ChatBeacon vs. Fin by Intercom

ChatBeacon is a decent choice for on-premises chat support, but the clunky agent UI sparks no joy. If your organization can use a cloud-based solution, there are plenty of other fish in the sea

Incentivized

FIN excels when the documentation available is up to date. We are a SaaS platform and have extensive documentation on the product so FIN is able to answer lots of our customers without them getting through to a human. This is a massive time saver for us. Scenarios where it's maybe not as appropriate is when you have to check data in other platforms - i.e Is the person contacting us authorised to grant us access (something we keep in hubspot). There's probably a way for us to do this but we haven't come across it yet.

Incentivized

• Easy to install and configure.
• Easy for customers to use.

Incentivized

• The ability to control who and where Fin engages through Workflows.
• It can be a one-size-fits-all for your volume, or you can control the audience/topics that Fin will be active in.
• Pricing is negotiable, and while you contract to a minimum, there aren't severe penalties for overages.

Incentivized

• ChatBeacon is just SightMax with a fresh coat of paint.
• The entire agent UI is remarkably worse than SightMax.

Incentivized

• Customizing Fin by Intercom's escalation paths could be easier (ex. if there are some inquiries we don't want passed to the human team)
• Reporting on conversations handled to completion by Fin by Intercom (not just those that are marked as "resolved")
• It would be helpful to be able to indicate to Fin by Intercom when an answer is wrong, or train it on things that it shouldn't do (not only what it should do)

Incentivized

We have been and will be continuing our journey with Intercom and nothing too concerning has happened that I have experienced or heard of that has us on the edge yet. If it ever happens it will be something along the lines of "Outgrowing" the use of need of the platform.

Incentivized

It's incredibly useful. You're honestly a little silly if you don't because it can handle simple conversations very easily and more in-depth conversations if you're willing to put in the work. It's great both as a customer success representative (with the AI agent) and as a higher-level customer success reporter.

Incentivized

always there

Incentivized

works perfect

Incentivized

Support is a strong point for ChatBeacon - their support team is small, but you definitely get white-glove service. Zero complaints about ChatBeacon support!

Incentivized

Intercom is the premier customer support/engagement model and it definitely has one of the top tier customer support teams as well. I don't think I have ever waited more than 5 minutes to get the information I need or get help with an issue. They are incredible and I aim to model our customer service department after them.

Incentivized

Easy to know the learning path

Incentivized

The implementation was surprisingly easy but we are having to adapt from our old process to work well with Intercom.

Incentivized

Before using SightMax (now ChatBeacon), we used AliveChat, which was an OK SaaS product, but the team operating the service would frequently restart the servers after maintenance and forget to start our instance back up. ChatBeacon(SightMax) as on-prem software eliminated this concern. We've been evaluating ChatBeacon vs. other products lately, and we really like how DeskPro stacks up vs. ChatBeacon - ChatBeacon is purely a chat product, and DeskPro does web chat/phone/email ticketing.

Incentivized

I used Zendesk briefly but found it difficult to navigate — I often couldn’t tell what was going on or how to simply reply to a ticket. In contrast, Intercom is much more intuitive and user-friendly. Its clean interface and support for multiple communication formats like emails, posts, and banners make client communication clear and efficient.

Incentivized

• Using website chat (often with an agent:customer ratio of up to 1:3 or more ) vs. phone support (with an agent ratio of 1:1) has greatly reduced support costs in every business unit.
• Providing realtime feedback and links (vs. phone calls) has greatly improved the turnaround on the sales and customer inquiry processes.

Incentivized

• I like how I don't feel like I need to constantly be monitoring support, especially on weekends
• It's great that the user will get some response right away, I just need to hope that the response they do get is good enough if I'm awk

Incentivized