Five9 vs. Qvidian RFP & Proposal Automation

We use Five9 as a tool to make and receive calls from various departments such as Customer Service, Underwriting, Claims, and others. It's a tool that has helped us complete various tasks to contact our customers. It has also allowed us to replace Zoom Phone, as it makes it easier to assign new contact numbers to agents, while Zoom Phone only allows reusing numbers. It's a good tool with an easy-to-use interface for new users.

Incentivized

This software is very well-suited to companies who find themselves expanding their footprint, the number of their Sales representatives, their territories, and/or their products and services and need to maximize their ability to both keep up with those demands whilst streamlining their proposal resources. Further, this is a very powerful tool with a lot of features and functionality including CRM plug-in and reporting. Thus, it may be less appropriate for a very small organization with only one product and that is also blessed with lengthy cradle-to-grave turnaround windows. In addition, to better the odds for success an investment in upfront personnel training and either a dedicated periodic window of time and/or dedicated person(s) for content upkeep are prudent. Finally, working with the vendor is a delight as they make every effort to maintain and deliver a product that both meets your needs and on which you can rely.

• Inbound and outbound calls it process is so well.
• The service is so good and they give very efficient support in customer need.
• The calls we can do in Five9 include incoming, outgoing, voicemails and we can also send a note to a specific person. It's a very reliable mode of communication.

• Using Qvidian as an RFP tool has made a difference in our RFP process, turn-around time, and content development. It's helped us streamline our RFP process so that we are able to produce the majority of the document before the kick-off meeting, which means we have more time to customize and refine the document before it goes to print.
• Additionally, it took several hours before to gather all of the basic data we needed for an RFP, but now we can have the majority of the response ready in under 15 minutes in most cases. We are also able to start projects from our phones (iPhone thru Safari) or on an iPad. This has been extremely helpful while traveling.
• Finally, our content is centrally located on a searchable database. Previously we had used several free tools to aid in content storage that would allow us access easily via search. It never seemed to do what we wanted, and when we did find something, we weren't sure if it was the most current or usable. The library functions in Qvidian have been a huge help, and has changes the way we collect data, and retrieve it.

• Text. Texting is incredibly difficult on Five9. We've had issues with only some texts logging to Salesforce, issues with threading of text conversations, and issues with having Salesforce contact information appear on the text widget (knowing who you are texting, not just their phone number).
• The interface to "pause" is challenging. There are not good reminders to our reps to remember to pause or log out of Five9. If you forget to log out, this can affect stats about who worked the longest hours that day - and it's hard to know who actually was active on the phones.
• Inbound voicemails are too-easily hidden. It's challenging for a lot of our reps to remember to check their inbound voicemails because it is hard to access them in the Five9 widget.

Incentivized

• One area where Qvidian occasionally struggles is feature regression. For instance, the editing option that puts multiple records into one document had always been present in Qvidian; however, when the multi-edit feature that only allows editing one record at a time was released in version 9.1, the original editing functionality was removed. This caused me a lot of frustration, as it severely slowed down my work flow since I could now only see and edit one record at a time. It wasn't until a year later when version 10 was released that the old editing functionality was added back. However, one bright spot of version 9.1 was an added feature that allowed organizing records by simply dragging and dropping them into different categories. This was much easier than having to right click on a record, select Move, then right click on a folder and select paste. However, with version 10, this feature was removed and I'm now back to having to right click on records instead of dragging and dropping. It seems that with each release, I never know if something I like will be taken away or if something I don't like will be added -- sometimes it's both.
• A recent change that was added in version 10.1 that I personally view as a negative is that Qvidian now handles all requests server side instead of on the user's computer. This means that if a user wants to export or edit a large number of records, they have to wait for Qvidian's server to generate a report of those records. Depending on the number of records, this can be very quick (a few seconds) or very long (I've waited up to 20 minutes before) depending on how taxed Qvidian's servers currently are. I understand the reasoning behind the move, in that it takes the load off of a user's computer so that other applications they currently have open aren't affected by added memory usage, but in practice I find that it only slows down my workflow. Any somewhat modern PC shouldn't have any trouble handling a large report request from Qvidian.
• Although Qvidian is certified for use in several different browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome for Windows), it doesn't offer the same functionality in each one. For instance, in Explorer, when a record is selected for editing or export, it will automatically open in Word. In Firefox, a pop-up dialog appears and a user has to click Open in order for the record to appear in Word. And in Chrome, the file is added to the download bar and a user must click on the file there for it to open, unless they add an exception to .docx file types to automatically open in Word (which I had to do, since I prefer using Chrome). Other simple features such as right clicking on a folder or record to bring up Qvidian's context menu are hit or miss depending on the browser. In Explorer, everything is generally smooth, though the browser itself is slower than the other choice. In Firefox, right clicking generally works but sometimes has some hiccups, and in Chrome, more often than not right clicking brings up Chrome's context menu instead of Qvidian's, which often leads to having to first select a folder and then click the dedicated Actions button in Qvidian to perform the desired action. No matter which browser you use, there will be some sort of functionality that doesn't quite work as expected.

Robust product, great reliability and support.

Incentivized

The tool provides us with the functionality we need to perform more efficiently and we have not identified another product that offers enough "nice to haves" in addition to the "must haves" to warrant a compelling reason for changing tools.

overall usability is very great. User friendly interface for agents within the Salesforce with the engage button. Easy to go offline and online. Very good Integrations with Salesforce helps lot of clients that implemented Salesforce. As it is cloud based, agents can access it from anywhere. While the agent experience is goof, as a technical person it is hard to manage with the Five9 VCC and also the reporting User Interface is bad and slow when there are large amount of records.

Incentivized

The shift they made in architecting documents from content to outline, is now reversed allowing outline creation first, then content which is more natural. But, due to the fact that we went through a migration of content to get to the new version, it feels less optimized than if we would have re-implemented.

End users having to configure settings more often than desired

We have had minimal downtime due to system outages since it was implemented.

Incentivized

Qvidian system maintenance is performed on weekends, usually at odd hours, and advanced notice is given so that teams can plan accordingly.

The system's performance is great. Page loads quickly. Reports are generated quickly and sent to our email or FTP. The integration did not impact the performance of our other applications. We have not seen any drop in the performance of either applications since we performed the integration.

Incentivized

Remote or VPN employees seem to have somewhat slower access time. Server maintenance has improved performance.

Finding occasional recurring prompts to update settings in Microsoft (Explorer, Word, Excel, Powerpoint)

Five9's Customer Support team is also based in Manila Philippines, thus turnaround email response times for our reported issues are great for our requirements. Their CS agents also facilitate mobile calls to followup on outstanding issues and operate on a 24/7 schedule. We've also had experience working with the senior tech agents to investigate recurring issues to completion.

Incentivized

They are very much in support of great customer service. They respond quickly with emails and in some cases phone calls to resolve any issues and often times user questions in the past when I could not figure something out.

Incentivized

Live instructor training is expensive, though we have had instructors come to our offices for a ‘refresher’ before. The refresher was more of a “let us fix that for you” than a training on how to do it ourselves.

I took the certification course for administrator and also received some tips while working with the developer during implementation. The UI was very intuitive, so I was able to figure out how things worked when I configured the users, skills, campaigns, IVR scripts. I worked with the Five9 AI team to beta test Agent Assist.

Incentivized

Online training is limited in my opinion.

The implementation team that was assigned to us was great. The project manager was very helpful and managed the timeline very efficiently. The developer was very helpful and provided insights while helping us configure the system.

Incentivized

IT works great. UPgrades are handled automatically. I was not involved in setup but I know they are there when we need them

Incentivized

Initially selected Five9 but have since switched to RingCentral which has given us what we needed. Better CRM integration, simpler and in my opinion more robust reporting capabilities and the same omnichannel solution at a fraction of the cost

Incentivized

We have been using Qvidian for years, when Compass was introduced in our company. Having spent over a year using Compass, I would not recommend it for writing proposals. In all fairness, that is not Compass' strength. Compass is ok for general document sharing for informational purposes. It does have a Presentation Builder function for creating PowerPoint presentations, but it is cumbersome and not very flexible. Specifically, the linkage is awkward and files may have to be re-linked when they are updated. In addition, the architecture only allows you to create a couple of levels of content. The search function is very limited. Compass is a newer project and has not fully matured.

We do annual renewals and it's concurrent licensing which is great.

Incentivized

It was very easy to add additional licenses. Once we placed the order, it was activated the following day. Since it's web-based, it's very quick to deploy across multiple sites.

Incentivized

Five9 Professional Services team is very knowledgeable and efficient. I worked with them during implementation and during beta testing for Five9 Agent Assist and Ai Insights.

Incentivized

• Cost savings: Five9 replaced a premise-based outbound dialer and a different virtual call center solution for inbound.
• Cost savings: Five9's voice over IP is less expensive than the land lines we were using.
• Cost savings: Five9 requires significantly less management than our previous solutions.

Incentivized

• The positive impact has been to know we have a system that can house legally-approved responses to questionnaires. The good about this is that if we have a simple RFI that does not require a lot of response customization, we can draw upon previously-approved responses and create output MUCH quicker, without the need of laborious and time-consuming legal reviews of RFIs or DDQs we produce for prospective clients. Quicker, easier output with less internal review = efficient RFI process and quicker turnaround time to respond to our client/prospective client base.
• The negative impact has only been the time it takes to orient oneself with the program, and REMAIN oriented. As we do not do RFIs on a daily basis, it is easy for us to become rusty, or to take short-cuts because we do not have time to re-train on the program. Those shortcuts and workarounds tend to cause us not to use the program to its full potential and lead to counter-productivity in some cases.