KANA Express, discontinued vs. Kustomer

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
KANA Express, discontinued
Score 3.3 out of 10
N/A
Verint Express (formerly KANA Express) was a cloud-based multi-channel customer engagement / experience platform that was owned and supported by Verint since that company's 2014 acquisition of KANA Software. The product has since been discontinued.N/A
Kustomer
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
Kustomer is a customer service CRM platform built for managing high support volume by optimizing experiences throughout the customer service journey. Kustomer was acquired by Facebook in late 2020, but spun out in 2023 and re-launched as an independent entity, Kustomer, LLC.
$89
per month per user
Pricing
KANA Express, discontinuedKustomer
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Enterprise
$89
per month, per user
Ultimate
$139
per month, per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
KANA Express, discontinuedKustomer
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAll plans require an annual subscription and 8 users minimum.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
KANA Express, discontinuedKustomer
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
KANA Express, discontinuedKustomer
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
KANA Express, discontinued
-
Ratings
Kustomer
8.6
17 Ratings
9% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings9.116 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings8.314 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.513 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings8.013 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings8.417 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings9.217 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
KANA Express, discontinued
-
Ratings
Kustomer
7.3
13 Ratings
6% below category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.213 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings6.413 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
KANA Express, discontinued
-
Ratings
Kustomer
8.6
17 Ratings
11% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings8.611 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings8.310 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings7.614 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings9.217 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings9.212 Ratings
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KANA Express, discontinuedKustomer
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Score 8.9 out of 10
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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CustomerSuccessBox
CustomerSuccessBox
Score 9.5 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Quadient Inspire
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Score 9.4 out of 10
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Salesforce Service Cloud
Score 8.7 out of 10
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User Ratings
KANA Express, discontinuedKustomer
Likelihood to Recommend
3.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(38 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(2 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(4 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.9
(7 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.6
(2 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.3
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(2 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.2
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
KANA Express, discontinuedKustomer
Likelihood to Recommend
Discontinued Products
If your business has more than 50 users, don't use KANA Express. User management and setup is not intuitive, and back-end email management takes a large amount of time. If your business emails more than one recipient and expects replies from more than one recipient, don't use KANA Express. The system is built for one-question-in, one-answer-out. Anything more than that requires extra customization or is impossible, according to their development team. If managing your inbound email either internally or externally is critical to your operations, don't use KANA Express. Downtime is more frequent than is acceptable, and their Netherlands advanced support team's hours make down-time in the western hemisphere a lot longer than it needs to be.
Read full review
Kustomer, LLC
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!
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Pros
Discontinued Products
  • Allows you to manage multiple email queues with different business rules.
  • User interface is somewhat intuitive, allowing users to navigate fairly easily.
  • Admin controls allow for a considerable variety of customization.
Read full review
Kustomer, LLC
  • 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.
Read full review
Cons
Discontinued Products
  • KANA Express is NOT set up for business models where email is conversational and involves multiple recipients and responses. If your business model is one-question-in, one-answer-out, then KANA Express will probably work for you.
  • Since signing on with them, KANA Express' support team has been severely lacking in expertise and acceptable turnaround times, especially when the platform encounters a system-wide issue to leads to downtime. Our assigned sales contacts jumped ship with the company almost immediately after we went live, which is never a good sign.
  • Admin panel and functions are very antiquated and not user-friendly at all. Email management through the admin tool lacks crucial insight that prevents admin users from being able to easily route and manage emails. Our organization had to write our own KANA user guides that KANA Express then took and started using themselves and for other clients.
  • The KANA Express platform does not have proper spam or auto-reply management tools. Admin users must manually turn off the KANA Express auto-response emails in order to prevent email loops with other parties' auto-responses.
  • Analytics options are lacking. Admin users must run at least three separate reports in order to gather appropriate insight as to user activities and metrics.
  • Email queue/user set up is not intuitive. If adding a new queue or user, all users must be manually adjusted to include that new queue. There is no mass-edit tool for KANA Express users.
Read full review
Kustomer, LLC
  • Small chat window--maybe the ability to chat in real-time with the person who received your ticket would help.
  • Different teams could have differently colored notes.
  • The notification bell could be a bit bigger. It's hard to keep track sometimes, when a lot of notes pile on.
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Likelihood to Renew
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Kustomer, LLC
I believe at this time, Kustomer is doing a good job. I really love its functionality at the moment.
Read full review
Usability
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Kustomer, LLC
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.
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Reliability and Availability
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Kustomer, LLC
I gave it a 10 rating because it is very helpful and the availability is there when needed. I have never had issues with application errors or unplanned outages so far.
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Performance
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Kustomer, LLC
Kustomer Performances need improvement. The pages do load very slowly but that might be because of the information they carry. If Kustomer integrates with other software or systems it does slow the performance. They need to find a solution to this.
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Support Rating
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Kustomer, LLC
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.
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In-Person Training
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Kustomer, LLC
Because they are very hands-on in training us and very approachable
Read full review
Online Training
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Kustomer, LLC
The best training I did was online. Videos teach as well as explain how everything works and what Kustomer's functions are.
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Implementation Rating
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Kustomer, LLC
Nothing really because it is easy to use. After an hour of using it, we're already getting the hang of it.
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Alternatives Considered
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Kustomer, LLC
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.
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Scalability
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Kustomer, LLC
Because customer is flexible and scalable
Read full review
Return on Investment
Discontinued Products
  • KANA Express was originally presented as an excellent alternative to Fastraq, an email management system that was in EOL during the time we were shopping for alternatives. Unfortunately, our originally planned ROI was not achieved due to lost functionality and broken sales promises, leaving us with an email management system that's built more on workarounds than out-of-the-box solutions, requiring considerable time for admin activities that could be avoided by a better-designed system.
Read full review
Kustomer, LLC
  • 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.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Kustomer Screenshots

Screenshot of Example of a customer profile within Kustomer.Screenshot of Example of how Kustomer’s automated chats can save agents time by handling less complex requests automatically.