Senior Manager for End User Support Services at Five9
Real User
Nov 21, 2023
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 value from it. We anticipate expanding our usage and adding more capabilities, which would necessitate upgrading to an enterprise license from our current IT-focused license. We envision utilizing Espressive across various service areas, including HR, facilities, and legal. The ability to assist users with repetitive, task-oriented common challenges, problems, or questions without constantly redirecting them to knowledge articles, SharePoint sites, or other resources is particularly valuable. We are meeting users where they are, and we believe the value of Espressive is immense.
I rate Expressive Barista six out of 10. The total cost depends on how large the client is. We get Barista from the vendor for a certain price and resell the solution to our customers at a markup. It's negotiable and depends on the customer's budget.
Manager at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Jun 9, 2023
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.
Business Services Technology Manager at a recreational facilities/services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Oct 14, 2022
It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing. I think it averages out to be about two full-time entry-level employee salaries per department. The biggest thing is making sure that you have everyone on board with using it, communicating well, and making it accessible. I think utilizing the mobile option is really important because so many people are on their phones throughout the day, so it makes it a lot easier for people to use. You also need someone to support it. It depends on how often you're going to use it, but you're looking at maybe a quarter of someone's workload throughout the year. Espressive can maintain things and update it for you. However, it's very easy to do it and I find it very beneficial to know how the back end works and know how to build out workflows and know your triggers and everything, especially as you're going through and doing all the testing and building. They'll do it for you but they can't tell you if something's right or wrong. They can't tell you how the question should be answered, so you're always going to need someone to say, "Oh, this works this way or that way." You're also going to run into situations where updates don't go right and you have to go back and figure out what's going on as you integrate into other systems.
Help Desk Manager at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Apr 28, 2022
The pricing is absolutely fantastic. Even though ServiceNow offers their chat and their AI product for free, there's still manpower that's required to maintain that. You probably have to hire two people to maintain ServiceNow's free tool. If I were to hire two ServiceNow admins, full-time, to manage ServiceNow's chatbot agent, it would be more than what we're paying for Espressive Barista. Therefore, even though ServiceNow's tool is "free" there's still a manpower issue in terms of managing it day-to-day and keeping it up and running, which we don't have with Espressive Barista.
CIO at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Apr 27, 2022
The price for the licensing is fair. We were an earlier customer, and that's always advantageous. I don't know what their pricing looks like today and I can't remember exactly what we paid but I thought it was a very fair price.
Barista, Espressive’s innovative virtual support agent (VSA) platform, takes on the role of the service agent, bringing the best of human experience with the best of artificial intelligence. Leveraging a proprietary and domain-specific large language model (LLM), the Employee Language Cloud, as well as integration with generalized LLMs, Barista automates resolution of employee questions, issues, and requests with personalized experiences that result in employee adoption of 80 to 85% and...
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 value from it. We anticipate expanding our usage and adding more capabilities, which would necessitate upgrading to an enterprise license from our current IT-focused license. We envision utilizing Espressive across various service areas, including HR, facilities, and legal. The ability to assist users with repetitive, task-oriented common challenges, problems, or questions without constantly redirecting them to knowledge articles, SharePoint sites, or other resources is particularly valuable. We are meeting users where they are, and we believe the value of Espressive is immense.
I rate Expressive Barista six out of 10. The total cost depends on how large the client is. We get Barista from the vendor for a certain price and resell the solution to our customers at a markup. It's negotiable and depends on the customer's budget.
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.
It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing. I think it averages out to be about two full-time entry-level employee salaries per department. The biggest thing is making sure that you have everyone on board with using it, communicating well, and making it accessible. I think utilizing the mobile option is really important because so many people are on their phones throughout the day, so it makes it a lot easier for people to use. You also need someone to support it. It depends on how often you're going to use it, but you're looking at maybe a quarter of someone's workload throughout the year. Espressive can maintain things and update it for you. However, it's very easy to do it and I find it very beneficial to know how the back end works and know how to build out workflows and know your triggers and everything, especially as you're going through and doing all the testing and building. They'll do it for you but they can't tell you if something's right or wrong. They can't tell you how the question should be answered, so you're always going to need someone to say, "Oh, this works this way or that way." You're also going to run into situations where updates don't go right and you have to go back and figure out what's going on as you integrate into other systems.
The pricing is absolutely fantastic. Even though ServiceNow offers their chat and their AI product for free, there's still manpower that's required to maintain that. You probably have to hire two people to maintain ServiceNow's free tool. If I were to hire two ServiceNow admins, full-time, to manage ServiceNow's chatbot agent, it would be more than what we're paying for Espressive Barista. Therefore, even though ServiceNow's tool is "free" there's still a manpower issue in terms of managing it day-to-day and keeping it up and running, which we don't have with Espressive Barista.
The price for the licensing is fair. We were an earlier customer, and that's always advantageous. I don't know what their pricing looks like today and I can't remember exactly what we paid but I thought it was a very fair price.