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Espressive Barista vs LinkLive comparison

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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

Automation Anywhere
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
660
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (2nd), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (2nd), Process Mining (1st), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (1st), Agentic Automation (1st), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (2nd), AI Legal & Compliance (1st), AI Finance & Accounting (1st), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
Espressive Barista
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (39th), AI-Powered Chatbots (9th), AI-Agents for HR (3rd)
LinkLive
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Contact Center Platforms (9th), Help Desk Software (47th), Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) (8th)
 

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash - PeerSpot reviewer
Management Consultant at Accenture
Has significantly improved document-driven workflows and reduced processing time across finance and HR functions
Automation Anywhere has evolved significantly and upgraded itself to provide agentic AI and AI-based automation solutions for document automation. The product has matured considerably over time. We can create workflows that can call an API. We can include prompts in particular workflows for ChatGPT-related functions, connecting to an LLM and RAG to perform tasks. For document automation, modern features are available to train documents, ensuring high accuracy and repeatability over time. The system is very easy to use. I recently completed a course in document automation, typically designed for people involved in coding and technical aspects. Though I understand coding comprehensively, I don't do actual coding. The course was very accessible. Currently, extensive coding isn't necessary due to the hybrid model incorporating GenAI aspects, low-code, no-code capabilities, APIs, and numerous pre-built objects in Automation Anywhere. The features include GenAI-driven prompting methods and workflow creation capabilities. In these workflows, we can create decision boxes and call APIs without coding. We simply pull objects, drop them, connect them, and add minimal coding when needed. The most crucial aspect isn't coding but rather sizing the automation and fleshing out the details. Automation Co-pilot takes notes and performs automated analysis. It can extract details from videos, summarize conversations, and provide detailed information. During calls, it identifies instructions and performs tasks such as preparing reports and reconciliation. Automation Anywhere can also connect with Microsoft Co-pilot. Through Co-pilot, real-time operations can be executed, allowing direct interaction between vendors and automation through this component.
Jim Lobao - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager for End User Support Services at Five9
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.
LA
VP, Service Center & Digital Banking Manager at Newburyport Bank
Great video conferencing, in-chat calling, and document sharing
I would give LinkLive a perfect ten out of ten rating. Despite being on a month-to-month contract, we could have easily switched to another provider. However, doing so would have been more expensive and time-consuming due to the simplicity and reliability of LinkLive's system. Their system's exceptional redundancy ensures consistent uptime, minimizing disruptions and downtime. LinkLive has recently been expanded from its initial implementation in the service center to encompass the entire company. Additionally, due to our merger with another financial institution, LinkLive is now being utilized by both entities. Before I joined the company, our organization had engaged a consultant to identify suitable customer engagement solutions. At that time, I was not particularly keen on LinkLive as they were not a widely recognized name. I favored more established options like Genesys and Five9. Consequently, I was initially skeptical of LinkLive. When we first adopted LinkLive, their technology was not yet fully mature. However, over the past few years, they have transformed into a completely different company. They have made significant investments in technological advancements and have emerged as a frontrunner in the industry. Moreover, LinkLive is exceptionally collaborative. We regularly provide suggestions, and their engineers are always receptive to our feedback and are willing to implement enhancement requests. Many of the enhancements they have made are based on our recommendations. As a result, LinkLive has evolved into a highly progressive technology company, and we are proud to be associated with them. LinkLive requires maintenance when we add or remove people. We are working on an enhancement with them to automate this process, making it the same as for phone numbers. This enhancement will cover permissions, call routing, and other relevant aspects. LinkLive may not have the same brand recognition as some of its competitors, but the value it offers is unmatched. The chat functionality is far superior to anything else on the market, and the sound quality is exceptional. Additionally, the people at LinkLive are passionate about technological innovation and committed to providing their customers with the best possible experience.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We've shifted platforms a couple of times, and Automation Anywhere is the one that stuck based on end-user experience, the ease of development, and trainability with the tool."
"By implementing processes using Automation Anywhere, we can save up to 3,000 euros within two weeks of development."
"The tool is a huge time saver. If I want to do something manually, it will take half an hour, but the bot can do the task within minute or seconds. In a day, month, or year, this will be a huge amount of time for me. A reduction to a fraction of seconds will be a big impact."
"Instead of packages like other RPA tools, I think the repo check-in and check-out feature enables the same in AA."
"The ability to customize added automation to a lot of situations where human judgment and interpretation are not required."
"The saving of efforts within my project has been to the tune of 20% as of now and I am sure that it will improve as we explore the tool more and automate many more processes."
"IQ Bot is one of the most valuable features because it helps in processing different formats from different vendors."
"It has improved the efficiency and reliability of the data in the systems."
"This is one of the few tools that live up to the sales reps' hype when it comes to integrating with ServiceNow."
"The solution is available to support us instantly as required."
"Our department received about a 70% deflection rate, so that was really great."
"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 bot is pretty easy to update and keep up to date. Espressive itself is pretty easy to work with."
"Given the out of the box content for common industry applications, we got good value out of the solution right from day one."
"I like Expressive Barista's integration with Microsoft Teams."
"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."
"Since we implemented LinkLive, it's been something we no longer think about as leaders, as staff, or as an organization."
"It improves our member experience and keeps them as members of our credit union."
"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."
"The presentation of calls within the applications used to access conference call forwarding is straightforward and user-friendly."
"LinkLive makes us more progressive in terms of efficiency and productivity. It is just a better customer experience."
"One of the primary features we use it for is the Agent Connect screen-sharing feature. I find it invaluable when troubleshooting customer problems with online banking. It saves us time, and time is money."
"Within two months from a business standpoint, it was a slam dunk success."
"More customers are getting taken care of, and that means we are seeing customer satisfaction."
 

Cons

"Automation Anywhere can improve the product in potential areas of improvement with respect to automation and AI."
"I suggest increasing assistance from support personnel."
"The approval process needs improvement."
"Regarding the UI, once you're on some of the screens there are fixed dialogues, they are a set size, so there's a lot of horizontal scrolls and vertical scrolls. If I want to do something that is purely business-related and is somewhat complex to write or is nuanced, I sometimes have trouble implementing that inside of the Automation Anywhere script."
"Queue management is still missing from the latest version which is a barrier to using the platform to start implementing complex cases where you have parent and child transactions going through multiple stages."
"From an IT perspective, we had too many issues and headaches."
"To improve the product, one aspect that Automation Anywhere can work on is archiving legacy data effectively. Currently, data older than current versions remains on the server, slowing the system down."
"Automation Anywhere risks falling behind by focusing solely on Robotic Process Automation when competitors offer more versatile and adaptable solutions that integrate AI for a more intelligent automation experience."
"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."
"There aren't very many things that this product needs improvement on."
"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."
"The knowledge management could definitely be improved."
"I would like to see improvement to the out-of-the-box verbiage, with the questions going to the right place."
"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."
"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."
"Our agents have made some requests for some automated responses and some ways that they could improve the way those get pushed out."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"They could provide faster response times, but they got everything resolved."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price for Automation Anywhere is reasonable."
"Cost-wise, it is fine. A lot of medium businesses prefer Automation Anywhere. The development cost is also lower."
"The pricing of AA is similar to UiPath."
"The licensing fees are approximately $10,000 USD for between five and ten users."
"I believe it is $10,000 for Bot Creator."
"Our licensing costs are setup on an annual basis."
"Its cost is good."
"They have a ridiculously expensive bot licensing structure, especially for the Asian region."
"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."
"It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Construction Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Construction Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business157
Midsize Enterprise82
Large Enterprise558
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.
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Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
No data available
Revation LinkLive
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
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: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.