Item: Exotel
Rating: 6
Author: Athul Sivadas

Overall Satisfaction with Exotel

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our organization leverages Exotel as its primary communication platform for both inbound and outbound calls. Key use cases include customer support, handling inquiries and resolving issues, and sales outreach, including lead generation and follow-up.

Exotel integrates with our Freshdesk CRM, enabling seamless ticket management and providing valuable insights into customer interactions.

While agent mobility enhances flexibility, potential network issues pose a concern.

We primarily utilize Exotel for outbound calling, while the inbound IVR flow presents some limitations.

Despite these challenges, Exotel plays a crucial role in improving customer service efficiency and supporting sales growth.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Outbound calling for Sales/Support
Call routing to Agent Mobiles
Inbuild Inbound flow designer

Cons

Better Inbound IVR flow designer
Better and Faster Customer Support
Better Support for APIs

Return on Investment

In a particular month, there was a discrepancy of more than 20% of tickets being missed to be created ny Exotel for incoming calls, thus leading to data mismatch.
Network issues and less reliable solutions which saw an impact of around 30% calls being disconnected within 10s
A recent attack on their servers saw us waiting for 3 months to retrieve call data thus causing unwanted bottlenecks!

Usability

For cold calling and outbound callings, to a certain extend Exotel serves the purpose as mutliple DID numbers are available at our fingertips. For company which use outcalling as a form of passing information to users can benefit from the flexibility it provides. They have a recharge and use model which doesnt have certain expiry. Basic API documentation available and lesser support from their support team on this matter makes it difficult to check if the API thows any error.

Alternatives Considered

Freshdesk Omni, Knowlarity IVR, Ozonetel, Freshchat, Freshdesk, Salesforce Service Cloud and Zoho CRM

We are currently going to replace Exotel as our use cases have evolved over a period of time and it can no longer be satisfied by Exotel. Hence we have decided to move to a much advanced and customisable Cloud Telephony Solution - Intalk. We would still be using Exotel for certain use cases and teams for user outreach!

Key Insights

Do you think Exotel delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Exotel's feature set?

Did Exotel live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Exotel go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Exotel again?

Other Software Used

Freshdesk Omni, Zoho CRM, Jira Service Management

Likelihood to Recommend

If the use case for colleague is mostly outbound with less followups or random cold calling, then Exotel would work pretty well but if the purpose is for a complete call center solutions, In my opinion, Exotel lacks in many things. Even proper reporting and dashboards.

Using Exotel

Users and Roles

15 - Sales
Support
Account Managers
Operations

Business Processes Supported

Sales
Support
Operations
Account Manager

Innovative Uses

Cheaper outcalling cost
Multiple DID numbers
Simple Inbound flow setup

Future Planned Uses

IVR blast

Likelihood to Renew

As a company our goals have slightly surpassed the current Exotel features and would want some other software which has better capabilities

Evaluating Exotel and Competitors

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Cloud Solutions
Ease of Use

Ease of use. Exotel is very simple to use and set up.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

Exotel lacks certain scalability interms of the inbound IVR capabilities.
I would definitely be looking for better alternatives in the market now

Exotel Implementation

Implementation Rating

It was pretty straight forward

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Change Management Lessons

Change management was minimal - none

Exotel Support

Support Rating

Initially they had chat support which was available faster. But now the chat support gets routed to a virtual agent and unable to get in touch with an actual agent. They also have no support with respect to the API's and other integrations.

Exotel Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
None	Slow Resolution Poor followup Less knowledgeable Problems left unsolved Difficult to get immediate help Need to explain problems multiple times Support doesn't seem to care Slow Initial Response

Premium Support

Dint find it logical to buy premium support when they already do hands-up on most of our queries or requirements.

Bug Resolution

Yes - It was resolved but not in a timely manner. In our experience, they rather pointed fingers at Freshdesk for occurrence of bug when it was clear that it was Exotel who was causing this issue.