Espressive Barista Reviews

Name: Espressive Barista
Brand: Espressive
Rating: 4 (9 reviews)

4.4 out of 5

9 reviews
87% willing to recommend

What is Espressive Barista?

Barista, Espressive’s innovative virtual support agent (VSA) platform, takes on the role of the service agent, bringing the best of human experience with the best of artificial intelligence. Leveraging a proprietary and domain-specific large language model (LLM), the Employee Language Cloud, as well as integration with generalized LLMs, Barista automates resolution of employee questions, issues, and requests with personalized experiences that result in employee adoption of 80 to 85% and reduced help desk call volume of 50% to 70%.

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Espressive Barista is the #2 ranked solution in top AI-Powered Chatbot vendors, #9 ranked solution in top IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions, and #12 ranked solution in top Help Desk Software. PeerSpot users give Espressive Barista an average rating of 8.8 out of 10. Espressive Barista is most commonly compared to ServiceNow: Espressive Barista vs ServiceNow. Espressive Barista is popular among the small business segment, accounting for 52% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a computer software company, accounting for 56% of all views.

Helped 801,394 peers since 2012

Featured reviews

JoseLopez7

IT Desktop Support Lead (IT Analyst III) | Application Administrator at a energy/utilities company with 5,001-10,000 employees

From an admin standpoint, the analytics and the metrics that you're able to pull from Barista are extremely helpful. It allows you to really dig in there and see exactly what people are asking and how they're asking it. For example, I can go in and say, "Well, on this day or during this month we're getting X amount of questions about this application. We have to go in and update content for that specific application or that specific question." Using this feature, we can pinpoint where we need to make our updates or what content to add. The accessibility of this solution is very good. We use the web browser desktop application, mobile phone application, and now, we're working on our Teams integration with it. Once the integration with Teams is complete, it will probably be a big leap for us. This solution is able to deliver localized information in multiple languages and for a company as big as ours, we have people all over the world and there are tons of users everywhere. I don't know the exact number right now but I think Barista knows eight-plus different languages. English and Spanish are our most common ones and Czech is probably our third most common one. Not many solutions that are out there are going to provide Czech as a language. I think it's really important for our users to be able to ask questions in their own language and get a response back in that language as well. I use the Barista Control Center to upload my own content and curate it. It gives me the ability to add new content from scratch or update older content. I can use it to perform testing; for example, if I feel that there is a specific sentence that isn't triggering a specific response then I can make changes to it. In terms of ease of use, the Barista Control Center is of medium-level difficulty. They have other methods to curate your own content in addition to this. This is the one that the representatives use so I wanted to learn it. I'd say that it definitely takes time to get used to it. It took me between six and twelve months in my off-hours at work to learn it. For people learning it from day one, it's probably easier.

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Jessica Spates

Business Services Technology Manager at a recreational facilities/services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The knowledge management could definitely be improved. There's no easy way to see or understand the information you have in your system by categories and subcategories. Right now, you can search by what your FAQ title is or the questions, but there needs to be improvement so you can understand what workflows and FAQs you have out there by category and subcategory. That would be a lot more beneficial for maintaining it. Right now, you have to look through miss hits and be like, "Oh shoot, we updated that." Or, "That needs to get corrected." If you have a big update that you need to make and you need to go back into all of your conversation history, you need to keep a good record of it on your own.

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Jim Lobao

Senior Manager for End User Support Services at Five9

Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement. We haven't yet found anything that resembles true AI that can learn autonomously without human intervention. However, Barista does help us identify and address some of these areas, allowing my team to step in and create intents and responses to questions. When a user asks a question that Barista doesn't immediately understand, we can recognize the pattern, capture it, and link it to a common intent. This is highly beneficial for acquiring such data, but it's a reactive approach and still requires curation. Natural language processing still has some way to go. One of our challenges is that our internal employees haven't yet adopted a natural way of interacting with Barista. Getting people to be concise and to the point, rather than being verbose as if they were interacting with a human, has been an ongoing challenge. While they may feel comfortable being conversational in Slack, expecting a human-like response, Barista is a different entity. Barista isn't interested in their recent vacation; it just wants to know they're locked out of their account. So, some users may assume Barista understands their intent when they say, "I'm back from vacation and locked out of my account." Barista, however, may interpret this as a request for the holiday schedule. Therefore, we're gradually educating our users to adapt their communication style for better success with Barista. Conversely, we desire Barista to adapt its behavior based on the interaction, the language used, and the way people communicate. I wholeheartedly desire an AI that can continuously learn and adapt to our organization's evolving needs. This is the most challenging aspect, as it involves understanding our organization's terminology, procedures, and toolsets. We've made significant progress in this area. However, from an NLP standpoint, we still face challenges with our nearly 3,000 Slack channel users, each with their unique communication styles. People ask questions in various ways, and sometimes there are misunderstandings. They want to interact with us naturally. However, we still struggle with natural language processing. People don't always realize that the bot is a virtual agent designed to be concise and efficient. Sometimes, less is more. It's been a difficult transition for people to grasp that they're conversing with a virtual agent, not a human. They still expect human-like interactions, such as discussing their weekend or holidays or simply pasting screenshots of errors. However, the bot can't interpret screenshots. If they provide the error code and some context about the application, the bot can better understand the issue. So, the key challenge is bridging the gap between human expectations and the bot's capabilities in terms of natural interaction.

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Espressive Barista mindshare

Product category:

As of September 2024, the mindshare of Espressive Barista in the AI-Powered Chatbots category stands at 8.5%, up from 5.8% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

AI-Powered Chatbots

Key learnings from peers

Valuable Features

The most valuable features of Espressive Barista, according to the reviews, include its conversational AI capabilities, customization options, ease of use, natural language processing, ability to automate processes, analytics and metrics reporting, chat integration, multi-language support, and cost reduction. Users appreciate that the AI understands questions regardless of location or language, allowing for intuitive and user-friendly interactions.
The ability to alter and enhance phrases, as well as extend the language model, is highly valued. The platform's automation capabilities and accurate responses to complex questions are also highlighted. The analytics and reporting features provide valuable insights for improving common questions and content. The chat integration with ServiceNow is praised for its seamless compatibility. The solution's ability to resolve support requests without human intervention has proven to be highly effective, reducing service desk costs and increasing availability of support for employees.

"The most valuable feature is its scalability."
"I like Expressive Barista's integration with Microsoft Teams."
"We have the ability to alter phrases, create new phrases, or enhance phrases, or change paths. From the dashboard, we are able to get a lot of information we need about what people are asking, where they are dropping off from conversations, and where they do not get the information they need."

Room for Improvement

Improvements that could be made on Espressive Barista include easier access to detailed information about out-of-the-box interactions and native features, customizable reports with filters, improved out-of-the-box verbiage for questions, enhanced knowledge management with better categorization and subcategorization, expansion of advanced automation capabilities with more prebuilt connectors, fine-tuning of the metrics dashboard for easier viewing, and the addition of IT service management capabilities, such as ticketing, change management, and problem management.

"Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement."
"Expressive Barista could improve by adding native integration with WhatsApp, one of the top communication channels in South Africa. When we're trying to sell Barista to customers, we have to tell them that the solution doesn't have out-of-the-box support for WhatsApp. We can develop it, but then we need to have a conversation about how much that will cost."
"What would make things easier is more detail, out of the box, about what is helping out of the box. We're struggling a little bit to get that data. We want more information about what Barista has brought in that the employees are using, out of the box. We want more visibility into the things that we ourselves haven't done the interaction for."

ROI

According to users, the Espressive Barista has provided a high ROI for their companies. It has allowed their end-user community to quickly receive help and answers to their questions. Many of the companies have seen about 20 percent return on investment, with a 70% deflection rate for their department. The adoption rate was slightly lower than desired, but it highlights the importance of ensuring all departments are on board before launching a new tool. The cost savings from not having to hire additional service desk agents has been significant, saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. The efficiency improvement is notable, with analysts being able to handle multiple chats simultaneously, reducing wait times for users. The solution has also helped decrease mean time to resolution and deflect a significant portion of incoming interactions. some users said they have been able to handle company growth without having to hire more service desk technicians, thanks to Barista deflecting 80% of calls.

Pricing

The pricing for Espressive Barista is described as not overly burdensome, affordable, expensive, and fair. One reviewer mentions that it averages out to be about two full-time entry-level employee salaries per department, indicating that it can be a significant investment. However, another reviewer highlights the importance of having everyone on board and utilizing the mobile option to make it easier for people to use. Additionally, having someone to support and maintain the system is necessary, but Espressive can also handle updates. The pricing is compared to ServiceNow's free tool, with the reviewer mentioning that even though ServiceNow's tool is free, there are still manpower issues in maintaining it, making Espressive Barista a more cost-effective option.

"User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant value from it."
"The pricing isn't overly burdensome. It's going to be interesting to see how new models come in with new capabilities but, as it is, as a base system, it's pretty good."
"The solution is affordable."

Popular Use Cases

The primary use case of Espressive Barista is to provide employees with instant help and assistance for their various needs. It is primarily used for IT-related content, allowing users to ask questions and receive answers regarding IT issues. The solution is integrated with multiple SaaS-based applications, giving users instant access to these applications and resolving a significant number of IT tickets on a daily basis. It also allows users to reset passwords and provides internal knowledge for departments such as IT, HR, and finance. The solution helps automate the business and assists the internal help desk by enabling users to reach them via chat and providing answers before they even have to reach out for help.

Service and Support

The customer service and support of Espressive Barista have been highly praised by the reviewers. They have experienced good support responses, attention to their requirements, and immediate assistance. The technical support team is described as talented, easy to contact, and quick to respond with solutions. While there were some initial difficulties with project management, the situation improved with the help of a dedicated project manager. Espressive was involved in the employee onboarding process and their customer success team provided assistance throughout. The reviewers appreciated the company's receptiveness to feedback and their commitment to ensuring customer success. The technical support has been described as amazing, with quick response times and availability at all times.

Deployment

Users provided feedback on the duration and process of deploying and setting up Espressive Barista. The feedback varies, with some users finding the initial setup and deployment straightforward and relatively quick, while others faced more complexity and challenges due to coordinating with different departments or global rollouts. The timeframes for deployment range from one month to a few months, with some users mentioning additional time for training, testing, and development.

Scalability

The solution of Espressive Barista is highly scalable and has met the scaling requirements of users. It has been successfully scaled to different GEOs and has been opened up for use by a large number of employees and contractors, including small and big companies. The bot is intelligent and improves with more usage. However, there are challenges in getting people on board with the bot, as it needs to be fully ready with accurate information to provide satisfactory answers. Integration with other programs, like Workday, may require more time and comfort. Despite these challenges, the solution is functional and can be easily used by employees in front of desktops. The app is still in its early stages but is functional. The scalability of the solution has been pressure tested and has proven to be effective without any performance issues. There is a high level of scalability and the developers are responsive to feature requests. While there is a desire to increase usage in other departments, there is currently a bandwidth issue preventing outreach.

Stability

The users have consistently reported that the stability of Espressive Barista is excellent. They have not encountered any performance issues or downtime. Although there have been some minor hiccups, these are considered normal for any technology platform. The users also acknowledge the ongoing efforts by Espressive to improve and integrate with other programs, indicating that the solution is constantly evolving and becoming more robust.

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

Download our Espressive Barista Buyer's Guide for additional reliable information.