Is Talkdesk right for your business, or is a Talkdesk alternative like Kixie a better choice? If you’re reading this, chances are your business relies on agents making lots of phone calls. With so many sales dialers on the market, how do you choose the optimal solution?
Following the tried and true method of comparing features and reading online reviews can lead you to the best choice. Thankfully, we’ve done the work for you by taking a realistic look at how Talkdesk stacks up to Kixie.
The Options: Talkdesk and Kixie
Two popular options for VoIP sales dialers are Talkdesk and Kixie. Read the breakdown below to understand the best option for your business.
Table of Contents
- Overview
- Things to Consider
- CRM Integration
- Onboarding and Support
- Local Number Options
- Dialing Capabilities
- Price
- Conclusion
Overview of Talkdesk and Kixie
Talkdesk
Talkdesk describes itself as a cloud solution for contact centers, to “create a seamless customer journey across channels that is fast and frictionless.” They offer a suite of tools for sales and customer service, and a platform that includes workforce management, power dialing, calling, SMS, team collaboration, integration capabilities, and many more add-ons depending on the use case. Popular software review site G2 lists over 2,000 Talkdesk reviews, with an average rating of 4.4/5 stars.
Kixie
Kixie provides seamless integrated voice and SMS capabilities for sales teams, combining an enterprise phone service with rock solid, intelligent CRM integrations and a powerful sales dialer. Focused on making sales teams more productive and successful, Kixie offers deep integrations into leading CRMs to ensure the highest possible sales team output. G2 lists over 250 reviews for Kixie, with numerous 5-star reviews and an overall rating of 4.6 stars.
Things to Consider When Choosing a Sales Dialer
Outbound call agents drive your business growth. Arming them with great tools to reach as many prospects as possible accelerates that growth. The quality of your sales dialer directly impacts how many calls your agents can make, as well as the quality of the connection on those calls.
What good are calls without robust reporting? When assessing dialers, look at the quality of information the system provides. Call agents should have the capacity to track call history, easily transfer calls to sales staff, and not worry about dropped calls. Managers should be able to quickly assess call agents’ performance.
Tightly syncing your calling activity to your existing CRM can boost productivity immensely. You want agents to have all the information they need to successfully complete calls, without system delays. This makes a robust CRM integration incredibly important to your agents’ success. The dialer should not only give you all the features needed for success, but come with full implementation assistance and amazing customer support.
CRM Integration
Talkdesk CRM Integrations
On their pricing page, Talkdesk lists integrations with Salesforce and over 60 other applications, including ServiceNow, Zendesk, Microsoft Teams, and Slack. They also offer even more integrations through their AppConnect marketplace, however the depth of those integrations is not described. Because Talkdesk is a Contact Center focused platform, most of their software integrations focus on customer service applications, like Zendesk and ServiceNow.
Kixie CRM Integrations
Kixie natively connects with many popular CRMs, including HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM, Zendesk, and many more. Getting your entire sales team on Kixie and integrated with your CRM takes only a few minutes and a few clicks.
Agents do not have to put in extra effort by referring to information in your own databases as well as what’s on Kixie. Agents see a complete profile of the customer, including past contact attempts, voicemails or conversations had with other agents in the Kixie dialer. The platform’s clean look and easy-to-navigate features mean agents can find and act on information quickly. Agents can fully personalize conversations with the prospect on the other end of the line.
Existing customers love Kixie’s seamless CRM integrations too. Stephen C. raves in his review on G2, “Kixie has been a game changer for our business! I use the Kixie integration with Pipedrive, and the built-in integration is phenomenal. Then I started playing with the webhooks and Zapier automation to really take my business to the next level. If you have a sales team and making calls is how you make money, you need to make sure that you implement Kixie into your business.”
Mary Beth T. writes in her review of the Kixie sales dialer on G2: “I handle sales and account management, so the ability to easily text or call a client from the CRM or the PowerDialer is a game changer. I cannot quantify how much faster I move with this tool, but I’d take a pay cut to keep Kixie if I had to–it’s that important. I believe Kixie will become more important to our company as we grow and more people utilize it.”
Onboarding and Support
Talkdesk Support
Talkdesk offers an online Support hub, where you can also submit a support ticket to chat with an agent for help. They state that their support is US-based, via phone and online forum, for optimal regulation and compliance guidance.
Kixie Support
Kixie, a Talkdesk competitor, also offers full US-based phone and email support, meaning you can get in touch with a Customer Success Manager quickly during your business hours. Customers write overwhelmingly positive reviews of their support experiences.
Chris C. writes in his Capterra review, “At first it was like anything else, something new and I didn’t know much about it or how to use it. Customer service is awesome and always there to lend their help.”
Local Number Options
Talkdesk Local Number Options
Data shows calling agents connect at a significantly higher rate when calling with a local number – that is, a phone number that is local in relation to their prospects. Talkdesk offers their customers a local presence dialing option, which allows agents to dial out with a local area code or country code – specific to the person being called. However, Talkdesk’s local presence software is limited based on the numbers you have already purchased on your account. In other words, in order to have the ability to dial with a local number presence, you must purchase a set of local numbers ahead of your calling campaign.
Kixie Local Number Options
In contrast, Kixie offers local number dialing, also known as Automatic Local Presence Dialing. Kixie’s local presence dialing automatically rotates through a pool of over 50,000 phone numbers, finding a fresh number that is local to the prospect you are calling. The system will then dial out with that number. There is no need to purchase local numbers ahead of time; simply pay one flat fee for access to automatic local presence dialing.
Jake B. writes on G2 in his “Kixie is Awesome – Incredibly Reliable Service with Amazing Features!” review, “Kixie offers some fantastic features. We save hundreds of dollars each month with their unlimited minutes plan. And the success of our campaigns saw an 8% bump in connection rates when we enabled local presence to always show a local area code when placing outbound calls.”
Thomas C. writes in his Capterra review, “Kixie has the easiest and most cost effective local presence that I’ve found in my last month or two of research. Essentially just turn it on and start dialing. In the short time we’ve been using the trial we’ve already been happy with the improvements to our connection rates.”
Dialing & Call Capabilities
Talkdesk Dialing & Call Capabilities
Talkdesk offers clients a power dialing software called Autoreach, which is a single-line power dialer integrated with Salesforce. Autoreach can automatically dial down a list of contacts within Salesforce, and enable agents to leave a voicemail message or send a contact to a “Do Not Call” list with just a few clicks. Unfortunately, Talkdesk does not offer a multi-line power dialer or describe any power dialing integrations with CRMs outside of Salesforce.
Kixie Dialing & Call Capabilities
Click-to-call, voicemail drop, PowerCall dialing, call recording, calling monitoring, call whispering, and call barging all come out of the box with Kixie. What’s more, you can also opt into multi-line PowerDialing with Kixie, and call up to 10 lines at a time. Giving your telesales reps the ability to click-to-call, drop voicemails automatically and power dial off of your CRM can make your reps extremely efficient.
Managers can use the call recording, call whispering, and call barging functionality to coach and train the sales team. Kixie offers a full suite of reporting aimed at driving sales team performance, including a call reporting and analytics dashboard, and a sales leaderboard.
Happye D. notes on their Capterra review, “Kixie allows me to track my calls; view call history; dispose of my calls in order to understand how each call was used; I can easily view, and download each call for Quality Control purposes; I can easily call contacts by using the click to call…without having to manually dial, and organize contacts.”
Price
Talkdesk Pricing
On their website, Talkdesk gives 3 pricing tiers, starting at $75 per user, per month, with a minimum contract duration of 3 years. For additional plan services, add-ons, and for a more comprehensive price (including fees and other charges) you must contact a Talkdesk representative directly.
Kixie Pricing
Kixie gives customers simple, easy-to-understand pricing tiers. Kixie does not lock users into contracts and offers simple, per minute pricing for usage overages.
Plus, you can mix and match pricing tiers to fit the needs of each of your agents. For example, if you have an office manager who only needs access to a business phone and not sales related calling tools, the Integrated Plan would be best for them, and the Professional Plan would be ideal for the rest of your sales team. Please see the pricing page and speak with a member of our team for full details.
More important than price is the value a sales dialer provides. John S. reflects in his G2 review, “Click to call, voice mail drop, SMS templates, CRM integrations, easy to use phone app and real time tracking with dashboards have all made the productivity and management easier and more enjoyable for each team member. All in all with the pricing and the value you get this has been little risk for big rewards.”
Conclusion
It’s no secret that organizations invest a substantial amount of money into a sales dialer system. When that organization relies on its call center as the primary way to find and nurture leads, every detail is essential.
From the technical aspects of running smoothly to the quality of information provided through the platform, it’s worth your while to closely analyze the respective benefits of any sales dialer. Talkdesk and Kixie appeal to slightly different needs. Talkdesk mainly focuses on large customer support teams that run on Salesforce. For sales teams with multiple call agents and high outbound calling volumes, Kixie offers a more robust solution. Kixie’s platform offers reliability, speed, and efficiency. Its seamless connection with leading CRMs ensures call reps spend their time calling prospects vs. entering data. Finally, customers rave about Kixie’s support and overall positive impact on their sales teams.
Set up a 1-on-1 demo with an experienced Kixie team member here. Or, try Kixie completely free for 7 days and see for yourself if it can benefit your sales team.
