Genesys Cloud CX (formerly PureCloud, Genesys Cloud) is a contact center application optimized for automatic call distribution, interactive voice response, email, social media, chat, and text/SMS. It is also a VoIP interconnect service provider.
$75
per month (billed annually) per user
HCL Sametime
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
HCL Sametime (formerly IBM Lotus Sametime, acquired by HCL Technologies from IBM in 2018) is an enterprise-level unified communications and VoIP platform. It includes features such as instant messaging, web conferencing, voice and video integration, telephony capabilities, and presence information.
Great for large centers with multiple sites, particularly if you are leveraging Genesys Cloud Voice and let them "be the carrier". Handles queues and campaigns well. Powerful when fully optimised but can be built over time. If you want to be able to build a third-party application to suit your business requirements, Genesys has a lot of API endpoints to allow this. Less suited to smaller orgs or orgs that only need simple flows - as the per agent cost can be expensive, and some features require additional licenses (and expense) on top.
Sametime is well suited for very quick conversations, where you know the person is an active Sametime user. It also serves as an easy way to reach out to someone you may not know when looking for an answer to a quick question, as they are likely to be a Sametime user. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to use Sametime for Audio or Video chat. The quality and reliability are horrendous.
Sametime's web-based interfaces are "zero load", requiring no plug-ins to be installed to join a meeting, launch a meeting, or use chat in a browser. A plugin is required only if you want to share your screen.
Integration with IBM Notes is very tight. Sametime's chat status can change according to your Notes calendar. You can easily see if someone who just emailed you is available to chat. Your chat History is right inside Notes as well.
IBM's mobile apps are top notch. We automated the apps for our users thanks to IBM's work with third party MDMs. This made it very simple for us to deploy the Sametime mobile apps -- Chat and Meetings -- and get new capabilities such as Audio & Video mobilized quickly.
No down time, ever. The rock solid WebSphere back-end of Sametime means the environment is always up. Period.
The upcoming upgrades working with Genesys Cloud and Salesforce are very exciting. Even though we don't use Genesys Cloud to the fullest extent it can be used (we just migrated a year ago), when these upgrades roll out, I am very excited to see what it can do to for our agents. I think they are going to be very impressed
Sametime is now an embedded experience for our users. They know it, they like it, they use it, and they expect it to be wherever they are. Because it is pretty easy to use and NEVER goes down, users know they can rely on it and won't be frustrated by it. Sametime is right up with there with Microsoft Office in terms of user adoption and appreciation.
Everything is very good. It is very useful, friendly to users and it makes our work easier than what we expected. I think that I don't need any help from someone on how to use Genesys coz basically they will directly feed it to you without any hassle on using it.
Just about everything works the way you expect it would and it's relatively easy for users to figure out. Sametime was one of those things that we started with only a few people as a "test" and before the test period was done we discovered a few hundred people had figured out how to log in and most got it working all on their own. Many of our users want to use Sametime and do so regularly; we do not have to create policies enforcing its usage. Users find it practical to use Sametime to do things like chat, transfer files, share their screen, and so forth.
The platform is highly reliable, with minimal downtime or outages, and is generally available when needed. Over the course of using it, unplanned outages or application errors have been rare, and any issues that did arise were quickly resolved. Genesys provides robust support and maintenance, ensuring the system remains operational during critical business hours. However, like any cloud-based platform, there have been occasional disruptions, though these were infrequent and quickly addressed. Overall, its availability has been excellent, supporting smooth daily operations.
Typically if Sametime is not available, it's because Windows Updates were done on the servers and they were not rebooted. However, that's not a problem with Sametime -- in fact, if you have Linux you could probably run Sametime for years without any hiccups whatsoever. We have no internal Linux expertise.
Overall, the platform performs well, with pages loading quickly and reports typically completing in a reasonable time, even with complex data. The interface is responsive, and most day-to-day tasks are executed efficiently. However, in some instances, especially during peak usage times or when running very detailed, large-scale reports, there can be slight delays. While these are rare, they occasionally affect workflow. Additionally, the platform generally integrates smoothly with other systems, though some integrations can slow down slightly, particularly when pulling large datasets or interacting with older, legacy systems. Nonetheless, the performance is strong and reliable for most use cases.
Generally very good. Occasionally AV or screen-sharing will stutter and every now and then I hear of it dropping out altogether, but in all cases it was easy to re-establish
Support does indeed resolve the issue but they seem to be really slow and I have to stay on them to get my ticket handled. Everyone I have interacted with is very professional and pleasant. Other than being slow its been a good experience
Genesys team that provide trainings are friendly and professional. They helped us to understand well the product and the functionalities. The training was detailed with use cases. At the end, we got a task to develop that ended with success and we got some Genesys rewards. It was amazing experience
In general, it gives a description and can help to understand what to do and how. but: Sometimes, it does not keep up with changes in the system (for example, in the GUI changes, additional features and so on). Sometimes, much easier and helpful to read the documentation (https://help.mypurecloud.com/) that gives the "better" explanations and takes less time.
My Team was involved in the discussion before implementing the application. We had a whole walkthrough of this product and during the demo itself we were very impressed with type of service we were getting. The integration of the product into our system was very quick and seamless.
We previously utilized Genesys Engage. The analytics and reporting in Genesys Engage cannot even compare to what we are seeing in Genesys Cloud CX. Genesys Cloud CX provides a very "hands on" experience for supervisors as well as analytics teams. Call recordings and analytics in Genesys Cloud CX provided a full view of the conversation and allow for a better understanding of the customer journey.
We use Jabber globally in our company and Symphony (no relevant app in able list) in some of the teams as well. All these are instant messenger tools, but Sametime is the easiest one to be used and its chat history is easy to be searched. Sametime can be used to contact almost all internal staff as it’s included in default computer package. Symphony is used to chat with front end business while Jabber is used for call.
Genesys provides Licensing in 3 tier subscription types of licenses on top based on any business requirements then any sort of feature/functionality inclusion (or removal) is discussed openly. There are 2 types of billing models available which are "Named" and "Concurrent" based on the type of roles users will perform in Genesys Cloud CX environment (eg. Agent, Supervisor, Administrator, and Business Users) Also, the billing period/frequency starts on the actual day the platform is delivered.
I give Genesys a rating of 10 for scalability because of its ability to adapt seamlessly to growing business needs, whether expanding across multiple departments, locations, or regions. Its cloud-based infrastructure allows for easy scaling without the need for costly hardware upgrades or lengthy implementation times. As our organisation grew, we were able to add new agents, channels, and features without disrupting operations, which significantly enhanced our flexibility. The platform's design supports both small-scale and enterprise-level operations, making it ideal for evolving businesses. Additionally, its capacity to handle increased interaction volumes without compromising performance ensures that customer service quality remains high, even during peak times. This flexibility and ease of scaling, combined with real-time analytics and automation capabilities, make it highly effective for growing organisations.
Sametime is rock solid. It runs on WebSphere, DB2 and other related IBM technologies. This does mean the back-end is highly complex and very difficult to learn and get comfortable with, however.
Professional services are definitely much more experienced than the support teams, and the price for their services is very fair. I wish that the support team could help answer simple questions about work that the PSS team does, however, so that we do not have to use our SOW for simple Q&A emails.
