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
Vtiger
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Vtiger is a customer relationship management (CRM) solution with sales and marketing automation, project management, and inventory management capabilities.
$28
per month per user
Pricing
Kustomer
Vtiger
Editions & Modules
Enterprise
$89
per month, per user
Ultimate
$139
per month, per user
One Professional - Single App
$28
per month per user
One Professional - Standard
$42
per month per user
One Enterprise - Single App
$42
per month per user
One Enterprise - Standard
$58
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Kustomer
Vtiger
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
$10 / user / month
Additional Details
All plans require an annual subscription and 8 users minimum.
Discounts are provided for both annual subscriptions, and for high volume users.
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!
vTiger packs a ton of functionality and capability, but the challenge is getting there. In today's day where everyone is doing more with less, having a solution that meets a couple specific needs and does that well is essential. To me, at times I feel as though vTiger is trying to be a "jack of all trades" solution which ultimately ends up making it more confusing to use. However, on the flip side of that, if you take the time to learn everything about vTiger, I am sure it is an awesome tool but there is a learning curve associated with it. Finally, I would like to see more integrations with other vendors moving forward so if we cannot use vTiger for everything, at least it would have the ability to "talk" with other programs.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It is as good as you could expect for a company that operates from another continent. Emails are quickly responded to and do not usually require additional questions or answers. It is quite rare for a company of their size to be as responsive as they are and that makes them a sound choice to deal with.
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.
VTiger had better overall cost and native capabilities that other solutions lacked. We used Nutshell CRM for over a year. It was a very efficient contact management system, but it seemed that if we needed to do anything but record contacts, we had to use an add-on. We spent a lot of time exporting and importing between different services. Quoting, invoicing, and payments all had to be manually transferred to our accounting system. It was very frustrating
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.
Integration Across the Organization - What started out as just a CRM tool for sales is now being used for ticket management and project management.
Steep Learning Curve - It is not as intuitive out of the box and really requires a dedicated person to be a vTiger expert which can be challenging and time consuming.
Reliability - Sometimes features that worked yesterday don't work today, thus causing more time to complete the same exact task that was done previously. The thing that comes to mind specifically is the main search box as 1/2 the time it works, 1/2 the time it doesn't work.
