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Espressive Barista vs ServiceNow Virtual Agent comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Espressive Barista
Ranking in AI-Powered Chatbots
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (10th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (8th)
ServiceNow Virtual Agent
Ranking in AI-Powered Chatbots
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the AI-Powered Chatbots category, the mindshare of Espressive Barista is 6.9%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Virtual Agent is 25.2%, down from 31.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
AI-Powered Chatbots
 

Featured Reviews

Jim Lobao - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 21, 2023
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.
Manuel Villalba Rodriguez - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 3, 2023
Powerful, visually attractive, and helps to create deflections and save a lot of time of service desk agents
For me, it's very valuable that many of the IT solutions that normally service desk agents provide and that take a lot of their time can be done. For example, password reset normally takes a lot of time for service desk agents, and that is something that can be very easily automated so that they can focus on something that adds more value. Password reset or helping with password reset looks simple, and maybe naive, but it takes a significant amount of time for service desk agents. That is something that helps a lot. It's very stable. It's powerful. It's flexible and very configurable. The way it shows for the end-user is very intuitive.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"The solution is available to support us instantly as required."
"Its ability to recognize phrases has gotten smarter over time."
"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."
"I like Expressive Barista's integration with Microsoft Teams."
"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 most valuable feature is its scalability."
"What's best about ServiceNow Virtual Agent is easy implementation. It's a drag-and-drop process where you can set up a chatbot over the UI. I like that ServiceNow Virtual Agent is a low-code solution. For ServiceNow Virtual Agent integration, you'll only need to write short lines of code, so that's easier. As ServiceNow Virtual Agent is under ServiceNow, it's easy to raise an incident, look for a knowledge base article, etc., so this is another pro of the solution."
"Virtual Agent frees up resources. When properly populated, it's a great asset because it can provide answers 24/7, and you can operate it with reduced staff. You save money. Over time, you can have it learn to address newer questions as you work with it from a support staff standpoint."
"The ITSM topics were valuable. They reduced service desk usage and freed agents. They saved 40% to 50% of the time, and the agents were able to do other tasks instead of just replying to customers, replying to their emails, or logging the incidents themselves. That percentage of work was now done directly by end-users who were also happy because they were able to get the query response within seconds instead of waiting in a queue or waiting for an agent to reply."
"Virtual Agent gives us connectivity that can reach out to any middleware."
"For me, it's very valuable that many of the IT solutions that normally service desk agents provide and that take a lot of their time can be done. For example, password reset normally takes a lot of time for service desk agents, and that is something that can be very easily automated so that they can focus on something that adds more value. Password reset or helping with password reset looks simple, and maybe naive, but it takes a significant amount of time for service desk agents. That is something that helps a lot."
 

Cons

"Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"They can help the developers with ready-made structures or JavaScript structures or topics that can be integrated into the basic package. That would help a lot."
"Lacks integration with AI search or any enterprise search machine."
"Right now, out of the box, ServiceNow Virtual Agent has no natural language conversion. You can't convert from one language to another. If that functionality were available in ServiceNow Virtual Agent, that would make the solution better and easier for users. For example, if a user is typing in Chinese and the service desk staff is using Hindi, there should be a dynamic conversion of the languages, so there'd be good and accurate communication between the end user and the service desk team. The additional feature I'd like ServiceNow Virtual Agent to have in its next release is language conversion because that's where it's lagging. It's one of the most critical features that clients ask for. I'm in a consulting firm, and I'm helping people implement ServiceNow Virtual Agent. As a consultant, people often ask me this question: "How do you remove the language barrier?""
"There were occurrences where the machine was not recognizing the topic correctly and not routing the users to the correct topic. It was specifically related to the Spanish language."
 

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 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 price for the licensing is fair."
"It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing."
"ServiceNow Virtual Agent was included in my company's basic ServiceNow package, so when you get a ServiceNow license, you can use ServiceNow Virtual Agent for free."
"Based on what I know, when you purchase ServiceNow ITSM, ServiceNow Virtual Agent comes out of the box with it. You don't have to pay extra for the ServiceNow Virtual Agent license. So, there's no extra cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
55%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
3%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
9%
 

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 ...
What do you like most about ServiceNow Virtual Agent?
Virtual Agent frees up resources. When properly populated, it's a great asset because it can provide answers 24/7, and you can operate it with reduced staff. You save money. Over time, you can have...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Virtual Agent?
I am a developer, so I've not been involved with its licensing, but I've read about it. Based on what I know, when you purchase ServiceNow ITSM, ServiceNow Virtual Agent comes out of the box with i...
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Virtual Agent?
Even though the way that the developers program the topics for the Virtual Agent is very intuitive and flexible, there is some room for improvement. There are things that can be done visually, and ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Virtual Assistant, Passage AI
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
MGM,Novant Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Espressive Barista vs. ServiceNow Virtual Agent and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
815,854 professionals have used our research since 2012.