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Espressive Barista vs Zoho Desk 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)
Zoho Desk
Ranking in Help Desk Software
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (6th)
 

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 Zoho Desk is 2.7%, up from 2.5% 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.
Babatunde-Olugbode - PeerSpot reviewer
End-to-end solution to manage customer support tickets and consolidate all communication channels into one platform
For me, the valuable features are related to customer engagement because I want to ensure I don't miss any customer inquiries, no matter the channel. For example, I haven't seen any other platform that consolidates all channels into one console. That's a valuable feature to me. Then there's the pricing, which is better than Zendesk. Zendesk charges in USD per user, per month, whereas Zoho let us pay in Naira (Nigerian currency). Zoho can also identify user locations, letting you leverage existing reviews. These are valuable features that many organizations have adopted Zoho Desk for. We can download the mobile app to see requests and respond from anywhere. It is one of the most improved applications and widely integrated systems I've worked with. You can virtually integrate it with almost anything, like Microsoft Teams and other data applications. The marketplace lets you find native integrations. For example, we have an organization that uses multiple systems and wants to ensure agents don't log in to multiple platforms to see emails. They have a native integration system that takes care of that and works seamlessly.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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 bot is pretty easy to update and keep up to date. Espressive itself is pretty easy to work with."
"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"
"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."
"The solution is available to support us instantly as required."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The solution doesn't have any bugs."
"It is a scalable platform."
"Good at capturing online inquiries has portal functionality, and is very good at managing inbound customer inquiries."
"The most valuable feature of generating the ticket through the web form and for the e-mailers. So, if you are facing any issues, by the ticket, you can generate the issue in Google Test."
"The deployment process is swift, typically taking just one day, and includes customization and automation setup."
"The ticketing feature is very easy to use, compared to other systems."
"The most valuable features of Zoho Desk are the user interface, pricing, and how they customize the solution for us."
 

Cons

"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."
"I would like to see the continued expansion of all of the automation capabilities."
"I would like to see improvement to the out-of-the-box verbiage, with the questions going to the right place."
"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 reports provided by the solution are not customizable."
"Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement."
"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."
"The customization of modules and some blueprint in the solution are areas with shortcomings that need improvement."
"The main concern is the pricing of Zoho Desk, as I consider it to be on the expensive side."
"They could enhance the product’s features to customize the automated email responses."
"Zoho Desk needs to be enhanced to support IT service management policies."
"The main concern is the pricing of Zoho Desk, as I consider it to be on the expensive side."
"There is room for improvement in customer service and support. It could be more knowledgeable."
"The solution could improve its stability and scalability."
"I would like to have integrated support, and integration between the ticketing tool and the project management tool."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing."
"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 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."
"Zoho Desk is a cost-effective solution."
"Price-wise, Zoho Desk is about 35 USD a month per user."
"The gap is limited, but it should limit the price back bracket so that most start-ups can use it most effectively."
"Regarding pricing, it's 35 USD per user a year and 45 USD per user a month. Under the price, I have access to all Zoho products since it all falls under Zoho One's package."
"Zoho Desk's pricing is more flexible."
"The product costs $10 to $25 per user per month."
"Zoho Desk's cost is pretty much okay."
"The solution costs INR 8400 per user."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
51%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Retailer
4%
Educational Organization
58%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Media Company
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 Zoho Desk?
The most valuable features of Zoho Desk are archiving queries and analytics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zoho Desk?
The price point is a concern. The licensing model is quite easy, however, the pricing issue remains the main concern.
What needs improvement with Zoho Desk?
The main concern is the pricing of Zoho Desk, as I consider it to be on the expensive side.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Intel, Sears, Daimler, Essilor, Aon Hewitt, Shop Your Way, CoffeeRocket
Find out what your peers are saying about Espressive Barista vs. Zoho Desk and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.