Ocelot vs Datalumni: Which is a better fit?

Farrah: Hi, I'm Farrah and I am the Associate Vice President for Student Affairs at a higher education institution, and I give Ocelot a rating of four out of five. We considered several other options for web chat features, as well as live chat features. And in doing our comparisons, I think one of the major factors was the combination of both having information accessible 24/7 on the web with automated answer options, as well as the ability to have live chat features activated when it was convenient based on our scheduling. And so that was a major deciding factor for us was really the combination of both web chat automation, as well as live chat at our convenience. So we ended up choosing Ocelot because when we had interview sessions with them and the demo session with them, it seemed pretty intuitive for our staff to be able to go in and manage the details. It turned out to actually be true, that once we were given access and staff were required to go in and set up, the questions and answers as well as train others to be able to do so, it was easy to navigate through the tools that were provided as well as to be able to add on questions as questions appeared from users that we didn't have included in our knowledge bank. So it really was a decision based on how user-friendly we thought the product was going to be for our staff, because that is the key for a successful product, is being able to anticipate questions, know the answers to provide in advance, and to maintain that process over time. Onboarding and integrating was different for each program. So we use Ocelot for several different programs. And we had one program that was prepared, coming out of the gate they were the first to launch. I think it was a level of excitement for that department too, but they used no more than just a few hours to actually get their questions loaded, their responses in there and connected as well. There were other departments that were a little bit slower, but I wouldn't attribute much of that to a Ocelot and what they were able to provide on their end. I think that was more our end, timing, staff availability, preparation on our end, in terms of what questions we anticipated from students, prospective students, their parents, and general public users that visit the website. So onboarding was different for various programs that we brought on board, level of preparedness, also different on our end. And so in fairness to Ocelot, the preparation tools they provided, I believe were more than adequate. And the support they also provided in terms of nudges and offering to assist were also very helpful. And in the end, we did get all programs launched. And like anything else, the maintenance over time continues to be something that we work on, but we're thankful for the support that we get from Ocelot in that part of the process as well. One of my main recommendations for others considering using Ocelot is really thinking about how prepared you are in terms of building the list of questions that you anticipate users coming to the website having and being prepared to provide clear answers because I think there's nothing more frustrating than someone asking a question, receiving a response, but getting taken in a loop in terms of the automated way that you build the answers to your questions. We experienced a little bit of that in our process, and it took us a little while to figure that out, but over time, we manage to navigate through all of those spaces. And so I would definitely recommend that individuals, organizations that know the kinds of questions that you anticipate from users, and you're prepared to have responses, whether those are simple text responses, whether that's a link to someplace on your website where that information actually lives that's actually recommended. I would recommend that anyways. That's always helpful for the users when you can give them a link to the specific website where that information lives for them, because oftentimes you can give them more details than a simple text response as part of that chat exchange.