Khoros Service vs. Sparkcentral (discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Khoros Service
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Khoros Service offers omnichannel engagement on publicly available channels like social, digital, chat, and voice, as well as owned online communities like Khoros Communities. The solution offers 1-to-1 and 1-to-many engagement with customers and consumers, bringing together automation through bots and human agents. Customer inquiries and support-related conversations can be routed and prioritized based on a variety of parameters, and the robust agent desktop solution…N/A
Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
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.N/A
Pricing
Khoros ServiceSparkcentral (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Khoros ServiceSparkcentral (discontinued)
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing is variable based on the needs of the customer.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Khoros ServiceSparkcentral (discontinued)
Considered Both Products
Khoros Service
Chose Khoros Service
Lacking in updated user guides. Limited in things that can be done when tasks and assignments are pushed. The program overall needs a refresh to be more eye catching and appealing to users. Great reporting and options. Should be linked to Excel, would save time. Khoros is good …
Chose Khoros Service
As I know Khoros Service was chosen for its strong omnichannel support, advanced automation and detailed analytics capabilities.
Chose Khoros Service
We chose Khoros Care as our main tool in catering or responding to any reachouts like messages, comments, and reviews by our members through our social media.
Chose Khoros Service
Multi-Channel Support:Khoros Care: Known for its ability to manage customer interactions across various channels, including social media, messaging, and more.Comparison: Evaluate how well each platform supports the channels most relevant to your business, whether it's email, …
Chose Khoros Service
In my opinion, Khoros Marketing is superior to Khoros Care in every way except queue management. Sprinklr, Hootsuite, and Social Studio are all similar products in terms of responding to users, but they are not as flexible with labeling.
Chose Khoros Service
KC fails to punch up. More features, reliability etc come as an offering with other products.
Chose Khoros Service
The user interface was much more personable, and we found we had overall less issues with the program itself.
Chose Khoros Service
Khoros is a well-known provider. It has a good support system. Known for its enterprise scalability, social listening, and AI based automation.
Chose Khoros Service
Zendesk was too big and complex, way more functionalities than we needed and that made the onboarding process dificult.
Chose Khoros Service
Khoros is more than just a platform for social publishing. No other competitor provides the in-depth moderation and social listening services that they do. If you're looking for a one-stop-shop of a platform for all things social, this is the tool to be using. Others are better …
Chose Khoros Service
Both Khoros and Zendesk offer robust customer engagement solutions, but Khoros stands out in several ways. While Zendesk provides excellent ticketing and support functionalities, Khoros extends beyond traditional customer service, offering a comprehensive suite that includes …
Chose Khoros Service
Intercom is really difficult to navigate. Khoros is so much more streamlined and easier to manage
Chose Khoros Service
I have not tested other products related to Khoros.
Chose Khoros Service
I haven't used other products as Lithium has fulfilled all needs other than what native provides. Reporting is excellent and makes there no need to use any other product. Very adaptable and customizable to what is needed to get the job done. Overall I have no issues with this …
Chose Khoros Service
Community is imperative, Khoros CXInsights is a product that we are still adapting to and needs more mature social integration to realize its value, and Khoros Marketing turned out to be a product that we use less frequently due to the scope of our team being mainly focused on …
Chose Khoros Service
While we don't use other products from Khoroscare, the support we've received has been fantasitc
Chose Khoros Service
Khoros is strictly keyword based with no NLP or AI options. Reporting is limited, both in general and by platform.
Chose Khoros Service
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (Radian6 + Buddy Media) and Sprout Social
Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Comparing Sparkcentral with other platforms might be a bit unfair! the platform stands out in so many areas, to be honest.
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
I like how more focused Sparkcentral is around customer care specifically, whereas Spredfast does a lot of things well but no one thing greatly.
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Pros:
1. Layout is more user-friendly than the previous platforms.
2. Real-time data on system issues where each user is able to see it and respond accordingly.
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
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 …
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
I have used Lithium and Spredfast platforms in the past for social care.
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
I selected Sparkcentral because I am a social media engagement director, so engagement is top priority for me and Sparkcentral does exactly that. It's not focused on marketing, word clouds, etc. It's focused on the incoming social media volume of your brand.
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Sparkcentral is an innovative tool and it just works. It works better than other tools we've attempted to use. It's simple and intuitive.
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Sparkcentral is very organized and robust in terms of using it for customer service/tech support. It allows you to record detailed information about your customers, and provides thorough customer support histories which are very helpful as well.
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Sparkcentral is in an excellent place - they are the only true stand-alone social media customer care platform. We also provide support through Oracle RightNow (Chat/email), but the social add-on for that appeared to be weak. Hootsuite works fine for small teams of low volume …
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Engagor,Radian6,HootSuite Pro,RightNow,autonomy explore
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
While it was more expensive, Sparkcentral blows other competitors away with their comprehensive tools and ease of use.
Chose Sparkcentral (discontinued)
A few months ago we decided it would be smart to look into back up options in case Sparkcentral ever had technical issues (it never has, but we like to have redundancies in place) and I could not find a company or product that offered all the features I love and have become …
Best Alternatives
Khoros ServiceSparkcentral (discontinued)
Small Businesses
Simplify360
Simplify360
Score 7.8 out of 10
Simplify360
Simplify360
Score 7.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Front
Front
Score 7.1 out of 10
Front
Front
Score 7.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Front
Front
Score 7.1 out of 10
Front
Front
Score 7.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Khoros ServiceSparkcentral (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.1
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.6
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Khoros ServiceSparkcentral (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
If you need a content management system that allows you to add a wide variety of label categorization and have multiple users logged in at the same time, Khoros Care is suitable. However, I cannot say that it's the best system to use. There are other systems that have the same or similar features without as many issues.
Read full review
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
Read full review
Pros
  • Manages and pulls in posts from communities, Facebook, and Twitter so we can address them in one place as opposed to logging into each site natively.
  • Khoros Care has great analytics. I like the customizable dashboards; we use them for weekly reports to upper management.
  • Khoros Care helps our social media manager manage and monitor our teams.
Read full review
  • 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.
Read full review
Cons
  • I would like to be able to see deleted comments/tweets so we can look into the issues.
  • I would like to be able to better customize dashboards for our exact metrics. Some things previously available in Spredfast are no longer available in Care.
Read full review
  • Bringing back the option to see not only who is responding to a customers post, but actually seeing the response as they are typing it out. That was a neat feature to have.
  • It will timeout, which is a bit annoying sometimes but not a huge deal.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Simply, there isn't anything on the market that is quite as personable as Khoros Care. After using a few different client messaging systems, this program gave the closest feel to in-person interaction that we could get during the COVID-19 epidemic and is an important part of our agency still to this day in 2023.
Read full review
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
The ability to auto tag, manually tag, make notes, and "snooze" posts is extremely helpful. The efficiency of the work flow for agents is also a huge plus. It keeps agents moving quickly and prioritizing responses for the cases that need it most.
Read full review
The system meets all my expectations.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
It's always up.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Performance
No issues.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Khoros Support has always very responsive and helpful when it comes to getting my issue/inquiry addressed. Their ticket portal is great for tracking any open tickets and they can be updated via the portal or by responding to the email thread. Support reps are always extremely knowledgeable and care about getting you taken care of
Read full review
Incredible customer service team that replies back very quickly, follows up on the reported issue till it's resolved in a very timely manner.
Read full review
In-Person Training
The team received training (from the same executive team member who has been supporting us) over the web and this was of very high quality.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Implementing the platform was not a big hassle for our client, it was seamless and easy we just had to follow a few steps and it was done. Just scaling was a bit of an issue but it got resolved with time and a bit of effort at both ends
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Multi-Channel Support:Khoros Care: Known for its ability to manage customer interactions across various channels, including social media, messaging, and more.Comparison: Evaluate how well each platform supports the channels most relevant to your business, whether it's email, social media, live chat, or others. Automation and Workflows: Khoros Care: Offers workflow automation features to streamline processes and handle routine tasks.Comparison: Compare the level of automation capabilities each platform provides and how well they align with your business processes.
Read full review
Sparkcentral is in an excellent place - they are the only true stand-alone social media customer care platform. We also provide support through Oracle RightNow (Chat/email), but the social add-on for that appeared to be weak. Hootsuite works fine for small teams of low volume customer care, but for a dedicated social care platform, we could not find anything else worth considering
Read full review
Scalability
Of course as the company grows owing to its growing customer base, they need to think of out-of-the-box solutions to offer its clients and customer satisfaction is one of them. Retention is very much needed in competitive environment like today and hence it becomes imperative for companies to find different ways to reach their client basis and fix their issues
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • We have seen a positive shift of customers from reaching out to the Call Centre to the Social Care Team.
  • Monthly and Annual Reporting to keep track of performance and stats related to the team has been much easier to highlight areas for improvement (month2month and anually)
  • CSAT/NPS Survey results have increased via Khoros Care in comparison to the Call Centre.
Read full review
  • Providing customers the option to contact us via social media cuts costs for the company by lowering call in numbers and creating a more efficient way of assisting customers where they are.
  • Currently there is not an option to separate outside of business hours reporting for response time and within business hours. This can cause a pain point when reporting to other departments as it calculates a higher response time than the accurate one due to outside business hours.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Khoros Service Screenshots

Screenshot of a customer conversation in Agent view. Access past customer conversations and interactions in a single pane of glass.Screenshot of the analytic dashboard used to monitor key metrics across a service organization, such as available agents, time to first response, and agent handle time.Screenshot of Khoros Agent Assist. This feature provides agents with real-time recommendations, reducing the time needed to handle customer inquiries, deliver accurate resolutions, and train new agents.Screenshot of Work Queues under Rules and Routing. This allows admins to build rules around tagging to ensure timely and effective follow-up from agents.