Sparkcentral (discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Score 9.9 out of 10
N/A
Sparkcentral was a social customer care solution and cloud-based customer engagement platform that catered specifically to customer care teams within large enterprises, enabling them to deliver real-time social customer service. Sparkcentral was acquired by Hootsuite in January 2021. The product has since been discontinued.N/A
Pricing
Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Free Trial
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup fee
Additional Details—
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Considered Both Products
Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Comparing Sparkcentral with other platforms might be a bit unfair! the platform stands out in so many areas, to be honest.
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
I like how more focused Sparkcentral is around customer care specifically, whereas Spredfast does a lot of things well but no one thing greatly.
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Pros:
1. Layout is more user-friendly than the previous platforms.
2. Real-time data on system issues where each user is able to see it and respond accordingly.
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
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 …
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
I selected Sparkcentral because I am a social media engagement director, so engagement is top priority for me and Sparkcentral does exactly that. It's not focused on marketing, word clouds, etc. It's focused on the incoming social media volume of your brand.
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Sparkcentral is an innovative tool and it just works. It works better than other tools we've attempted to use. It's simple and intuitive.
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Sparkcentral is very organized and robust in terms of using it for customer service/tech support. It allows you to record detailed information about your customers, and provides thorough customer support histories which are very helpful as well.
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Sparkcentral is in an excellent place - they are the only true stand-alone social media customer care platform. We also provide support through Oracle RightNow (Chat/email), but the social add-on for that appeared to be weak. Hootsuite works fine for small teams of low volume …
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
A few months ago we decided it would be smart to look into back up options in case Sparkcentral ever had technical issues (it never has, but we like to have redundancies in place) and I could not find a company or product that offered all the features I love and have become …
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
While it was more expensive, Sparkcentral blows other competitors away with their comprehensive tools and ease of use.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Small Businesses
Simplify360
Simplify360
Score 7.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Emplifi Social Marketing Cloud
Emplifi Social Marketing Cloud
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Emplifi Social Marketing Cloud
Emplifi Social Marketing Cloud
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(16 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.7
(4 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
Discontinued Products
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
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Pros
Discontinued Products
  • 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).
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Cons
Discontinued Products
  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
Discontinued Products
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.
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Usability
Discontinued Products
The system meets all my expectations.
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Support Rating
Discontinued Products
Incredible customer service team that replies back very quickly, follows up on the reported issue till it's resolved in a very timely manner.
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Alternatives Considered
Discontinued Products
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.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Discontinued Products
  • 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.
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ScreenShots