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.
$8,544
per year for 8 users (minimum)
WORKetc
Score7 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
WORKetc is a cloud-based business management system. With integrated CRM, project management, billing, help desk, reporting, and collaboration, teams can access one system for all relevant information. The system supports popular third-party apps such as Google Workspace, Xero Accounting, Quickbooks Online, Outlook, Dropbox, and Evernote.
$78
per month
Pricing
Kustomer
WORKetc
Editions & Modules
Enterprise
$89
per month (billed annually) per user
Ultimate
$139
per month (billed annually) per user
Starter Edition
$78
Per Month for up to 2 Users
Team
$195
Per month for up to 3 Users (Each extra user + $49/month)
Foundations
$395
Per month for up to 5 Users (Each extra user + $59/month)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Kustomer
WORKetc
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
All plans require an annual subscription and 8 users minimum.
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!
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
If you are looking for a way to organize customer data and projects across regions, then WORK[etc] will get the job done. For our company, the country is divided into 3 regions and each region has a team of workers in charge of providing ongoing support services to that region. WORK[etc] has organized our company exponentially and given us a solid database to pull from to ensure we're meeting contractual requirements, providing timely deliverables and staying ahead of the game. Because I only work in a service industry, I don't know if WORK[etc] would be appropriate for product based companies, However, if you were offering anything [product or service] that required online support, the system will function well.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Connecting all the different methods of communicating with our clients into one place is the best part of the application to us. The Google Apps integration lets us update all of our WORK[etc] details directly from our email page which saves a huge amount of time. It lets us move back and forth freely between WORK[etc] tools and our Google Apps email, documents, calendar, etc. with ease.
Breaking work according to what we are doing helps us group and ungroup things as needed. Since we do tech support and so much more having the ability to connect projects, support cases, to dos, documents, discussions, and more all together makes it easy to work with the relationships of all the different activity.
We have found the discussion tool to be vital to moving things through quickly. There are many discussions that are just FYI while others really need a decision or answer form the team members. Discussions allows us to quickly note the people we need to answer us and what is there as an FYI. It keeps all that history so our decision process become documented easily and not lost in email chains.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The one key issue that it doesn't solve is resource utilisation. You are able to add the number of hours that each "to do" will take but you can't allocate that to an employee and then aggregate all that up to show how much capacity you are using or have left.
One if its great benefits is its flexibility but that is also a drawback because there are multiple ways to do the same thing. This means that to ensure consistency across all employees having your own business procedures on how to use WORKetc is vital.
Some of the financial processes don't fully reflect UK practice currently. For instance it doesn't deal with VAT on expenditure well. However we have been assured that this is being resolved.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We, as a company, have put a lot of time and energy into building the system to where it is for us today. With its constant improvements and our continually learning and developing, I couldn't imagine moving away from WORKetc to try a different system out. This really does give us everything that we've wanted/needed in a system without having to utilize 2-3 different products. The part that makes this so unique compared to other systems that we've used in the past is the fact that it has a project management piece built in, and that in itself is a huge driving point in why we will continue to use this.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
My staff hates it, our clients require transparency and you manual have to enter notes, billing is horrific, as it does not subtotal by type - so as a T&M shop there is no way to easily see how much was spent to each matter or service type.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
WORKetc compares well in regards to speed and reliability to other cloud-based products we use such as Google for Work. Compared to our old in-house based CRM, it is a superstar; faster, more reliable and easily run on a variety of browsers and smart phones. The program loads fast as do data screens for contacts, projects, invoices and more
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
WORKetc offers maybe the best support in the business. Product documentation and training resources are outstanding. Support tickets or inquiries are answered quickly. If you do need to address an issue in person, it is easy to schedule a 15 or 30 minute live call with their fantastic support staff who are fast, friendly and skilled
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The implementation of the system was fairly easy. Because of our previous experience with a similar system, we were ready and working on the product as soon as we announced the switch. The system also allowed us to simplify our processes by integrating timesheets and project management directly into our CMS.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We needed a CRM that would work with US. We found WORK [etc] was exactly what we needed. being able to customize the CRM around our company and further change as we go has been the best thing about it. We haven't been locked into how it is set up and can change it very quickly.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Setting up project templates is time-consuming - if you want to do it right. Nevertheless, it is well worth it! Routine complex projects that used to require at least six people and at least as many "silos of information" are now done with two or three people, and - at most - 2 or 3 silos of information. And that's only because I haven't fully integrated the program with our Accounting programs (and there is an API for Quickbooks). I'd say the initial investment of perhaps 80 hours on my part was saved five or ten times over during our first six months, with better accuracy, accountability, and documentation. Since then, the ROI is at least 20 or 30 times annually of my time...the one thing I can't buy more of.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info