Khoros Care vs. Zendesk Support Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Khoros Care
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Khoros Care enables brands to serve their customers on their preferred digital channels, reducing costs and increasing customer satisfaction and revenue. It Offers: Web chat & messaging gives customers convenient, efficient channels to engage brands, while giving brands a single consolidated platform to manage customer engagements at scale. Supporting the widest range of digital messaging channels, including; web chat, in-app, email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,…N/A
Zendesk Support Suite
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
The Zendesk Support suite is a cloud-based customer support software built for better customer relationships. Designed to improve customer satisfaction and to support customers on any channel: text SMS, web, mobile app, phone, email, social media. The vendor states more than 200,000 companies such as Uber, Groupon, Box, Airbnb, and Slack are using Zendesk to lower their support costs, raise productivity, and increase customer satisfaction. Zendesk offers a full suite of products to meet customer…
$19
per agent/month billed annually
Pricing
Khoros CareZendesk Support Suite
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Support Team (Foundational Support Only)
$19.00
per agent/month billed annually
Suite Team
$49.00
per agent/month billed annually
Suite Growth
$79.00
per agent/month billed annually
Suite Professional
$99.00
per agent/month billed annually
Suite Enterprise
$150.00
per agent/month billed annually
Additional Enterprise-Ready Plans, starting at...
$215.00
per agent/month billed annually
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Khoros CareZendesk Support Suite
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalOptional
Additional DetailsPricing is variable based on the needs of the customer.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Khoros CareZendesk Support Suite
Considered Both Products
Khoros Care
Zendesk Support Suite
Chose Zendesk Support Suite
Salesforce.com cases - we use Salesforce.com as our CRM and it is the support system of record for our company's other major product line (our enterprise solution). Salesforce.com cases is more flexible than Zendesk, and therefore ultimately more powerful, but Zendesk is easier …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Khoros CareZendesk Support Suite
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Khoros Care
-
Ratings
Zendesk Support Suite
5.9
88 Ratings
32% below category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings6.587 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings4.754 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings4.962 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings5.358 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings7.288 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings7.087 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Khoros Care
-
Ratings
Zendesk Support Suite
5.5
78 Ratings
37% below category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings5.874 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings5.369 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Khoros Care
-
Ratings
Zendesk Support Suite
5.4
86 Ratings
40% below category average
Customer portal00 Ratings5.569 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings3.528 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings5.853 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings6.584 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings5.963 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Khoros CareZendesk Support Suite
Small Businesses
Simplify360
Simplify360
Score 7.7 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk
Score 8.9 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Desk.com
Desk.com
Score 8.4 out of 10
SAP Service Cloud
SAP Service Cloud
Score 9.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Khoros CareZendesk Support Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(73 ratings)
6.3
(126 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(41 ratings)
10.0
(39 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(7 ratings)
10.0
(19 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(4 ratings)
8.6
(26 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(4 ratings)
8.0
(20 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(11 ratings)
8.7
(49 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
7.3
(1 ratings)
7.9
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(46 ratings)
9.0
(35 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.3
(3 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.5
(38 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Khoros CareZendesk Support Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
Khoros Care is great for quick responses on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, which are our three most used platforms. Based on what I have seen, it would be better to have a more in-depth review module that allows for better response capability. Right now, it seems that Khoros Care only allows us a bird's eye view of sentiment and issues, versus handling all responses across various review platforms.
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Zendesk
Zendesk Support Suite implementation means an industry-class help desk with a dynamic interface that brings together all customer interactions from almost any channel allowing agents to respond faster to customer queries and with the right context. It is more than just a help desk since it also acts as a CRM by allowing us to organize workflows, processes and track customer engagement.
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Pros
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
  • Manages and pulls in posts from communities, Facebook, and Twitter so we can address them in one place as opposed to logging into each site natively.
  • Khoros Care has great analytics. I like the customizable dashboards; we use them for weekly reports to upper management.
  • Khoros Care helps our social media manager manage and monitor our teams.
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Zendesk
  • Zendesk makes it easy to see if a question/ticket has already been answered/updated (and to see who answered it).
  • Zendesk makes it easy for users to indicate if they are available to respond or not.
  • Zendesk also makes it easy to respond as you can respond within the software/system. A one-stop process!
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Cons
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
  • More options to customize the default templates for the smart views in analytics or the pre-made one for work queues and agents
  • Automated and customized exports from analytics without the need to use APIs
  • More granular priorities or prioritization methods (like a point system)
  • More metrics to prioritize conversations with, like answer speed of the author, time waited since last answer, custom attributes, etc.
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Zendesk
  • Allow each user to customize the look of their Dash, rather than being hemmed in by company selections
  • Provide a way for Suspended tickets (created by emails from non-users) to be better managed
  • Set a timer for tickets to reopen on a more individual ticket basis.
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Likelihood to Renew
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
I don't see any reason why we would not renew. We have had a great overall experience, and other than some support concerns, everything has run smoothly. In addition to the platform, our experience with the bot has been really good. We average between 25-30% of our volume handled by the bot, while still maintaining easy-to-use offramps for customers.
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Zendesk
There has not been a reason to consider anything else as the core functions work perfectly for ticketing. Also Zendesk continues to focus on new functionality, growth of the API and Apps framework and add more partner application to the list. Not only will be renew but it is likely we will add seats as we grow and expand our customer focused teams.
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Usability
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
The ability to auto tag, manually tag, make notes, and "snooze" posts is extremely helpful. The efficiency of the work flow for agents is also a huge plus. It keeps agents moving quickly and prioritizing responses for the cases that need it most.
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Zendesk
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
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Reliability and Availability
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
No issues.
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Zendesk
In the past year, I'd say I have only noticed maybe two hours total of downtime in my own usage. Very minimal.
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Performance
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
No issues.
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Zendesk
There has been minor performance degradation on a very few days out of the two years I have been using the product.
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Support Rating
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
Khoros [Care (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)] has made several improvements to its support and engagement for clients. Response times have improved and the need to seek support has drastically reduced, highlighting the improvements in the experience to reduce customer pain.
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Zendesk
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.
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In-Person Training
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
The team received training (from the same executive team member who has been supporting us) over the web and this was of very high quality.
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Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
No answers on this topic
Zendesk
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.
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Implementation Rating
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
The implementation was very easy! They work diligently to ensure that everything that you want to monitor is put into one place eliminating the worry of missed interactions and as needs change the ability to edit what's being searched for is quick and easy to set up.
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Zendesk
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
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Alternatives Considered
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
We previously used Hootsuite. Hootsuite was very clunky for Customer Service, and oftentimes it would end up that agents would accidentally step over each other, send out multiple responses, or struggle to identify posts to work. Hootsuite was more intended for marketing and struggled at times with response. However, Khoros Care is a good balance of both, and also has tools specific to marketing versus customer service. Additionally, Khoros now has far more platforms than we previously had in Hootsuite.
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Zendesk
I have not used any other support software, but also evaluated FreshDesk. For our needs at the time, Zendesk was more polished and had the ability to support multiple websites in a single instance, while allowing customization for each brand separately. That was crucial to us, and is why we went with Enterprise.
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Scalability
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
I see the Khoros team bringing on new employees and different expertise as their platform grows to more brands. They are dedicated to ensure they are growing with their customers and building new products to fulfill the needs of their customers request
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Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
  • Less overheads due to automated features in the tool.
  • Stopped using external survey tools and used care CSAT surveys, this resulted in cost-cutting.
  • Saving time by responding to customers quicker.
  • Ability to manage different channels in one platform and unified reporting.
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Zendesk
  • The main part of the IT department is able to quickly prioritize and delegate tickets as they come in.
  • Tickets can be linked to each other and support articles, creating opportunities for more efficient responses.
  • Central location for users to ask for tech help when they don't need to know which staff member is the appropriate person to ask.
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ScreenShots

Khoros Care Screenshots

Screenshot of Lithium ResponseScreenshot of Keep agents focused with a single, prioritized to-do listScreenshot of Unify multiple channels in a single engagement hubScreenshot of Increase efficiency with advanced workflows and operational insights