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Ruby Virtual Receptionist Services vs. Sparkcentral (discontinued)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Ruby

    Score10 out of 10
    N/ARuby, or Ruby Receptionists headquartered in Portland, boasts supporting more than 10,000 businesses with live virtual receptionists and 24/7 available chat services. Users set their preferences to have Ruby answer the phone part-time, full-time, or after hours, and Ruby deploys personalized company greetings to custom call handling instructions.

    $129

    per month

    Sparkcentral (discontinued)

    Score10 out of 10
    N/ASparkcentral was a social customer care solution and cloud-based customer engagement platform that catered specifically to customer care teams within large enterprises, enabling them to deliver real-time social customer service. Sparkcentral was acquired by Hootsuite in January 2021. The product has since been discontinued.N/A
    Pricing
    RubySparkcentral (discontinued)
    Editions & Modules
    Chat Ruby 10
    $129
    monthly
    Chat Ruby 30
    $299
    monthly
    Call Ruby 100
    $319
    monthly
    Chat Ruby 50
    $469
    monthly
    Call Ruby 200
    $599
    monthly
    Call Ruby 350
    $999
    monthly
    Call Ruby 500
    $1,399
    monthly
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    RubySparkcentral (discontinued)
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsBundled Chat Ruby 10 Your Call Ruby Plan + Up to 10 Chats for $99 Bundled Chat Ruby 30 Your Call Ruby Plan + Up to 30 Chats for $249 Bundled Chat Ruby 50 Your Call Ruby Plan + Up to 50 Chats for $399—
    More Pricing Information
    Best Alternatives
    RubySparkcentral (discontinued)
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    Smith.ai
    Score9 out of 10
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    Medium-sized Companies
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    Score8.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    Brand Embassy (discontinued)
    Score7.9 out of 10
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    User Ratings
    RubySparkcentral (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (16 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.7
    (4 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    RubySparkcentral (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Ruby Receptionists, Inc
    Ruby Virtual Receptionist Services is well suited for a business that needs call screening and message-taking services. The service is expensive but if the user is willing to put a lot of time and effort into planning and scriptwriting, as well as call handling instructions, it may work well. Also, if there is not much information that must be captured by the receptionist, I feel this may be a better fit.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    Sparkcentral has an extremely dedicated customer service team The platform UX is brilliant Reports are very detailed & easy to export The system is stable more than 98% of the time Queue management is extremely easy They need to work on a mobile app / making the website mobile friendly The ability to add more social media channels is essential
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Ruby Receptionists, Inc
    • Call-out request "personal assistant services."
    • Ruby Receptionist app.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • The biggest advantage of the Sparkcentral platform is its "inbox zero" philosophy. With this, our customer support requests are queued within the app, and agents need to work down the queue to keep it empty.
    • The app is designed from the ground up for customer care - instead of taking a generic social platform, and sprinkling in some customer care tools. Everything about Sparkcental is designed for helping our customers.
    • Sparkcentral allows us to do much better CRM. We can make customer notes, see recent interactions, determine who helped the customer (and when).
    Read full review
    Cons
    Ruby Receptionists, Inc
    • Clarity in billing.
    • Shortened hold times.
    • Less transfer time from call to receptionist (between English and Spanish).
    • Better training of receptionists to prevent certain things from being said to clients - decreases client confidence.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • In the beginning our team had the option to see what another user was typing as they responded to a post. With the latest update, this was taken away. That feature was key for us to shadow agents remotely who are still in training to provide real time feedback.
    • Our company has a number of different brands that we manage. Having a truly unified queue would be a great addition for us!
    • The bulk resolve should allow the option to select on the posts that you wish to resolve instead of selecting a time frame for bulk resolve. Often we find that marketing posts generate more volume in the evening. However, there are sometimes posts where the customer needs assistance during that time. So, if we were to bulk resolve for a certain number of evening hours we would potentially miss a customer's concern through that option as it is currently. But, if the option was to go through and select on all marketing posts and then bulk resolve you would ensure that you are not missing a post where a customer needs assistance.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Ruby Receptionists, Inc
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    Sparkcentral has never given us a good reason to consider any other option. Aside from all the positive points I mentioned in previous areas of this review, something else that has really impressed us is their customer service (makes sense, they're a customer service company after all!). Any time we have a question or concern, we send them an email and we get a response almost instantly.
    Read full review
    Usability
    Ruby Receptionists, Inc
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    The system meets all my expectations.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Ruby Receptionists, Inc
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    Incredible customer service team that replies back very quickly, follows up on the reported issue till it's resolved in a very timely manner.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Ruby Receptionists, Inc
    We switched over from Answer First to Ruby Receptionist because we wanted a more full-service answering service. We wanted to be able to call out using our business number as well as text in and out. We also really liked the "call-out request" feature as it freed up our time and allowed Ruby to handle minor client communications, etc.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    Sparkcentral does what it has offered to do, where other software made empty promises, Sparkcentral delivers. They also inform us, anytime they are undergoing maintenance or when Twitter or Facebook has an API change, where in previous cases we would have to discover this ourselves.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Ruby Receptionists, Inc
    • Increased efficiency.
    • NEGATIVE ROI.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • Customers appreciate fast responses to the things they post on social media. This tool allows that to happen.
    • The dashboard allows us to keep up with how many are waiting in our queue so we can keep up with how busy we are during the day and manage it.
    • Customer satisfaction has seemed to increase while using this tool.
    • Being able to add notes with the customers address and phone info is awesome as well.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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