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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Kayako

    Score6.8 out of 10
    N/AKayako is a help desk and customer support platform that helps businesses automate workflows, improve agent productivity, and deliver personalized customer experiences across email, chat, and social media.

    $79

    per month

    Olark

    Score10 out of 10
    N/AOlark is a website live chat tool for engaging website visitors while they browse. It can be used to to track leads, drive sales, provide support.

    $15

    per month

    Pricing
    KayakoOlark
    Editions & Modules
    Kayako One
    $79
    per month
    Enterprise
    Contact Sales
    Self Service
    $19.00
    Per Agent Per Month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    KayakoOlark
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    KayakoOlark
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Kayako and Olark
    Feature
    Kayako
    2.0
    11 Ratings
    122% below category average
    Olark
    -
    Ratings
    Organize and prioritize service tickets1.011 Ratings00 Ratings
    Expert directory1.05 Ratings00 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications1.08 Ratings00 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation1.07 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission7.011 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ticket response1.011 Ratings00 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of Kayako and Olark
    Feature
    Kayako
    1.0
    9 Ratings
    156% below category average
    Olark
    -
    Ratings
    External knowledge base1.09 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base1.08 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Kayako and Olark
    Feature
    Kayako
    1.0
    10 Ratings
    156% below category average
    Olark
    -
    Ratings
    Customer portal1.07 Ratings00 Ratings
    IVR1.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Social integration1.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Email support1.010 Ratings00 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration1.06 Ratings00 Ratings
    Chat Analytics and Reports
    Comparison of Chat Analytics and Reports features of Kayako and Olark
    Feature
    Kayako
    -
    Ratings
    Olark
    10.0
    1 Ratings
    14% above category average
    Chat history and transcripts00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Chat reporting00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Chat and web analytics00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    KayakoOlark
    Small Businesses
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Gist
    Score9.5 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Zoho SalesIQ
    Score9.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Genesys DX (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    KayakoOlark
    Likelihood to Recommend
    1.0
    (22 ratings)
    10.0
    (18 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.8
    (11 ratings)
    8.6
    (5 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Availability
    7.5
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    2.1
    (4 ratings)
    9.8
    (2 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    KayakoOlark
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Kayako
    When it works, It's without a doubt a great help desk solution. It is perfect for our usage, and have rolled it out company-wide. It's great if you have multiple departments. We have it set up so most items come through a single desk that then hands out tickets to their proper department. There may be cheaper options for smaller organizations but for one that is as service-driven as ours, we really think Kayako is a great fit.
    Incentivized
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    Olark
    Olark chat is easy to set up and use. You can have more than one user logged in to monitor the chat on different computers. This makes a fast response time more likely. Although you have to be sure to keep your volume up on the computer so you hear the sound letting you know there's a chat waiting. I like that you can see the customers path through the website and you can put clickable links while you are in a chat to guide the customer to a product or a help page. Plus you can see if they actually went there. This makes it easier to upsell
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Kayako
    • Gives a very good report on an individual level of what is being done for a customer or corporate issue.
    • Easy to understand who has what, what the tickets are about, how long they have been opened and how many times the customer/employee have gone back and forth with each other.
    • Nice dashboard view.
    Incentivized
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    Olark
    • Olark is user friendly for both sides of the CHAT conversation. If you are initiating the chat, or the one receiving the chat, it is extremely easy to follow and use. There are many different levels of computer use comprehension and Olark is for every level.
    • Olark has reporting features to allow you to check the quality of your employees chat abilities as well as their productivity. It provides feedback for the employee themselves to also see how they are doing and take any suggestions the customer may leave for them regarding their chat experience.
    • Olark is very affordable and offers you the option, at a low cost, to look bigger and more professional that you even are. We were a smaller company and has the chat option with Olark and now have grown tremendously and STILL have the Olark chat option. Olark allowed us to grow and provide professionalism to our customers .
    • The Olark program allows you to set up quick responses to keep your customer from waiting, and to allow your employees to not have to retype the same response over and over. It is a great program that the employees really enjoy as well. It reminds you if you forgot to log out when you left your desk and provides your customer a quick note giving them the option to send the chat as an email inquiry instead, so you don't miss a thing.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Kayako
    • Departments need a bit of work. Even though you can have multiple departments, the only changes that can be made are globally. If you want independent queues within the departments, you have to do a lot of work that can be very confusing.
    • Survey system is not up to speed. Kayako really needs to add Net Promoter Score into their system. Also, if a staff user removes their name from an incident ticket, it removes them from the survey so you really can't even get a good estimate of how well your staff is in the eyes of the customer.
    • Very difficult to implement when you already have a customer base. Setting them up in organizations is difficult. Also, the sign-up for new customers is quirky. If you send an email to Kayako, it will say you are not an authorized user, however, it will store your email address. If you try to send an email a second time, it will go through. This is one of many reasons why we decided to move from Kayako to Oracle Service Cloud.
    Incentivized
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    Olark
    • Not really an area of improvement for Olark specifically, but I will offer that it is incredibly important to keep in mind your company's "shopping hours" or peak traffic times (there is a Reports feature on the software that allows you to analyze peak traffic times).
    • Transcript history can be a little tricky - if you're searching for a specific past conversation, sometimes you may get multiple search results and have to sift through them until you find exactly what you're looking for.
    • I'd also offer that you will occasionally come across folks that are on your site to cyberbully or say nonsensical things. While there isn't an absolute fullproof way to deal with this, Olark does offer a nice "block" feature to disregard any unwanted conversations.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Kayako
    • We are grandfathered in on their old Software-assurance pricing and our continued use costs us only a few hundred dollars a year (excluding hosting expenses)
    • Our team's processes are now heavily ingrained in the system
    • We have not been shown a more compelling option that is more cost-effective while still offering all the features we've come to expect
    Incentivized
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    Olark
    To be honest, renewal decisions are not currently within my power. Hypothetically speaking, I'm very comfortable with the platform, have used it daily for nearly a year, and would see no reason to switch to anything else. The small criticisms I had are not significant enough to deter me from using Olark. It's a user friendly, effective tool for our department.
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    Usability
    Kayako
    I did not come from an IT background and I picked this program up quickly
    Incentivized
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    Olark
    It is simply easy and customizable to be exactly what you need it to be
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Kayako
    They are really good, but it takes a while to get back, because of the large time difference to the Eastern US. However, they are very helpful.
    Incentivized
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    Olark
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Kayako
    • We didn't have to use support too much, but when we did, they were able to assist us and help us make everything work.
    • Mostly we used their Online KB and step by step instructions to get all of our issues resolved.
    Incentivized
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    Olark
    Our organization does not have any complaints about Olark's Support. Anytime we reached out to them for assistance, we received a prompt, helpful reply! As mentioned previously, we used Olark fairly basically so we didn't have too much need to work with their support team other than a few general questions here and there. They were always pleasant to work with.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Kayako
    Three years in we are about as happy with Kayako as we could be. We've had several employee's leave and on-boarding new hires was easier than it has ever been as things are uniform and consistent across the entire application.
    Incentivized
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    Olark
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Kayako
    We were using Spiceworks for a few years before switching to Kayako but found that it wasn't as customizable or as user friendly for our customers. The SNMP scanning and inventory features with Spiceworks was nice but we needed more of a Help Desk that would allow us to scale our services to more companies.
    Incentivized
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    Olark
    Olark has an easier implementation process and has better functionality such as the ability to send commands through the platform to either create a ticket in your CRM or push an opportunity to salesforce; you're even able to 'push' the end user to a web page. Implementing their SDK is a snap as well.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Kayako
    • Tickets were definitely responded to faster once we implemented the audible alarm that would go off when new tickets came into the queue. This was possible because of the API.
    • Since the system was email based we could set our monitoring software up to generate tickets automatically via email for customers when it found something out of the ordinary.
    Incentivized
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    Olark
    • Olark allows my customer support team to respond to inquiries much faster than before.
    • We have seen an uptick in sales as we are able to address more questions from website visitors.
    • We have changed the design of our website based on chat feedback and questions obtained through Olark.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots