It’s one of the fundamental truths of business that you can’t be successful without happy customers. Customer service software helps organizations of all sizes improve customer satisfaction by providing an easy way to organize, track, and respond to customer inquiries.
Having a unified system offers a consistent experience, makes it easier for your staff to collaborate and follow up, and reduces the number of times a customer needs to repeat their inquiry to a new person. Here are some of the best customer service software packages.
Best Customer Service Software Solutions
1. Freshdesk
Freshdesk makes customer service streamlined and simple, with a unified support channel that incorporates email, chat, phone records, and more, so you can respond to customers from one place.
In addition, it integrates automated tools to save time and has customizable team dashboards that keep everyone on the same page. Freshdesk’s features include:
Ticketing
A team inbox manages incoming support tickets into a single channel and ensures that multiple team members aren’t accidentally working on the same ticket. Custom ticket status and SLA management let you create custom ticket statuses, set deadlines for response, and make a workflow that works for your team.
In addition, automated tools like canned responses, ticket field suggester, and scenario automation save time. Freshdesk even has a ‘thank you detector’ that prevents tickets from reopening when customers send a thank you.
Single Platform Support
Freshdesk unifies communications from email, chat, website support systems, phone, social media, and even texting with WhatsApp, so you track all your channels from the same platform.
Ticket Tracking
Agents can link tickets together to track related issues, resolve multi-stage problems with parent-child ticketing, and even share ownership and consult team members to resolve tickets quickly.
Ratings and Reports
With Freshdesk, you can create and track your own metrics, use curated reports, get customer satisfaction data, and schedule the reports you need.
Freshdesk also has tools to integrate field teams, smart AI-chat features so your customers can help themselves, and custom app integrations so you can make your helpdesk your own. In addition, Freshdesk is affordably priced and has a robust free trial, so you can see if it’s the right choice for your business.
2. HubSpot
HubSpot is famous for its customer service, and its service software grew out of its own needs and support practices. HubSpot’s customer service software is designed to grow with your company, so you can start small and upgrade to enterprise-level services over time. Some of the most popular features of ServiceHub include:
Help Desk and Ticket Automation
You can create rules that automatically prioritize and route tickets, minimizing data entry and manual sorting.
Knowledge Base
ServiceHub’s knowledge base converts frequently asked questions into a searchable library, so your customers can help themselves by finding articles, videos, and documentation.
Live Chat With Contextual Conversations
HubSpot’s live chat is context-sensitive and can automatically route users to the right team.
Universal Inbox
The universal inbox connects email, chat, Messenger, and other customer communications into a central inbox.
Management and Reporting
Manage teams easily by making sure every agent has the right status, permissions, and availability. Reporting dashboards help you assess team performance and access relevant data, and you can create custom objects to store and customize that data you need.
HubSpot offers a free version of ServiceHub with no time limitations; you can simply sign up and take advantage of all the basic features with full functionality. Over time, upgrading your plan unlocks more features and capabilities, and HubSpot also offers special discount pricing packages for startups.
3. ZenDesk
ZenDesk believes that customer service software needs to not just satisfy your customers but needs to make life easier for your teams as well. ZenDesk sets your agents up for success and keeps your business in sync with their comprehensive tools. ZenDesk allows you to:
Provide Support Anywhere
ZenDesk connects all your conversations, whether over messaging, chat, social, email, or phone, and allows you to communicate with your customer in the channel they prefer.
Create a Help Center
ZenDesk helps you build an integrated help center and community forums so customers can find the answers they need in their own time.
Automate Service and Support
ZenDesk allows you to use automation and AI-powered bots to deliver personalized service even as your business grows.
Improve Efficiency
With a unified agent workspace and collaboration tools, service staff can work more efficiently and connect with internal and external partners. In addition, built-in routing intelligence reduces data entry and escalates issues to the right person.
Personalize the Customer Journey
ZenDesk creates a unified view of the customer, so you can maintain individual service and insights.
Get Detailed Analytics and Reporting
ZenDesk’s analytics monitors analyze and act based on what your customers need. Reporting works across sales, service, and third-party systems for comprehensive reports.
ZenDesk has various packages for businesses of every size, including a very affordable ‘foundation’ price for new businesses, with a free trial. It’s a great way to meet the needs of customers and support staff as well.
4. LiveChat
LiveChat is more than chat. It’s a complete customer service platform used by some of the world’s biggest companies, including McDonald’s, Unilever, Adobe, PayPal, and more. LiveChat integrates Messenger, email, Apple Business Chat, WhatsApp, SMS, web, and chat into a single platform that makes it easy to offer excellent customer service every time. With LiveChat, you get:
Simple Automation
You can set up automated, interactive greetings with context sensitivity based on the user’s location, their visited web pages, and more. Automatic chat routing gets your customer to the right team fast and efficiently.
Complete Profiles
Customer profiles and user behaviors let you personalize interactions, and you can integrate LiveChat with your CRM to see more customer data.
Easy Setup
LiveChat is easy to set up and install and allows you to create message templates that save time and enable you to handle multiple cases at once.
Robust Reporting
LiveChat offers 20+ reports out of the box, with all the data you need to measure and monitor performance, engagement, and customer satisfaction.
LiveChat integrates with more than 200 other applications and has a free trial. Plans are affordable for small businesses but can scale up as you grow. After all, if it’s the support platform of Ikea, Mercedes-Benz, and 33,000 businesses worldwide, it needs to be reliable no matter how large your teams are.
5. Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk specializes in context-aware tools that help you increase customer happiness. Zoho Desk was awarded a 2021 Category Leader award by GetApp, won the FinancesOnline 2020 Expert’s Choice award, won the Gartner peer insights 2020 Customer’s Choice Award, was recognized in the 2021 Best Software Awards, and is a PCMag Editor’s Choice. Zoho desk offers:
Omnichannel Communications
With Zoho Desk, you can manage conversations across multiple channels, including email, phone, social media, and your website, responding and following up with a single application.
Workflow Automation
Not only does Zoho Desk let you automate repetitive actions, but it also allows you to manage complex cross-functional processes. Tracking processes will enable you to spot bottlenecks and solve problems more quickly.
A Comprehensive Platform
Zoho Desk is compatible with popular tools like Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Trello, Pipedrive, and more. In addition, you can use their API to add custom capabilities or use their SDK to build your own internal apps.
Self-Service
With Zoho Desk, you can embed a knowledge base, user community, and AI capabilities into your website, mobile app, and even your SaaS product. As a result, your customers can find the answers they need at any time.
Artificial Intelligence
Zoho Desk’s AI-powered assistant can proactively triage support tickets, analyze customer sentiment, and spot anomalies in ticket traffic, so you get intelligent analysis in real-time.
Zoho Desk works across verticals and scales with your business, allowing you to deliver the consistent, quality support that helps you grow. Zoho Desk’s well-defined processes help you improve productivity and manage support without a glitch.
Zoho Desk offers a 15-day free trial, and their plans are affordable and include onboarding assistance. No wonder it has won so many awards and is the customer service software choice of so many global brands.
Conclusion
No matter what type of business you have, it’s powered by happy customers, and customer success is critical to your own success. These customer service software packages will help you deliver great customer experiences on any channel, any time, and give you the data you need to measure outcomes and improve over time.