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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Penelope

    Score6.7 out of 10
    Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
    Bonterra’s Penelope is a configurable and secure case management system designed to help social good organizations save time for their staff, improve data quality and reporting, and better serve and connect with their participants.

    $400

    per year per user

    Salesforce Agentforce Service

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AService Cloud is a customer service platform that helps businesses manage and resolve customer inquiries and issues. It provides tools for case management, knowledge base, omni-channel support, automation, and analytics, enabling companies to deliver exceptional customer service experiences.

    $25

    per month

    Pricing
    PenelopeSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Editions & Modules
    Basic
    $400
    per year per user
    Starter Suite
    $25
    per month
    Pro Suite
    $100
    per month per user
    Enterprise
    $165
    per month per user
    Unlimited
    $330
    per month per user
    Agentforce 1
    $550
    per month per user
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    PenelopeSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsPenelope software is priced on a Named Active Users model, with a minimum of 25 users. There’s also a one-time fee for implementation of the software, and our Tailored Services team is available to quote on additional services as required.—
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    PenelopeSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Considered Both Products
    Social Solutions
    No answer on this topic
    Salesforce
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    70%
    Would buy again
    21 Answers
    91%
    Would buy again
    52 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    85%
    Delivers good value for the price
    17 Answers
    88%
    Delivers good value for the price
    43 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    87%
    Happy with the feature set
    26 Answers
    93%
    Happy with the feature set
    53 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    88%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    15 Answers
    88%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    36 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    76%
    Implementation went as expected
    13 Answers
    87%
    Implementation went as expected
    39 Answers
    Features
    PenelopeSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Penelope and Salesforce Agentforce Service
    Feature
    Penelope
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Agentforce Service
    8.0
    81 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings8.279 Ratings
    Expert directory00 Ratings7.857 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.267 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings6.962 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings8.779 Ratings
    Ticket response00 Ratings7.978 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of Penelope and Salesforce Agentforce Service
    Feature
    Penelope
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Agentforce Service
    8.7
    76 Ratings
    8% above category average
    External knowledge base00 Ratings8.567 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.874 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Penelope and Salesforce Agentforce Service
    Feature
    Penelope
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Agentforce Service
    7.9
    81 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Customer portal00 Ratings7.858 Ratings
    IVR00 Ratings8.037 Ratings
    Social integration00 Ratings7.451 Ratings
    Email support00 Ratings8.880 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings7.870 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    PenelopeSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    PenelopeSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Likelihood to Recommend
    6.9
    (32 ratings)
    8.7
    (100 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    6.2
    (8 ratings)
    Usability
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.2
    (22 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.4
    (45 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (7 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.0
    (20 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    PenelopeSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Social Solutions
    Even if Penelope by Social Solutions is useful for case noting and any other file management, coordination and reports, it is not user-friendly. It does not let you delete your mistakes easily, it does not let you go back, and all the other issues mentioned, which are minor, added too much for a system that is supposed to support your work. However, some of the characteristics have been chosen by the system administrator and are not Penelope by Social Solutions's fault.
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    I think Service Cloud is best suited for medium to large operations that require both proactive and reactive service. It’s a great fit for post-sales support. However, I wouldn’t recommend it for very small companies because it can be quite costly, and many of the features may go unused. Salesforce also performs best when you have a capable team managing it, so it’s important to consider your organization’s size and readiness before starting. Once you do, I recommend exploring other parts of the Salesforce ecosystem—Service Cloud works even better when integrated with Sales Cloud, since it allows better visibility across teams.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Social Solutions
    • Provides time-saving features by automatically compiling data to an individual file from multiple areas.
    • Allows staff to be updated on important information in real time.
    • Provides a user-friendly experience and ease of access for staff with all levels of technical experience.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • Email to case is an interesting piece of it. The threading is very strong, sometimes too strong, but it does very well at handling the incoming emails.
    • The omnichannel routing, using skill-based routing is really effective.
    • Pathing. So making the workflow and helping the team understand what it is that they're trying to do, what they have to accomplish, those step-by-step pieces. That's really helpful.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Social Solutions
    • The feature for the date of birth times out too quickly.
    • You can't upload any files that may have a symbol such as a . in their title.
    • The learning modules could be more concise making it faster to find the help you need.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • We had a principle initially to try and use Omni as much as we can from the user experience perspective, but have found that fairly restrictive. It was very difficult to actually get the right customer experience and customer engagement going. So we're actually on a journey at the moment to replace all of our Omni with Lightning web components that gives us that flexibility. That's probably one area where we've had some challenges in terms of how we've used the product out of the box.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Social Solutions
    Penelope is saving us so much time and providing us with much-needed consistent regular data tracking and documentation. It has been a game-changer for our organization and we should have had it years ago. It has allowed us to have an efficient organized system to use daily in our non-profit agency.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Professional edition works best for a small company with lower call volumes and is very useful but as you grow exponetially I think it has limited ability to do all the things we want to - SLA management, defect, release management to name a few. Reports and dashboards being available in real time.
    Read full review
    Usability
    Social Solutions
    Penelope has a lot of features and options which is one of the reasons why it is so great. With a lot of features also comes a lot of time to learn all of them. For someone who is part of the development and implementation process, it is a lot of learning to fully understand how everything works. This is good to know in advance when choosing a team to develop your database. The great thing about Penelope is that you can customize the features for each level of staff that will be using it so the staff only have access to the parts of Penelope that they need and will be using regularly. This makes the training process for staff a lot easier.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    I had Salesforce experience prior to using Service Cloud which made it a little easier to learn and navigate, but overall my team (some who had no Salesforce experience) caught on very quickly and found Service Cloud to be easy to use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Social Solutions
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    Working on an application that caters to customer needs requires a platform that acts as a mediator between the actual person and the client. This mediator handles the customer and resolves many of their doubts, helps them map through the entire process, and automates the processes. Such a platform is Salesforce Service Cloud. For queries that cannot be serviced by the platform, it creates a separate ServiceNow ticket for us, and it is assigned.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Social Solutions
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    The Salesforce Service Cloud generally has very good performance, however the overall new Lightning user experience can bring that down. For example, if you have too many tabs open, then it can take a while for the Lightning UI to load. This UI is probably not well equipped to handle loading of all of that information at once, but Users tend to leave their tabs open all day long. It can also be fickle depending on which browser you use, what extensions you have installed, and whether you've cleared your cache. This can be the downfall with any software as a service though, not just Salesforce
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Social Solutions
    Our support person with Penelope has been a dream to work with since day one. She is accommodating to our ever-changing schedule and has worked around us for training and Zoom meetings. She is always available via e-mail and is quick to respond to our many inquiries throughout the development and implementation process. Our Zoom meetings have been like talking to a long-time staff member. She explains things in a way that everyone can understand and will review with us as needed. She has been innovative in ways that Penelope can work for us and our needs and we have been so pleased with the support we have received.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Salesforce offers support, although it generally gets routed to overseas support teams first, and once they are unable to help, it gets escalated up the chain to higher tiers. Frequently, the answer back from support is that there is no native solution, and we either have to turn to the AppExchange for some solution provided by another developer, or custom build our own solution.
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Social Solutions
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    Our in-person training was provided by our implementation partner and it was quite good. This was in part because we were already working with them and so it naturally leant itself to a good training relationship. And because they were building our customizations and configuring things, they could then provide training on those things naturally.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Social Solutions
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    Trailheads are great but it was often unclear what actually applied to our organization. This made it difficult to get a whole lot out of it. Part of it is that because the basic Salesforce features didn't quite work for us, we had to add customizations, which then nullified a lot of the training.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Social Solutions
    Be sure to have a good team of staff that will be on board with the training and will dedicate time and energy to the process. You want to have people who are motivated and excited about the new program that you are investing in.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    I would go through an implementation very differently knowing what I know now. It was difficult coming from systems we liked in post-sales service and having to adapt to the clunky and underwhelming feature set in Salesforce. I would trim back our expectations
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Social Solutions
    Penelope is more controlled, well designed, and easy to use. We like that Penelope has some structure to it while having a decent amount of opportunities to be configurable to our own specific needs. Our staff finds Penelope easy to navigate and enter their data into the system in a reliable and easy way. We valued that at the time of purchase, Penelope was a Canadian company that understood our specific needs as a Canadian nonprofit.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    We selected this product because we already had some competencies in Salesforce. We own a Salesforce partner with expertise in this area, and on top of that, Salesforce purchased it — it was originally called Velocity. When Salesforce decided to acquire it, that finalized the decision for us.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Social Solutions
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    The product has scaled up with our company growth just fine. No issues here other than slowness in clicking around and running reports
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Social Solutions
    • Created the need to hire temps to correct data incorrectly entered based on a poor initial setup.
    • Frustrated staff to the point many stopped entering services that were essential for receiving funding.
    • Gave me an excellent understanding of what happens when core functions are lacking.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • We have cut our service team in half over the past 5 years due to the efficiency of the tool
    • The amount of direct inquiries to our technical team is less than 10% compared to the number support tickets that get entered in the system for them to work in a more organized manner
    • Responses are 100% more timely because tickets can be responded to by any individual in the queue or on the team, as opposed to direct emails to just one person
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Salesforce Agentforce Service Screenshots

    Screenshot of Workflows and OrchestrationScreenshot of Service CatalogScreenshot of Contact Center