Stonly - Detailed Review
Customer Service Tools
Stonly - Product Overview
Stonly Overview
Stonly is an AI-driven knowledge management platform that is primarily focused on enhancing customer service operations and improving overall customer satisfaction. Here’s a brief overview of its primary function, target audience, and key features:
Primary Function
Stonly’s main purpose is to streamline customer service by providing interactive, contextual guidance to customers and support agents. It aims to reduce support costs and improve the efficiency of customer service processes.
Target Audience
The target audience for Stonly includes various sectors such as contact centers, insurance companies, financial services, and retail businesses. It is particularly useful for organizations looking to enhance their customer self-service capabilities and support agent productivity.
Key Features
Interactive Guides and Walkthroughs
Stonly allows you to create step-by-step interactive guides, product tours, and checklists that guide customers through specific processes or troubleshooting steps. These guides can be customized to match the user’s needs and the brand’s look and feel.
Data-Driven Targeting
The platform uses customer data, including properties (attributes like names, email addresses) and events (actions taken on the site), to deliver personalized content at the right moment. This feature enables targeted content delivery, such as onboarding hints for new users or renewal reminders for subscribers.
AI Answers and Decision Trees
Stonly’s AI Answers feature provides instant, precise responses to customer inquiries based on an existing knowledge base. It also offers decision trees for support agents, helping them make accurate decisions without extensive training.
Automated Ticket Triage and Routing
The platform includes tools for automated ticket triage through interactive guides and conditional branching, ensuring that support tickets are routed to the right agents efficiently.
Integration and Analytics
Stonly integrates seamlessly with ticketing tools like Freshdesk and Zendesk, allowing agents to access critical information without switching tabs. It also provides global insights and analytics to track how customers use help content, helping to refine and strengthen support materials.
On-Demand Support and Feedback Collection
Features include in-app and website help widgets, custom contact forms, and actionable NPS surveys. These tools help in deflecting support tickets, qualifying and routing customers, and collecting valuable feedback.
Overall, Stonly is a comprehensive tool that enhances customer self-service, supports agent productivity, and provides valuable insights to improve the overall customer service experience.
Stonly - User Interface and Experience
User Interface of Stonly
The user interface of Stonly, particularly in the context of customer service tools, is designed with a focus on simplicity and ease of use, making it accessible for both customers and support teams.
Interactive Guides and Walkthroughs
Stonly allows users to create interactive, step-by-step guides and walkthroughs using a visual editor. This editor is intuitive and does not require coding, enabling users to add steps, links, surveys, checklists, and even live chat integrations with ease.
UI Triggers and Contextual Help
The platform uses UI triggers such as pills, banners, hotspots, and icons to provide contextual help. These triggers can launch guides or multi-step tours based on specific user properties or actions, ensuring that customers receive relevant information exactly when they need it. However, it’s important to note that these UI triggers are only available on paid plans.
Self-Service Support
Stonly’s interface is optimized for self-service support, allowing customers to find answers quickly through an interactive help center. The platform includes multi-function search tools to locate categories, guides, and individual steps, making it easy for customers to self-solve their issues without needing to contact support.
Analytics Dashboard
The user interface also features a unified analytics dashboard that provides global insights across all guides. This dashboard helps in tracking content engagement and monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs), giving a clear picture of how the guides are performing and where improvements are needed.
Integration with Help Desk Tools
Stonly integrates seamlessly with help desk tools like Zendesk and Freshdesk, allowing support agents to access critical information directly within their workflow. This integration reduces the need for agents to switch between different tabs, enhancing their efficiency.
Ease of Use
Users have praised Stonly for its ease of use, particularly in creating and embedding guides. The platform’s step-by-step format and visual editor make it simple to move from written documentation to live, interactive guides. This ease of use extends to the customer side as well, where interactive guides and contextual help reduce the number of support tickets and increase customer satisfaction.
Overall User Experience
The overall user experience with Stonly is positive, with users appreciating the modern and clean interface that provides a smooth experience for both customers and support teams. The ability to provide just-in-time help and the availability of AI-driven answers enhance the user experience by ensuring that customers get the information they need quickly and efficiently.
Conclusion
In summary, Stonly’s user interface is user-friendly, interactive, and designed to facilitate easy creation and access to guides and support content, making it a valuable tool for enhancing customer service and self-service support.
Stonly - Key Features and Functionality
Stonly Overview
Stonly is a comprehensive customer service tool that leverages AI and automation to optimize operational efficiency and enhance customer support. Here are the main features and how they work:Interactive Guides and Walkthroughs
Stonly allows you to create interactive, step-by-step guides, walkthroughs, and checklists that adapt to each customer’s unique needs. These guides are easy to follow and can be accessed through website triggers and widgets, ensuring customers get the help they need exactly when they need it. This feature reduces the number of support tickets and increases customer satisfaction by enabling quick issue resolution without leaving the product.AI Answers and Knowledge Base
The AI Answers feature uses an existing knowledge base to provide instant, precise responses to customer inquiries. This AI-driven functionality ensures that customers receive accurate and relevant information quickly, enhancing self-service capabilities. The knowledge base is easily maintainable, and Stonly provides tools to collect feedback and measure the impact of the knowledge on your business.Support Agent Decision Trees
Stonly offers support agent decision trees that aid in accurate decision-making without extensive training. These decision trees guide agents through the process of qualifying issues, finding the right answers, and following established processes. This feature improves agent efficiency and reduces the time needed for agent onboarding by integrating training into the workflow.Automated Ticket Triage
The platform includes automated ticket triage through interactive guides and conditional branching. This automation helps in categorizing and resolving tickets more efficiently, reducing the overall volume of support tickets by up to 50% and decreasing resolution times by up to 20%.Integration with Help Desk Tools
Stonly seamlessly integrates with ticketing tools like Zendesk, Freshdesk, and Salesforce. This integration allows agents to access critical information without needing to switch tabs, enhancing their productivity and response quality. The AI Agent Assist, available as an add-on for the Enterprise plan, can be configured within these compatible support tools to summarize tickets, find relevant guides, and generate answers based on available knowledge.Analytics and Feedback Collection
Stonly includes an analytics dashboard to monitor usage and track improvements. The platform also offers tools for feedback collection and impact measurement, helping you to keep your knowledge content up to date and accurate. This ensures that the knowledge base is continuously improved based on user feedback and performance metrics.Contextual Knowledge Delivery
The platform delivers contextual knowledge in real-time, ensuring that users have access to pertinent information at the right moment. This real-time delivery enhances the user experience and supports both agents and customers in resolving issues efficiently.Multi-Functional Search and Versioning
Stonly features multi-functional search tools that allow users to find categories, guides, and even individual steps easily. The platform also includes versioning and user permissions, making it simple to create and update content.Conclusion
By integrating these features, Stonly significantly improves customer satisfaction, reduces support tickets, and accelerates agent onboarding, making it a valuable tool for enhancing customer service operations. Stonly - Performance and Accuracy
Performance and Accuracy Evaluation of Stonly
Performance Highlights
- Stonly is highly effective in reducing resolution times and support tickets. It can decrease resolution times by up to 20% and reduce support tickets by up to 50%.
- The platform accelerates agent onboarding, allowing new agents to ramp up more than 50% faster. This is achieved through integrated training within the workflow, reducing the need for traditional classroom sessions.
- Stonly’s AI Answers feature leverages existing knowledge bases to provide instant and precise responses to customer inquiries, enhancing self-service capabilities and improving customer satisfaction.
Accuracy and Factual Support
- Stonly’s interactive guides, walkthroughs, and checklists deliver contextual knowledge in real-time, ensuring users have access to pertinent information when needed. This accuracy in providing the right information at the right moment is a significant strength.
- The platform’s support agent decision trees aid in accurate decision-making without extensive training, which helps in maintaining the accuracy of responses and resolutions.
Limitations and Areas for Improvement
- Technical Integration Challenges: Stonly requires a significant amount of technical expertise for integration, especially if the application or website uses dynamic code or specific frameworks. This can involve rewriting parts of the codebase, which can be cumbersome.
- Limited User Onboarding Features: Despite its claims, Stonly lacks essential onboarding features such as tooltips, smart tips, and comprehensive product tours. This makes it less suitable for enterprises needing a complete onboarding stack beyond basic help docs and banners.
- Manual Recording Process: Unlike many other interactive walkthrough tools, Stonly’s process is manual, requiring users to write each step and select elements to highlight manually. This can be time-consuming and prone to errors, especially for large user bases.
- Blended Recording and Editing: Stonly combines the recording and editing processes, which can interrupt the flow and delay the final output. This can be frustrating and may lead to abandoned demos.
- Limited Customization Options: Users have reported limited options for formatting guide layouts or modifying the overall design, making it difficult to align demos with brand guidelines or achieve a polished look.
- Poor Product Analytics: Stonly’s analytics are limited, providing only surface-level insights through metrics like net promoter score surveys. It lacks detailed insights into user interactions, feature usage, and engagement rates.
- No In-App User Feedback: While Stonly integrates with third-party applications, it does not allow users to provide feedback on the embedded resources directly within those applications.
Engagement and User Experience
- Stonly’s workspace, although clean, can be confusing to navigate due to its division into multiple sections (All Spaces, Clips, and Personal Space), which may not be intuitive for all users.
- The platform’s inability to collect in-app user feedback can hinder continuous improvement and engagement, as users cannot provide immediate feedback on the resources they are using.
Conclusion
In summary, while Stonly excels in providing accurate and timely support, reducing resolution times, and enhancing agent onboarding, it has several limitations, particularly in technical integration, user onboarding features, manual recording processes, and analytics capabilities. Addressing these areas could significantly improve its overall performance and user engagement.
Stonly - Pricing and Plans
Stonly Pricing Overview
Stonly, a knowledge management and customer onboarding tool, offers a structured pricing structure with several plans to cater to different business needs. Here’s a breakdown of the plans, their features, and any free options available:
Basic Plan
- This plan is free and includes basic features such as:
- Support for up to 5 published guides.
- Display of Stonly ads (both step ads and label ads).
- 1,000 guide views per month.
- Limited to one team member.
- No multilingual support.
Small Business Plan
- This plan starts at $249 per month (or $199 per month with annual billing).
- Key features include:
- Unlimited guides and the ability to embed them anywhere on your website.
- Multilingual support.
- Unlimited triggers to display help content or launch guides.
- SEO customization for guides.
- Versioning to track changes in content.
- File attachments and PDF exports.
- Basic analytics.
Additional View Charges
- For the Small Business plan, there are additional charges based on the number of guide views:
- Up to 4,000 views: No extra charge.
- 4,001-15,000 views: $200 per month.
- 15,001-30,000 views: $400 per month.
Enterprise Plan
- This plan is customizable and requires contacting Stonly for a quote.
- It includes all the features of the Small Business plan plus:
- Auto-translation of guides using machine translations.
- Advanced team rights management.
- White label options to remove Stonly branding.
- Integrations with Zendesk, Front, and Freshdesk.
- Single sign-on (SSO) compatibility.
- Priority support and a dedicated customer success team.
Free Trial
Stonly offers a 14-day free trial for the Small Business plan, allowing you to test its features before committing to a paid plan. After the trial, if you do not opt for a paid plan, you will be downgraded to the Basic plan.
Stonly - Integration and Compatibility
Stonly Overview
Stonly, a platform for creating interactive, step-by-step help guides, integrates seamlessly with a variety of tools and supports multiple platforms, making it a versatile solution for customer service and support teams.
Integrations with Customer Service Tools
Stonly integrates with popular customer service and help desk tools such as Zendesk and Freshdesk. These integrations allow you to access Stonly guides directly within your help desk platform, enabling agents to quickly find and share relevant help content with customers. This integration helps in reducing the volume of support tickets and enhancing the overall customer service experience.
Integration with Front
Stonly also integrates with Front, a communication platform. This integration enables you to access Stonly guides and help content directly in Front, allowing you to quickly find and paste the right help content into your email responses to customers.
Mobile App Integration
For mobile applications, Stonly offers a mobile SDK that supports Android, iOS, Flutter, and React Native. This SDK allows you to display the Stonly widget within your mobile app, providing contextual guidance to users. The setup requires some technical knowledge and access to the app’s code.
Browser Extension
Stonly has a browser extension available for Chrome, which enables users to insert the Stonly widget on any webpage. This extension uses a CSS selector picker to help build guides and provides contextual guidance wherever needed. It is particularly useful for creating and accessing help content directly on web pages.
Other Integrations
Stonly supports a wide range of integrations with other software and services. For example, it integrates with Segment’s Customer Data Platform (CDP) and Crowdin for translation management. These integrations help in building robust support workflows and ensuring that customer data is unified and accessible across different systems.
Compatibility
In terms of compatibility, Stonly’s tools and integrations are cloud-based, allowing agents to work conveniently on their laptops or phones. The mobile SDK has specific system requirements, such as iOS 13 for iOS and SDK 21 for Android, ensuring that the guides are accessible across various devices and platforms.
Conclusion
Overall, Stonly’s integrations and compatibility features make it a flexible and effective solution for enhancing customer service and support operations.
Stonly - Customer Support and Resources
Stonly Overview
Stonly offers a comprehensive suite of customer support options and additional resources, particularly focusing on AI-driven and interactive self-service experiences. Here are some key features and resources provided by Stonly:
Interactive Self-Serve Support
Stonly enables businesses to create interactive guides, checklists, and walkthroughs that help customers solve issues independently. This approach reduces the volume of support tickets and allows customers to find answers quickly and efficiently.
AI-Powered Automation
Stonly incorporates AI to automate level-one support, such as answering first-level questions through chatbots or automation. This frees up support agents to focus on more complex and critical issues.
Contextual Help
Stonly allows businesses to place guides, entire knowledge bases, and FAQs directly within their app or website. This contextual help ensures customers can find the information they need without leaving their current page, reducing friction and improving the overall customer experience.
Easy Access to Human Help
Recognizing that not all issues can be resolved through self-serve support, Stonly provides an easy way for customers to contact human support agents when needed. This can be done through a contact form integrated within the guides, ensuring that all relevant information is available to the agent, thus saving time and reducing frustration for both the customer and the agent.
Proactive Support
With Stonly, businesses can shift from a reactive to a proactive customer support approach. The platform allows for proactive support by providing AI answers and interactive help centers that anticipate and address customer needs before they become major issues.
Flexible Content Management
Stonly’s content is structured in an interactive, adaptable format rather than traditional linear articles. This makes it easier to maintain and update content using reusable modules. The platform also integrates with other customer service tools to automate actions and guide both customers and agents to success.
Analytics and Reporting
Stonly provides automated reports and dashboards to track key metrics such as response times, resolution rates, and customer satisfaction scores. This helps businesses identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to optimize their support strategies.
Integration and Distribution
The platform allows for the distribution of content everywhere it is needed without requiring any coding. This flexibility ensures that customer service knowledge is accessible and up-to-date across all necessary channels.
Conclusion
By leveraging these features, Stonly helps businesses scale their customer support efficiently, improve customer satisfaction, and enhance the overall support experience.
Stonly - Pros and Cons
Advantages of Stonly
Stonly offers several significant advantages that make it a valuable tool in the customer service and support sector:Interactive Guides and Self-Service
Stonly allows you to build interactive, easy-to-follow guides that adapt to every situation, making it more engaging and effective than traditional linear articles. This feature helps customers self-solve their issues quickly, reducing the need for support tickets by up to 50%.Agent Support and Training
The platform provides interactive guides and decision trees that guide customer support agents through troubleshooting, reducing new agent onboarding time by more than 50% and ensuring consistent support service. This leads to higher customer satisfaction and faster resolution times, with some companies reporting a 20% drop in resolution times.Integration and Automation
Stonly integrates seamlessly with ticketing tools like Zendesk and Freshdesk, allowing agents to access critical information without switching tabs. It also offers automated ticket triage through interactive guides and conditional branching, which streamlines the support process.Analytics and Reporting
The platform includes an analytics dashboard that tracks usage and monitors improvements, providing insights into content engagement and key performance indicators (KPIs). This helps in identifying areas for improvement and measuring the ROI of the content.User Segmentation and Targeting
Stonly enables user segmentation, allowing you to collect user data, create custom properties, and set up targeted triggers for guides. This ensures that users receive relevant content at the most contextual moments.Ease of Use and Maintenance
The platform is user-friendly, with a visual editor for building guides that requires little to no coding. It also offers versioning and user permissions, making it easy to create and update content.Disadvantages of Stonly
While Stonly offers many benefits, there are some limitations and potential drawbacks to consider:Limited Features on Basic Plans
Some features, such as UI triggers, guide variables, and advanced analytics, are only available on paid plans. Users on the Basic version may not have access to these functionalities.Interface Intuitiveness
Some users have reported that the interface is not always intuitive, particularly for certain features that are available only on more expensive plans.Data Update Frequency
The flow reports in Stonly update every 15 minutes, which means you won’t have real-time user path metrics. This could be a limitation for some users who need immediate data updates.Additional Coding Requirements
While the guide builder is intuitive and visual, other features like event tracking, user targeting, data streaming, and styling may require coding, which could be a barrier for non-technical users. Overall, Stonly is a powerful tool for enhancing customer service and support, but it may have some limitations, especially for users on basic plans or those requiring real-time data updates. Stonly - Comparison with Competitors
Unique Features of Stonly
- Interactive Guides and Walkthroughs: Stonly stands out for its ability to create interactive guides, walkthroughs, and checklists that are highly engaging and effective for both customer self-service and support agent guidance. These guides can be integrated into existing help centers, reducing the need for linear, text-heavy articles.
- AI-Powered Self-Service: Stonly’s AI Answers feature leverages an existing knowledge base to provide instant, precise responses to customer inquiries, enhancing self-service capabilities and reducing the volume of support tickets.
- Contextual Knowledge Delivery: The platform delivers knowledge contextually in real-time, ensuring users have access to pertinent information at the right moment. This includes support agent decision trees that aid in accurate decision-making without extensive training.
- Automated Ticket Triage: Stonly offers automated ticket triage through interactive guides and conditional branching, which helps in efficiently managing support tickets.
- Feedback Collection and Impact Measurement: The platform includes tools for collecting feedback and measuring the impact of knowledge on the business, allowing for continuous improvement.
Potential Alternatives and Comparisons
Whatfix
- Whatfix is a notable alternative that also offers interactive guides and knowledge bases. However, Whatfix can customize support documentation based on an employee’s role, which Stonly does not. Whatfix also provides features like tooltips, checklists, and smart tips that Stonly lacks, making it a better option for enterprises needing a complete onboarding stack.
- Whatfix integrates with various SaaS applications and can embed help docs within platforms like Salesforce or Zendesk, similar to Stonly.
Other Alternatives
- Other competitors in the digital adoption and customer service space include platforms like Userpilot, Walkme, and Appcues. These tools often offer similar features such as interactive walkthroughs, tooltips, and user segmentation, but may differ in their integration capabilities and pricing models.
- For example, Userpilot is known for its user segmentation and targeted triggers, which allow for personalized onboarding experiences. However, it may not offer the same level of AI-powered self-service as Stonly.
Pricing and Integration
- Stonly’s pricing starts at $99 per month for the Starter plan, which supports up to 2,500 monthly views and three team members. The Business and Enterprise plans offer more features and higher limits, but can become costly as usage grows.
- In terms of integration, Stonly seamlessly integrates with ticketing tools like Freshdesk and Zendesk, allowing agents to access critical information without switching tabs. This is a key feature that many of its competitors also offer, but Stonly’s integration is particularly noted for its ease and effectiveness.
Considerations
- Technical Expertise: While Stonly offers powerful features, it requires a significant amount of technical expertise to integrate, especially if the application or website has a complex framework. This can be a barrier for some users.
- Onboarding Features: Stonly is strong in providing interactive guides and walkthroughs but lacks some essential onboarding features like tooltips and smart tips, which might make it less suitable for large enterprises with complex onboarding needs.
Stonly - Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions about Stonly
What are the key features of Stonly?
Stonly offers several key features that make it a valuable tool for customer service and support. These include ITIL-aligned ticketing, automated ticket management, one-click workflows, and real-time updates. It also provides interactive guides, walkthroughs, and checklists, as well as support agent decision trees to aid in accurate decision-making. The AI Answers feature leverages an existing knowledge base to provide instant, precise responses to customer inquiries, enhancing self-service capabilities.
How does Stonly support new customer onboarding?
Stonly is particularly effective for new customer onboarding due to its user segmentation, interactive walkthroughs, tooltips, and onboarding guides. These features help guide new users through the process step-by-step, ensuring they have the necessary information at the right moment. Additionally, Stonly accelerates agent onboarding by integrating training into the workflow, reducing the need for classroom sessions.
What are the pricing plans available for Stonly?
Stonly offers two main pricing plans: the Small Business plan and the Enterprise plan. The Small Business plan starts at $249/month (with a 20% discount for annual billing) and includes features such as five team seats, unlimited guides, multi-language support, guide variables, and integrations with tools like Zendesk and Freshdesk. The Enterprise plan is customizable and includes all the features of the Small Business plan plus additional features like automatic guide translation, advanced team rights management, white label options, SSO compatibility, priority support, and dedicated customer success.
Is there a free trial or a basic plan available for Stonly?
Yes, Stonly offers a 14-day free trial for the Small Business plan, allowing you to test its features. After the trial period, if you choose not to proceed with a paid plan, you will be automatically downgraded to a Basic plan. The Basic plan is free and includes features like support for 5 published guides, but it has limitations such as displaying Stonly ads and supporting only 1,000 guide views per month.
How does Stonly integrate with other tools and platforms?
Stonly integrates seamlessly with various ticketing tools like Freshdesk, Zendesk, and Front. These integrations allow support agents to access critical information without needing to switch tabs, enhancing their efficiency. Additionally, the Enterprise plan offers SSO compatibility, allowing team members to sign in using other apps’ credentials.
What benefits can I expect from using Stonly?
Using Stonly can lead to several measurable benefits. It can reduce resolution times by up to 20%, decrease support tickets by up to 50%, and speed up new agent onboarding by more than 50%. These improvements contribute significantly to enhanced customer satisfaction.
How does Stonly’s AI Answers feature work?
Stonly’s AI Answers feature uses generative AI and guided answers to transform your knowledge into faster, more accurate resolutions. This feature leverages an existing knowledge base to provide instant, precise responses to customer inquiries, thereby enhancing self-service capabilities and improving support team efficiency.
Can I customize the guides and knowledge bases in Stonly?
Yes, Stonly allows you to customize guides and knowledge bases according to your needs. You can create interactive guides, walkthroughs, and checklists, and even embed them into your website using hotspots, banners, and other interactive elements. The Enterprise plan also offers advanced team rights management and white label options, allowing for further customization.
How does Stonly support multi-language environments?
The Small Business plan of Stonly supports multi-language environments, allowing you to create guides in multiple languages. The Enterprise plan takes this further by offering automatic guide translation using machine translations powered by Google Translate or by uploading translation files.
What kind of analytics and feedback tools does Stonly provide?
Stonly includes an analytics dashboard to monitor usage and track improvements. It also offers tools for feedback collection and impact measurement, helping you gauge the effectiveness of your guides and knowledge bases. This data can be used to refine your support strategies and improve customer satisfaction.