Respond.io is a business messaging platform from the Hong Kong based company of the same name, that connects customers from any channel to every team. As consumers grow to demand personal communication on a wide variety of channels, businesses are looking to their software vendors and partners to innovate and deliver these customer experiences. Respond.io is designed to meet this challenge, simply.
$99
per month
Sprout Social
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Sprout Social provides social media management, marketing, customer care, data and intelligence, and employee advocacy solutions for brands and agencies, including Ticketmaster, Chipotle, Grubhub, Subaru, and Zendesk. Sprout’s platform is used to simplify social publishing, engagement, reviews, analytics and listening for customers. Sprout also provides customer success and technical support, to deliver consistent value to all users. Any organization, regardless of size or industry, receives…
The company's sales funnel support is well represented in Respond.io. I like how its workflow is configured with the initial support bot. It filters and provides a summary of the customer's needs, making the advisor's job easier. Calls are something the platform is sorely lacking. I understand they are under development and something we're eagerly awaiting at the company to be able to track more efficiently on a single platform. La atención del embudo de ventas de la compañía está bien representada en Respond.io me gusta como se configura su flujo de trabajo con el BOT de atención inicial, filtra y me entrega resumen de la necesidad del cliente haciendo más fácil el trabajo del asesor. Las llamadas son algo que le hace mucha falta a la plataforma, entiendo que se encuentra en desarrollo y es algo que esperamos con ansias en la compañía para poder hacer un seguimiento más eficiente en una sola plataforma. This review was originally written in Spanish and has been translated into English using a third-party translation tool. While we strive for accuracy, some nuances or meanings may not be perfectly captured.
I love Sprout Social specifically for our large events. They're limited-time events, they allow us to do a lot at once and pull in the data we learn to our regular systems, and the ChatGPT integration lets us create content quickly and easily on the fly. However, I would not use this for your everyday social platform. There are simpler platforms. In my experience, Sprout Social seems needlessly complicated for most businesses and is certainly not cost-effective for most businesses. Unless you have a huge budget for social and/or it's truly your bread and butter for marketing strategy, I think Sprout Social is best suited for special events.
For each account, customize posts for each platform, and schedule them to go live simultaneously.
Employee Advocacy via Sprout Social has integrated AI assistance for captions. Usually I would generate one suggested caption for employees to use/stem from when re-sharing to their socials. But now, EA message ideas display in random orders to better promote the full range of content.
Sprout Social has made the option to gamify the sharing concept quite easily with Employee Advocacy. Using the Leaderboard feature, employees can earn points in Employee Advocacy. Customized point values ensure you know how to climb the Leaderboard and start some friendly competition.
Social media platforms don't always play nice with Sprout so it will always be a challenge to get all integrations to work properly.
Sprout Social is a growing organization and they are acquiring new technologies, which can be good. However, they often spend time in meetings upselling new services. I like to learn about enhancements and opportunities but prefer to focus on my investments first.
Sprout Social is the best platform out there for social-media management, and now that I have all my clients using Sprout Social, it would be sort of silly for me to walk away format at this juncture. The only cloud on the horizon would be if Salesforce bought it (as has been rumored) and put it inside its walled garden.
It has been very useful for us with very innovative functions and it has the ability to adapt to our operation according to the needs that our administrator indicates to them, and that is very efficient. Besides, it is easy for users to adapt; the functions are very intuitive and easy to implement.
Sprout Social's ease of use and navigation throughout the technology are relatively easy to figure out and teach. We also had a representative thoroughly walk us through the features and functionality to set us up for success in using the platform. I didn’t give it a ten because there were times when the navigation didn’t make sense, but once you figured out the quirks, it didn’t cause any trouble.
Uptime was OK, but given the fact that we are in Europe, there were some specific problems: They tended to take the system down for maintenance during the night in the US, which was during our workday. This was definitely problematic and hard to explain to our clients.
The chat and online resources are great. The managers are too. They go through account reps pretty fast. Also, not a lot of onboarding once a product or service is sold. The ticket request system is terrible, they have too many people switching off roles, they take a long time to get back to you and don't plan on anything being fixed over a weekend - even if you have a problem. Their customer service via tickets is the worst.
Their training is good, but the promotion of it is even better. I don't need or have the time for training, but I was always happy to know it was there. They did a great job sending updates out and making me aware when there was a new feature that I may want training for. As for the training I never used it, so I can't comment on that
Make sure you do it all the way. Do not break it into phases. Pour yourself a coffee, start it in the morning and you'll be done before you finish that coffee.
In my opinion, Respond.io is by far the most user-friendly platform out of other similar products. Other advantages rely on features such as AI Agents and automated workflows that are easily adaptable to our company's needs. Lastly. customer support from the Respond.io is admirable, being at all times better than their competitors.
We are constantly exploring our options and looking for the most cutting-edge products that suit our needs as a business. Sprout ticked the boxes for what we needed when it was time for a change. Both are powerful tools, and you can only see by doing.
The cost of the solution, as compared to our previous solution, has meant that we now pay 50% less than our previous solution for a MUCH superior offering.
We are able to have a single agent (versus multiple agents previously) in our busy season and they are able to keep up with the load of queries being sent through.
The setup time, and integration of new channels into the mix has meant that Respond.io keeps up with the market trends, and we don't have to search for other solutions to engage with our customers - This has saved major amounts of time.
One positive impact has been a huge time saver for our team. Where we once had multiple systems and delays from producing content to approval to publishing, now everything is seamless.
Another positive impact is streamlining the onboarding process for new team members. Sprout Social is user-friendly and intuitive, making it easy to study even for someone completely new to social media.
One negative impact has been the time it takes to wade through irrelevant social listening posts. The filtering is not effective enough to eliminate the noise.
