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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cortana (discontinued)

    Score7.5 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft's Cortana was a general purpose productivity assistant, that has been deprecated as a standalone product.N/A

    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
    Cortana (discontinued)Olark
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Self Service
    $19.00
    Per Agent Per Month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cortana (discontinued)Olark
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    Cortana (discontinued)Olark
    Chat Analytics and Reports
    Comparison of Chat Analytics and Reports features of Cortana (discontinued) and Olark
    Feature
    Cortana (discontinued)
    -
    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
    Best Alternatives
    Cortana (discontinued)Olark
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Gist
    Score9.5 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    Zoho SalesIQ
    Score9.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    Genesys DX (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cortana (discontinued)Olark
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.1
    (3 ratings)
    10.0
    (18 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (5 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.8
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cortana (discontinued)Olark
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Discontinued Products
    It's easy for anyone who is expecting some simple AI problems like fetching the keywords, understanding the intent, language translation, etc. to be solved from an existing database and all they need is to connect to their APIs via a subscription model. But for complex use cases, there is still room for improvement like customization of underlying AI models for a specific use case like identifying some unique identifiers with respect to industry.
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Pros
    Discontinued Products
    • Being hosted in Azure solves a massive hosting problem
    • The language understanding system has the ability to revolutionize many vertical markets
    • Integrating with Cortana Analytics was really simple due to easy to understand documentation
    Incentivized
    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
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    Cons
    Discontinued Products
    • More partnerships with colleges and schools to increase the workforce with technical knowledge (increase local workforce)
    • Have more online training and documentation in other languages
    • Have affordable prices for students
    Incentivized
    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
    Discontinued Products
    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
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Olark
    It is simply easy and customizable to be exactly what you need it to be
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Discontinued Products
    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
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    Alternatives Considered
    Discontinued Products
    IBM Watson Assistant has been early into this market and has improved a lot over time compared to Azure AI Cortana. More documentation related to the services. But Ease of integration Azure AI ranks over IBM Watson Assistant. And again in terms of services offered under the ecosystem, Azure AI precedes IBM Watson Assitant.
    Incentivized
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    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
    Discontinued Products
    • Difficult to ascertain the ROI as we are a software house who have developed a module in our application using Cortana. However for companies that use our software I would say the use of sentiment analysis in our application could free up at least 1 full time resource to be used elsewhere in their organisation.
    Incentivized
    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