Kustomer vs. Picsello

I would say the greatest strength of Kustomer is its flexibility. In the hands of a skilled admin, it can be adapted to tons and tons of different use cases. I've been able to make custom displays for different groups of agents, produce complex cross sections of users, draw interesting data relationships combining marketing contacts and customer-initiated contacts. For example, there's really no other data source in our company which could tell you which users received a specific promo code and checked out with it, received their delivery within 14 days and then can related that to the number of times they contacted us about using our product. At the intersection of communication, marketing, data, and relationship-management, Kustomer shines at the center. I would say it falls short when you are trying to coordinate multiple "side conversations" with multiple sources to resolve an issue. This is a tough task for any type of platform, but if you're maintaining 3 different email chains with a 3PL partner, the customer, and a separate internal conversation, it would be confusing anyway!

Incentivized

Picsello helps you stay on task. I have struggled with being too nice to clients in regards to when they pay for my services but Picsello fixed that. A payment schedule is included in the proposal process so when you send the email to your client, they'll get their contract, questionnaire, pricing details and a request for payment to secure booking. That's one less item on my to-do list and I can move forward with my workflow.

• All customer data (past orders, communication with customer service, rewards account data) is in one place. This helps agents avoid confusion and reduces the number of tabs they need to open.
• The Knowledge Base (or K Base) is very helpful. Any time we roll out a new policy or have a limited-time promotion, we can add all the relevant information and worksheets there for the convenience of the agents. That way they can stay in a chat while looking up the answer to a question.
• We can seamlessly move from chat into email if the customer leaves or the queue times are too long. All the interactions will stay on the customer profile page, so they are kept up to date.

Incentivized

• Smart Profit Calculator helps you make money from your business!
• Photo Galleries are already linked to a world class printer so your clients can start ordering right away.
• Control over pricing allows you to set the profit you earn from print and product sales.
• An embed lead form is available so you can get new clients directly from your website started as a lead in Picsello.

• For our team, the feature that defaults all notes to begin in "done" status is difficult. Throughout each day we need to have notes open and assigned back and forth to different teams, and we have to remember to manually "open" each note. There is too much room for human error with this setting, and it is easy for important notes to be missed if a user forgets to open the note.
• Similarly, it can be hard to remember to assign emails/notes to a particular team in addition to a user. We almost exclusively work out of team inboxes, and if someone on Care writes an email to a customer, the email will automatically be "done" when it is created, and it will be assigned to the user who wrote it, but not also to the user's team. There are instances where an email needs to be snoozed for several days/hours with further action needed, and unless the user remembers to assign the email to their team it may "awake" from the snooze and not be visible to anyone except the user who created it. Similarly to my first comment, this leaves a lot of room for human error and is not very intuitive.
• Personally, I do not love that all tickets/emails/notes are jumbled together in the same inbox. While this gives visibility to everything on the "to do" list at the same time, it can be visually overwhelming. We have created unique folders for certain types of projects or categories of work, but have experienced tech glitches or just the awkwardness of another step to manually read the note, determine what type of category it is, and then manually assign it to another folder. Would love to have things auto-sort and take out this manual lift.
• I love the idea of the autopilot setting, but we have not been able to use this for our work because it sorts items based on time, and not based on priority. In our line of work, we may have an urgent situation arise that needs attention before an email that was sent in 60 minutes ago. The autopilot feature would push the email to my associates sooner than it would the urgent situation from 5 minutes ago. Due to this, we manually monitor inboxes and assign work to ourselves and others.

Incentivized

• People like flexibility and being able to work with previously established vendors that are different from the print vendor currently available in Picsello. I know additional partnerships are forthcoming and once they do I think this product will only increase in popularity.
• One feature that would be helpful is to be able to block off time in the calendar so potential clients can view your availability.
• I'd like to be able to enter multiple contacts under a single client. If you have a large group and you have their email addresses you could send the gallery to more than one person but from the same job.

Because there's no other tool like Kustomer

Incentivized

There is a learning curve, but it is more than worth it, especially to have a dedicated resource pointed at Kustomer and any other software it interacts with. The basic implementation is useful, and powerful - certainly a MASSIVE upgrade over taking care of your customers in an email inbox or shuffling between multiple windows and applications! It is also set up really well to grow and reconfigure with your business. I'm a big fan.

Incentivized

Picsello is a 10 because it has everything I need to successfully run my photography business. I can communicate with my client, get them booked and paid all in one location. I don't need a separate gallery manager, I don't need to remember gallery passwords, I don't have to worry if I remembered to send a contract to a client, I don't have to worry if I don't hear back from a client about their gallery because Picsello will tell me when they logged in to view it. And best of all, I know what I need to charge in order to earn the goal I set for myself and at the end of the day, it's all about earning money doing something you love!

Because Kustomer is available when you need it

Incentivized

Because ages load quickly, reports complete in a reasonable time frame, given their complexity

Incentivized

I did not reach out to Kustomer support when we had an issue. Still, whenever we provide feedback to our manager regarding what can improve based on our experience using Kustomer, our manager always comments that Kustomer support always replies with some positive feedback based on our suggestions.

Incentivized

The people at Picsello are genuinely interested in seeing you succeed! Are you having trouble deciding what to charge? They have a Mastermind Facebook group, and they have business coaching available. Are you frazzled and just need a little extra help, Customer Success is there to listen and dive into the app with you. Are you new and just need some guidance? Customer Success is there to walk you through the process or send links to demo videos or to sign you up for a one-on-one meeting. These people have been truly nice to me as I've gotten help and learned the product. Customer Service is a big deal to me and this company is going to have my business for a long time.

Because they are very hands-on in training us and very approachable

Incentivized

It was very easy to understand.

Incentivized

Nothing really because it is easy to use. After an hour of using it, we're already getting the hang of it.

Incentivized

Apps like Intercom, Zendesk, and Gorgios all treat customer inquiries as tickets, just tracking that one issue or interaction with a customer. Kustomer treats each customer as an individual, which allows us to provide top-notch customer service. Customers love that we're able to be more conversational and informal, while still solving their issues quickly. It also helps us build relationships with customers and increases repeat orders.

Incentivized

Against Pixieset: I like Picsello better for a client experience and managing pricing and galleries. Pixieset is too complicated and cumbersome. Setting up the store is required before you can sell products on Pixieset and that's one large step more than Picsello. Against Honeybook: This is a product that's too generic and doesn't have even half the features of Picsello. It might work for freelance type work but a photographer needs way more than what is offered. It's just not made for photographers so it fails to hit the mark. Shootproof is another I tried but it's just not robust enough. There aren't enough features to help you successfully run your business, but if you'd like to add music to a photo montage, they've got you covered. That's fun to have but it's more important to earn a livable income and Picsello has them all beat with the Smart Profit Calculator!

Because customer is flexible and scalable

Incentivized

• We’re getting so much positive feedback — which is not something you traditionally associate with a customer care team — because we’re making it effortless for customers to deliver both positive and negative feedback, and we can now resolve the bad feedback really really quickly.
• Primarily from our increased efficiency with Kustomer, we’ve seen a significant reduction of $3 to $4 for every cost per contact.

Incentivized

• By incorporating everything I need in a single email to my client, it saves me time. The contract, questionnaire, pricing details and payment are all sent over in one email and the automation takes over from there as the client signs everything and returns it with payment. So much time saved!
• Having all my clients saved in this platform is a space saver for my Contacts app and so easy for me to contact them on the go since Picsello is mobile-ready. I can use it's full features anywhere!
• The questionnaires are a godsend! I use to have word documents saved all over my laptop from clients but having everything in the Picsello app is way move convenient!
• The photo galleries are given a password and it's automatically entered into the email you send your clients when you share the gallery. I used to have to come up with a password and keep track of it in case a client lost it. Such a pain! This is so much easier and I literally don't even think about this anymore since Picsello does it for me!