LinkLive Reviews

LinkLive is our primary tool for handling customer interactions in the service center. It offers a comprehensive suite of features, including chat, desktop sharing, video calling, inbound and outbound calling, and automatic desktop recording. Additionally, LinkLive facilitates appointment scheduling and campaign management. Its versatility makes it an invaluable asset for our team.

We were tasked with establishing a call center for the financial institution, which did not have one previously. Together with LinkLive, we deployed the call center throughout the organization, initially focusing on serving our customers.

We observed the time to value after the first year, and its worth truly became apparent as our volumes increased and our customers grew more accustomed to it. Once we resolved any initial teething issues, we fully grasped the value of LinkLive.

The presentation of calls within the applications used to access conference call forwarding is straightforward and user-friendly. However, LinkLive's ability to compete with larger call center CRM providers truly lies in its impressive chat functionality. This is attributed to the wide range of communication channels available to customers, catering to different generations and preferences. LinkLive's chat capabilities extend beyond text messaging to include screen sharing, video conferencing, in-chat calling, and document sharing. These features place LinkLive ahead of its industry counterparts in many aspects.

The onboarding process could be enhanced by providing comprehensive training to all users, not just administrators. This would ensure that everyone is well-equipped to utilize the features effectively.

I have been using LinkLive for five years.

LinkLive is stable.

I would rate the scalability of LinkLive a nine out of ten.

Their technical support is incredibly prompt and efficient. They prioritize our needs and strive to resolve issues immediately. They take pride in providing accurate solutions on the first attempt and value our collaboration.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward and took around six months to complete.

The pricing is exceptionally competitive, and the value we receive from LinkLive for the cost is a significant advantage.

LinkLive's chat functionality far surpasses any of the big names like Genesys and Five9. LinkLive's rollout of its onboarding could be better.

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.

We run a transfer center at a large, local hospital system called Banner Health. We use LinkLive's VoIP phone system to answer the phones, and the chat features for internal communication among our agents who answer the phones. We transfer patients from one hospital to the next, usually for a higher level of care or for a service not provided at the sending facility. These are, usually, very critical transfers that are high-risk, life-on-the-line types of situations. We lean heavily on the reliability and the stability of the platform.

Prior to our time with LinkLive, telephones and their reliability were a big deal. That was always something we were working on and dealing with. Now, it's nice to not have to think about it, because it's just reliable. It's there. It's chugging along. It does what it needs to and it's never an issue.

We get phone calls from physicians who have a patient in front of them who's having a stroke or a heart attack and it's vitally important that our communication methods are reliable. For all those reasons, LinkLive has been a great partner for us.

Also, we have phone call recordings that we review regularly and that is another one of the big wins that we've seen from it, the ease of pulling those phone call recordings. We regularly have to investigate patient transfers, why they went well or didn't go well—sometimes it's related to litigation—and it's always pretty quick to pull the recordings out. They're pretty well-categorized and itemized within the LinkLive system.

The reporting that comes out of the platform is probably the most valuable feature. The telephony system is pretty standard compared to others, but the reporting that we get helps improve our processes and operations, and that has been valuable throughout the years.

In addition, its usability is a benefit. It's easy and simple. 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.

And while I can't tell you exactly what all the certifications are, I know LinkLive takes a lot of pride in the security of its platform, and that, obviously, is a big deal for a healthcare organization. When LinkLive started with us, we were one of their first clients in the healthcare space and that was a little bit of a concern for us as an organization. But they have performed wonderfully there. I'm happy that we took that little bit of a leap of faith with them.

I think they're working on it, but with telehealth being so prevalent in healthcare now—and they already do a lot of things that are on the edge of the telehealth experience—there's an opportunity to develop the platform to be more comprehensive. The overall development of the platform into something more comprehensive could be helpful. 

One of the stronger suits of the platform, and an advantage for us, has been the reporting. But there's always the idea that the more data you have, and the more reports that have, the more you want. There is an opportunity to further develop the reporting. That opportunity is not because the reporting is lacking today, rather, it's there because there's always an opportunity to look at reports in different ways.

With that said, if it's meant to be just a telephony system and the steady rock that it is, I don't know that anything needs to be improved.

In terms of additional features, 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. Any additional ways to share documents and information, communicate with one another in different ways, would be helpful. A lot of providers require texting today, so developing that piece of the platform would probably be good. Overall, a good mobile application that folks could download from the app store and access our transfer center through would be great.

We have been using LinkLive since the end of 2019, making it just a hair less than three years.

The stability of LinkLive has been one of our biggest wins in all of this because that was our biggest struggle before. Everyone has the problem they're trying to solve and that was what we were trying to solve: stability while maintaining security. 

Our previous system, Genesys, had a good security platform and that's obviously important with healthcare, and we needed to maintain the highest levels of security. Our problem to solve was stability with security and LinkLive has absolutely done that.

Scaling it is easy. We've scaled our staffing up and down pretty quickly as we've gotten busier, or at the beginning of the pandemic when things were very slow. We've also scaled across states when we opened up a new office in Colorado. That one has since been closed and we brought it down to Arizona. And it's been pretty easy to flex and contract and even to scale to different operating models, like people working from home or this hybrid model. That model is where it has really excelled for us with that internal communication chat feature that it has. We can very quickly chat with people at home or in the office.

The solution's technical support is good. Whenever we need something, we either put in a ticket or we make a phone call and it's always dealt with promptly. No concerns there.

When we need updates to recordings or when we have suggestions around updates to the platform, they're always well-received by LinkLive and executed in a timely manner, if appropriate. It has really been a great partnership all the way around. 

I usually shy away from a rating of 10 out of 10, but with their technical support I don't have a reason to do so. I would rate it a 10.

Positive

Our company, as a whole, which is a large system, was using a platform called Genesys Cloud. First of all, they didn't really have much in line for reporting. But we were also having constant reliability issues where the whole system would go down. We'd have to flip over to desk phones and it wouldn't call-route. Skill-based routing wasn't available and all the phones would ring at once and it was just pure chaos every time that happened. We were putting pressure on that organization to be better and they just didn't get better. 

When we engaged with LinkLive, we were looking for security and reliability and ease of use and they've nailed all three of those.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We had two different offices at the time, one in Arizona and one in Colorado, and they had people onsite to support both go-lives. We didn't do it all at once. Because I oversee both of those departments, I oversaw the deployments. I would check in, "Hey, how's it going?" And they would say, "Great," and that would be the extent of it.

I didn't have to get too involved. The go-lives were successful and smooth. We had folks onsite and we had good remote support. Of course, we had questions once we went live, and those were always answered quickly. We were able to do those via phone calls and emails. Interestingly, even their sales folks stayed engaged with us through the go-live, which was unusual but much appreciated.

Initially, it was deployed across those two different offices. One was a large office that encompassed, at-peak staffing, about 30 to 40 people. And the smaller office, at-peak staffing, would have three people working. But they were in different states and different time zones, and that was all mitigated and successful. Both of those office spaces consist of people sitting at desks in a typical call-center setup.

Once the pandemic started, we did deploy folks from their homes, not everybody, but some. Those people would utilize the program from their house, and that continues today. We have a hybrid model where we have people in-office and people at home.

The timeframe from when we signed the contract to go-live was a few months. Over the course of those few months, we probably used a quarter or one-third of an FTE, on average. There were times that we didn't have to do much, and there were times when it was a half of an FTE involved.

The ongoing management of it has been next to nothing, one-tenth of an FTE. From our perspective, maintenance usually involves opportunities for growth, and that's usually in the reporting. We'll email them and say we're trying to create this report or trying to quantify that information, and they will help us. We also have a phone book of numbers that we update as they change, or as we get new people that we're calling frequently. To that degree, there might be some maintenance, but there really hasn't been maintenance of the system, as a platform. It's just around the tools within it that we decide to use.

LinkLive has an implementation specialist. It wasn't a third-party consultant but someone from the LinkLive team. And we had folks at Banner, within our department, who were assigned to make sure it was project-managed and that it was successful.

We saw the benefits from the system almost immediately. We had a lot of challenges with our previous vendor and we had to go through a lot of steps to leave that vendor. It was almost immediate that, once LinkLive was implemented, it was a steady rock and it has continued that way since.

With this type of platform, it's not like you're going to see a number in your P&L that helps you see your ROI. However, overall, our program and our transfer center have developed immensely, and that's in no small measure due partly to LinkLive. There are a lot of nuances in the transfer of patients, and the idea of a solution being reliable, with the "easy" button, and quick, for the referring communities that need to send patients, is huge. LinkLive is a cog in that wheel. 

It is hard to say that, because LinkLive is here, we've seen an ROI of X. But the feeling, the soft ROI that you don't see on a P&L, is that we're reliable, we don't have our phones cutting out anymore, and we're able to run reports and make decisions on staff productivity based on it. Without a doubt, we've seen ROI, probably multiple-fold. But if someone were to press me and say, "Give me your ROI, a number, and when you broke even," I wouldn't be able to provide that.

The pricing is fair. I was rather inexperienced in pricing when comparing telephony software, but when I look at the bill, it doesn't make me shudder. 

If they were to develop other modalities of communication, like texting or a mobile application or video chat, they could probably get more expensive and it would be justified.

In terms of additional costs, I believe there were some professional services fees, when we first stood it up. They had a person assigned to help us get live and build the platform out. They also helped us with the type of customization that is available and to prep for go-live. There was some cost with that. Outside of that, it's just the licensing and operating. We had to buy headsets to plug into our computers, but that was expected no matter which vendor we went with, as were the professional services. There wasn't anything that surprised us in terms of additional fees.

We evaluated LinkLive at the recommendation of another vendor that we were using for a different software, not related to phones, and we also evaluated a local, smaller company that was actually much cheaper, but we went with LinkLive.

The primary driver in our going with LinkLive was the recommendation that came from that other vendor we were using, a company called Central Logic. They've now rebranded and they're called ABOUT Healthcare. We were using them for a transfer center software application and they recommended LinkLive as part of a discussion of integrating the two platforms: the LinkLive software would be able to communicate directly with the Central Logic software, and vice versa. That would make things easier for us in the transfer center. Even though it was more expensive, we decided to go down the path of LinkLive for those reasons: the recommendation and the discussion of integration.

We went with LinkLive at a higher cost than other solutions, because of the recommendation of that other vendor. I'm glad we went with LinkLive and we've got no intentions of doing anything else. The promises from that other vendor never came to fruition, which has been a source of frustration for us, but I wouldn't pin that on LinkLive.

My advice to others, if they're in the healthcare space and considering LinkLive, would be to talk about the future plans for this system. In this field, we're going to see more dispersed delivery of care and they're going to want something that is multimodal in how they communicate with patients and physicians. Today, LinkLive works great. Tomorrow, it may not if LinkLive doesn't keep up. I think they are working on that and keeping up. But for anybody who is looking into LinkLive, ask them about the future product, and how it's going to be developed, and how that's going to match the healthcare needs of tomorrow, versus just what we need today.

The biggest lesson I've learned is that I wish I hadn't waited as long as I did to find a new solution. We really struggled with Genesys for quite some time, and we had some big downtimes that caused a lot of chaos and a lot of staff dissatisfaction and frustration. Since we implemented LinkLive, it's been something we no longer think about as leaders, as staff, or as an organization. My lesson learned is: If it's not working, don't wait.

I would even say that with LinkLive. We went into this partnership with LinkLive with a very short leash. It would only have taken one or two downtimes in the first six months and we would have broken the contract, because we were just so frustrated with that. But I'm glad that it's gone well and we haven't had to go down any of those routes. That's my lesson learned and what I would have done differently through all this. It's nothing to do with LinkLive. I would've gone with them sooner.

The product, overall, is great. I'll hold back from rating it a 10 because there are opportunities to expand the platform, as a whole, into some of those other modalities such as telehealth. The product today, as a VoIP telephony system with an attached internal communication chat feature, is a 10 out of 10. It has good reporting, et cetera.

But the product as a whole, and maybe the future of it and the opportunities there, would rate an eight out of 10, because we're in that healthcare space. If LinkLive doesn't adjust to that, if they don't react to the healthcare landscape and the telehealth surge that we've seen, they may end up in trouble. So I reduced my rating a little but that's just because of the opportunity to do more, not because it's not doing something today that it's supposed to be doing.

We are a financial institution. We have a call center that is staffed with live agents, and we wanted them to be able to interact with our customers via chat as well. Therefore, we needed a solution that was secure enough for our digital banking environment. While we could find something to put on our website, we also needed something that was secure through our digital banking provider. The partnership with LinkLive has been able to do that in an environment where the chat provider was secure enough to be housed within our digital banking environment, which contains customers' financial and personal information. That was our biggest issue and the deciding factor for us in going with LinkLive.

Right now, we just use it on the customer service side. Those customer service requests come in from our website, as general traffic, and also within our digital banking environment.

Being a financial institution, information security is very important. Personal information and identifying information are our top priority when dealing with customers. LinkLive gives us the flexibility to be able to authenticate users without us having to re-authenticate them. When you are dealing with 20 to 30 chats a day, this can save our agents half hour to an hour of time when verifying customers. Having visibility into who we are interacting with on the other side of the chat has been a huge improvement for us.

Our agents find the authenticated session feature to be the most helpful. It can take 30 to 45 seconds to verify someone with verifying questions through digital banking, and we didn't have the capability of verifying questions through digital banking before LinkLive. This feature allowed us to work in partnership with our digital banking provider, who can see that a customer is within an authenticated digital banking session. They do not need to ask verifying questions again to ensure that the person is who they say they are. That is one of the nicest things for us, and especially for our agents.

On the bank side, we love the fact that it is web-based, intuitive, and easy to get new people trained on the system. We have had two or three new people since we launched this solution, and it is a very intuitive interface. 

On the customer side, we have the ability to place it in more locations than we did before. The icon can show up wherever we need customers to see it. That has been a big help as well.

We have found that the browser version is much easier for training purposes. This is on the IT side as well since all updates are facilitated through LinkLive instead of having us physically touch our computers and assets. This is very important for our day-to-day operations.

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.

We have been signed up with them for about six months.

In the six months that we have been up, we have not experienced any interruptions in their service. There have been no bugs or glitches. It has been fairly reliable.

We have been looking at using some of their chatbot-based services. We have also been looking at utilizing their text messaging sessions and a bunch of features that we haven't enabled yet. We wanted this scalability. Therefore, when we grow or have bigger needs, we would have someone who had these capabilities.

Right now, we are very happy with everything that we can add to the service. We aren't using everything, but as we get more comfortable with various areas, we will start adding in some of the enhanced features that we are currently not using yet. We are still not utilizing all the features that we plan to use.

Right now, we have seven end users who are our admin and agents. We have only deployed it in the customer service area of our bank. We do have plans to open the solution up to other departments, as we get more comfortable with how adding more users looks. 

They have been super responsive to discussing any future needs that we may have. One of the deciding factors for us, outside of security, was the solution's scalability factor.

They have been great. The times that we have had to reach out to them, they have been very quick to respond with an email or phone call. We have not had any issues with their support. I would rate them as eight out of 10.

Positive

We were previously using ChatBeacon. Due to information security, we didn't have the ability to allow them access to our customers' secure information. Therefore, we weren't able to embed their solution into some of our more secure channels. Security for us was the deciding factor on moving forward with LinkLive.

When we were selecting a provider, we really wanted to make sure that we had the flexibility to work across multiple channels and business units, as this is really important for us. 

The initial setup was a very straightforward process. Once we signed with them, we initially implemented the desktop version, which we did not move forward with. We waited for the web-based version, which was all URL-based. Then, we had two admin training sessions and one session to train our agents. In between those time frames, we had some testing that we were able to do in a test environment. People could play with the tools. Other than that, it was a very quick process with a very smooth implementation.

The implementation was a very smooth process. Prior to going to the web-based version of LinkLive, we originally signed up with their older version. We actually paused the implementation for that so it took a few months. However, the actual implementation went very well and was very simple. 

To install, we used the web-based version. We just needed a URL that was specific to us. There were no IT resources really involved in the actual deployment of the product. We had one website support request from our end. We wanted to be able to embed the chat icon on our website. Other than that, because of the type of solution that we are running with now, it was just getting that URL to go live.

We probably used five to six people throughout the implementation. Those people were used for testing, doing some of the training for our internal staff, and making sure that we had all the communication in place for LinkLive and our digital banking provider.

Prior to LinkLive, because of the limitations of who we were using before, we actually saw a 1,200% increase in chat volume with LinkLive. That was due to sessions not being abandoned. Our agents were able to handle them quickly and efficiently with different automated responses and things of that nature. Then, it was a lot easier for customers to interact with us as their financial institution through the various channels that we were able to implement with LinkLive.

We realized the benefits of LinkLive in the first two months. That is when we saw that kind of explosion of growth. We saw that we had a huge need that we didn't necessarily know that we had before, just because of some of the limitations we had. 

Within two months from a business standpoint, it was a slam dunk success. Our customers were using it, and it was something that we didn't really know customers would want to see from us. We saw a 1,200% increase versus our old provider from the previous month. Thus, the functionality and usability of LinkLive was a success internally as well as externally with our customers.

We have seen ROI. It is hard to quantify dollars because customer support is not always something where we see a dollar amount tied to it. One of the things that we really value is being able to handle customer service requests with live agents. We have been very happy that we have been able to handle an increase in chat volume with our live agents.

It has reduced our TCO since we are able to facilitate customer requests a lot of times at that first touchpoint, if not within two touchpoints. So, the solution has been beneficial for that reason.

The overall cost of LinkLive is comparable to competing virtual care management platforms. 

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.

We don't have any complaints. We are happy with the current structure. We don't have anything that we would change.

There are add-on services. On the standalone product, we chose to move forward with the chat, which also has video file and desktop sharing. However, we are looking to add within the next month or so the ability to interact with customers via text. So, we will be adding that service. Then, there are other services as well that we don't take advantage of at the moment that also have an add-on fee.

We did analyze some other solutions. The deciding factor was our overwhelming need to fill security and for the solution to work with our digital banking provider. This solution was the one that we felt best filled those needs. 

For us to be able to trust a third-party with our customers' information, we have to feel comfortable with the vendor. Our financial institution uses a core provider for most of our banking products. We had the benefit of them also reviewing and implementing LinkLive as a service. Therefore, we had multiple parties checking the security, making sure that not only did they have the functionality that we needed, but they also had a secure environment for us to be able to interact with our customers.

I would just advise folks to look at other solution providers out there. Cost is always an issue, but it can't be the deciding factor. Having a solution, from a security standpoint, that will stand the test of time is extremely important. The way that the industry is trending, consumer information will be more heavily scrutinized than it is now. Therefore, the way that you are collecting information, as well as safeguarding it from anyone who might try to steal it, is very important.

There is really nothing that we have on our wish list that they haven't been able to do or already done.

We don't use a lot of the workflows yet. 

I would rate LinkLive as nine out of 10. No product is ever perfect. However, we are always getting feedback from our internal staff, agents, and even customers about ways that they would like to see the product change. It is not necessarily that the product is bad. However, we have had some requests, and we have talked to LinkLive about some of them, and they have been really responsive. As we grow, our needs will change. The perfect product probably doesn't exist out there. That is why we would probably give it nine out of 10 instead of 10 out of 10.

We are a statewide health and human services referral system and we handle about 300,000 contacts a year via phone, text, and chat. Individuals call and they may have needs for things like rent payment assistance, food pantries—a whole host of things—and they contact us. We use LinkLive for our phone and our chat.

As a health and human services referral system, we operate quite differently than a regular call center. Our call abandonment rate has very little to do with our communication system and everything to do with our capacity. One thing I have noticed is that our wait times have gone down, and I attribute that to the functionality of LinkLive and its efficiency. Calls aren't dropping and they aren't getting stuck in queue and holding up other calls behind them.

LinkLive's reliability has helped us maintain continuous calls and reduced customer frustration with dropped calls. We can make quick changes as we need to. The call quality is better. We don't have as many weird VoIP issues that you might have sometimes with bad internet connections. The interface itself is very efficient, so we're able to collect a lot of good data.

There are so many valuable features. One of the things that we really appreciate is the uptime. LinkLive rarely, if ever, goes down or disconnects calls. We appreciate that we don't have to be concerned about dropping calls or losing a customer mid-call as a result of those issues.

It's also very easy to use. It's intuitive. We are able to easily transfer calls and get a customer to where they need to be if they have ended up in the wrong queue.

We can also make changes to groups on the fly. The amount of self-service that you can do in the program is really helpful.

In addition, all of your channels are within one interface. The other thing that's really nice is that now, there are two ways to access that interface. One is an app that's downloaded onto your machine, and another is via a URL. Depending on what you like, as an agent, you have those options. Both options do the same things. Our people who use the browser-based option love it.

The single interface is really important because you don't want to have to jump all over the place or go from screen to screen. With everything in front of you, you can see it all. It allows the agent to work much more efficiently and effectively without having to look all over the place for what they need.

When using that single interface to switch between modes on the fly, it's pretty seamless, in terms of supervisor-to-agent, agent-to-agent, and agent-to-customer communication. It's a one-stop shop. You can even work in multiple channels at the same time. You can handle a text and a chat, or a chat and a phone call, simultaneously.

We also use the solution's AI quite a bit for our chat. The AI aspect is pretty important because it allows us to triage customers' needs without taking agent time. Using it, a customer can self-select. Plus, we find that a lot of our web users prefer a more anonymous contact for clarification of information they got while searching our website, which they now need more help with. The fact that we can translate that call from AI to a live agent is really helpful. By the time it gets to the live agent, there is a good sense of what the customer needs and what they're looking for. Our agent has more time to search for the needed resources, rather than gathering details about what the customer is looking for. It's a time-saver. It allows the customer to really identify what exactly it is they need and it does help answer some general questions that ultimately help us with customer eligibility.

It measures all aspects of a call pretty well and we appreciate that. The dashboard we're currently using is a nice feature. I know that's being updated with workforce management, but the tool we currently use, the MMP (Measuring, Monitoring & Planning Portal) is fine for those quick reports.

In the browser-based experience, I would love to see a hold button. Presently, you have to drag the hold music into a call and then drag it out. A hold button would really be easier, particularly if you have to put someone on hold multiple times.

I know that they're working on the workforce management tool that allows for scheduling and other things. That is going to help immensely.

We have been using LinkLive for almost a year.

The stability of this solution is very good. That has been one of the most significant aspects of it.

The scalability of the solution is great.

We have about 85 users and we are mostly remote workers. We have four contact centers across the state.

Their support is unbelievably responsive. Whenever there's an issue or a need, they're right on it. It's generally with configuration issues or setting up new queues or groups, or making tweaks to messaging. What we contact them for is not necessarily problem-related, but more along the lines of, "We need these things built out," or, "We need this added," or, "We need this changed real quick," and they're on it. You don't have to wait.

They're absolutely fantastic. I give them 11 out of 10.

Positive

Our previous solution had terrible connectivity. The customer service was basically non-existent. Support was inadequate. It just wasn't a great product.

The initial setup was straightforward and it was complex. That is because we are a different entity than a traditional call center. We had a very complex build, and they rolled with it. It was pretty amazing. There were very few glitches or issues. Until we got into the build, I don't think the folks on the LinkLive side were really clear on how complicated it was. They adjusted quickly. We had no delays. There were tense moments, as with any migration, but they handled everything perfectly.

On the day that we actually switched over, our previous provider did not do what they were supposed to do on their end, so we were down for a couple of hours. The LinkLive staff saved the day by going in and making a fix to an issue that they absolutely had no role in. They fixed the problem temporarily until our prior vendor could do what they were supposed to do. To me, that was really impressive.

The security in place in the solution helps us acquire partnerships that need high levels of system security. We also see ROI in the reduced wait times and the lack of dropped calls. If you could quantify that, it would be significant. We're happy with how it has worked out for us.

We had a pretty thorough vetting process. We looked at NICE CXone, inContact, and 8x8 Contact Center. Those and LinkLive were the solutions that we honed down to after starting with 15 or 20 different initial vendors. 

The LinkLive features and user-friendliness were important to us. Also, with LinkLive, all of the applications are in-house, meaning the chat, the text—everything that you use—is developed and maintained internally by LinkLive. In the other systems, chat, text, and video were all third-party applications. We saw that as a little bit of a drawback to quick customer service, should we need a fix or needed to address something. It added additional layers. And the security certifications of LinkLive were really important to us.

Their security-first approach is really critical for us because of the type of data that we deal with. It also allows any partners that we work with to have a high level of certainty related to our security and our data. I've not encountered any issues with it. We just started a partnership with a major medical center in our state, and they needed to do a security audit of all of our systems. Because LinkLive has the certifications it does, they were pretty impressed. It was a no-brainer for them and we didn't have to work too hard on that one.

The security offered by LinkLive, in my experience, is superior to the security of competing systems. It also does not prevent agents from doing their work or create problems for them. It's highly secure, but the systems appear to work behind the scenes without any inconvenience to our staff.

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. When you have vendors out there tacking on third-party solutions to their offerings, and you know the impact that is going to have, it was nice to have one solution and one price.

I rate LinkLive pretty highly because I'm comparing it to our last vendor. I would give it a 10 out of 10. Every system comes with its issues. It's not going to be perfect. But the effort and the investment that the LinkLive staff makes in working with their customers to make it as perfect as possible is what makes it a 10.

If we need to send an encrypted, secured message to a member or a client or a vendor, we can send it through the LiveLink app and we know it's secure and that we don't have to worry about confidential information being leaked.

With this solution we have better communication with our members, who, outside the credit union business, are what you call customers. We're able to support them where they are. For example, if they're trying to log in to the online banking platform and they can't get in, they can hit the Chat feature and talk to us directly and we can help them.

My staff has the ability to multitask and not only help members but continue doing other stuff between the chat sessions. It's more efficient for my staff, but, at the same time, more responsive for our members. They don't have to pick up the phone and call us and say, "Hey, it's not working." A lot of times, members are able to share their screens with us and we can see what they're doing wrong and help them get logged in to the system. Or if they want to find out about rates, or have a question about their account, we can respond and it cuts down on calls to the office itself.

It also helps reduce complexities in our communication. When a member is dealing with a financial situation, the quicker you can respond to that member and get them the answers that they need, the more at ease the member will be and that strengthens the relationship. It cuts down on members being angry because they're on hold waiting for a person to pick up the phone. I feel they're getting quicker response times when they hit the Chat, and we're able to resolve their conflict much quicker. It is a better experience for our associates and our members.

Being the president of our organization, I love the secured email because there are a lot of messages that I have to send out that are secure. There have not been any issues with sending the messages or with individuals receiving and viewing them.

Most of the interaction between our member base and my associates is through the Chat feature and they really like that feature. It helps us engage with our members more.

And LinkLive’s interface for enabling agents to switch between modes on the fly, share files, or schedule a follow-up is easy. When dealing with a client or a member, you can switch easily from chat to video chat or to sharing files or desktop sharing. And when you're initiating contact, it's easy to select the one you want. It's tab-driven, so you just select the tab that you want. You can do that right there. That flexibility is important. When you're dealing with people's money, they want a prompt reply. It has been very useful for us.

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. With some of the more advanced stuff, our associates were a little gun-shy. They didn't want to do that kind of stuff because it was too techy for them. The adoption of it on the staff side has been our biggest challenge with the whole thing.

They can work on the documentation and upfront training. When you introduce a system to your team, the better the initial introduction and training are, the more buy-in you'll have. If things are not presented as well as they can be, they are going to get a preconceived notion that this system is not a good system, and trying to change their minds after is difficult. Training is so important in that respect.

In addition, it would be nice if there were an interface with our core system. We have what we call our Portico teller system, which gives us member information. For communication with a member, it's a standalone product. We don't have any CRM built into it. When someone is chatting or doing a virtual call with you, you have to go to the Portico system to see if they're a member, what kind of relationship they have, and what their accounts are. Having those two working together, so that when the chat comes in you know exactly who you're dealing with and what their relationship with you is, would be very helpful.

We started using LinkLive about seven months ago.

We haven't had any issues with it being down. It has been very reliable. I haven't had any issues with not being able to send a secured email to anyone. I have to deal with the state and send secure documents to them, and you never want it not to go through when you're dealing with the state, but it's been fine.

It probably does a lot more than what we actually utilize it for, so in our case it scales down to us nicely. We only have 12 associates, as we're a small credit union, but all 12 of them have either the LinkLive web version or the older version still installed. They use it to talk directly to our members. You can use it for internal chatting with associates, but we had already adopted Microsoft Teams and we didn't want to have multiple internal channels for people to talk to each other. We use LinkLive, and only LinkLive, for communicating with our members.

I just attended a demo of the next product that's going to be interfacing with LinkLive, which is an interface with DocuSign. With that, you can have a virtual meeting with a member, go over a loan document, and then turn it over to the member and have them sign the document right there on the virtual call. For loan closings, I was very impressed with the ease of use and the interaction capabilities within the virtual meeting, and the ability to view and sign documents together. When it is rolled out, that will be very beneficial to our staff in our line of work.

The support has been excellent and we have stopped communicating with the third party that sold LinkLive to us. We communicate directly with LinkLive because their support is so much better than the support offered by that vendor. They have been very supportive in getting our staff trained and comfortable using it.

And when we had some system issues I had to turn in a support ticket. We're putting in a new website and we needed the new code to get it on our website. Julius Wolf was one of the people on that support ticket and they were very helpful.

When we first went to LinkLive and said we were trying to get it on our website, we were told to work with the third party that sold it to us. We could not get adequate coding and could never get it to work with them. Finally, they gave me a number for someone at LinkLive. From that moment on, we haven't dealt with our third-party vendor. It's unfortunate because they're the ones that sold it to us and they should be the ones supporting us, but LinkLive has been extremely helpful. They know where we bought it, but they're always been willing to go above and beyond to help us.

Positive

Communicator was our first solution and then we got LinkLive, which includes the web browser and is easier to use.

We initially signed up for what we call VB chat. A third party sold it to us to communicate with our members when they're logged in to our online banking platform, so that they can open up a chat window. Once we were using it for that, then we expanded it and used it for our secure email system.

Because we were already on the LinkLive system, the deployment was easy. 

When we initially got into the system, we had to rely on the third party that sold us the app to do the training and to help us adopt it, and that was not good. When we reached out directly to the vendor and shared our disappointment about that with them, they took over and trained our staff and did a good job. I told them that I wish that we had had that from day one instead of the third-party vendor that sold it to us, because that third party didn't know what they were doing. It was hard for them to teach our staff anything. Our staff would ask them a question and they wouldn't know the answer.

When LinkLive found out how disappointed we were with the initial training, they sent us Christy Stanley and she did the training with our staff. The feedback from our staff was that it was excellent training. She recorded the training and sent it to us to use for new hires, which was excellent.

We have seen return on investment. It reduces our staff hours. It has also reduced our total cost of ownership because our employees can service more than one member at a time. They're able to multitask. It reduces the number of calls that come in and the number of voicemails that have to be returned. It improves our member experience and keeps them as members of our credit union.

It has probably reduced our TCO by 5 percent.

I don't know what their direct pricing is because we bought it through a third-party vendor. For what we pay to this third party, it is excellent value for the money.

We did look at other chat features. The important item for me was knowing that it was a secured connection. I did not have to worry about my staff accidentally putting confidential information into a chat window that was not secure. We went through our Portico system to buy LinkLive because Portico manages our member security. Security was a huge selling feature for us.

I like LinkLive's security-first approach. That was a priority for us. We're a credit union and we have to trust that the vendors we use are taking the sensitivity of our member information as seriously as we do.

If you are going to use something like this, make sure that you select a reliable vendor that is aligned with your core goals. The solution becomes one of your primary ways of communicating with your members, so you want to make sure that it's representing you the way you want to be represented.

It is utilized by multiple departments, but the true active use by one team within the customer service center. It is also accessed by a couple of other departments, including marketing and residential lending.

LinkLive makes us more progressive in terms of efficiency and productivity. It is just a better customer experience.

The daily chat functionality is the most valuable, which is the customer communication piece. They have now rolled out many more features that I can talk about, but the most valuable is the functionality to connect with customers.

LinkLive’s single interface makes it very easy for agents to switch between modes on the fly, share files, co-browse, and schedule a follow-up.

LinkLive's security first approach is excellent.

LinkLive provides flexibility to work across multiple channels and business units, and this flexibility is extremely important. However, up until recently, it was not convenient because the camera resided on the laptop but we had VPN on our desktop, which did not have a camera. So, we had to switch between VPN and laptop in order to utilize the chat video.

It doesn't reduce complexities because it is another channel. It is a very effective tool to offer to our customers, but it adds complexity. You need to manage that channel and hold to expectations.

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.

I would like a live dashboard. I get reports delivered at month's end, so I really don't see live activity at the moment. I don't get daily reports of chat interactions and chat loss. While this could be available in the new release, i.e., the web-based version, I don't have experience in that.

I have been using it for about four years.

There is no maintenance. Once it is up and running, it is very stable. The stability is excellent. It hasn't gone down, not that I am aware of. It is very easy to scale LinkLive. 

The scalability is excellent. When we bring on new staff, we have a very simple install process, which includes agent activity and bringing the agent onboard. However, in the future, it would be web-based, which would even eliminate that step. 

The technical support is very valuable when needed, which is not often. It is only generally used with new agent onboarding. I would rate them as eight out of 10.

Positive

We didn't use another solution prior to using LinkLive.

We just did the upgrade to video document sharing. 

The actual implementation was easy. They had great support who answered every question and held our hands. Perhaps, if they had said, "Hey, if you use VPN," we may not have been at the 11th hour, "Oh, are we going to make an adjustment?"

Because of the effective tool and good experiences, we upgraded to the latest version with document sharing and video. The return on investment has been worth it for us because of the improved customer opportunities for business development.

The benefits were quite immediate. It absolutely has resulted in better customer experiences as well as provided more channels for customers to interact and do business the way customers want to do it.

It was introduced shortly before my engagement. Therefore, I don't have details on the pricing.

It is a great solution. There are not many competitors out there. 

It was a complex solution that we adapted to quickly.

My advice is just have a bit more communications with the sales team, getting to know the functionality. This advice is for the desktop-based version. Now that it will be web-based, it may eliminate that.

We have adequate agent coverage. Generally, our abandonment rate is very low. Looking at reports at the month's end, we have done a good job and don't lose many chats. This has been more because of manual internal training and efforts, instead of LinkLive.

We have email, Link-Live, and phone for our communication channels, so it doesn't need to be centralized. It can be decentralized as long as we have access.

The browser-based user experience offered by LinkLive was introduced to us about three weeks ago. Therefore, we are still resident on desktops and laptops. The problem is we won't convert because our bank is merging with another bank. For that reason, we probably won't convert, but we are testing it.

I will be doing a presentation on the application, and perhaps the new bank will be interested in continuing with the solution, but that is unknown.

I would rate LinkLive as nine out of 10.

LinkLive allows our customers to chat with our customer experience representatives. Most customers use it through our digital banking app, but LinkLive is also available on our website. We are a small community bank, and six people here use LinkLive. It is limited to our data center and bookkeeping department. 

LinkLive is a significant improvement over our previous tool. We were not happy with the notifications that the other chat solution provided. It was all web-based, and the interface wasn't intuitive.

In the future, we may take advantage of LinkLive's video or phone capabilities, but we strictly use text chat now, so I would say that is most valuable to us at the moment. 

The ability to centralize communications channels has been fairly important. When there are issues, we need to get somebody to assist with them, and I've been satisfied with what they offer so far.

I like the built-in validation features. When someone uses our digital banking app to chat with us, it is authenticated. We feel comfortable answering specific questions regarding sensitive information. It enables us to safely assume the customer is who they say they are because they got through the login process on our app. Those chats look different than the ones from the website, which we consider unauthenticated. No specific account information is shared in those chats.

I would like LinkLive to rework the notification system. There's an audible sound, and an alert pops up on the screen. However, in Microsoft Teams, an unviewed chat message appears red on my taskbar. That doesn't happen in LinkLive. My only enhancement request is to improve the notifications. 

It would ensure we don't miss chats. This week, a person tried to chat during a busy time, but we missed the chat because we were short-staffed. It isn't entirely LinkLive's fault. They waited for 10 minutes with no answer. We might not have missed that if we had a clearer notification system.

We started using LinkLive in June 2022, so it has been around six or seven months. 

We haven't had any issues, to my knowledge. I think we've had 100% uptime.

LinkLive seems scalable. It's easy to add users, set them up, and assign them rights. If we doubled in size overnight, it wouldn't be an issue to set our users up on LinkLive as well.

I rate LinkLive's support a seven out of ten. I'm probably stricter than most folks, but seven is fair. They're above average. I haven't had many issues, and they usually solve any problems I have quickly. 

For example, this week, I was looking for some reports that I couldn't find. LinkLive responded promptly and got me what I needed. It was resolved in about an hour. S

Neutral

We used a solution called Intercom. LinkLive integrates better with our core CSI.  One of our favorite features of LinkLive is its integration with digital banking. That was the primary selling point. Also, I didn't like our previous solution's interface. It wasn't intuitive.

Setting up LinkLive was pretty straightforward. I didn't do much besides providing them with some information. LinkLive and CSI, our core provider, did the bulk of the work and updated me on the progress. About six people were involved. After they were finished, we had a final call to discuss what our chat buttons needed to look like. It was a smooth process.

The process took a few months. The partnership with CSI was pretty fresh then, and we were among the earlier banks to get on board. At the same time, that's probably not typical, especially now that it's a more established relationship with our core provider. I would imagine they've gotten that process down a bit better.

We still used Intercom until we decided to switch, and we went without a chat solution for a couple of months. We wanted to go live, so we would have a method of communicating with our customers. That was our number one goal, and we've achieved that.

It's hard to put a number on it, but we believe LinkLive is worth what we pay for it. 

We signed up with them through CSI, so we don't pay LinkLive directly. It's just part of our CSI bill. I'm not part of the decision-making process, but we reviewed the pricing before we signed on and thought it would bring value. I believe we still feel it's worth the price.

While I don't have access to our billing, I believe it is more expensive than our previous solution. At the same time, it interfaces with our core more directly through digital banking, so it was worth the cost.

I rate LinkLive a seven out of ten. It's a good solution, and we're happy with it.

We are in the digital banking department, so we use LinkLive to help people troubleshoot their online issues.

Before we had LinkLive, we couldn't see the customer's screens, so we had to go off what they said. However, they might not be clicking where they say they're clicking, or they could be on a completely different page than we think. The screen-sharing capability is fantastic. It has shortened phone calls that used to last 20 minutes down to five minutes.

LinkLive provides a central location for all its communication channels, which is critical. Internally, we still use Teams just because we already had Teams, but because we have Scheduler with LinkLive, everything is in the communicator portal. 

We also have a chatbot that the customers can go through, and I think many of our customers notice the chat button more when they're online. It's pretty neat to have people begin to use the chat.

The chatbot has helped reduce the call volume because it can answer simple questions. For example, I had a chat where this girl only wanted to know how much a bank check was. Instead of calling, she asked the question online, and I could answer her in five seconds.

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. 

LinkLive lets you switch between modes on the fly. When chatting with somebody, I can just throw our fee schedule into a chat or an address change form if they need it. I also like that when customers are logged into online banking, it shows that they're authenticated.

It's good to know our chats are encrypted, providing a safe way for customers to message us. We also have policies to safeguard their personal information. For example, we ask them not to send their account number over the chat or anything. At the same time, it's good to know that it's not easily hacked. They can see all our chats. Our federal auditors are here, and they requested LinkLive's security agreement. I just gave that to them yesterday.

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 system has nothing at the bottom that blinks to let us know someone's there. You have to figure it out. A lot of chats have been missed because of that.

I have been using LinkLive for at least a year

It has been stable. The service went down for a little bit one or two times, but that does not happen often.

Initially, we got support through Fiserv, and that person was unresponsive. Later, we worked directly with LinkLive support, and they were wonderful. 

As someone without a tech background, I found the setup complicated. It involves something like HTML coding, which I can't do. LinkLive support helped us put it all together. We got all the information from them we needed to ensure it would work the way we needed it to work for our company.

I rate LinkLive eight out of 10. 

We use it for online chat.

With the online chat, customers do not have to call in and more people can assist with a customer. Our customers are liking the fact that everything is online. They don't want to call in and they don't want to come into the bank. They can do it right from their mobile devices or their computers.

We have very few abandonments on it. More customers are getting taken care of, and that means we are seeing customer satisfaction.

Overall, LinkLive has helped us keep pace with the times. It has made us more competitive giving us another service we can offer customers.

LinkLive gives us a central location for our communication channels and that is very important. I can go back and see if someone has a complaint. Although our users are spread out, everything, all the conversations, is housed in one place. I can keep up with the conversations. The interface works wonderfully.

As far as the security goes, it has been great.

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.

But as far as what the customer sees, it's great.

I have been using LinkLive for about a year.

It has never let us down.

We contacted their technical support in the beginning. They could provide faster response times, but they got everything resolved. That part was perfect.

Positive

We did not have a previous solution.

The deployment was very straightforward and very easy.

And there is no maintenance required on our side.

Our ROI isn't so much from getting more accounts, it's more that customers are saying that they love the chat feature. It's about reputation.

It hasn't yet reduced our total cost of ownership but it will in the future, as we grow.

I have not been disappointed with the pricing so far.

I don't remember the names of the other solutions we looked at. One was more like a bot system, but this one was the best to go with for our core provider.

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.