What is our primary use case?
If we need to send an encrypted, secured message to a member or a client or a vendor, we can send it through the LiveLink app and we know it's secure and that we don't have to worry about confidential information being leaked.
How has it helped my organization?
With this solution we have better communication with our members, who, outside the credit union business, are what you call customers. We're able to support them where they are. For example, if they're trying to log in to the online banking platform and they can't get in, they can hit the Chat feature and talk to us directly and we can help them.
My staff has the ability to multitask and not only help members but continue doing other stuff between the chat sessions. It's more efficient for my staff, but, at the same time, more responsive for our members. They don't have to pick up the phone and call us and say, "Hey, it's not working." A lot of times, members are able to share their screens with us and we can see what they're doing wrong and help them get logged in to the system. Or if they want to find out about rates, or have a question about their account, we can respond and it cuts down on calls to the office itself.
It also helps reduce complexities in our communication. When a member is dealing with a financial situation, the quicker you can respond to that member and get them the answers that they need, the more at ease the member will be and that strengthens the relationship. It cuts down on members being angry because they're on hold waiting for a person to pick up the phone. I feel they're getting quicker response times when they hit the Chat, and we're able to resolve their conflict much quicker. It is a better experience for our associates and our members.
What is most valuable?
Being the president of our organization, I love the secured email because there are a lot of messages that I have to send out that are secure. There have not been any issues with sending the messages or with individuals receiving and viewing them.
Most of the interaction between our member base and my associates is through the Chat feature and they really like that feature. It helps us engage with our members more.
And LinkLive’s interface for enabling agents to switch between modes on the fly, share files, or schedule a follow-up is easy. When dealing with a client or a member, you can switch easily from chat to video chat or to sharing files or desktop sharing. And when you're initiating contact, it's easy to select the one you want. It's tab-driven, so you just select the tab that you want. You can do that right there. That flexibility is important. When you're dealing with people's money, they want a prompt reply. It has been very useful for us.
What needs improvement?
In our experience, the areas where there could be improvement are training, staff adoption, and getting the staff comfortable with utilizing the complexities of LinkLive, such as screen sharing. With some of the more advanced stuff, our associates were a little gun-shy. They didn't want to do that kind of stuff because it was too techy for them. The adoption of it on the staff side has been our biggest challenge with the whole thing.
They can work on the documentation and upfront training. When you introduce a system to your team, the better the initial introduction and training are, the more buy-in you'll have. If things are not presented as well as they can be, they are going to get a preconceived notion that this system is not a good system, and trying to change their minds after is difficult. Training is so important in that respect.
In addition, it would be nice if there were an interface with our core system. We have what we call our Portico teller system, which gives us member information. For communication with a member, it's a standalone product. We don't have any CRM built into it. When someone is chatting or doing a virtual call with you, you have to go to the Portico system to see if they're a member, what kind of relationship they have, and what their accounts are. Having those two working together, so that when the chat comes in you know exactly who you're dealing with and what their relationship with you is, would be very helpful.
For how long have I used the solution?
We started using LinkLive about seven months ago.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We haven't had any issues with it being down. It has been very reliable. I haven't had any issues with not being able to send a secured email to anyone. I have to deal with the state and send secure documents to them, and you never want it not to go through when you're dealing with the state, but it's been fine.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It probably does a lot more than what we actually utilize it for, so in our case it scales down to us nicely. We only have 12 associates, as we're a small credit union, but all 12 of them have either the LinkLive web version or the older version still installed. They use it to talk directly to our members. You can use it for internal chatting with associates, but we had already adopted Microsoft Teams and we didn't want to have multiple internal channels for people to talk to each other. We use LinkLive, and only LinkLive, for communicating with our members.
I just attended a demo of the next product that's going to be interfacing with LinkLive, which is an interface with DocuSign. With that, you can have a virtual meeting with a member, go over a loan document, and then turn it over to the member and have them sign the document right there on the virtual call. For loan closings, I was very impressed with the ease of use and the interaction capabilities within the virtual meeting, and the ability to view and sign documents together. When it is rolled out, that will be very beneficial to our staff in our line of work.
How are customer service and support?
The support has been excellent and we have stopped communicating with the third party that sold LinkLive to us. We communicate directly with LinkLive because their support is so much better than the support offered by that vendor. They have been very supportive in getting our staff trained and comfortable using it.
And when we had some system issues I had to turn in a support ticket. We're putting in a new website and we needed the new code to get it on our website. Julius Wolf was one of the people on that support ticket and they were very helpful.
When we first went to LinkLive and said we were trying to get it on our website, we were told to work with the third party that sold it to us. We could not get adequate coding and could never get it to work with them. Finally, they gave me a number for someone at LinkLive. From that moment on, we haven't dealt with our third-party vendor. It's unfortunate because they're the ones that sold it to us and they should be the ones supporting us, but LinkLive has been extremely helpful. They know where we bought it, but they're always been willing to go above and beyond to help us.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Communicator was our first solution and then we got LinkLive, which includes the web browser and is easier to use.
We initially signed up for what we call VB chat. A third party sold it to us to communicate with our members when they're logged in to our online banking platform, so that they can open up a chat window. Once we were using it for that, then we expanded it and used it for our secure email system.
How was the initial setup?
Because we were already on the LinkLive system, the deployment was easy.
When we initially got into the system, we had to rely on the third party that sold us the app to do the training and to help us adopt it, and that was not good. When we reached out directly to the vendor and shared our disappointment about that with them, they took over and trained our staff and did a good job. I told them that I wish that we had had that from day one instead of the third-party vendor that sold it to us, because that third party didn't know what they were doing. It was hard for them to teach our staff anything. Our staff would ask them a question and they wouldn't know the answer.
When LinkLive found out how disappointed we were with the initial training, they sent us Christy Stanley and she did the training with our staff. The feedback from our staff was that it was excellent training. She recorded the training and sent it to us to use for new hires, which was excellent.
What was our ROI?
We have seen return on investment. It reduces our staff hours. It has also reduced our total cost of ownership because our employees can service more than one member at a time. They're able to multitask. It reduces the number of calls that come in and the number of voicemails that have to be returned. It improves our member experience and keeps them as members of our credit union.
It has probably reduced our TCO by 5 percent.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I don't know what their direct pricing is because we bought it through a third-party vendor. For what we pay to this third party, it is excellent value for the money.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did look at other chat features. The important item for me was knowing that it was a secured connection. I did not have to worry about my staff accidentally putting confidential information into a chat window that was not secure. We went through our Portico system to buy LinkLive because Portico manages our member security. Security was a huge selling feature for us.
I like LinkLive's security-first approach. That was a priority for us. We're a credit union and we have to trust that the vendors we use are taking the sensitivity of our member information as seriously as we do.
What other advice do I have?
If you are going to use something like this, make sure that you select a reliable vendor that is aligned with your core goals. The solution becomes one of your primary ways of communicating with your members, so you want to make sure that it's representing you the way you want to be represented.
*Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
