The 16 Best Customer Service Software Platforms for 2024

For example, if everyone needs to call customer support to resolve an issue, they’ll likely face long wait times. Having multiple channels improves response times and lets customers choose the medium that suits them best. A service software with an intuitive UI will ensure even new agents can start supporting customers immediately without requiring special training. Just as a higher price does not equate to more features, a complicated UI with a certification process to use it does not necessarily mean a powerful or feature-rich helpdesk.

Instead of searching for your contact information, your customers can quickly contact you on your website with the click of a button. The SolutionWith HubSpot, Unific saves time by only using one tool, shares more information, and provides a more enjoyable customer experience. Service Hub helps you automate repetitive customer service system tasks and provide agents with the information they need, all in one place. Eliminate manual data entry, simplify collaboration, and empower your team to work more effectively. Only after addressing the basic needs of the customer service department should you start exploring features tailored to your business needs.

You can also create a support experience that is in line with your brand’s personality by customizing your support portal, email address, and help desk URL. Gorgias is customer service management software that is built specifically for e-commerce businesses. The robust plugins with Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magneto make it easy for online businesses to perform actions like editing orders and refunding payments right from within the help desk software. WhatsApp Business App is an application built by WhatsApp, the popular messaging channel for owners of small businesses who want to offer real-time assistance to their customers.

Customer service software is any technological tool or platform designed to enhance customer interactions, streamline service operations, and foster improved customer satisfaction. The main objective of this type of software is to manage and process customer inquiries, support requests, or complaints effectively and efficiently, from initial contact to resolution. While offering email is still a must for most brands, other channels such as live chat, social media, and async messaging are emerging as customer favorites. Consumer surveys have found that 40% of consumers believe that having “multiple options for communicating” is the most important aspect of a company’s customer service.

Explore the 5-step customer service management plan for your business with Freshworks, today!

Best customer service software for large businesses that already use HubSpot. There are plan tiers within both, but the help desk solution is a lower cost on average when compared to the omnichannel product, and it’s probably a good starting place for most small businesses. HelpDocs is a strong contender for those looking to invest in a stand-alone piece of knowledge base software. Their straightforward pricing, robust feature set, and easy-to-use interface all make setting up your first knowledge base a breeze. Over the last few years, there’s been an increased focus on self-service options.

In addition, it offers self-service, audio calls, and reporting capabilities, making it an excellent choice for businesses of all sizes. Intercom is a business messenger that companies use to communicate with existing and potential customers. The software offers live chat, bots, self-service platforms, and a ticketing system. The software can help customer service agents seamlessly send short customer satisfaction surveys for feedback collection.

Customizable platform

It’s very cost-effective, and self-service tools are the preferred support choice for many — up to 67% of users, in fact. Additionally, Kustomer has single-thread conversations, so all communication will be funneled into one chat, regardless of where the conversation occurs. This ensures customer service reps are clued into the customer’s past experiences with the team. With the free Zendesk trial, for instance, you can access our full suite of features and tools for 14 days. Once the trial period ends, your settings and data are still available, so you can seamlessly transition into the plan of your choice. Knowledge base software serves as a centralized hub for self-help information.

Understand the ins and outs of customer relations to improve your customer experience, raise profits, and boost brand credibility. It is also important that the company constantly keep performance records and monitor the system activity to ensure that tasks are being completed and achieved. For instance, the purchasing department relates directly to the customer experience because they are responsible for ensuring all of the supplies are available to fulfill a customer’s order.

Instead, good customer service management can improve everyone’s success by delivering better service to customers. Companies are increasingly focusing on customer service, and their investments are paying off. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2023, 57 percent of consumers have seen a noticeable improvement in customer support experiences. This indicates that markets are becoming more competitive, and companies should stop leaving customer service to chance. Freshworks Customer Service Suite has a free trial plan with intuitive ticketing, knowledge base management, automation, and reporting that you can easily get started with.

Things like team management, robust analytics, smart automations, and a host of other features mean Olark can meet the needs of almost any team. Decide what your biggest challenges are when improving the customer experience. Continue your journey through the world of customer service software with these information-packed resources. Moving company Storage Scholars uses texting to deliver a more personal touch to customer interactions. While bots help deflect basic questions, knowing a human agent is available on the other end prompts customers to trust the company with their belongings.

Our customer service software is easy to use, maximizing productivity and ensuring you can move at the speed of your customers. Customer service software is a set of tools designed to help businesses track, manage, organize, and respond to customer support requests at scale. Zendesk is a multichannel customer service app that utilizes AI-powered bots and a robust ticketing system.

Customers are willing to pay more for a better experience.

It also allows agents to track their progress on key metrics and seamlessly collaborate with other teams. Building and retaining a talented team should be a key component of any customer service management strategy. Strive to hire talented agents, but realize their development shouldn’t depend entirely on on-the-job experience. With a customer service tool streamlining your support process, it is easier to make customers happier. Happier customers are customers who will keep returning to your business, increasing the loyalty of the customers to your brand. Your team can collaborate within and across other teams in your organization right from your customer service software.

With HelpCrunch, each message, whether from email, chat, or social media accounts, lands in a unified shared inbox as a chat conversation. The platform empowers your reps with the tools to manage, assign, and annotate these conversations efficiently. To meet its goals, Reverb began collecting back-end data and customizing its workflows based on the insights it learned. Customer service management (CSM) is the practice of empowering your team with the tools, training, and day-to-day support they need to deliver exceptional customer service experiences.

Train employees to take ownership of customer issues by giving them the tools and training to meet customer requirements. By integrating Google Analytics with LiveAgent, you can track all live chat sessions. Having this data at hand can help you evaluate the impact that live chat has on conversions or your agents’ effect on your company’s sales. Klaviyo is a marketing automation platform that offers customer segmentation, benchmarking, and data analysis. The platform specializes explicitly in email and SMS automation, promising to deliver personalized content and increase customer engagement. When integrated with LiveAgent, customer feedback can be easily provided to your agents after each live chat session or after viewing each email conversation.

To a certain degree, knowledge base software solutions are similar to classic content management systems like WordPress. They usually give you a text editor where you can create and publish articles, plus a few useful enhancements. No longer than ten years ago, customers had to call businesses and wait in line for a palpably long period to get some assistance. Fast-forward to today, people have messengers, social media, and self-service hubs.

It enables active engagement by allowing you to track customer requests for feedback. The basic price is €20 per agent per month, and you must pay €35 for the professional one. The cost of an enterprise customer support solution is calculated individually. They are made for creating portals with pre-made answers to customers’ common questions.

It also has a much higher average customer satisfaction rating when compared to phone — 82% satisfied for live chat vs. 44% for phone. Shared inbox software is an email tool that allows multiple people to access and respond to messages sent to a specific email address. There are generally also other organization and automation features included to help effectively manage customer conversations. Sprout Social integrates with all of the major social media networks including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, Pinterest, and TikTok.

It is renowned for its exceptional text editor, extensive customization, and collaboration features tailored to your support team’s diverse needs. Its versatile editor allows multiple team members to collaborate seamlessly on the same article, ensuring that all changes are consistently saved and tracked. You can track and analyze every customer interaction with your company to look for ways to improve your service. Real-time monitoring lets managers sit in on conversations and immediately address any issues they witness. It requires continuous effort to build customer loyalty and improve employee engagement with your customer service team. These tips cover how to empower agents and adopt agile processes within your department.

With screen sharing and recording, agents can demonstrate solutions, walk customers through steps, and capture sessions for reference or training. There’s also videoconferencing for broader team collaboration, enabling group discussions with up to 48 people at a time. You can also design ready-made canned responses to the most frequently asked questions.

Top Features

In today’s day and age, a customer service system has become a commonplace necessity for every business; it wishes to build a relationship with its customer group. But every company should aspire to have a system that is good at tracking and delivering services. Use cross-functional teams to collaborate on process improvement opportunities identified through customer feedback.

Technology is constantly updating, and so should the Customer Service System be updated from time to time with new additions wherever possible. At this step, you must connect the plan with the components and set your customer service system into action. Once all components are connected in an actionable manner and the human element, you will have successfully built yourself your customer service system.

Those lower-cost plans do lack some features but should cover the basics for those with a primary focus on email support. Olark has straightforward pricing, no term commitments on most plans, and the ability to add certain features à la carte. That means you can get the features you want and skip the ones you don’t need, making it ideal for smaller teams. Its ability to generate tickets automatically from customer reports on platforms like Twitter or Facebook makes it a versatile tool. In addition to Intercom, Podium is also a messaging tool that can be used to communicate with customers via live chat. Customer experience (CX) refers to all the interactions between a business and its customers.

The most sought-after customer service software on the market share several key attributes that make them excellent choices for businesses of all sizes. These solutions are recognized for their robust and flexible features, including multichannel support, ticketing systems, and automation capabilities. They offer a variety of communication channels, such as email, live chat, social media, and phone, ensuring that customers can reach out through their preferred method. HelpSpot is great for small customer support teams that want to get familiar with fundamental service tools.

It allows customers to receive help when and where they need it most via both chat and self-service channels. Agents are able to manage incoming customer messages from a unified agent desktop that lets them see customer data and interaction history to aid in providing contextual support. With any Zendesk plan, you’re able to manage email, Twitter, and Facebook conversations. On their higher-cost plans, you’re also able to manage phone and chat conversations.

Customer service focuses on fulfilling customer needs and satisfaction, whereas customer support addresses issues with the products or applications. Both are important in ensuring good customer service and a positive customer experience. Email management software tackles the often overwhelming task of handling customer email inquiries.

All of these tools are synced with the HubSpot CRM so that you can align marketing and sales operations alongside your customer service functions. Customer service software with reporting and analytics tools and customer feedback mechanisms can provide valuable insights for decision-makers. With real-time reporting dashboards and omnichannel analytics, management teams gain visibility into ticket queues, team bandwidth, and performance.

Ensure the software can handle increased data, users, and customer interactions without a hitch. Buffer, a social media customer service, enhances social engagement for small businesses. This help desk tool gives you essential features like tags for easy organization, automation rules for streamlining processes, and custom inboxes tailored to your needs. Groove ensures you have a versatile and efficient platform for managing customer interactions across multiple channels with ease and sophistication. On the agent side, Usersnap offers collaborative features, including AI-assisted categorizing, tagging, and co-editing.

It’s good to know that the system you choose can grow with you and won’t cause you any headaches in the future when it comes to supporting more and more agents and customers. Messy workflows and processes can lead to wasted time and reduced productivity for customer service teams, ultimately impacting the quality of service they provide. Using a patchwork of tools to manage customer interactions can cause a disjointed experience, resulting in lost revenue. Connect your customer interactions to your front office, and uncover new opportunities to drive growth while enhancing customer satisfaction. Service Hub helps you gather important insights about your customers, track their interactions, and deliver personalized service experiences that keep them coming back for more. Deepen your customer relationships and build a loyal customer base that will drive your business forward.

These features enhance your team’s efficiency in managing and responding to user feedback. Suppose you’re searching for a straightforward yet powerful tool for handling feedback. In that case, Usersnap stands out as one of the best solutions, ensuring a seamless and practical feedback management experience for users and agents. From your perspective, it’s a software solution with features designed to make your service integrated and fast. If a client has a question, a gripe, or needs guidance on your product or service, such customer service platforms swoops in, organizing all those communications into a neat and manageable system.

Here are a few things to consider when choosing the right customer service software for your business. Not every customer issue requires a ticket or time with a customer service agent. Self-service options, including a help center and FAQ pages, let customers quickly find information without waiting on an available agent.

First, build your customer service agent persona relevant to your industry and use it in your talent acquisition process. Take care of the recruitment process and use different techniques to vet candidates. You can try the assessment center method or relevant role-playing scenarios that really reveal the true nature of people. Now that you know the general outline of your customer service responsibilities, you can divide them fairly among your support team members. Collecting customer feedback and reporting back to other support team members. Reduce costs – By providing great customer service, your business can reduce the number of customers who leave, (also known as “customer churn”).

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Beacon, Help Scout’s chat widget, lets customers search your knowledge base, initiate a live chat conversation, or send an email support request from any page of your website or app. Help Scout is an all-in-one customer service software that lets support teams deliver email, self-service, and live chat support from one centralized tool. Mobile SDKs (software development kits) are like tiny toolboxes for developers building customer service features directly into mobile apps.

• Thus, Zendesk’s potent combination of functionality, versatility, and user-friendly design rightfully places it at the forefront of customer service software solutions.
• It’s important to highlight that the company provides a generous 30-day free trial, allowing potential users to explore and evaluate the features and benefits before committing to a subscription.
• Instead, they can get help right where they’re working, saving time and reducing friction in the customer experience.

Although our products are powerful on their own, the real magic happens when you use them together. A shorter curve means quicker adoption, reducing downtime and ensuring your team can hit the ground running. Explore the key features, from the dedicated WhatsApp bot to advanced AI automation, and make your communications easier with Chatfuel. An employee onboarding process helps new hires get acquainted with the company and sets them up for success. The importance of customer experience in a CSM strategy cannot be overstated.

But it’s worth noting that its longevity in the market, being one of the earliest tools, may occasionally reflect in its user interface (UI), user experience (UX), or overall performance. Support teams can improve transparency by sharing ownership of tickets with other teams. You can also split complex tasks into smaller subtasks and resolve them in parallel. Good customer service tools will also let your global team huddle together within a ticket to discuss possible solutions and answers faster. Offering self-service using a knowledge base or a self-help portal that has important information and frequently asked questions documented is a proactive approach to customer service. But, leaner customer service teams can benefit from using a knowledge base software that helps you publish and manage your customer portal.

Whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise, LiveAgent’s flexible pricing plans cater to businesses of all sizes and budgets. Top-tier plans include advanced automation, customizable routing, and workflows to do the heavy lifting for you, making everything smoother than butter. Built-in analytics help you track response times, spot common customer issues, and even analyze sentiment. Zendesk offers a unified agent workspace that displays important customer data and context when agents need it most.

Phone support software can improve call resolution times, agent efficiency, and overall customer satisfaction by automating tasks and providing agents with real-time information. Customer service platforms with built-in AI and automation can improve team productivity by lending agents a helping hand and reducing manual work. For example, generative AI tools can streamline knowledge management by flagging articles that are ready for a refresh and helping agents write new pieces. AI can also quickly scan ticket content and provide a summary so agents can jump in and resolve the issue faster. Additionally, automation can ensure tickets get routed to the right agent for the task.

It automatically closes spam messages and answers legitimate requests, like order statuses. Users can automate follow-up responses based on survey results to gather more insights on the topic. Key performance metrics—like rep productivity, response time, and support volume—are available with the reporting and analytics dashboard. Agents can view a customer’s ticket history and export conversations as PDFs. It also features private notes for users to collaborate through side conversations. Collision detection can help avoid having multiple agents unknowingly work on the same ticket.

The Socialbakers customer service software is praised for its ease of use and data collecting from Instagram and Facebook. On the other hand, it’s criticized for not drawing data from newer social media platforms like TikTok. Last but not least, research what kinds of collaboration options are available. Does the customer success software you’re eyeing offer internal chats and calls?

All systems should work together with one goal, and that is to make the buying experience as positive as possible for the customer. We have tried to support local restaurants by ordering carryout, and the experience is all over the map. To get a quote, visit their website and fill out a contact form on their pricing page. Buffer integrates with nearly 30 other solutions, including Zapier, automate.io, and integromat, so the possibilities are endless. If you want to give the Large plan a try, we offer a free 30-day trial— no credit card is required. The ChallengeAs Stella expanded, its founders realized they had outgrown their software setup.

HappyFox also offers self-service options, like an online knowledge base, so customers can find answers to questions without generating a support ticket. Customers can also track support tickets, engage in community forums, and refer to help center articles and FAQs—all within a single self-service portal. Tidio’s live chat tool features prewritten responses that help agents answer common questions. The chat window displays what customers are typing in real time, so the assigned agent can prepare a reply before the customer sends the message. Tidio also has a conversational AI chatbot, Lyro, that can assist customers with automated support.

After all, reducing the time it takes to assist a customer directly reduces the time other customers must wait, too. At the same time, be sure to motivate agents to solve each problem completely; speed is important, but resolution times should never trump customer satisfaction. This system works by providing each customer with a service request ticket, which acts as a tracking tool. You can track the volume of customer service requests and equip your service teams to deal with them. You can also use this ticket to effectively access your service team to solve your customers’ service-related queries. Before you start building your customer service platform, your employees and personnel should be skilled enough to deal with customers.

Before Nottingham Trent University used service desk software, the IT department was considered an ineffective call center. Adding Zendesk service desk software allowed the department to manage and close tickets efficiently. Discord Chat PG uses community forums to gauge user sentiment for possible updates to the service. Product teams quickly get customer feedback in a centralized place so they can prioritize which new features or fixes should come next.

With multichannel customer service software, you can resolve customer issues proactively. For example, proactive chat invitations can come in handy when shoppers on your site are ready to check out but need some assistance with the process. An omnichannel customer service solution helps you manage customer interactions across all channels. With omnichannel it, you can offer unified customer support and ensure that there are no lapses in customer experience. Still, the solid foundation should be the right ticketing software where you can store and handle all customer messages from different channels.

It is vital to hold employees accountable for job requirements, especially when it comes to meeting the needs of the customers. Help employees develop customer-friendly people skills by using customer service standards to communicate service guarantee expectations. Incorporate the Focus PDCA model for customer-focused efforts to create a culture that embraces continuous improvement. Teach them about service recovery, and if something goes wrong, give them the authority to make things right for customers. Make sure employees have job-specific goals that support the business goals of the organization. Learn more about improving your help desk productivity with LiveAgent’s ActiveCampaign integration.

The software enables its users to create and organize issues, delegate tasks, and track work activity. Monday.com is an open cloud-based platform that enables its users to create unique tools and applications to aid their workflow. For example, the platform can create project management, sales, CRM, marketing, design, HR, IT, or DevOps applications. Socialbakers is a social https://chat.openai.com/ media platform that helps businesses of all sizes engage with their customers. It combines social listening, content analysis, and AI persona mapping with analytics and benchmarking to create the best possible outcome for your social media marketing strategies. ClickUp is a fully customizable task management application suitable for small, medium-sized, and larger teams.

The customer service manager is an individual with strong leadership skills who is most often responsible for supervising the day-to-day matters of customer service teams. The support agent is an individual with perfect communication and problem-solving skills who takes ownership of customer cases and provides timely, quality customer service. Customer service is a process that can take place before or after customers buy products or services from you.

Embrace HelpCrunch as the cornerstone of your customer service strategy, you can start with a free trial. Many customer service platforms provide integrations with social media management tools, which will help you accelerate your support service on those channels. Sometimes, smaller businesses need a streamlined way to manage conversations on social media channels like Twitter and Facebook. In cases like this, social media customer service software can help you track and manage responses on social media. One of Intercom’s standout features is its chatbot, Operator, which can handle routine customer inquiries, book meetings, and qualify leads, freeing agents for more complex tasks.

However, some users report being overwhelmed with options, stating there’s a learning curve with Jira. Users enjoy the intuitive interface and the visual format in which they can see leads moving through the sales funnel. Reviewers have stated that they would enjoy more complex automation options and would welcome a dedicated notification section in the app, as currently, they receive notifications by email only. Live chat is the preferred communication channel for 42% of online customers because it’s hassle-free and easily accessible.

However, some of those features — like chat — are limited to the highest-cost plan. ServiceNow offers advanced features like AI-assisted ticket routing to help boost productivity. Self-service options and virtual assistants help employees get answers quickly, and reports mean you’re able to track performance and find areas of improvement. Helpshift is a leader in in-app support, specifically focusing on providing in-app support for mobile applications.

Using HelpDesk’s automated workflows, you can quickly answer and resolve simple customer cases or direct them to the right person in a second. 24/7 automations perform selected tasks for your team and, as a result, minimize customer wait times. By analyzing customer data, you can find out about previous interactions, purchases, or concerns, and you can also read complaints or praises to personalize customer communication.