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Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board vs. Olark

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board

    Score9.1 out of 10
    Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
    Social Squared is a SharePoint Discussion Board App that can be deployed across SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams. Social Squared improves productivity and efficiency by providing structured discussion forums for employee and student discussions. For Microsoft SharePoint Social Squared is a SharePoint discussion board application where users can post questions within relevant forums and receive answers to their questions from subject matter experts. The…

    $2,200

    per year per installation

    Olark

    Score10 out of 10
    N/AOlark is a website live chat tool for engaging website visitors while they browse. It can be used to to track leads, drive sales, provide support.

    $15

    per month

    Pricing
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardOlark
    Editions & Modules
    Social Squared Discussion Board
    From $2200
    per year per installation
    Social Squared Discussion Board Enterprise Edition
    POA
    per year per installation
    Self Service
    $19.00
    Per Agent Per Month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardOlark
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsPrices stated are minimum per installation for "stock" products. $2.20 per user/year on top of base price. Enterprise editions can be amended to suit business needs if deemed necessary, additional costs incurred and TBD. All packages include free technical support. Free upgrades available to latest versions of tool as they are released.—
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardOlark
    Project Management
    Comparison of Project Management features of Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board and Olark
    Feature
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    9.1
    1 Ratings
    16% above category average
    Olark
    -
    Ratings
    Mobile Access9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Search9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Communication
    Comparison of Communication features of Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board and Olark
    Feature
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    9.1
    1 Ratings
    13% above category average
    Olark
    -
    Ratings
    Chat9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Notifications9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Discussions9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internal knowledgebase9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    File Sharing & Management
    Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board and Olark
    Feature
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    9.1
    1 Ratings
    12% above category average
    Olark
    -
    Ratings
    Versioning9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Video files9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Audio files9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Document collaboration9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Access control9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Chat Analytics and Reports
    Comparison of Chat Analytics and Reports features of Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board and Olark
    Feature
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    -
    Ratings
    Olark
    10.0
    1 Ratings
    14% above category average
    Chat history and transcripts00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Chat reporting00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Chat and web analytics00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
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    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardOlark
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    User Ratings
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardOlark
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (18 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (5 ratings)
    Usability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.8
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardOlark
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Lightning Tools
    Their customer service it top notch and always responsive. I struggled in the beginning a little bit because I'm not tech savvy and we had to add it to our SharePoint site but they helped me along the way and even had share screen meetings with me to assist!!
    Read full review
    Olark
    Olark chat is easy to set up and use. You can have more than one user logged in to monitor the chat on different computers. This makes a fast response time more likely. Although you have to be sure to keep your volume up on the computer so you hear the sound letting you know there's a chat waiting. I like that you can see the customers path through the website and you can put clickable links while you are in a chat to guide the customer to a product or a help page. Plus you can see if they actually went there. This makes it easier to upsell
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Lightning Tools
    • Organizing Data
    • Opens up discussion, whether publicly or anonymously
    • Easy to setup
    Read full review
    Olark
    • Olark is user friendly for both sides of the CHAT conversation. If you are initiating the chat, or the one receiving the chat, it is extremely easy to follow and use. There are many different levels of computer use comprehension and Olark is for every level.
    • Olark has reporting features to allow you to check the quality of your employees chat abilities as well as their productivity. It provides feedback for the employee themselves to also see how they are doing and take any suggestions the customer may leave for them regarding their chat experience.
    • Olark is very affordable and offers you the option, at a low cost, to look bigger and more professional that you even are. We were a smaller company and has the chat option with Olark and now have grown tremendously and STILL have the Olark chat option. Olark allowed us to grow and provide professionalism to our customers .
    • The Olark program allows you to set up quick responses to keep your customer from waiting, and to allow your employees to not have to retype the same response over and over. It is a great program that the employees really enjoy as well. It reminds you if you forgot to log out when you left your desk and provides your customer a quick note giving them the option to send the chat as an email inquiry instead, so you don't miss a thing.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Lightning Tools
    • I would love to be able to assign various people as administrators of different topics (this may be an option now but a couple years ago it wasn't)
    Read full review
    Olark
    • Not really an area of improvement for Olark specifically, but I will offer that it is incredibly important to keep in mind your company's "shopping hours" or peak traffic times (there is a Reports feature on the software that allows you to analyze peak traffic times).
    • Transcript history can be a little tricky - if you're searching for a specific past conversation, sometimes you may get multiple search results and have to sift through them until you find exactly what you're looking for.
    • I'd also offer that you will occasionally come across folks that are on your site to cyberbully or say nonsensical things. While there isn't an absolute fullproof way to deal with this, Olark does offer a nice "block" feature to disregard any unwanted conversations.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Olark
    To be honest, renewal decisions are not currently within my power. Hypothetically speaking, I'm very comfortable with the platform, have used it daily for nearly a year, and would see no reason to switch to anything else. The small criticisms I had are not significant enough to deter me from using Olark. It's a user friendly, effective tool for our department.
    Read full review
    Usability
    Lightning Tools
    Our employees really like the fact that they can find things easily with the search feature and add questions and comments as they see fit.
    Read full review
    Olark
    It is simply easy and customizable to be exactly what you need it to be
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Olark
    Our organization does not have any complaints about Olark's Support. Anytime we reached out to them for assistance, we received a prompt, helpful reply! As mentioned previously, we used Olark fairly basically so we didn't have too much need to work with their support team other than a few general questions here and there. They were always pleasant to work with.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Olark
    Olark has an easier implementation process and has better functionality such as the ability to send commands through the platform to either create a ticket in your CRM or push an opportunity to salesforce; you're even able to 'push' the end user to a web page. Implementing their SDK is a snap as well.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Lightning Tools
    • We signed up for a 3 year contract and hope to do another 3yr contract when this one is up. :)
    Read full review
    Olark
    • Olark allows my customer support team to respond to inquiries much faster than before.
    • We have seen an uptick in sales as we are able to address more questions from website visitors.
    • We have changed the design of our website based on chat feedback and questions obtained through Olark.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board Screenshots

    Screenshot of MODERN, RESPONSIVE SHAREPOINT DISCUSSION BOARD
Discussion Forums can be created for a variety of different reasons. This example is a Forum Group for the Microsoft 365 technologies such as Teams, Planner, and SharePoint. Forums are then created within the Forum Groups for more specific discussions. Under the SharePoint Forum Group, there is a Forum for SharePoint On-Premises and SharePoint Online. Anyone looking to ask a question regarding SharePoint 2019 for example would be able to post their question under SharePoint On-Premises rather than SharePoint Online. This also allows subject matter experts to focus more on the questions that they can respond to and provide value.Screenshot of SHAREPOINT DISCUSS BOARD – TOPICS VIEW
When navigating into a forum, the topics and discussions that are taking place are shown. Any new topics that not yet read will be highlighted. It also displays whether topics have been answered, their average ratings, how many views and posts are within the topic, and also provides the ability to subscribe to the forum to be notified of new posts within it.Screenshot of READING DISCUSSIONS AND PROVIDING FEEDBACK
Social Squared offers a threaded discussion view with the ability to provide feedback to other users.

Posts can be rated, voted upon, or liked by users in order to give feedback to the user creating or responding to a post. Additionally, replies can be marked as answered or marked as featured, which gives readers of forums assurance that the response they are reading is validated to be the correct answer.

Users also receive feedback through the earning of badges. The more users post or mark posts as answered, the more points are rewarded. This makes it easy to spot subject matter experts.Screenshot of SUGGESTED TAGS
Social Squared provides a rich text editor for creating and replying to topics. The Rich Text toolbar provides functionality such as inserting images, YouTube videos, Stream Videos, Formatted Code Inserts, as well as font formatting.

While typing, suggestions on how to tag a post appear. Selecting an existing tag will provide consistency in the tags used making it easier for other users to discover the post.Screenshot of SOCIAL SQUARED TAG CLOUD VIEW
The Social Squared Tag Cloud view makes it easy to navigate to posts within a specific category even if they span multiple forums. The more a tag appears in different posts, the more prominent it will be in the tag cloud. Users can navigate to posts with the tag in one click.Screenshot of DISCUSSION BOARD WITHIN MICROSOFT TEAMS TAB
Social Squared is a Discussion Board App for Microsoft Teams Tab’s and Microsoft Teams Personal Apps. Social Squared provides information workers the ability to post questions within relevant forums, and receive answers from their team. The Discussion Board layout for posts makes it easier to find answers to questions that may have already been asked before. Through features such as “Mark as Answered”, “Forum Moderation”, “Post Rating”, “Post Likes”, “Post Voting”, users will be assured that the answers they are reading are validated.