Parature from Microsoft

Parature is a customer support software as a service company which was acquired by Microsoft in 2012. I have tried at least a dozen customer support, help desk and live chat software in the last eight weeks and so was very interested to learn how this one was different from the rest. I noticed immediately that this solution has three major components which are self service, knowledge management and multichannel support. As a multichannel support software you can help customers via several means other than the direct email support ticket which is great including live chat, social media, mobile support and email support as well. Agents are empowered to manage tickets and offer personalized support using a relatively simple system. I found it to be quite easy to learn and beginning using quickly. I like that you can create an internal knowledge base as well as another for customers. You can create articles with dynamic media embedded such as images, infographics and video. This increases efficiency of ticket management as well as empowers customers to find their own solutions and not have to contact support at all which only helps everyone involved be more productive with their time. You can actually publish articles to social media networks and other locations as well so this serves to help increase your brand awareness and facilitate organic traffic as well. I also like that tickets can be automatically generated and add to a queue or assigned to a particular agent. You can also escalate tickets for increased support while responding with personalized messages which is all good. You can set up an excellent workflow using common request resources and pre-write responses to these issues to help save time. Management has the ability to make use of roles and permissions so team members have the access they need to help. Parature's social media listening is a particularly solid feature which helps you to pre-empt negative social posts from going viral. It's also a way to facilitate relationships with brand advocates and prospects who already love your brand. You can also brand the support desk to suit your company which I can appreciate. And there is decent analytic reporting to help you observe and analyze your team's performance. And to adapt to improve performance using this data as well.

I don't like that you cannot check out the pricing it seems on their website. I understand when enterprise level companies do this for solutions which must be highly customized simply because of the nature of the service such as multi-channel marketing or ecommerce, and display advertising as well perhaps. But for a support software to not have pricing available is just rare in the industry so far having directly experienced at least a dozen others in their market. And I realize this company is owned by Microsoft yet relatively independently run compared to their other assets. Which is what makes it slightly odd because they have pricing available for every other product I have tried so far. Their Microsoft Power BI is enterprise level and pricing is clearly available on the site, for example.

I like that they have the ability to search engine optimize your knowledge portal. Why not? This is valuable content marketing that might as well get done as you are building out your knowledge base. And a surprisingly practical feature which is not mentioned in the copy at least of each of the other help desk software I have experienced that I can recall. The ability to offer support across multiple channel is very good and the social media monitoring and integrated Facebook portal is great to have. Overall, this is a very solid customer support software which is well rounded and easy to use. Though I am not certain it is game changing enough to drop everything and make an appointment to get their sales pitch in person. I may email to inquire about pricing but there are so many options in this industry some support solutions with a couple dozen integrations to third party softwares enabling them to become a centralized portal for business across marketing and sales departments in the lifecycle of your customers, and not just to do with the support department.