a problem with Twitter or FB API.

Agorapulse has generally had great performance. Occasionally I have issues with my videos being posted on Instagram. I still am not sure why. the format of the videos is the same as the videos that are going through.

Incentivized

Extremely fast, practically in real time.

The support from Agorapulse is excellent. Any time we have made contact they have been quick to reply, and given added extra information to help. The initial sales experience was also good. Not pushy like a lot of other companies, more that they would like to help. And they certainly did for us at a difficult time which built a fantastic relationship with us from the very start. Communication is great too, with just the right amount of emails and updates. Overall we feel that they genuinely care about their clients and users.

Incentivized

Our account rep at Conversocial has set up a call with me every two weeks to check in, talk about new features, or answer questions. I know I can email or call her for help anytime. Their support team also responds quickly.

I did not train in person

Incentivized

Comprehensive training in all aspects of the software and general usages (including social media) for both agents and managers. Simulation workshops really made the live deployment process very smooth.

The staff walked me through the whole platform and asked me if I had any questions. They were very helpful in answering any questions I had.

Incentivized

Outstanding & comprehensive training both on-line and instructor-led. Another crucial differentiator from competitors in our eyes.

Be sure of the game play mechanics you need to achieve your objectives, it will help significantly in setting up the game and creating the assets

Without any tech requirement on our end, this was an extraordinarily easy implementation to run, compared to other platforms like live chat or email.

Want to post the same content on different profiles? Don't duplicate your posts, you can just select what platform to post them onto! You can even change around the copy/hashtags/etc to optimize the posts for each platform.

Incentivized

Early on we did comparisons with Hootsuite and later with Adobe. While they have similarities, the difference at the time and likely currently, was the personal interest and general accessibility of Conversocial's platform and people. The combination of an effective CRM solution and a team that was readily available to help proved to be the winning formula for our business.

I'm not sure I understand what is meant by scalability.

Incentivized

• It has saved our company a lot of time digging through all different social medias to be responsive to consumers
• It has helped us be more responsive to prospects, so better lead generation
• Agorapulse allows us to be in touch quicker with our prospects, meaning better lead to appointment generation as well.

Incentivized

• One of the biggest benefits we are seeing is that we have reduced the number of post-holiday complaints coming into head office. Since we are responding to issues and concerns as they arise, we can impact overall customer satisfaction.
• The efficiencies gained from using a centralized platform for managing the response process has enabled us to reduce our team by 50%.
• We can track that we are responding to a fan's first message within 30 minutes.
• We can track the number of messages each user engages with.
• We can see the most effective times of day to post and reply.