The 17 best customer service software tools for 2024

Sprout Social provides businesses with tools that manage social media engagement. Part of this includes customer service features that help support agents respond to customers who ask questions or provide feedback through social media channels. In fact, 33% of consumers now prefer to contact a company’s customer service via social media rather than by phone. Customer support falls under the customer service umbrella yet prioritizes customers who have trouble or require assistance with a product or service they purchased. Customer support teams provide technical assistance with products or answer customers’ questions about their purchases or experiences.

While the call center is still an integral part of customer service offerings, it’s actually just a small part of the bigger picture. When you employ effective customer service strategies, you can gain a competitive advantage over other businesses by building lasting relationships with customers. When you focus on delivering great customer service, it becomes easier to upsell your customers and increase your bottom line.

No matter where customers reach out to your support team, Freshdesk funnels those conversations into a single chat, making it easy to keep track of open conversations and recall important information. And, Freshdesk has a mobile interface, so agents can respond to tickets even when they’re not at the office or near their computers. However, unlike Intercom, Podium has internal communication channels so your agents can communicate with each other privately. Agents can collaborate on complex or time-sensitive service cases, which leads to faster response times and resolution rates. Plus, Podium has easy-to-use handoff features that make case transfer seamless for both agents and customers.

Courteous and empathetic interaction with a trained customer service representative can mean the difference between losing or retaining a customer. So, rather than thinking only about the tasks customer service software will allow you to perform, think about the data it will allow you to acquire. If you’re actively marketing your business, you need an equally active customer service program.

Track team performance and support quality with access to important customer service reports and metrics like CSAT. Streamline support workflows by delegating and organizing customer service requests with incredible ease. Using tools like machine learning (ML) and speech-to-text, companies can more quickly identify common problems and pain points for the customer through call centers. Internal KPIs, such as conversion rates, channel escalation, and churn rate, can also provide insights into what is causing a breakdown in customer retention. This leaves a gap in the understanding of customer concerns; it also makes  the company susceptible to a lower CSAT score, which measures customer satisfaction. The needs of customers throughout the buyer’s journey are anticipated, making customers feel supported.

For example, there’s no need to search for Tweets or comments in your notifications to join customer conversations. Instead, simply answer each message as you go, directly from your customer service management software with customer history on hand. An omnichannel agent workspace provides a dashboard with a unified view of customer data, interactions across channels, and ticket history (aka the entire customer journey) for all departments to access.

Instant feedback

Zendesk is an omnichannel customer service solution that you can customize and build at your convenience. The basic plans come with certain fundamental features that you need to keep your support function afloat. However, you can add paid modules such as self-service and channels like live chat and phone to the basic plan to make it work better for you. Intercom is a business messenger that companies use to communicate with existing and potential customers.

Check out our extensive knowledge base, take a live class, or even get a one-on-one demo with one of our customer champions to learn how your team can get the most out of Help Scout. Customers aren’t interested in stiffly written scripts or one-size-fits-all email templates that never quite fit the issue at hand. Instead, customers want to have conversations with businesses where their concerns and needs are listened to and met in a timely manner. Some of the features above are common across nearly every customer support platform; others are less common or are implemented quite differently. You could — in theory — build either one with just two or three tools, but the overall quality and efficiency of your efforts would be greatly impacted. As with Zendesk’s lower-cost plans, it only covers email, Twitter, and Facebook messages, so if you’re looking for other channels, you’d need to look at the omnichannel support tiers.

Messaging apps

Aerial Capital Group is an Australian transport logistics company responsible for a large fleet of cars-for-hire, taxis, and shuttle buses. They also provide telecommunication sales, service, and maintenance services through their communications subsidiary, Servitel. Before Mitel, ACG’s customer service system was struggling to keep up with high call volumes. On average, they missed out on about 15,000 opportunities per month by keeping customers on hold for too long and wading through inefficient booking processes. They were in the market for a solution that could handle peak call traffic and reduce operational costs when they discovered Mitel. The customer service software market used to be dominated by a select few on-premise systems, such as Avaya and Cisco.

They also love the insights they gain from customer engagement tracking features, as well as the long list of available integrations. On the other hand, some users experience glitchy automation, which can lead to delays. 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 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.

This means that unless an employee understands what great service looks like, they may not be able to demonstrate it. This can be because we all have different life experiences that result in different frames of reference. Employees should understand the importance of everyone doing their part to take care of the customer. This should include explicit customer objectives for both internal (other departments) or external (paying) customers. Departments that are interdependent should have overlapping responsibilities to ensure good coordination of efforts.

By implementing best practices in the use of customer service software, companies can efficiently manage customer inquiries, enhance satisfaction, and build lasting relationships. LiveChat is an excellent customer service platform that offers advanced live chat features. The chat widgets are clean and modern and are one of the best at showcasing eCommerce products beautifully.

If the product begins to underperform, the organization can initiate a customer service engagement before the customer knows there’s a problem. VR is a computer-generated experience, typically delivered over a headset, that creates an immersive environment. AR is similar—an interactive experience where computer-generated information is overlaid on a real-world environment. Both are being used to allow customers to preview and customize products, take part in product demonstrations and training sessions, and explore new product experiences and entertainment.

The three basic methods of customer profiling are the psychographic approach, the consumer typology approach, and the consumer characteristics approach. These customer profiling methods help you design your business customer service system around who your customers are and help you make better customer-centered decisions. The real secret to great customer service is being able to empathize with everyone who seeks help and to do so earnestly.

As a customer support agent, you deal with various requests — from refund inquiries to issues with defective products. These requests come through different channels, such as email, telephone calls, live chat, and social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It’s no secret that managing all of these different channels can be tricky — but customer service software can help.

LiveAgent combines communication from email, calls, and social media into a unified dashboard. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. The software offers simple setup, integration with the rest of their platform, and tools to help team productivity. Beyond Slack, you can use Salesforce Service Cloud to provide support via email, live chat, and self-service channels. The platform also offers add-ons like field service and AI tools and can integrate easily with Salesforce’s CRM for added customer insights.

There are tons of use cases that we can outline — from decreasing cart abandonment to boosting customer satisfaction, revenue, and loyalty. However, suppose a customer uses a channel like email, social media, or a messaging app to contact your company. In that case, the system will simply create a ticket and assign it to a specific department/agent based on predefined criteria.

Zoho Desk has a number of features like a shared inbox, phone integration, and chat. However, some of those features — like chat — are limited to the highest-cost plan. Helpshift has flexible, use-based pricing to ensure your team only pays for what you need. For instance, they offer a free plan for teams that are only looking to collect feedback from users. Sending out mass communication over the phone can be time consuming and costly, but it’s sometimes necessary.

Robust Mobile App

The software offers live chat, bots, self-service platforms, and a ticketing system. Using the Jira integration with LiveAgent customer service software users can easily create new tasks and issues directly from the ticket panel, saving data input time and eliminating platform hopping. If you want to support your customers on messaging apps like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, ensure that the free customer management software offers a functional social media channel integration with them.

In those instances, live chat is a great option since it offers the immediacy of phone support while being less resource-intensive. 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.

But you don’t need to create your own Morton’s moment to delight customers. Customer service skills are the qualities and abilities a customer service representative needs to deliver good customer service. 81% of business leaders see customer experience and support as growing priorities over the next year. So while Joan Jett may not care about a bad reputation, business owners and leaders should—good customer service plays an increasingly critical role in a company’s success.

If you’re a fan of contacting support on live chat, make sure that the company you choose offers live chat support. If you’re more into talking it out, find out whether your preferred vendor offers toll-free numbers and offers support at an appropriate time for your time zone. Ensure that the support ticket system you choose has active integrations with the tools you like to use daily. The whole point of customer service software is to improve your productivity and minimize the number of external tools you use. By integrating your help desk with third-party apps like Shopify, for example, you can view your customer’s orders/refunds directly in your customer service software. The reason why you can do so much with this customer service tool is that it is versatile.

As we explain in our post on customer service metrics, there’s a lot of important data to track in any customer service program. As your business grows, it simply becomes impossible to manage and track your service efforts without software. According to McKinsey, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. If consumers don’t like the experience they receive, it’s easier than ever for them to choose a different business. In addition to support style, usability, and price, you also need to ensure that your customer service tool has essential features like collaboration, reporting and analytics, self-service, and security.

The paid version of the software has more functions and has custom pricing, so you will need to contact sales for an exact quote. Google Analytics is a platform that tracks website and advertising traffic. Users can easily create reports and investigate spikes or dips in clicks, visits, and views. It’s an excellent tool for gaining insights about your target audience and improving advertising ROI, content, as well as your products. The marketing automation platform is praised for its ease of use, segmentation options, and two-way synchronization with other applications. As for criticisms, some users report having trouble rearranging flows (specifically CRM campaigns).

Having access to accurate data insights can help every business improve its sales, marketing, and support processes. Customer service software is generally used for customer support purposes; however, it can also be used by sales, accounting, IT, or marketing teams within one organization. Apart from being useful for traditional businesses, the system can also benefit non-profit organizations, government agencies, and educational institutions.

• Modern live chat solutions also enable you to manage conversations across messaging channels and chatbots.
• Others say that the mobile app needs work, as it’s not very user-friendly.
• Automate repeatable customer service tasks and reduce your team’s need to manually handle mundane work.
• Unfortunately, only 10% of companies use automated responses, according our Customer Service Benchmark Report.
• When it comes to providing best in class customer service, speed is an important criterion.

It’s crucial to choose customer relationship management and contact center tools that support fast resolutions and stress-free experiences for your customers and your employees. Look for a platform that offers complete integration with your other business systems and provides real-time data from across your business, so that your staff has the details they need at their fingertips. It’s all part of developing an agile workforce that can flex and change according to need – and for better customer service experiences. Intercom’s customer support solution uses automation and messaging to help internal customer service teams. Intercom Messenger works as a supplement to a business’s existing support tools.

Organizations that use chatbots typically train them on frequently asked questions and tasks, and program them to their specific industries. Customer support teams also interact with customers, but they are part of the larger customer service department to answer product-related questions and troubleshoot problems when necessary. Depending on the industry, support teams provide guidance with electronic equipment, software and apparel, among other products. Customer support agents solve problems related to products customers purchase or use. Customer service teams focus on providing the best possible CX before and after a customer purchases a product. They also specialize in customer retention and solve complex issues that frustrate customers.

In fact, providing a good customer service experience has several real-world impacts on your business performance and how your company is perceived by the public. Finding the right software can help you guarantee your customers consistently have pleasant experiences with your company. 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. Instead, they can get help right where they’re working, saving time and reducing friction in the customer experience. It also equips you with a comprehensive customer profile and key behavior insights, enabling personalized interactions that boost customer satisfaction.

It tracks all the necessary metrics, including the number of visitors on your site, average page views per session, session duration, and much more. However, analytics users state that the app is quite complex and does have a learning curve. In addition, businesses have the option to choose from four paid subscription options.

This helps provide services to more customers for a fraction of the cost of employees’ wages. One of the key benefits of social media software is that it allows you to collect valuable data. You can use that data to develop a solid understanding of your customers, your team, and even your own products and services. The customer service software tools you choose will become the basis of workflows across your company. You don’t want to have to change everything later because you chose a customer service solution you’ll quickly outgrow.