ServiceNow Customer Service Management vs. Sparkcentral (discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
ServiceNow Customer Service Management
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Built on the Now Platform, ServiceNow offers their Customer Service Management solution through the Standard and Professional Customer Service Management bundles. Both include agent workspace, knowledge management, survey and assessment module, and the community module, oriented in this edition to support customers rather than internal employees. The Professional bundle also includes performance analytics, predictive intelligence, and related tools to support customer support agents improvement…N/A
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
ServiceNow Customer Service ManagementSparkcentral (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ServiceNow Customer Service ManagementSparkcentral (discontinued)
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ServiceNow Customer Service ManagementSparkcentral (discontinued)
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
ServiceNow Customer Service ManagementSparkcentral (discontinued)
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
ServiceNow Customer Service Management
7.0
6 Ratings
12% below category average
Sparkcentral (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Organize and prioritize service tickets7.66 Ratings00 Ratings
Expert directory7.95 Ratings00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications7.15 Ratings00 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation4.55 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission9.16 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket response6.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
ServiceNow Customer Service Management
4.8
5 Ratings
47% below category average
Sparkcentral (discontinued)
-
Ratings
External knowledge base4.44 Ratings00 Ratings
Internal knowledge base5.15 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
ServiceNow Customer Service Management
6.3
6 Ratings
20% below category average
Sparkcentral (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Customer portal7.24 Ratings00 Ratings
IVR5.34 Ratings00 Ratings
Social integration3.54 Ratings00 Ratings
Email support7.45 Ratings00 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration8.25 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
ServiceNow Customer Service ManagementSparkcentral (discontinued)
Small Businesses
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Simplify360
Simplify360
Score 7.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Emplifi Social Marketing Cloud
Emplifi Social Marketing Cloud
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP Service Cloud
SAP Service Cloud
Score 8.7 out of 10
Emplifi Social Marketing Cloud
Emplifi Social Marketing Cloud
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
ServiceNow Customer Service ManagementSparkcentral (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
7.4
(6 ratings)
10.0
(16 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(4 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
ServiceNow Customer Service ManagementSparkcentral (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
ServiceNow
It is well suited for medium to large companies that manage different teams and need to communicate constantly and track progress in a timely manner. It is less suited for small enterprises as it will overwhelm users with the features and functionalities embedded.
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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
ServiceNow
  • Allows for clear communication between help desk and end users.
  • Provides a clean inventory option for both hardware items and software licenses.
  • Navigation is very intuitive and user friendly.
  • Many reporting features for all levels of the company.
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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
ServiceNow
  • Adding in additional chat features would be nice
  • Viewing where you stand in priority
  • Having a way to automate more of the processes
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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
ServiceNow
No answers on this topic
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
ServiceNow
Bottom line is that it does what you need it to do. We've been using Service Now as a ticket managing tool for a few years now. There's really not much it can't do when it comes to recording interactions. It has been nice using inventory tracking for software licenses and hardware as well.
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Discontinued Products
The system meets all my expectations.
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Support Rating
ServiceNow
Support has been very good. Any time there has been a real issue, the team has responded very quickly and identified the issue without a lot of repetitive questions that I've seen from other services. There is a great external community and internal knowledge base that covers pretty much anything you need.
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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
ServiceNow
Connectwise targets small to medium enterprises and kept things simple for cross-organizational communications. On the other hand, ServiceNow with users with more than 500 at least, tends to create lag and tension when all are using the app at the same time, especially getting reports in a timely manner.
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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.
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Return on Investment
ServiceNow
  • The negative impact for my team is the delay in team completing tickets but not a system issue.
  • A positive impact for my team is we can easily view the status of tickets and the follow-up emails are beneficial to maintain records of tickets.
  • Negative impact is that there is no user job aid or helpful tools for new users.
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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