Likelihood to Recommend 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
Read full review Inbound messaging it is top notch, it does it well and couldn't imagine anyone's program doing it better. Like I said before been using ZenDesk for over 7 years and absolutely love it. We use the talk feature with the phone very limited so Zen works fine for us, but if I was running an inbound or outbound call center I don't believe Zen has all the functions I would want as a manager. For limited phone use and mostly email, text, and even web chat, ZenDesk works great. Having the iOS App is so great and flexibility with notifications allows my team to be "on call" anytime without unnecessary interruptions
Read full review Pros 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). Read full review Reporting and Analytics Ease of Agent Training and Use Able to add multiple brands with related custom reports and dashboards Adding a new brand and basic help center is easy to do without the need of an expert or web team Ability of agents and supervisors to see customer history across multiple channels Read full review Cons 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. Read full review I think the Graphical User Interface could use a facelift. It not the most aesthetically pleasing platform in my experience. Particular things like where the default is when you click on each and every dropdown menu. The macro integration could be a little more simplified. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Zendesk is super easy to use and navigate. I really enjoy the sleek layout, the ability to tailor tickets, the macro option, and the quick key guide they have to make your use of time even more effective. My whole team loves working with Zendesk and rarely ever has problems.
Read full review Usability The system meets all my expectations.
Read full review As an agent it's very simple to use. As an admin it's also easy to use, but sometimes lacks some functionality that would be nice to have such as expanded native 2 way sync functionality for many major apps that are commonly used today like
HubSpot and Salesforce. The ability to add followers to tickets to they get updates and are in the know without the customer seeing this agent cc'd is a nice touch. This ensures additional visibility and easily following the communication without having to appear as a CC to the customer, who could accidentally remove that person in a response, thus breaking the visibility
Read full review Reliability and Availability In the past year, I'd say I have only noticed maybe two hours total of downtime in my own usage. Very minimal.
Read full review Performance There has been minor performance degradation on a very few days out of the two years I have been using the product.
Read full review Support Rating Incredible customer service team that replies back very quickly, follows up on the reported issue till it's resolved in a very timely manner.
Read full review Every time I contacted them they were not only very responsive and knowledgable, but always seemed to have a positive upbeat attitude. It probably helps that we did not have significant service outages or sev 1 level issues, but even my lower severity issues were quickly answered. And the positive and upbeat attitude really made things feel comfortable.
Read full review Online Training Zendesk has tons of available material for training - videos, webinars, articles, etc. The only reason this is not a 10 is because it can be hard to figure out how to navigate to these things and find what you are looking for.
Read full review Implementation Rating I was very satisfied. They have a free trial for 30 days and I recommend you do that and use it. It is very easy to get started with the basics and the build on over time. The only thing technically complex was single sign-on and integration to Salesforce.com required some tweaks – otherwise setting up system was very easy
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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 If spoken honestly Intercom is a level-par with any nearest competitor, Tools like Zendesk has to catchup with them in speed. However, there is an advantage to Zendesk with its simple and easy-to-get software which falls in every mid and small-size business pocket wherein Intercom is way too expensive and needs a tech admin to customize the product. The kick-starting feature with negligible configuration made Zendesk the ideal choice of our organization + the budget fell under our expenses.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review The positives weigh more than the negatives here, as it gives us a one-stop portal where we can tend to customer needs using one web app It has also helped us identify areas of improvement based on the reporting feature The value it provides outweighs any missing or lacking features that I'm sure will be available in the future Read full review ScreenShots Zendesk Suite Screenshots