Customer Service is an integral part of customer experience. In fact, according to statistics, ‘90% of Americans use customer service as a factor in deciding whether or not to do business with a company.’ Well, you can’t mess up when it comes to customer service then. When that’s the case, you’ll need skilled employees, proper strategies, and robust customer service software to level up your game.
What to Look for in a Customer Service Software?
When choosing customer service software, there are several key features and factors to consider to ensure it meets your business needs effectively:
- Multi-Channel Support: Look for software that supports various channels like email, chat, social media, and phone. This helps in providing a seamless experience for customers across different platforms.
- Integration Capabilities: The software should easily integrate with your existing business tools and systems (like CRM, databases, or marketing tools) for smooth operations.
- Automation and AI Features: Features like chatbots, automated ticketing systems, and AI-assisted responses can significantly enhance efficiency and response times.
- Customization and Scalability: The software should be customizable to fit your specific business needs and scalable to accommodate growth and changes in demand.
- User-Friendly Interface: Both the customer and employee interfaces should be intuitive and easy to navigate, reducing training time and improving user experience.
- Reporting and Analytics: Detailed analytics help understand customer interactions, service performance, and areas for improvement.
- Reliability and Security: Ensure the software is reliable with minimal downtime and has robust security features to protect sensitive customer data.
- Customer Support and Training: Good vendor support for troubleshooting, regular updates, and training materials for your team is essential.
- Cost-Effectiveness: Consider the cost relative to the features offered. It should fit within your budget while meeting all your key requirements.
- Feedback and Survey Capabilities: Features that allow you to gather customer feedback can be valuable for continuous improvement.
- Community and Self-Service Options: Providing a knowledge base, forums, or FAQs for customers to find answers can be very effective.
- Mobile Compatibility: Ensure the software is mobile-friendly, as many customers and employees may access it on mobile devices.
Now, let’s continue exploring the 11 best customer services for 2024.
11 Best Customer Service Software in 2024
If you were to Google customer service tools, you would find tons of them with similar features in your search results. And how confusing that would be! We get that. After some serious research and comparisons of many tools, we have come up with the 11 best customer service tools that 2024 offers.
- Freshdesk
- Zendesk
- Zoho Desk
- Intercom
- Salesforce Service Cloud
- LiveAgent
- Hubspot Service Hub
- HappyFox
- Helpshift
- ServiceNow
- Richpanel
1. Freshdesk: Best for Cloud-Based Customer Service
Freshdesk is one of those big names in the industry that delivers a self-service, AI-driven, and omnichannel customer service solution for you. The Freshdesk solutions are used by an eminent clientele that includes Honda, Toshiba, Cisco, etc.
Streamline customer conversations in a single place, collaborate with teams to deliver solutions faster, and automate your workflow with the help of a multitude of features.
The cloud-based customer service software offers you relevant features like:
- Multi-channel communication
- Email integrations
- Integration tracking
- Real-time chat
- SLA Management (Service Level Agreement)
- Ticket management
- Complaint classification
- Electronic signature
- Scheduling and many more.
Freshdesk also offers you the ability to video chat with clients, which, in turn, can help you improve customer relationships. The ticket-based solution provides a complete tracking system for almost all sorts of communication with your customers. Yet, on the downside, it has a mediocre mobile app with an unstable notification system and expensive pricing plans.
Pricing: Starts at $15 per month. Free Version Available.
Need to trigger an NPS survey to your contact after closing their ticket? The Freshdesk SurveySparrow integration lets you do just that. With its powerful features, SurveySparrow is a great tool to personalize and improve your customer experience journeys.
For surveys, the Basic plan starts at $19/month for personal use. SurveySparrow also provides a Forever Free plan with limited features and a free trial for testing the product. Sign up below to try it out.
14-Day Free Trial • No Credit Card Required • No Strings Attached
2. Zendesk: Best for Ticket Management
Arguably the most popular customer service software, Zendesk has a powerful set of tools to elevate customer service and engagement. The ticket management system can help you manage hundreds of tickets every day and resolve queries via various channels like phone, email, web, social media, and mobile apps. You can completely focus fully on conversations instead of the workflow by leveraging features like:
- Customer History
- Automatic Ticket Creation
- Blended Call Centre
- Call Recording
- Call Scripting
- Interactive Voice Response
- Real-time Chat
- Queue Management
- Quality Assurance Management
- Customer Complaint Tracking
- SLA Management
Well, the most reliable attributes of Zendesk remain ticket-raising and auto-fill forms that help resolve issues during a call and a knowledge base that helps customers use the solution efficiently. However, the UI is not very intuitive, and the customizable options of the customer support tool are limited.
Pricing: Starts at $5 per agent per month. A free trial is available.
3. Zoho Desk: Best for Zoho Suit Users
Zoho Desk is yet another top-of-the-line tool in our list of customer service software. Claiming to be the first-ever contextualized helpdesk software, Zoho Desk helps you connect through multiple channels, giving you a wider reach to resolve issues and retain customers better. The free customer service software has all the important features that you would need, like:
- Alerts
- Customizable Branding
- Multi-channel Communication
- Real-time Chat
- Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management
- Automated Routing
- Call Logging
- Call Recording
- Call Scripting
- Automated Routing
This affordable AI-powered ticketing tool, with its intuitive UI, seamless integrations, and flexibility, makes for a great option, though the advanced features have a steep learning curve.
Pricing: Starts at $12 per agent per month. Free Version Available.
4. Intercom: Best for Building Customer Relationship
With over 30,000 paying customers to their credit, Intercom is one of the most popular customer service software in the market. The platform serves an eminent list of clientele that includes biggies like Shopify, Atlassian, New Relic, etc. Grow your enterprise by building strong customer relationships through scalable messaging powered by chatbots to provide a personalized customer experience. The mobile-friendly customer service platform even provides guided product tours to provide you with a deeper understanding of the product. Here are some of the best features of Intercom:
- Performance Metrics
- Queue Management
- Live Chat
- Customizable Bots
- Self Service Portal
- Mobile Optimised Emails
- Auto Responders
- Segmentation
- Geo-Targeting
- Customizable Branding
The software, with its improved features and updates, continues to provide services that are fairly good and would definitely make a great customer service software for your organization.
Pricing: Plans start at $39 per month. Free Trial Available.
5. Salesforce Service Cloud: Best for Customer Service-Related Process
Salesforce Service Cloud is a customer service platform built on its parent platform Salesforce’s CRM software. Provide personalized customer experience through multiple channels, manage tickets, and automate workflows by leveraging the 360-degree view of your customers that the software delivers. Here are some other features of the tool that will help you streamline customer service-related processes:
- Blended call Centre
- Call Logging and Scripting
- Queue Management
- Self Service Portal
- Escalation
- Live Chat
- Appointment Management
- Service Level Agreement Management(SLA)
- Email Integration
- IT Asset Management
With its 24/7 cloud-hosted services and interesting suite of features, Salesforce Service Cloud is a customer service software that can’t be ignored even though it’s a tad expensive with a steep learning curve.
Pricing: Starts at $25 per user per month. Free Trial Available.
6. LiveAgent: Best for Omnichannel Communication
LiveAgent is yet another customer service software in our list that serves large enterprises like BMW, Yamaha, Huawei etc., in providing robust customer service solutions. With LiveAgent, your agents can resolve tickets and manage customer issues from a single platform, irrespective of the source from which it is identified. The customer service tool provides a suite of mandatory features that a good platform should have:
- Escalation
- Performance Metrics
- Live Chat
- Queue Management
- Social Media Integration
- Service Level Agreement Management
- Automated Routing
- Email Integration
- Screen Sharing
- Third-Party Integration
Flexible management of tickets, efficient features, intuitiveness, an appealing UI, etc., definitely make LiveAgent a tool to be considered for your enterprise.
Pricing: Starts at $15 per month. Free Version Available.
7. Hubspot Service Hub: Best for Seamless Customer Service
Hubspot’s Service Hub is a comprehensive customer service software that helps you engage with customers and resolve tickets painlessly by simultaneously aligning marketing and sales operations supported by its CRM software. Service Hub offers all the required features, including:
- Canned Responses
- Geo-Targeting
- Proactive Chat
- Third-Party Integration
- Website Visitor Tracking
- Customizable Branding
- Performance Metrics
- Alerts
- Email Management
- Queue Management
- Ticket Organization
- Shared Inbox
- Reporting Functionality
With advanced ticket management systems, free live chat tools, and the ability to record videos and answer customer questions in real-time, Hubspot Service Hub is one of the best customer support tools.
Pricing: Starts at $35 per user per month.
8. Happyfox: Best for App Integrations
Happyfox is a customer service software that supports you in delivering relevant customer service solutions via multiple channels and devices like web, email, social media, phone, mobile, tablets, etc. The help desk software helps you integrate with various business applications to improve and streamline your workflow. Some of the main features that Happfox provides include:
- Canned Response
- Bulk Actions
- Alerts
- Customizable Branding
- Real-time Chat
- Service Level Agreement Management
- Automated Routing
- Project Management
- Issue Scheduling
- Queue Management
- Email Management
- Social Media Integration
Happyfox is a great customer service software considering its flexibility, remarkable features, reliable ticket templates, intuitiveness, and powerful real-time reporting.
Pricing: Starts at $29 per agent per month.
9. Helpshift: Best for Integrated Bots and In-App Web Messaging
Helpshift is a digital customer service software that provides solutions and helps you engage with customers through apps, websites, and multiple devices. Integrated bots, in-app and web messaging, AI-powered in-app and web knowledge base, etc., are some of the best characteristics of Helpshift. The other features of the customer service platform include:
- Email Integration
- Customizable branding
- Interaction Tracking
- Multi-channel Communication
- Real-time Chat
- Service Level Agreement Management
- Canned Responses
- Geo-Targeting
- Proactive Chat
- Workflow Management
Helpshift is a pretty decent tool that allows you to make reports, filter tags and solve customer issues painlessly. Yet, the tool has a drawback when it comes to removing resolved tickets from the open queue.
Pricing: Contact to get a quote
10. ServiceNow: Best Mobile-Friendly Ticket Management Tool
ServiceNow is the final customer service software in our list of the best. Improve customer experience by keeping track of the trends and delivering solutions proactively. The mobile-friendly ticket management tool has a lot of useful features to its name like:
- Alert
- Performance Metrics
- Self Service Portal
- Email Management
- Live Chat
- Virtual Assistant
- Social Media Integration
- Appointment Management
- Work Collaboration
ServiceNow is an intuitive tool that helps you collaborate work across departments to streamline workflow and improve efficiency. However, its loading time is comparatively slow compared to its peers.
Pricing: Contact to get a quote.
11. Richpanel: Best for Painless Customer Complaint Resolutions
Richpanel is a customer service software that helps solve customer issues painlessly and eliminates the need to over-depend on the agents. Such a provision helps your customer service agents save time and cover more important matters. In fact, the Richpanel claims to solve 50% of the customer queries and problems without involving the agents.
The features offered by the customer service tool include help desk and ticket management, self-service software, multichannel communication, service level agreement, live chat, automated routing, email integration, social media integration, and many more.
Pricing: Starts at $65/month
Conclusion
Customer demands and expectations are changing with time. The decade exhibits customers with a strong understanding of what they want, and of course, there are many options in front of them, and they very well know that they can switch to better ones. One wrong move and your customers could leave you for your competitors. So, you need to play along with the changing trends and provide the best experience and services to your customers using a tool that will comply with the needs of your enterprise.
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