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Espressive Barista vs LinkLive comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 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
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
IT Service Management (ITSM) (14th), AI-Powered Chatbots (3rd)
LinkLive
Ranking in Help Desk Software
16th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Contact Center Platforms (5th), Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) (7th)
 

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 LinkLive is 0.1%, up from 0.0% 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.
Charles Larsen - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides stability with security, and the reporting helps us improve our processes
I think they're working on it, but with telehealth being so prevalent in healthcare now—and they already do a lot of things that are on the edge of the telehealth experience—there's an opportunity to develop the platform to be more comprehensive. The overall development of the platform into something more comprehensive could be helpful. One of the stronger suits of the platform, and an advantage for us, has been the reporting. But there's always the idea that the more data you have, and the more reports that have, the more you want. There is an opportunity to further develop the reporting. That opportunity is not because the reporting is lacking today, rather, it's there because there's always an opportunity to look at reports in different ways. With that said, if it's meant to be just a telephony system and the steady rock that it is, I don't know that anything needs to be improved. In terms of additional features, I would like to see more video conferencing, some degree of mobile apps, and artificial intelligence. That's the wave of the future with healthcare. Our providers are all on-the-go, so anything that allows them to remain mobile and not have to go to a desk to take a phone call, would be a good addition. Any additional ways to share documents and information, communicate with one another in different ways, would be helpful. A lot of providers require texting today, so developing that piece of the platform would probably be good. Overall, a good mobile application that folks could download from the app store and access our transfer center through would be great.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"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."
"I like Expressive Barista's integration with Microsoft Teams."
"The bot is pretty easy to update and keep up to date. Espressive itself is pretty easy to work with."
"The solution is available to support us instantly as required."
"The most valuable feature is its scalability."
"LinkLive makes us more progressive in terms of efficiency and productivity. It is just a better customer experience."
"LinkLive gives us a central location for our communication channels and that is very important. I can go back and see if someone has a complaint. Although our users are spread out, everything, all the conversations, is housed in one place. I can keep up with the conversations. The interface works wonderfully."
"It's very reliable and we haven't had much experience with any downtime or dropped calls, which, of course, is one of the most important things to us. That's been a big win for us."
"There are so many valuable features. One of the things that we really appreciate is the uptime. LinkLive rarely, if ever, goes down or disconnects calls. We appreciate that we don't have to be concerned about dropping calls or losing a customer mid-call as a result of those issues."
"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."
"Our agents find the authenticated session feature to be the most helpful. It can take 30 to 45 seconds to verify someone with verifying questions through digital banking, and we didn't have the capability of verifying questions through digital banking before LinkLive. This feature allowed us to work in partnership with our digital banking provider, who can see that a customer is within an authenticated digital banking session. They do not need to ask verifying questions again to ensure that the person is who they say they are. That is one of the nicest things for us, and especially for our agents."
"The presentation of calls within the applications used to access conference call forwarding is straightforward and user-friendly."
"In the future, we may take advantage of LinkLive's video or phone capabilities, but we strictly use text chat now, so I would say that is most valuable to us at the moment."
 

Cons

"I would like to see improvement to the out-of-the-box verbiage, with the questions going to the right place."
"The reports provided by the solution are not customizable."
"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."
"The knowledge management could definitely be improved."
"I would like to see the continued expansion of all of the automation capabilities."
"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."
"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."
"On the back-office side, it houses email addresses for when you look at the agent hunt groups. I can't use my work email address in my own online banking account because it messes up whether I'm an employee or a customer."
"The onboarding process could be enhanced by providing comprehensive training to all users, not just administrators."
"The initial enrollment of employees can be a little bit challenging. It tends to require the need to reach out to Link-Live support to iron out a bug or two."
"The notifications for incoming chats could be a little more obvious. Our organization doesn't have a call center, so we don't have someone sitting at the computer waiting for a chat to come in. They're busy with other work."
"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."
"Our agents have made some requests for some automated responses and some ways that they could improve the way those get pushed out. Right now, the way that canned responses are set up, they could be set up with as many responses as you want. However, the one thing that they liked from our previous providers is that you could categorize responses. So, if you have a certain area where you might have four or five responses related to one topic, then you could easily just click on the topic and see your responses. That is one area which is not a huge deal, but it gives back those five seconds that you are looking for a response to get more lengthy responses out to a customer. It would be nicer to have that a little bit more available."
"I would like LinkLive to rework the notification system. There's an audible sound, and an alert pops up on the screen. However, in Microsoft Teams, an unviewed chat message appears red on my taskbar. That doesn't happen in LinkLive. My only enhancement request is to improve the notifications."
"In the browser-based experience, I would love to see a hold button. Presently, you have to drag the hold music into a call and then drag it out. A hold button would really be easier, particularly if you have to put someone on hold multiple times."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant value from it."
"The solution is affordable."
"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."
"It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing."
"You definitely get more bang for the money with LinkLive.You can get a more expensive product that does what this one does, and possibly more, but for the cost, it works perfectly with our core system."
"We have been very comfortable with the pricing. We are a smaller financial institution so pricing is always a factor. We feel that we are just getting a ton of value for what we are spending."
"The pricing is fair."
"The pricing is exceptionally competitive, and the value we receive from LinkLive for the cost is a significant advantage."
"In terms of cost, LinkLive was similar to other products. I find it reasonable. Its features, for the cost, were a better deal comparatively speaking."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
51%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Retailer
4%
Computer Software Company
63%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Non Profit
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 ...
What do you like most about Revation LinkLive?
The presentation of calls within the applications used to access conference call forwarding is straightforward and user-friendly.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Revation LinkLive?
The pricing is exceptionally competitive, and the value we receive from LinkLive for the cost is a significant advantage.
What needs improvement with Revation LinkLive?
The onboarding process could be enhanced by providing comprehensive training to all users, not just administrators. This would ensure that everyone is well-equipped to utilize the features effectiv...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Revation LinkLive
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
1. AT&T 2. Verizon 3. T-Mobile 4. Sprint 5. Comcast 6. CenturyLink 7. Vodafone 8. Orange 9. Telefonica 10. BT Group 11. Deutsche Telekom 12. Telstra 13. NTT Communications 14. China Mobile 15. SoftBank 16. SK Telecom 17. Telecom Italia 18. Bell Canada 19. Rogers Communications 20. Telus 21. KDDI 22. Swisscom 23. Telkom Indonesia 24. Singtel 25. Etisalat 26. Ooredoo 27. Turkcell 28. Saudi Telecom Company 29. Telecom Egypt 30. PLDT 31. MTN Group 32. América Móvil
Find out what your peers are saying about Espressive Barista vs. LinkLive and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.