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Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service vs. Parature (Discontinued)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service

    Score8 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service is designed to create positive experiences through any channel and on any device to exceed customer expectations.

    $50

    per month per user

    Parature (Discontinued)

    Score5 out of 10
    N/AParature was a self-service customer support platform providing a self-service knowledge base to connect with customers across multiple channels. The company was acquired by Microsoft in January 2014 and reached EOL in 2017.N/A
    Pricing
    Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer ServiceParature (Discontinued)
    Editions & Modules
    Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional
    $50
    per month per user
    Add-In - Chat
    $60
    per month per user
    Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise
    $105
    per month per user
    Dynamics 365 Customer Service Premium
    $195
    per month per user
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer ServiceParature (Discontinued)
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer ServiceParature (Discontinued)
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Parature (Discontinued)
    Feature
    Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
    7.4
    3 Ratings
    10% below category average
    Parature (Discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Organize and prioritize service tickets9.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Expert directory1.33 Ratings00 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications7.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation6.83 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission10.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ticket response10.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Parature (Discontinued)
    Feature
    Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
    4.5
    3 Ratings
    56% below category average
    Parature (Discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    External knowledge base4.93 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base4.23 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Parature (Discontinued)
    Feature
    Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
    8.0
    3 Ratings
    0% below category average
    Parature (Discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Customer portal9.93 Ratings00 Ratings
    IVR5.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Social integration5.13 Ratings00 Ratings
    Email support10.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration9.93 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer ServiceParature (Discontinued)
    Small Businesses
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer ServiceParature (Discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    6.7
    (10 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.1
    (10 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    2.0
    (2 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.5
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    1.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer ServiceParature (Discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Microsoft
    Suitable for ticketing that might also require routing to 'queues' and capturing communication timelines. Not as suitable for heavily credentials-management-type organizations or organizations that are not on the Microsoft stack. Also, not as suitable for organizations that have very high needs for knowledge base management or organizations that do not have resources or a partner to help extend the capabilities.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    The single element of Parature I've not seen in any other system of this kind is the Download Module. You can post files in the open, or protect them by any number of entitlement methods. The solution is also appealing to those who don't want to manage the back-end/IT needs as it is a hosted solution and has proven to be very reliable.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Microsoft
    • Routing
    • Different Channel Support
    • Intuitive user interface
    • Continues improvement in the product
    • Integration with other Microsoft services and products
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • Clean/Friendly UI. It was extremely easy to navigate around Parature's menus at a high level, and you could take advantage of the more robust features as you became more comfortable and familiar with how Parature operates!
    • Strong Knowledge Base. Writing KB articles or ticket summaries and making use of the search function within Parature allows for expedient recovery of past ticket information. Being able to search for a fix action, or at least a troubleshooting article that can guide you towards a resolution is extremely valuable.
    • Enhanced Notation Capability. Being able to send/post internal or external updates to a ticket is great! You can leave the wordy technical details for other employees while making sure to communicate the high-points and fix action to the end-user.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Microsoft
    • It occasionally crashes or slow down, but it usually works great.
    • Costly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • Reporting is barebones at best. If you need special reports, we had to go through Parature to have them built.
    • The use of frames on a website is very 1990s. It actually impacts usability of the product, especially when combined with how Parature handled sessions. An engineer could only work one ticket at a time which, honestly, isn't very realistic for a busy support team that is working on several issues at a time.
    • Support was often unresponsive when contacted for unplanned problems.
    • The knowledge base was not very friendly for clients and it provided no real encouragement for it to be used.
    • It took several clicks to do something as simple as edit and assign a ticket or to close a ticket.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    Parature has been the best option for this campus in terms of what we use it for and there is no alternative
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Microsoft
    It's not as simple as some of the other offerings, but it is fairly intuitive. The design philosophy is a little more bloated, but it can be streamlined by customizing views and forms (pages) to be organized for end users. Once it is set up, though, assuming your UI choices and design are intuitive, it is simple for end users to use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    It was bulky, cumbersome, and didn't allow us to handle the volume of cases we received on a daily basis. Many of our issues were highly technical in nature and we would often need to work on 2 or 3 at once. The poor design choices prevented this, which was unfortunate.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    They recently had one very extended outage. It was a data center issue - but they were not diversified enough so in the end the system was down for almost 8 hours. There are also periods of time where for no reason the system simply doesn't respond. This small outages are usually short (just a few minutes), and have in fact been occurring less often, so it appears some corrective actions have been taken.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    Nothing ever seemed to get resolved
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Microsoft
    I have worked with Oracle CRM On Demand earlier, mainly for case management and basic customer support workflows. Oracle CRM was stable and worked fine for standard use cases, but customization was limited and changes usually required more effort and time. Integrations with other systems were also not very flexible.
    Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service is much stronger in terms of flexibility and scalability. The biggest advantage is tight integration with the Microsoft ecosystem like Outlook, Teams, Power Automate, and Power Apps, which makes automation and productivity much better. Case management, SLAs, queues, and omnichannel features are more advanced and easier to configure.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    There are services that do bits and pieces of what Parature does. We liked the idea of having one service that meets our needs
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Microsoft
    • Creativity way.
    • Foster increase in revenue.
    • Improving decision-making.
    • Culture of good relationship/service.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • Parature allows for better Customer Service
    • Can follow up automatically for tickets
    • Will automatically close tickets that haven't been responded to.
    • Allows customers to reopen tickets easily and not allow them to be missed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots