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Sparkcentral (discontinued)

Sparkcentral (discontinued)

Overview

What is Sparkcentral (discontinued)?

Sparkcentral 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…

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Recent Reviews

Best Review Ever

8 out of 10
November 04, 2016
Incentivized
We currently utilize Sparkcentral for our social media care platform. This platform allows us to engage with customers via Twitter and …
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Pricing

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N/A
Unavailable

What is Sparkcentral (discontinued)?

Sparkcentral 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…

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  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Details

What is Sparkcentral (discontinued)?

Sparkcentral 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.

Sparkcentral (discontinued) Features

  • Supported: Intelligent Routing
  • Supported: Seamless Escalation
  • Supported: In-App Messaging
  • Supported: Social Channel Customer Service
  • Supported: Text Customer Service
  • Supported: Reporting & Analytics
  • Supported: Customer Profiles
  • Supported: Customer Personalization
  • Supported: Knowledge Base
  • Supported: Macros
  • Supported: Contextual Engagement
  • Supported: Omnichannel
  • Supported: Transcripts
  • Supported: Pop-up Chat
  • Supported: Co-Browsing
  • Supported: Targeted Emails
  • Supported: Conversation Archiving
  • Supported: Team Inbox
  • Supported: Visitor Activity
  • Supported: Help Desk

Sparkcentral (discontinued) Integrations

Sparkcentral (discontinued) Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported CountriesGlobal
Supported LanguagesEnglish Interface, Software can accept any language

Frequently Asked Questions

Sparkcentral 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.

Verint Messaging, Khoros Care, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring) are common alternatives for Sparkcentral (discontinued).

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of Sparkcentral (discontinued) are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(27)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-10 of 10)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Islam Farrag | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used Sparkcentral to engage & reply to customers' enquires, Sparkcentral helped us a lot in reducing the first response time, the automation feature & the ability to automatically remove all the unwanted interactions from the queue got us more productive & we were able to focus more on our customer's inquiries. the reports are very detailed as well.
  • Customer Service response time is brilliant
  • Reports are extremly detailed
  • Queue management & the interface of the platform is very user friendly
  • Allowing users to connect more social media platforms
  • Having a mobile app is extremly essential as the website is not mobile friendly
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
November 04, 2016

Best Review Ever

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently utilize Sparkcentral for our social media care platform. This platform allows us to engage with customers via Twitter and Facebook to answer questions regarding their accounts, or future accounts, with us.
  • Our team enjoys the fact that if there is an issue with the site the developers provide an update across the top of the platform. This allows us to receive real time data and plan accordingly.
  • The knowledge base updates which allow you to have a personal and default collection work great! This allows us to have uniform information for any important disclosures that need to be provided for customers, but also allows us the option to have our own way of providing customers information.
  • Customizing reports is key for us. There are different pieces of information needed for various reports we pull to show what we do. This allows us the option to build what we need as we go.
  • 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.
Sparkcentral as a whole is a great care tool. The knowledge base update was a great addition. A unified queue is something our team is eagerly awaiting.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Primarily, Sparkcentral is used by our social media support team, within customer support, to monitor all incoming mentions of JetBlue from Facebook and Twitter and to engage with our customers. In addition to that, our customer insight team uses Sparkcentral's reporting and several other stakeholders have access in order to see social mentions in real-time or check reports.
  • It's an excellent tool for collaboration. The UX is friendly and intuitive and our team loves the internal chat.
  • The workflow is seamless and provides easy-to-use features for the team and leaders to do what they need to do.
  • The integrated knowledge base is easy to manage, search and use.
  • We could always use deeper and richer reporting features! It would be nice to have a way to easily set up notifications for other departments.
Sparkcentral is great for a team that wants to engage with customers. It's not necessarily a listening or analytics tool, but it supports customer service very well.
Brent Devey | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Sparkcentral to track and respond to customers who contact us via Facebook and Twitter. Sparkcentral allows us to respond individually to customers in a very organized and professional way. It's used solely by our Social Media Support Team who consist of about 30 work-from-home crewmembers.
  • It pulls in customer mentions in real time.
  • Collects data through tagging that used for market research.
  • Queues messages to crewmembers. Avoids overlap.
  • Allows us to monitor real-time what's being sent out.
  • Improve reporting functions.
Sparkcentral is for companies with social customer support teams. It keeps you organized and helps you to efficiently respond to customers.
Ellice Soliven | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Sparkcentral is used by the Social Customer Care team, a subset of our Technical Support department. It addresses customer services on social media, solving issues for customers & receiving feedback over social media channels.
  • Sparckcentral has amazing customer success reps and account managers. They are very communicative and quick to help resolve any issues.
  • Sparkcentral has a robust system for keeping track of customers' account information. Everything we need to keep track of is already included.
  • The Secure Authentication feature in Sparkcentral helps establish a secure relationship with our customers; it shows that we take their security very seriously and that they can trust us.
  • It would be good to see some more robust metrics/reporting details
Sparkcentral would be well suited for anyone needing to manage and execute excellent customer service and technical support. It would be less appropriate for basic, day-to-day Twitter publishing.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Sparkcentral is being used by our organization across a team of 10, separated by two states. It helps us respond to customers via social networking channels ,Twitter and Facebook.
  • Sparkcentral is user-friendly and easy to learn.
  • Sparkcentral leaves room for notes to be left about your customer, so you can remember information for the next time you talk.
  • Sparkcentral's topic feature allows us to filter out easier questions to newer team members.
  • I'd like to see Sparkcentral work out their kinks. Our team often has small bugs that aren't resolved after reporting that we just work around.
  • I'd like to see a feature where we don't have to log out/in between Twitter accounts to favorite a Tweet from a specific account or view a direct message from that account.
I think it is user-friendly, so it's great for basic CRM functionality.
Kim Daenen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Sparkcentral is used by the Social Media team of Brussels Airlines to provide customer service to our passengers on the go, via the channels they choose. Thanks to Sparkcentral we have significantly improved our response times on Twitter and Facebook and hereby increasing customer satisfaction and managing our reputation in a more efficient way.
  • Sparkcentral lets us have a super efficient overview of customer requests via social media. Multiple team members can work in the tool without the threat of double answers to the same request.
  • The assign option within Sparckcentral allows you to implement the tool throughout your organization and assign questions to the concerned departments, which is extremely important when you're in a complex business like aviation.
  • Sparkcentral allows you to see the entire history you've had with a customer, so you never have to worry about giving an embarrassing answer and most importantly, it allows you to have an even more personalized conversation with your customers.
  • It would be great if Sparkcentral could capture all our online customer requests and reviews, meaning aviation and travel forums. That way we could manage the conversations with our clients even better
  • The reporting functionalities could be improved, so that KPI's can be evaluated better, but I know that Sparkcentral is working on this. Their teams are constantly working on improving the product.
I would highly recommend Sparkcentral to any social media manager or marketing manager who is serious about social media servicing and looking to improve their customer relationship management. I would not recommend the tool to very small companies who receive less than 10 requests per day as there are other tools available out there for very small accounts.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
In late 2013, we embarked on a mission to split our social publishing in half. Our existing setup was to have our customer care team, and our social media marketing team both work within Hootsuite. While Hootsuite performs very well, it is not the best option for either of our needs; publishing or customer care.

Within our company, we offer 24/7/365 customer care in social media using a team of 20 trained agents. Our main issues in Hootsuite for customer care were the lack of a good workflow management, weak customer interaction history and lack of basics like locking customer cards to prevent duplicated replies. We also experienced agents who would sometimes pick and chose which customers to reply to, sometimes delaying replies to inquiries that need some extra work. Additionally, we could not always determine which agent was responsible for a reply.
  • 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).
  • Mobile is lacking entirely. While the site is responsive, it is not possible to use Sparkcentral on the go with a mobile device smaller than a tablet.
Sparkcentral really shines in a team environment - its workflow features make it ideal for true collaboration. It is currently limited to Twitter and Facebook, so companies who provide customer support on other channels may need additional tools.
Andrew (Drew) Johnston | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Sparkcentral is currently being used between both our Customer Service and Marketing departments as a means to offer 24/7 Twitter Customer Support and engage with fans who comment on our product. SparkCentral offers a means by which to organize, distribute, track and index our engagement through Social Media as well as open access to our employees without given them the "master key" to our accounts.
  • Sparkcentral has a simple interface that makes internal training an easy and time saving process.
  • With Sparkcentral, we can easily distribute access to our Twitter handles and track the performance of agents.
  • Dealing with a large amount of customers, Sparkcentral is great for finding past interactions on Social Media.
  • We've been with Sparkcentral since the early days and I honestly can not think of a single thing with the current app that I am disappointed with.
I would recommend Sparkcentral to any company that has multiple employees handling social media customer support. It is ideal for keeping inquiries organized, tracking engagement and multitasking. I do not see how Sparkcentral would be particularly useful to an individual or to a company with a single person handling all social media.
Adam Kossoff | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Our Social Media team uses Sparkcentral to track and respond to conversations about our brands online. With multiple people and brands to manage, it makes it easier for us to all work together. We haven't missed a mention of our brand, and with the history of conversations it stores, we've been able to build a closer relationship to our fans.
  • User interface and experience is top notch.
  • Conversation management tools make it easy for multiple users to work together on the same account.
  • Reporting & Statistics are super helpful when following your team members use of the software.
  • Still need to integrate Instagram tracking into the software.
It works best for a brand that receives a heavy volume of mentions, along with a company that manages multiple accounts with multiple people.
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