Vendor:
Founded:
Headquarters:
Kayako
2001
London
Customers:
Deployment Model:
Free Trial:
131,000 users
Cloud, On-Premise
Yes
Kayako At A Glance
Product Overview
Kayako is a cloud-based software that helps customer service agents respond quickly to their customers. Agents can communicate with customers in their preferred channel (e.g., email, live chat, social networks), and organizations can set up and manage a self-service help center that directs customers to answers. In addition, managers can set up automated workflows and measure the team’s performance on customer satisfaction and other key metrics.
The software has numerous benefits, including:
- Built-in live chat tools for real-time communications
- Ability for internal team members to leave notes or draft help center articles
- Customizable features that fit an organization’s unique needs
- Integration with over 600 third-party applications
Even though the software is deployed in the cloud, Kayako offers an on-premise option, Kayako Classic, for companies that prefer to host it on their own servers. It has similar features to the cloud version, such as a customizable self-service portal, automation, Service Level Agreement (SLA) management and custom reporting.
Features
Kayako has many features. Here are a few of its key ones.
Agent productivity – Users can streamline workflows by setting up automated rules and notification triggers. They can also set up canned responses to commonly asked questions, and they can run macros that insert data, such as customer names, into the messages, so agents can save time with less typing. Agents can track all the responses associated with SLAs. There’s also the collision prevention feature that alerts agents if another agent has already responded to a customer’s request.
Customer journey – With this feature, agents get an at-a-glance visual customer journey that includes purchasing history, interaction history and other data for additional context. They can also add notes and communicate in the customer’s preferred channel within the same screen.
Live chat – Kayako Messenger is a built-in live chat feature that allows agents to communicate with customers in real time. Users can customize the chatbot by selecting colors and creating targeted messages. After, companies can deploy the chatbot on their website, support portals or mobile apps. The bot helps customers by providing relevant answers to their questions and then routing them to live agents.
Help center – As mentioned, companies can set up a help center to provide self-service functionality to their customers. Users can customize the help center with their branding and localize it to support the customer’s preferred language. Kayako has a smart search feature that suggests relevant results as the customer types a question into the search bar. Users can also draft articles, upload videos and upload images and then see if customers viewed specific content. Customers can leave comments on the articles as well as use the thumb-up/thumb-down icons if the articles are helpful to them. Finally, users can set up an internal help center to assist agents in finding documentation for specific customer questions.
Social customer service – Agents can manage their social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, with Kayako. The software “listens” to any post that tags the organization, captures it and alerts agents if any action is needed. It can also move the conversation if a customer switches to email from social and vice versa.
Insights – Managers can see their team’s performance at a glance via personalized dashboards. They can also conduct customer satisfaction surveys and create their own reports using custom tools.
Collaborators – This feature empowers agents to get help on a customer’s question from their team or another department. Collaborators can add in internal notes, read conversations and draft help center articles, but they don’t respond to the customer directly.
Target Market
Kayako targets organizations of all sizes, ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. We’ve listed 10 of its clients below.
- Acer
- Disney
- FedEx
- General Electric
- KFC
- MTV
- SEGA
- T-Mobile
- Toshiba
- University of Minnesota Research Data Assistance Center
Implementation/Integration
New clients can try Kayako for free for 14 days before selecting the Inbox, Growth or Scale pricing tier. Companies that are interested in the Enterprise tier can reach out to the Kayako sales team to demo the software.
Kayako integrates with other 600 applications via Zapier, and developers can also build custom integrations using the Kayako API.
Customer Service & Support
Users can visit the help center to browse user guides and submit support tickets. They can also contact support by email or on Twitter.
Pricing
Kayako has four pricing tiers (based on annual billing).
- Inbox – The Inbox tier costs $15 per agent, per month and is intended for small teams. It includes email, live chat and social communications with customers, the ability to create and maintain a help center, assignment rules, the Insights feature, collision prevention, reply-only macros, mobile SDK and integration to over 600 applications with Zapier.
- Growth – The Growth tier costs $30 per agent, per month and is intended for medium-sized teams. It includes all the features of the Inbox tier, plus up to five collaborators, automation rules, custom view, fields and forms, custom reporting, advanced help center customization, dedicated help centers for multiple brands, multiple language support and organization profiles.
- Scale – The Scale tier costs $60 per agent, per month and is intended for larger teams. It includes all the features of the Growth tier, plus up to 10 collaborators, advanced workflow customization, an internal help center, shared organizations, custom security policies, custom roles and permissions and integration with Salesforce.
- Enterprise – The Enterprise tier starts at $100 per agent, per month and is intended for larger companies with complex needs. It includes all the features of the Scale plan, plus a custom licensing agreement, a guaranteed SLA availability, a Customer Success Manager, onboarding and phone callback support.
Shortcomings
Some users have mentioned that the user interface is not always intuitive. And while Kayako offers a 14-day free trial, it doesn’t have a free plan like Zoho Desk and Freshdesk.
Screenshots
About
Kayako was launched in 2001 as an alternative to clunky and tedious customer service software solutions. Its mission is to help companies provide better customer service with a unified and intuitive platform. Kayako incorporates seven core values: simplifying daily, living to learn, fighting the resistance of fear, doubt and inertia, becoming customer obsessed, thinking bigger, acting with ownership and doing the right thing.
The software is used by over 131,000 customer service agents to support over 100 million customers. Kayako is headquartered in London and has a second office in New Delhi, India.
