Braze vs. Sparkcentral, by Hootsuite

Braze is the go-to solution for businesses that offer its services and products through apps. It is a comprehensive tool that will provide you with an easy and quick way to orchestrate conversion and engagement communications and tests. Both product and marketing teams will be able to deliver amazing InApps and Notifications without any help or supervision from tech teams and developers (tech help is needed for implementation and tool evolution only). Braze can also deliver messages to websites and through web push, however, if you do not own an app, I may suggest you pursue other CRM tools.

Sparkcentral has an extremely dedicated customer service team The platform UX is brilliant Reports are very detailed & easy to export The system is stable more than 98% of the time Queue management is extremely easy They need to work on a mobile app / making the website mobile friendly The ability to add more social media channels is essential

• Is constantly improving all its features.
• Cares a lot for the final user and its usability, in my case I'm constantly getting asked about feedback to improve several features.
• Is really easy to use, and the documentation and LAB are really helpful if you are starting with Braze.
• Has a strong community, where anyone can ask everything and other peers can contribute.

• The biggest advantage of the Sparkcentral platform is its "inbox zero" philosophy. With this, our customer support requests are queued within the app, and agents need to work down the queue to keep it empty.
• The app is designed from the ground up for customer care - instead of taking a generic social platform, and sprinkling in some customer care tools. Everything about Sparkcental is designed for helping our customers.
• Sparkcentral allows us to do much better CRM. We can make customer notes, see recent interactions, determine who helped the customer (and when).

• Braze could offer more tier based cost effective solutions for users who only integrate minimally.
• I think the the ability to understand how users patterns can be utilized is powerful but could be made more robust yet usable.
• Reporting without exporting to a CSV perhaps a more cloud-based reporting option.

• In the beginning our team had the option to see what another user was typing as they responded to a post. With the latest update, this was taken away. That feature was key for us to shadow agents remotely who are still in training to provide real time feedback.
• Our company has a number of different brands that we manage. Having a truly unified queue would be a great addition for us!
• The bulk resolve should allow the option to select on the posts that you wish to resolve instead of selecting a time frame for bulk resolve. Often we find that marketing posts generate more volume in the evening. However, there are sometimes posts where the customer needs assistance during that time. So, if we were to bulk resolve for a certain number of evening hours we would potentially miss a customer's concern through that option as it is currently. But, if the option was to go through and select on all marketing posts and then bulk resolve you would ensure that you are not missing a post where a customer needs assistance.

Sparkcentral has never given us a good reason to consider any other option. Aside from all the positive points I mentioned in previous areas of this review, something else that has really impressed us is their customer service (makes sense, they're a customer service company after all!). Any time we have a question or concern, we send them an email and we get a response almost instantly.

The system meets all my expectations.

We have direct support from our account manager and success manager practically around the clock when things come up that are urgent. They're even helping me post open roles for my team on internal job boards within the Braze team.

Incredible customer service team that replies back very quickly, follows up on the reported issue till it's resolved in a very timely manner.

Braze is a MUCH simpler interface than the Adobe Campaign. However, it is hard to argue that they both have the same functionality. Adobe Campaign is for a MUCH more technical team whereas Braze has a much easier user interface. I would definitely recommend Braze for small to medium-sized customers.

Sparkcentral does what it has offered to do, where other software made empty promises, Sparkcentral delivers. They also inform us, anytime they are undergoing maintenance or when Twitter or Facebook has an API change, where in previous cases we would have to discover this ourselves.

• Positive: A growth hacking experiment was proven successful in nudging users who abandoned their cart after checking out with a product/service and leaving their chart or 24 hours.
• Positive: A growth hacking experiment was proven successful in nudging users whose credit card failed when trying to upgrade to a paid account.
• Negative: With the plethora of teams (disciplines / business units / markets) with access to braze, it's easy to accidentally over-nurture users.

• Customers appreciate fast responses to the things they post on social media. This tool allows that to happen.
• The dashboard allows us to keep up with how many are waiting in our queue so we can keep up with how busy we are during the day and manage it.
• Customer satisfaction has seemed to increase while using this tool.
• Being able to add notes with the customers address and phone info is awesome as well.