Why we use Bloomfire to support our staff and customers.
July 13, 2017
Why we use Bloomfire to support our staff and customers.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Bloomfire
We use Bloomfire primarily as a company knowledge base. It is used internally and by the public. We have two communities, one for the public, containing all of our sales and support documentation including product promotional information and customer service support. Our second community is strictly private where we have specific product information to assist our sales staff, repair technicians and internal support people. We exchange compnay assets, case studies and sensitive client information. Our people constantly rely on each other to answer questions posted and provide support documentation to the many industries and applications we service.
We use Bloomfire as the system of record for our manuals, and other materials that are all fed directly from BF to all of our websites and mobile applications, both domestic and internationally via direct links and the BF API.
We use Bloomfire as the system of record for our manuals, and other materials that are all fed directly from BF to all of our websites and mobile applications, both domestic and internationally via direct links and the BF API.
- The search feature is second to none. This was one of the primary reasons we went with BF. The categorization and tagging increases the ability to find documents quickly and accurately among the vast amount of information we have accessible.
- The way BF handles the multiple file types and displays them beautifully for our customers and support staff is excellent. The ability to download and/or send links directly to this content is invaluable. No more storing it locally or having out of date documents circulating in the company. Everything is kept current on BF and all employees know this is their first stop when searching for a particular subject.
- The mobile app is fantastic for providing all the same features of the browser version so our people can always have it at the ready.
- When we create new documents and search for them immediately after they do not appear in the search but when you choose the "recent" filter they do. I have reported this to BF in the past but it has not been addressed yet.
- Occasionally posts will become corrupted and literally disappear from the search altogether yet if you had a direct link to it this still works. Again I have reported this to BF for improvement.
- User management, especially password reset requests seem to cause issues. Either the reset email is not received or the end user has trouble resetting it and almost always asks us, the admins, to assist. It would be good to have the ability to reset passwords on our own for the user.
- Members cannot be deleted only deactivated. We would like to be able to purge the deactivated members and simplify our list of users.
- We no longer have to take time out of our day for calls to provide support documentation or other assets to our customers and sales team.
- In the past where we would have to update items in multiple locations on our local network or online we now only do once. I can have my assistant update our content on Bloomfire quickly and accurately and subsequently update all instances of this content in its many forms.
- The main negative aspect of Bloomfire is the cost. While it is a fantastic product, our user base grows yearly and very soon BF may price itself out of range for us. Internally we share a few user licenses to reduce this cost somewhat. It helps that not all users need constant access.
This was really our first foray into the knowledge base and document management. We did review some other solutions like Zendesk and Confluence but ultimately the categorization and search of Bloomfire sold us on it.