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Sparkcentral (discontinued) vs. Talkwalker by Hootsuite

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    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

    Talkwalker by Hootsuite

    Score8.1 out of 10
    N/ATalkwalker is a consumer intelligence company that bring sin data from 30+ social networks, 150 million websites, and 100 data partners to give customers a unified view of their consumers. Talkwalker is a Hootsuite solution since the 2024 acquisition.N/A
    Pricing
    Sparkcentral (discontinued)Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Sparkcentral (discontinued)Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Sparkcentral (discontinued)Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    Considered Both Products
    Discontinued Products
    No answer on this topic
    Hootsuite
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    5 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    5 Answers
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    Sparkcentral (discontinued)Talkwalker by Hootsuite
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    User Ratings
    Sparkcentral (discontinued)Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (16 ratings)
    8.3
    (13 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.7
    (4 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    8.0
    (4 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Sparkcentral (discontinued)Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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
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    Hootsuite
    Talkwalker is well suited for big companies and agencies that are looking for a long-term solution to keep track of the industry and/or their brands and key competitors. While setup requires a bit of dedication (especially in terms of custom filters and tags), once it's done, the tool will give the user a lot of flexibility to analyze the conversations and find the relevant results that answer the business questions. Companies just looking for a tool to track a short time period, or simple things like Twitter hashtags, won't take advantage of the full capabilities of this tool. Therefore, they could feel frustrated when comparing the outcomes/usage versus the costs.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    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).
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    Hootsuite
    • Truly global listening platform - monitor a deep range of media types from all over the world. Particularly strong in supporting competitive monitoring and analysis briefs across regions and countries. It monitors content in original language which I believe is a very strong monitoring factor.
    • Easy to use yet powerful dashboard visualisations - the dashboard interface is among the best I have seen. While it can accomplish many things, and under the hood is a very powerful and complex tool, the user interface is very intuitive, slick, quick and packed with all the KPIs you could want.
    • Customisation of the tool is a great feature. You can build your own dashboard and reporting spaces to suit your needs. You can schedule alerts from the system in a variety of outputs to keep you up to date with the latest events.
    • Customer support & technological advancement - the team at Talkwalker are highly proficient, always willing to support our every need, however big or small. Talkwalker aim to release around 4 software updates each year which means the platform is always full of the latest data visualisations and monitoring technologies
    • Having 'traditional' media monitored alongside social as well as owned media assets in one dashboard space is invaluable to help brands understand where their media footprint lies and how they perform in each media set, relative to the others.
    • AI - Talkwalker has introduced greater AI capabilities recently which means the capability of the tool in monitoring is ever-increasing, and the accuracy of targeting content and sentiment analysis is improving. The Visual Insights and image recognition technology is a really strong feature, and a very welcome addition to the monitoring aspect
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    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
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    Hootsuite
    • The system is complicated. With everything that you're able to do, it does come at the cost of simplicity. It definitely requires training and a high level of expertise to properly leverage what it can do.
    • The system can be slow. If you "ask" it to do too many things at once, it can get hung up and do the spin of doom.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    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.
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    Hootsuite
    Love it! In most cases, Talkwalker is a no-brainer: I can confidently recommend it to clients.
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    Usability
    Discontinued Products
    The system meets all my expectations.
    Incentivized
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    Hootsuite
    Despite all the functionalities available on the platform, I never felt overwhelmed or confused
    Read full review
    Performance
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Hootsuite
    Talkwalker gets the job done at a basic level. It performs regular indexing of existing webpages and tracks the instances in which a particular brand or company is mentioned. Especially for being free, this is an awesome resource. However, it should be said that this product does not perform nearly at the level of the paid options.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    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
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    Hootsuite
    They are very helpful, but can sometimes be a little too quick and not explain things in as great a depth as we would like. They have great staff and programs, and we don't really have any other major complaints. Support is very responsive and helpful when need be.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    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
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    Hootsuite
    I have yet to find another tool that would provide me with such a detailed information per query. It's such a find! Plus, I get separate emails per a search query and I'm able to archive those emails to the appropriate folders and always have a way of looking back. It's very useful for building monthly reports.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    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
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    Hootsuite
    • The free tool is a no-brainer. It absolutely helps ferret out mentions on social media that I wasn't aware of before.
    • Now, I can use the tool for clients, too, so for consultants, it can be a great way to help stay on top of what's being said about them online, as well.
    • Using the paid version would help delve into even more insights for your business.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots