Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Espressive Barista vs Infraon Desk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Espressive Barista
Ranking in Help Desk Software
15th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
14th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
AI-Powered Chatbots (3rd)
Infraon Desk
Ranking in Help Desk Software
41st
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
40th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Espressive Barista is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Infraon Desk is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software
 

Featured Reviews

Jim Lobao - PeerSpot reviewer
Has helped enhance our support ability, reduced our resolution time, and reduced our service desk costs
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.
KB
Helps us monitor customer ticket SLAs and enables us to understand why SLAs are missed and to improve our processes as a result
There are a lot of predefined reports but we asked for a lot of changes. The problem is that every organization has its own processes and needs. As a result, we had to do a lot of customization on the reporting. The reporting is okay, but it doesn't give you reports that make you say "wow," like you might see from a tool like MRTG or PRTG whose reports give you a good feeling. The detailing is not there in the Infraon Desk reports and there are no graphical elements in them. The reporting is slightly weak and needs to be improved. It should become a more graphical presentation of information. It's much more jazzy when you present something in a PowerPoint rather than a Word document. If the system is capturing a lot of data about certain parameters, I should have the option to generate a report based on all those parameters in any permutation and combination. That kind of flexibility is needed. The reports do help us to analyze and understand things at the customer level, but they could be better. Something that is missing is predefined dashboards. I would expect to see dashboards with some parameters that are predefined.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I like Expressive Barista's integration with Microsoft Teams."
"The most valuable feature is its scalability."
"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."
"When it comes to neutral language processing and conversational AI, it's very good, very solid... We all have different ways of speaking or writing in English and the application does a very solid job of recognizing what's being asked regardless of how it's being asked."
"Our developers have used the Barista Control Center to extend the platform by adding content, and they've found it fairly easy to do and manage"
"The bot is pretty easy to update and keep up to date. Espressive itself is pretty easy to work with."
"With respect to its natural language processing capabilities, it recognizes things that you wouldn't think it would recognize. Even in cases where it doesn't, it's pretty easy to go in and make the adjustments that are needed."
"Its ability to recognize phrases has gotten smarter over time."
"There are a few dashboards and they are helpful because, in our organization, we have different groups of people who need different kinds of dashboards... as head of network operations, I need a top-level view. I want to see how many calls are open and how many calls are pending, on average, and some trend analysis. Whereas a manager in my team might like to see slightly more detail."
"Infraon Desk is very flexible in nature and can be customized for my needs. The fact that I can customize it the way I want is the best part of the tool for me."
 

Cons

"The reports provided by the solution are not customizable."
"I would like to see the continued expansion of all of the automation capabilities."
"The knowledge management could definitely be improved."
"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."
"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."
"I would like to see improvement to the out-of-the-box verbiage, with the questions going to the right place."
"My only comment would be if they wanted to use this as an IT service management tool, maybe they could think about Barista making tickets and having change management and problem management capabilities."
"Although they've done some work on their metrics dashboard, there is some fine-tuning to do for people that just want to go in there at a glance and see their metrics."
"Better connectivity and integration with more collaborative platforms would be helpful."
"The reporting is okay, but it doesn't give you reports that make you say "wow," like you might see from a tool like MRTG or PRTG whose reports give you a good feeling. The detailing is not there in the Infraon Desk reports and there are no graphical elements in them. The reporting is slightly weak and needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing."
"The price for the licensing is fair."
"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."
"User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant value from it."
"The pricing model is very competitive."
"The price of this solution is reasonable and it was well within my budget."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Help Desk Software solutions are best for your needs.
845,960 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
51%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Retailer
4%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Espressive?
The most valuable feature is its scalability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Espressive?
Espressive has been very accommodating in trying to meet our needs and adapt to our current situation. User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant ...
What needs improvement with Espressive?
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 ...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Everest Service Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Airtel, BSNL, Cloudnine, D-Vois, Geojit, Indian telco
Find out what your peers are saying about Espressive Barista vs. Infraon Desk and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
845,960 professionals have used our research since 2012.