Kustomer vs. Workbooks

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Kustomer
Score 8.7 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 (billed annually) per user
Workbooks
Score 4.9 out of 10
N/A
Workbooks offers cloud-based CRM, marketing automation and business applications to the mid-market. Workbooks includes order management and fulfillment, invoicing, and supplier management. Workbooks aims to provide a single 360° view of customers, where the information is accessible anytime, anywhere.
$30
per user/per month
Pricing
KustomerWorkbooks
Editions & Modules
Enterprise
$89
per month (billed annually) per user
Ultimate
$139
per month (billed annually) per user
Workbooks CRM Edition
$30
per user/per month
Workbooks Business Edition
$65
per user/per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
KustomerWorkbooks
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsAll plans require an annual subscription and 8 users minimum.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
KustomerWorkbooks
Considered Both Products
Kustomer
Chose Kustomer
I think that Kustomer is the most user friendly BUT I think the other platforms are built to do a lot more and can be much more customized
Chose Kustomer
I find it baffling how little data can be stored or associated with a customer in many other systems, and how difficult that can be to set up. It is fine if you already have a robust CDP that you can hook up and use to power your CRM, but it is rare that an organization has the …
Chose Kustomer
It has improved a lot of the training time needed for our new hires to understand the Kustomer interface and how to handle communications fully. The time invested went significantly down, and the learning curve improved a lot as well.
Chose Kustomer
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 …
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer is more modern and capable of so much more any of my other systems have compared to in technical support customer interfaces.
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer is a great fit for our organization because we can cut down on multiple contacts from the same customer and see all their information in one place. It's also infinitely customizable, so if we need changes made we can make them while still using the same platform. This …
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer is different from slack since Slack is just for communicating with the whole team while Kustomer is more on communicating with our customers.
Chose Kustomer
I have never used anything besides Kustomer and I don't know if I ever will because Kustomer is just so helpful!!
Chose Kustomer
The UI of Kustomer is a lot cooler than what we are using before. There are a lot of features that Kustomer has that make things easier and more convenient than Desk.com.
Chose Kustomer
I use both in my role with the company. Our social media channels are managed through Khoros, but we use Kustomer to notate and contact customers outside of social media. I'd much rather bring our social media channels into Kustomer, to help with efficiency.
Chose Kustomer
I have not had any experience with other programs like Kustomer.
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer has a great team that is easy to work with. They are always there to support and are pleasant, as well.
Chose Kustomer
Zendesk: In my opinion, Kustomer is more powerful when used to its full potential due to its workflows/automations.
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer is far more intuitive, personal, and holistic than Zendesk. As a company who has a lot of interaction with a single customer, it is such an advantage to take the customer approach rather than a single ticket approach. Zendesk was very limited in a lot of the actions …
Chose Kustomer
All other systems I have used have been internally-made programs that were a lot more basic order-taking systems, no notes or call functions outside of when order was placed. Doesn't really compare here.
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer simply does more than any other platform I've been able to work with. Sure some others will give you a handful of neat tricks built in for managing a channel or two but those rarely offer any external integrative capacity or limit what you can do in connections. …
Chose Kustomer
Intercom, Kayako, Zendesk, Freshdesk have all been used by myself in the past, and were evaluated before we chose to go with Kustomer.
Chose Kustomer
I was not personally involved in the decision-making process when selecting a new CRM and ultimately settling on Kustomer. That said, I'm happy with the decision to partner with them. Compared to our previous CRMs, it is much easier to work with everything in one place and we …
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer was better suited to the personalized nature of the service that we're trying to provide.
Chose Kustomer
Glovo was using Zendesk before. Kustomer is much more flexible in terms of integration capabilities and customisation.
Chose Kustomer
Moving from Zendesk to Kustomer was driven by the clarity that the customer timeline brings for advocate engagement alongside the custom workflow abilities.
Chose Kustomer
Zendesk did not give a big picture of the customer. It was more of a ticketing platform, and only gave statistics of those conversations. We were unable to track customer sentiment, or other attributes of the customer.
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer is far more scalable and flexible than Zendesk, and it provides a real omni-channel experience far from the "Zendesk for mails, Zendesk chat for chats" we were used to. On the automation and customisation features, it gets even clearer how Kustomer can deal with a lot …
Chose Kustomer
I've used Desk and other platforms in the past and none of them are as interactive or user friendly as Kustomer.
Workbooks
Chose Workbooks
We felt the high amount of customisation available from Workbooks was much more beneficial to us than the offerings from the larger CRM companies. We also liked the smaller company mentality of Workbooks as it reminded us of ourselves. Ultimately the price also paid a factor as …
Chose Workbooks
We selected Workbooks because it had a more powerful reporting engine and a much slicker way of managing the sales pipeline and territories. It also gave us the ability to manage the support contracts better and ensure that the support team knew exactly who was in an active …
Chose Workbooks
The ability to customize Workbooks really gave them the lead against the other products that we have used or that we considered when upgrading from the Base CRM system.
Chose Workbooks
I've only used SugarCRM, Workbooks is a much more sophisticated product. A huge step in the right direction and the company are much better organized now, all across the board. The reporting, lead and support management are much more reliable for our business. We can do a lot …
Chose Workbooks
Workbooks was the best overall value. It had the functionality the client needed at the best price and the quickest implementation set up and overall time frame.
Chose Workbooks
Workbooks is highly customizable, affordable, scalable, and a workhorse when it comes to being able to design a system to get things done. There is almost no limitations to what can be done with it, and even if you don't want to use their built in automation engine to design …
Chose Workbooks
Stacks up well against private sector CRM, membership MRM and fundraising management systems - We needed functionality only normally seen within one or another of these system types and we chose Workbooks due to the comprehensive nature of what it can do, ease of use, …
Chose Workbooks
For us, SFDC was like using a sledge hammer to crack a walnut. Plus the cost put us off.
CallPro CRM came a close second in our review, but what made us eventually go with Workbooks was the UI. It was a much more friendly environment to work in.
Chose Workbooks
Have worked with the likes of SugarCRM, Salesforce, Siebel, and some of their predecessors. Most of them are too much, too complex and too expensive. Have seen most of these implemenations fail. Buying these typically require much consultancy and much bespoke implementation …
Chose Workbooks
We were previously with Sugar and this served us well when we started with very little money and a few staff, however we quickly outgrew Sugar and additional functionality required custom work or 3rd party plugin's. We needed a scalable system that could grow with our business, …
Chose Workbooks
We looked at Salesforce and Sage, they were too heavy and the custom work required meant any change would be cost prohibitive.
Chose Workbooks
Much lower cost than both products Very favourable comparison in user experience with M'soft Better GUI than S'force
Chose Workbooks
Salesforce, Pivotal and Sugar. I find Workbooks much easier to use and more efficient.
Chose Workbooks
Haven't used any similar products.
Chose Workbooks
Easier to use…….and less expensive to customise.
Chose Workbooks
Sage CRM overall is a good product, but it's ease of use left something to be desired, especially with our administrative department that had little to no experience with CRM.
Another BIG PLUS of Workbooks.com over Sage is the fact that it's somewhere between 50% to 30% cheaper! …
Features
KustomerWorkbooks
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
8.1
Ratings
1% below category average
Workbooks
-
Ratings
Organize and prioritize service tickets8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Expert directory8.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications8.60 Ratings00 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket response8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
8.5
Ratings
6% above category average
Workbooks
-
Ratings
External knowledge base8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Internal knowledge base9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
8.1
Ratings
1% above category average
Workbooks
-
Ratings
Customer portal8.70 Ratings00 Ratings
IVR8.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Social integration7.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Email support10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration6.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Sales Force Automation
Comparison of Sales Force Automation features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Workbooks
7.7
Ratings
2% below category average
Customer data management / contact management00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Workflow management00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Territory management00 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Opportunity management00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail)00 Ratings6.40 Ratings
Contract management00 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Quote & order management00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Interaction tracking00 Ratings6.40 Ratings
Channel / partner relationship management00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Customer Service & Support
Comparison of Customer Service & Support features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Workbooks
6.3
Ratings
20% below category average
Case management00 Ratings6.20 Ratings
Call center management00 Ratings6.80 Ratings
Help desk management00 Ratings5.80 Ratings
Marketing Automation
Comparison of Marketing Automation features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Workbooks
7.3
Ratings
6% below category average
Lead management00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Email marketing00 Ratings6.60 Ratings
CRM Project Management
Comparison of CRM Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Workbooks
7.5
Ratings
3% below category average
Task management00 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Billing and invoicing management00 Ratings6.80 Ratings
Reporting00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
CRM Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of CRM Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Workbooks
8.6
Ratings
12% above category average
Forecasting00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Pipeline visualization00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Customizable reports00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Workbooks
7.7
Ratings
0% above category average
Custom fields00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Custom objects00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Scripting environment00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
API for custom integration00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Workbooks
7.5
Ratings
12% below category average
Single sign-on capability00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Social CRM
Comparison of Social CRM features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Workbooks
6.6
Ratings
13% below category average
Social data00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Social engagement00 Ratings7.30 Ratings
Integrations with 3rd-party Software
Comparison of Integrations with 3rd-party Software features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Workbooks
6.9
Ratings
9% below category average
Marketing automation00 Ratings6.70 Ratings
Compensation management00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Platform
Comparison of Platform features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Workbooks
4.2
Ratings
58% below category average
Mobile access00 Ratings4.20 Ratings
Best Alternatives
KustomerWorkbooks
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Salesmate
Salesmate
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
SysAid
SysAid
Score 8.9 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
KustomerWorkbooks
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.4
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.1
(0 ratings)
6.4
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
KustomerWorkbooks
Likelihood to Recommend
It works really well for you to ask a teammate to review a case/email/message and provide some input since you can all review the same conversations and client accounts. They can also cover your inbox using your email handle in case you are out of the office suing some well deserved PTO.
Read full review
Workbooks offers great support, as do ( in our experience) local partners. It works really well for our sales and marketing departments. Workbooks is really effective in tracking our marketing campaigns. It also keeps tabs on existing clients, and gives insight on how quickly potentials are turned to customers.
As with all CRM it strongly depends on how well it is being maintained and used by the user. We have found that with the ease of use of Workbooks its become much less of an issue. Where as before we didn't only look at the data produced but actually had to keep track of the system being used accurately. We constantly needed to keep tabs on the actual level of maintaining.
The fact that we see data being produced organically (naturally being updated and tracked) to me is a testament of the user friendly nature of workbooks.
Read full review
Pros
  • 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
  • Sales process management from enquiry to delivery of product
  • This was previously on as many as 4 systems using excel and legacy applications such as the written word in log books
  • Automatic reporting for financial compliance: once built, the reporting process reduced the workload on a monthly basis from 2 days to 20 minutes
  • The FD loved it
  • The overall capability of the package enabled the sales force to rapidly pull our pertinent data for a sales call, plus managing time and resources better for increased efficiency
  • Business development and focussed marketing became so much easier, we noted that the process paid for itself many times over
Read full review
Cons
  • 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.
Read full review
  • We use it for support but find it difficult to easily link support emails that arrive to organisations, it requires a lot of manual input to open/close a case
  • The flexibility can be a hindrance as it can be difficult to work out exactly what you wish to see, especially in reports. Sometimes a simple report is all thats required but it provides a lot of information
  • Can sometimes be a little slow and goes down from time to time but this is fairly rare
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Because there's no other tool like Kustomer
Read full review
the product works. support has been good or great so far all has been great and we hope to get more from the product. we purchased for an initial year then renewed for a longer term, we have no regrets with this.
Read full review
Usability
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.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
Because Kustomer is available when you need it
Read full review
Workbooks CRM never let me down.
Read full review
Performance
Because ages load quickly, reports complete in a reasonable time frame, given their complexity
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
It’s a great tool that has helped our company and overall customer service. I believe if we were able to edit certain setting for our specific company that would be hopeful. We have been told before that certain desires of ours would make a change throughout all of Kustomer. Which is not something we would want, we would just want that to change for our business.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
In-Person Training
Because they are very hands-on in training us and very approachable
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Online Training
It was very easy to understand.
Read full review
Workbooks online trianing does what it needs to; but some training will always be better suited to face to face..
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Nothing really because it is easy to use. After an hour of using it, we're already getting the hang of it.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
I find it baffling how little data can be stored or associated with a customer in many other systems, and how difficult that can be to set up. It is fine if you already have a robust CDP that you can hook up and use to power your CRM, but it is rare that an organization has the resources or the customer-focus to rally behind setting up their customer service/experience team up for success. With a platform like Kustomer, you can actually evolve the relationship over time, or use the past experiences (number of contacts, purchases, previous issues, etc.) to power your next steps with a customer, making for a much more nuanced relationship with a human, not just a ticket.
Read full review
Workbooks is highly customizable, affordable, scalable, and a workhorse when it comes to being able to design a system to get things done. There is almost no limitations to what can be done with it, and even if you don't want to use their built in automation engine to design highly specific workflows, the functionality out of the gates is a tremendous asset for most businesses
Read full review
Scalability
Because customer is flexible and scalable
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • 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
  • Tracking of customers who are in active support or not has benefited the support team's time by not supporting non paying customers.
  • Keeping track of why sales are won or lost has meant we can call upon times when new leads have the same characteristics as old wins/loses.
  • Creating auto invoicing scripts has drastically cut the finance team's invoicing time.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Workbooks Screenshots

Screenshot of Activity ManagementScreenshot of Dashboard for Customer ServiceScreenshot of Dashboard for SalesScreenshot of Marketing CampaignsScreenshot of Organisation RecordScreenshot of Person Record