Top 20 customer service software in 2024

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Customers are the lifeblood of your business. Use this guide to choose the best customer service software, improve customer experience, and drive customer loyalty.

Good customer service is essential to retaining customers and growing your business. You need to offer timely, personalized assistance no matter how big or small your business is. Good customer service software is what you need to ensure that your support team is able to manage customer conversations better and build long-term customer relationships.

If you’re looking for a better way to handle customer queries, an alternative to your existing customer service software, or just want to learn more about them, you are on the right page.

What is a customer service software?

Customer service software enables efficient communication and management of customer support issues across multiple channels. The software's ability to sync-up with additional tools amplifies its functionality, allowing you to provide efficient and effective customer service.

The terms customer service software and customer support software are often used synonymously. You might also find them referred to as help desk software or ticketing systems. However, all these names refer to the same software and can be evaluated on similar features and capabilities.

20 Best customer service software in 2024

If you're looking for software for customer service for your business, you might be overwhelmed by the number of options available. To make things easy for you, we've put together this list with key features so you can compare tools and pick the best one for your business.  

1. Freshworks Customer Service Suite

The AI-Powered Freshworks Customer Service Suite combines the power of self-service bots, conversational messaging, and ticketing into a single solution. 

The Suite is built on generative AI technology, using Freshworks Freddy AI. Freddy unlocks self-service for customers, and empowers reps to solve problems swiftly, and gives leaders the insights they need to maximize business growth.

The unified, omnichannel solution backed with generative AI can elevate support capabilities with more engaging experiences and improved agent productivity.

Key features

From bots to conversational experiences, ticketing, and collaboration, Freshworks covers the entire customer service journey. It helps with the following: 

  • Self-service automation: Freddy Self Service, available on any channel, helps with faster and more personalized resolutions. Freshbots can help deflect up to 70% of queries, according to the Freshworks Customer Service Benchmark Report 2023–thus reducing wait times and improving overall customer engagement. 

  • Elevating agent productivity: Freddy Copilot is an always-on assistant who can suggest responses, recommend next-best action, and summarize events for support reps. Agents receive valuable insights to enhance their actions. This ensures a personalized and proactive approach to customer engagement.

  • Enabling seamless collaboration between teams: Resolve complex queries effortlessly with Freshworks’s robust ticketing capabilities. Assign tickets to the right agent with the help of AI capabilities and solve queries quickly and efficiently. With the help of natural language prompts, admins can easily build complex chatbot flows, create training plans for agents, set up automation, and more for faster resolutions. 

  • Making data-driven decisions: Freddy Insights can analyze performance data for opportunities to remove bottlenecks and optimize productivity. It can even recommend actions to solve problems and execute them.

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Perfect for:  Businesses that need an all-in-one customer service suite

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Why do people like Freshworks Customer Service Suite?

Your current systems can be easily integrated with the Customer Service Suite, which offers a user-friendly interface for your agents. In addition, the suite can seamlessly expand to accommodate your business's growth.

Some other benefits include:

  • User-Friendly: Its intuitive interface reduces training time and boosts agent productivity.

  • Scalability: It grows with your business, adapting to changing needs seamlessly.

  • Efficient Ticket Management: It streamlines support processes, ensuring responsiveness and quality.

  • Multi-Channel Support: It consolidates customer interactions across channels for consistent service.

Backed by Freddy AI—our native AI platform—Freshworks Customer Service Suite provides an intuitive interface that enables you to interact with the software using natural language. It is easy to set up, configure, and manage—allowing you to save time and resources. 

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2. Zendesk

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.

Key features

  • Email, Twitter, and Facebook tickets: Zendesk allows you to centralize customer inquiries and complaints from multiple channels, including email, Twitter, and Facebook.

  • Automations: Zendesk offers powerful automation capabilities that help reduce manual tasks and streamline processes.

  • Reporting: Zendesk provides comprehensive reporting and analytics tools that give you insights into the performance of your support team and the satisfaction of your customers.

Pros and cons of Zendesk

Pros:

  • Good starter customer service for those needing essential functions. Best for smaller teams.

  • Highly customizable — you can set up specific queues, macros, automated triggers and workflows.

Cons: 

  • Difficult and time-consuming to set up. 

  • It lacks integrations with certain important management tools, which would hinder your workflow if you work with different tools.

  • High entry pricing.

3. Front

Front is a customer communication platform that is built specifically for businesses that offer support only via email. Front also brings together conversations from SMS, live chat, and Facebook into an email-like UI. So Front can also serve as an omnichannel shared inbox that businesses can use to create better relationships across channels.

Key features

  • Shared inbox feature: This acts as a centralized hub for all your communication channels. Multiple team members can access and collaborate on messages.

  • Effortless location of emails: Locating past emails is effortless with specific criteria—a challenge with other email tools. The search capability with intricate criteria simplifies finding past messages—an often arduous task with alternative email services.

  • Advanced personalization: Every conversation is surrounded by customer history and relevant data so teams can craft faster and better responses.

Pros and cons of Front

Pros:

  • Front makes email the center of your support activities. If having your personal work email in the same tool as your shared inbox is a true priority, Front may be right for you.

  • Collaborating with team members and keeping track of customer conversations is easy.

  • The highly advanced search criteria make retrieval of past emails very easy. 

Cons:

  • There's a learning curve when you first dive into all its diverse features and functionalities.

  • The pricing is on the higher end.

4. Groove

Groove is a shared inbox alternative for small businesses offering multi-channel support. Groove can be a good fit for businesses with lean support teams since it also comes with a knowledge base that helps with reducing support volume. 

Key features

  • Social media integrations: You can stay on top of social media interactions with Twitter and Facebook plugins.

  • Automations: There are many easy-to-setup automations available, like an instant categorization of conversations, setting time-based SLAs, and automatic task assigning.

  • Live Chat: Groove has a smart live chat that can be customized easily and direct customers to the right support.

Pros and cons of Groove

Pros:

  • You can know when customers open your email 

  • You can quickly create shared drafts and have a smooth workflow with the intuitive email layouts available.

Cons:

  • Some of the integrations can be lagging

5. Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk is an omnichannel and context-aware help desk that helps businesses increase productivity of agents and customer happiness. If you’re already a user of the Zoho Suite of products, Zoho Desk might be the ideal support platform for you since it offers native integrations with products like Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, and Zoho Mail. 

Key features

  • Customization: There are multiple options for customization, including various layouts, rebranding options, and domain mapping to make the software fit your team perfectly.

  • Integrations: ZohoDesk has a strong selection of tools that can be synced with the rest of your tech stack and integrate customer service with the rest of your team.

  • Team management: There are various team management features that larger teams can use, like time tracking.

Pros and cons of Zoho Desk

Pros:

  • There are many features for sales enablement, making it an ideal software for sales-focused teams.

  • Easy to set up and a clean interface

  • A unified view of all customer communication lets you easily keep track of all information.

Cons:

  • Some of the features, like AI and chat, are limited to the highest-cost plan

  • The dashboard's reporting capabilities can be limited

6. Help Scout

Help Scout is a software for customer service that gives you the feeling of working out of a shared inbox with the added advantage of being able to track customer requests via email and live chat. With Help Scout, you can also offer proactive support, promote new initiatives, and share updates using their help widget, Beacon.

Key features

  • Centralized dashboard: You can manage email and live chat from one centralized space. Customers can contact you from wherever they want, and your team can work in a single support queue.

  • Customer profiles: You can access past interactions and other customer data from connected apps to help provide more personalized support.

  • Customer management: Proactively help customers with trigger-based messages in-app. Engage leads, onboard new customers, and provide proactive support.

Pros and cons of Help Scout

Pros:

  • More efficiency because you can see if an agent is already working on a ticket. 

  • Good reporting capabilities and comes with pre-built reports, which lets you analyze results without setting up reports from scratch.

Cons:

  • There’s only a single template available for the self-service portal, and branding is not available.

  • The integrations are limited.

7. WhatsApp Business App

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. In addition to offering support, you can use the WhatsApp Business App to provide information about your products, set up automated messages, and increase sales. 

Key features

  • Bulk messages: You can send bulk messages from your WhatsApp app.

  • Respond with ease: You can greet people the moment they start a conversation and respond to messages automatically even when you’re away.

  • Customizable: Leverage the API to deliver compelling conversational flows with interactive CTAs, rich media and more.

Pros and cons of WhatsApp Business App

Pros:

  • Ideal for small businesses who personally manage conversations with customers on WhatsApp.

  • Free of cost

Cons:

  • Only meant for small businesses of up to five team members, as it doesn't offer any scalable business options.

  • Limited to only WhatsApp

8. Intercom

In their own words, Intercom is an engagement OS that helps businesses strengthen customer relationships with proactive live chat and messaging. Using Intercom, you can also manage customer conversations across email, WhatsApp, and your mobile app, making it a good option to consider if you offer chat-first support.

Key features

  • Messenger-first ticketing: You can provide personal, in-context resolutions to any type of customer query with a messaging platform interface.

  • Personalized interactions: Give customers support tailored to serve their unique needs with live, first-party insights for every engagement.

  • Powerful integrations: Intercom offers over 350 integrations with various CRM, email, ticketing, social channels, reporting tools, and internal databases, making it easier to scale its capabilities beyond customer ervice.

Pros and cons of Intercom

Pros:

  • You can communicate with customers right inside your product, making it a great support tool for product and marketing teams.

  • It comes with a chatbot and also sales features. So, it can be a good choice if you want a tool beyond customer service capabilities.

Cons:

  • Except for the starter plan, pricing plans are not clear and transparent. 

  • The setup can get complicated and is more suitable for mid to large-sized companies.

  • The analytics do not always provide real-time information.

9. Talkdesk

Talkdesk is a call center customer service solution that is big on AI and automation. With the Talkdesk AI, you can improve productivity by automating customer self-service, agent assistance, and mitigating fraud. 

Talkdesk also enables omnichannel engagement with Talkdesk Digital Engagement, an all-in-one digital customer engagement solution that includes email, SMS, and live chat.

Key features

  • Advanced AI: Teams can respond to customer seamlessly across channels with personalized, intelligent service and also predict and prepare for their future needs and wants.

  • Omnichannel engagement: Engage with customers on their channel of choice, personalize interactions, and preserve conversation context.

  • Low-code and no-code customization options: Build the right interface, design automations specific to roles, create custom flows, and build custom integrations.

Pros and cons of Talkdesk

Pros:

  • Highly scalable, making it ideal for growing businesses and enterprises with dynamic support needs.

  • Reporting is easy with a simple point-and-click interface requiring no coding.

Cons:

  • Some reviewers report technical glitches

  • Does not support all browsers

  • Expensive

10. Aircall

Aircall is a cloud-based call center software that can be used by customer service teams as well as sales teams. What’s different about Aircall is that it is also available as a desktop application. This makes it ideal for large businesses that require a native telephony desktop application over an IP telephony system.

Key features

  • Insights card: View the customer’s name and previous interactions as soon as the phone rings with insight cards that are integrated with 100+ customer service software and other tools. 

  • Sync notes: Automatically sync call notes and tags to your customer service platform. Agents don’t have to spend time logging information.

  • Call quality and reliability: With multiple data centers globally, Aircall delivers high-quality communications with excellent uptime, opus codec audio transmission, and dynamic carrier switching. 

Pros and cons of Aircall

Pros:

  • It can be integrated with your existing customer service tool or CRM. 

  • Easy to access and record call logs.

Cons:

  • Can only be used for support via call, and no other channels

  • Some reviewers mention slow customer service and response time.

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11. Salesforce

Salesforce is a legacy customer service platform that is preferred by enterprise businesses due to its customizability. It is an ideal solution for businesses that use the Salesforce CRM software. So if your sales and customer service teams need to work closely together, then this solution might be right for you.

Key features

  • Self-service: Salesforce offers self-service portals and knowledge bases, empowering customers to find answers to their questions independently.

  • AI customer service: With AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants, you can handle routine inquiries, while predictive analytics help identify customer needs and preferences.

  • Call center management: Salesforce provides tools for managing call centers, including features for call routing, call scripting, and real-time analytics.

Pros and cons of Salesforce

Pros:

  • Thousands of add-ons that can be integrated with your customer service data for an additional fee

  • It can be a good option for teams that are looking to provide support over Slack, as Salesforce integrates natively with Slack.

Cons:

  • Customizing without developers would be difficult

  • The reporting interface is less intuitive than other software

12. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a social media management platform that can also be used to monitor customer service on social media. This is perfect for businesses running on social media and only wanting to deliver customer service across the same social channels. 

Sprout Social can help your team be fast and efficient with features like delegation, personalization, and seamless in-app collaboration.

Key features

  • Social CRM: You can access important customer details and provide personalized service to build lasting relationships.

  • All-in-one platform: Enable greater visibility across your team and seamless in-app collaboration with a user-friendly and centralized social media customer service platform.

  • Reporting capabilities: Create reports that provide insight into individual and team response times and message threads to help you evaluate the quality of your customer service.

Pros and cons of Sprout Social

Pros:

  • Excellent for monitoring customer sentiment across social channels

  • Best for teams that receive a lot of support requests via social media — both in DMs and posts.

Cons:

  • Limited to only social media channels

13. Gorgias

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.

Key features

  • Centralize all support tickets: Have every customer data displayed when you're talking to them. Edit orders, modify subscriptions, and refund payments without leaving the platform.

  • Proactive support: Respond to customers' queries about your products on your ads and posts, increasing your sales and ad effectiveness.

  • Multi-channel service: Track all conversations by support agents over text messages, social media answers, and live chat conversations on your website.

Pros and cons of Gorgias

Pros:

  • Integrations with popular eCommerce website builders make it an ideal choice if you have a website on any of those platforms.

  • Also helps with sales along with support, helping you get more conversions.

Cons:

  • The reporting feature is limited—it only allows for historical data within 90 days.

14. Happyfox

Happyfox is a customer service solution that can be used not only by a customer service team but also by HR and marketing teams. This platform lets you streamline your internal support with the IT support and support operations modules.

Key features

  • Omnichannel support: Convert email, phone, chat, social media, and web requests into tickets and keep them organized in a single place.

  • Ticket categories: Classify your inbound tickets into predefined categories like products, sales, support, etc., and all requests will flow into the right ticket categories of your support ticket system.

  • Live Chat: Add a chat plugin to your support center or your website by integrating with HappyFox Chat or other supported live chat widgets. These customer conversations can be recorded as helpdesk tickets.

Pros and cons of Happyfox

Pros:

  • Pricing is not a per-user model, as many other tools. So you can add unlimited agents to any plan.

  • Neat interface as every ticket is properly organized automatically.

Cons:

  • When creating workflows, it has limited triggers and actions.

  • Reporting capabilities are basic.

15. Hiver

Hiver is a Gmail-based customer service management software that is perfect for lean customer service teams that do not want to let go of the comfort of using Gmail but are struggling to keep track of customer requests. Users can manage all support channels from the Gmail panel.

Key features

  • Shared inbox: Gmails can be turned into actionable tasks, given them to designated owners and resolutions.

  • Collaboration within Gmail: Enable cross-department collaboration in Gmail and also invite external collaborators.

  • Automation: Automate Gmail-based tasks like assigning emails and tagging messages.

Pros and cons of Hiver

Pros:

  • Because it’s email-based, Hiver is very easy to set up and manage. Best for teams that don’t want to go through the hassle of setting up a custom platform.

  • Wide range of email templates for providing faster responses to customers.

Cons:

  • There is no way to create support tickets unless related to a Gmail account.

  • The analytics and reporting feature is very basic.

16. MailChimp

MailChimp is an email marketing platform that helps businesses create, send, and automate email campaigns. It's known for its user-friendly interface and robust audience segmentation capabilities, making it a popular choice for customer engagement and marketing.

Key features

  • Email Marketing: Use email campaigns for customer engagement and support updates.

  • Audience Segmentation: Targeted messaging for customer segments.

  • Automation: Automate email responses and follow-ups for customer inquiries.

Pros and cons of MailChimp

Pros:

  • Good for customer engagement and updates via email

  • Automation features can enhance support.

  • Detailed analytics for email performance.

Cons:

  • Not primarily designed for customer service.

  • Limited real-time support features.

  • Pricing can be expensive for large subscriber lists.

17. LiveAgent

LiveAgent is a comprehensive customer service and helpdesk software that offers multi-channel support, ticketing, live chat, and knowledge base features. It's designed to streamline customer interactions and enhance support efficiency, making it a valuable tool for managing customer service inquiries.

Key features

  • Multi-Channel Support: Handle customer inquiries from various channels.

  • Ticketing System: Efficiently manage and resolve customer issues.

  • Live Chat: Offer real-time customer service on your website.

  • Knowledge Base: Provide self-service options for customers.

Pros and cons of LiveAgent

Pros:

  • Real-time live chat for instant support.

  • Extensive customization options.

Cons:

  • Learning curve for advanced setup and configuration.

  • Pricing can be high for businesses with many agents.

18. Buffer

Buffer is a social media management platform that allows businesses to schedule and analyze social media posts across various platforms. While it's primarily used for social media marketing, it can also be employed to manage support-related social media communications.

Key features

  • Social Media Scheduling: Plan and schedule support updates on social media.

  • Analytics: Measure social media engagement and performance.

  • Collaboration: Collaborate with team members for coordinated customer service.

Pros and cons of Buffer

Pros:

  • Simplifies social media support

  • Provides analytics to evaluate social media engagement.

  • Supports team collaboration for coordinated support efforts.

Cons:

  • Doesn’t integrate other channels of communication

  • Pricing for advanced plans can be costly.

19. ClickUp

ClickUp is a versatile project and task management platform with customization options. While not specifically a customer service software, it can be adapted to manage support workflows and collaboration, offering flexibility for various business needs.

Key features

  • Task Management: Organize support tasks and projects.

  • Collaboration: Collaborate with team members on customer service initiatives.

  • Customization: Highly customizable for various workflows.

Pros and cons of ClickUp

Pros:

  • Highly adaptable to different support workflows.

  • Integrates with a variety of tools to enhance support processes.

  • Offers both task and project management capabilities.

Cons:

  • Complexity may be overwhelming for straightforward customer service tracking.

  • Learning curve for advanced features.

20. Slack

Slack is a team messaging and collaboration platform that facilitates real-time communication among team members. While it's not a dedicated customer service tool, it can be used for internal communication among support teams, ensuring efficient collaboration and information sharing.

Key features

  • Team Messaging: Real-time communication for support teams.

  • Channels: Dedicated spaces for specific customer service projects or topics.

  • Integration: Connects with various tools to enhance customer support processes.

  • File Sharing: Easy sharing of customer service documents and resources.

Pros and cons of Slack

Pros:

  • Facilitates efficient communication and collaboration for customer ervice teams.

  • Wide range of integration options with other support systems.

Cons:

  • Limited customer support-specific features. Advanced functionality may require integration with other tools.

What are the types of customer support software?

The most basic categorization of support software is based on where the solution is built and hosted. Going by this classification, here are the three types you will come across in the market:

  • Cloud-based 

  • On-premise 

  • Open-source 

Cloud-based customer service software is a solution that’s hosted on the internet and simply requires a laptop or a phone to use. Its low maintenance and high convenience make it preferable when compared to the other types. 

An on-premise customer service system is hosted on your local server and hence requires technical assistance for rolling out updates and maintenance. 

An open-source customer service tool has its source code available for modification, making it ideal for enterprise businesses with a team of technical specialists who can build specific, robust requirements. 

Teams generally prefer cloud-based ones because it’s more cost-effective, scalable, and enables collaboration.

You also need to remember that customer support software is anything that enables you to track and manage your service to customers better. So, the type of tools can also vary based on the channels or modes of support you use. 

Here are a few types of customer support solutions:

#1 Shared inbox

A shared inbox is an email management software that typically looks and feels like an email platform like Gmail and Outlook - the key difference being that multiple team members have access to the same inbox via a group email ID such as help@xyz.com. The added benefit is that you can assign emails and track responses to an extent. Shared inboxes are perfect for businesses that have email-only support.

#2 Live chat software

A live chat software helps you deliver instant live chat support on your website and within your mobile or website app. Modern live chat solutions also enable you to manage conversations across messaging channels and chatbots.

#3 Call center software

As the name suggests, call center software helps businesses manage their inbound and outbound calls. A call center software can help you provide customer service and also drive sales.

#4 Social media tool

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.

#5 Knowledge base software

Customer service need not always be reactive. 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. Most businesses need to offer self-service today. But, leaner customer service teams can benefit from using a knowledge base software that helps you publish and manage your customer portal.

#6 CRM software

A CRM or customer relationship management software can also double as a customer service tool. You can engage with customers using your CRM customer service software, and you have access to additional information, such as lead stage and previous interactions, that you can use to personalize your conversations.

#7 Omnichannel customer service software

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.

Benefits of using a customer service system

Some advantages of utilizing a customer service tool include:

Streamlined communication

With a customer service app, your agents can reply to emails, social media requests, chats, and attend customer calls from one place. You don’t have to juggle between various tools and logins.

Contextual assistance

Communication is easier, and answers are personalized when you have more context. You can always access past interactions with any customer on any channel from a single, unified customer database.

Stronger collaboration

An online customer service app helps your team collaborate efficiently. Your team can collaborate within and across other teams in your organization right from your customer service software.

Instant insights and analytics

A good B2B customer service software will provide the insights you need to improve your team’s performance. You can also find out if your teams’ responses are fast and accurate enough and measure how satisfied your customers are with your service. 

Increased support efficiency

In a survey, 40% of consumers cited “multiple options for communicating” as the most important feature of a company’s customer service department. A customer service system can help automate most support processes and offer multiple channels to customers. You can dedicate all of your team’s efforts towards tackling the customer’s problems instead of figuring out paperwork and maintenance. 

Improved customer loyalty

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.

Who can use a customer service platform?

All kinds of online and offline businesses can use customer service platforms. Let’s look at how specific businesses can benefit from them:

Small businesses

Entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small businesses alike can benefit from using a good customer service tracking software that can help you:

  • Automatically categorize, prioritize and assign tickets as well as maintain logs of queries received and responded.

  • Provide better context than supporting via email inboxes. Contexts such as customer interaction history, purchase history, and other relevant information will ensure your agents have everything they need to personalize conversations.

  • Set SLA policies and ensure your agents honor deadlines for solving customer problems. They will also escalate tickets to senior support managers if these problems aren’t solved on time.

  • With good support software for customer management, you can ensure multiple agents don’t work on the same query and don’t spam customers with different responses, something that happens often when you use a shared inbox.

Enterprises

If you are an enterprise business, good customer software will help your support work at scale without losing the personal touch and provide great customer experiences by enabling you to:

  • Manage available agents across shifts, time zones, and languages spread across geographic locations to ensure tickets reach the right agents for the fastest responses.

  • Extend your customer service system capabilities by connecting with different platforms like CRMs, billing tools, payment solutions, and other internal and third-party tools.

  • Collaborate across your company in tandem with other teams like product, sales, and marketing. Your enterprise customer service software will enable you to bring in people from across your company and set the context so the request can be resolved quickly and efficiently.

  • Engage in secure conversations by being compliant with industry standards for data protection like TRUSTe, ISO 27001:2013, SSAE - 16 & HIPAA, SOC I, II, III and so on. Pick a solution with data centers across the globe as well as enterprise-class in-product security features to help you manage your data security challenges.

What are the essential features of a customer support solutions?

Here are some of the features you should consider when looking for a customer service platform. 

Multi-channel ticketing 

With customer service platforms, you can upgrade to a ticketing system that is much more robust than the standard email inbox that drives most customer support teams. It can streamline multiple communication channels like email, phone, chat, social media etc., into one platform, so you won’t have to juggle various websites, passwords and tools just to talk to your customer.

Learn more about multi-channel support

Collaboration

A unified cloud-based support tool enables better collaboration. 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.

Learn more about collaboration on your customer service system

Automations

With a powerful customer service tool, customer management and interaction management can be automated based on time-based triggers or event-based triggers. You can create automated workflows to route incoming customer questions and calls intelligently to the right team or the most appropriate agent for a more efficient and faster response.

Learn more about using automation to streamline your support

Self-service

Most customers today want to find answers on their own. So make sure to pick a customer service solution that enables you to launch self-service options like a knowledge base portal, a help widget, and a chatbot. By strengthening customer self-service, you can also free up your team’s bandwidth while improving customer experience.

Learn more about self-service here

Customization

You need a customer service system that can accommodate your business’s unique needs and workflows. Extend its capabilities by integrating with your existing tech stack, having multiple levels of access, and offering support in the languages of your choice. 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.

Learn more about how customizations can help you support better

Reporting and analytics

Powerful reporting features are necessary to track and measure team performance and customer satisfaction. Live dashboards give you a birds-eye view of the happenings in your customer service tool so you can prevent bottlenecks and escalations. One-click reports make it easy for you to look back and derive insights that influence your customer service strategy.

Learn more about using reporting to monitor your team’s performance

How does customer service platform work?

Customer service tools serve as a tool for businesses to enhance their customer service by consolidating customer interactions and data across various channels and systems in a centralized platform.

Components of a customer support system

Here are the components of a support system:

  • Ticketing system: A system that assigns, tracks, and manages support requests (tickets) from creation to resolution.

  • Knowledge base: A repository of articles, FAQs, and guides providing self-help resources for customers to solve common problems.

  • Multichannel communication: Support for multiple communication channels, such as email, chat, phone, social media, and sometimes even SMS, to interact with customers.

  • Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Syncing up with CRM software to access customer information and history, allowing for personalized support.

  • Reporting and analytics: Tools for tracking and analyzing support performance, customer satisfaction, and team productivity.

Automation and chatbots: Automated processes and chatbots to handle routine inquiries and tasks, freeing up human agents for more complex issues.

Why use customer service solutions in your business?

Customer service software solutions are essential for businesses of all sizes. Without them, customer requests can be missed, leading to delayed responses and dissatisfied customers. According to eMarketer, 60% of customers said they are concerned about bad customer service. 

Customer service systems enable efficient tracking of response times and customer feedback, fostering continuous improvement. As your business expands, managing support requests across agents and departments becomes complex, necessitating ticket systems. 

Even in smaller operations, this software streamlines processes, automating repetitive tasks, freeing time for addressing complex issues, and focusing on business growth.

How to choose the right customer support software?

Here are some factors to consider when choosing a customer service platform for your business:

Customer preference

Do you prefer to chat with your customers live? Or do you prefer support over just email and phone? Or would you rather just write comprehensive knowledge-based articles? Or is it a combination of all of them? Make sure the customer service system you choose fits your style and is an easy customer support software.

Usability

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. A support software for non-tech users, User-friendly customer service solution and customer help software without tech jargon is most sought after.

Price

A higher price does not always equate to more features in support software. Make sure you shop around, compare features and read reviews before deciding on a helpdesk software. If you are looking to provide B2B support, sometimes even a free customer service platform will suffice.

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. Let’s take a deeper look at why these features are important.

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Customer service software: best practices

Customer service software has become indispensable for businesses aiming to deliver exceptional customer experiences. By implementing best practices in the use of customer service software, companies can efficiently manage customer inquiries, enhance satisfaction, and build lasting relationships. 

  1. Automation for Efficiency: Leverage automation features within your software. Automate routine tasks like ticket routing, email responses, and appointment scheduling. This saves time and ensures quicker response times, leaving your team more time to focus on complex issues.

  2. Personalization: Use customer data to personalize interactions. When customers contact support, your software should provide agents with relevant information about the customer's history and preferences. This enables more tailored and effective responses. It’s also best to create custom workflows and rules to suit your organization’s needs.

  3. CRM: Integrate your customer service software with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. This synchronizes customer data, enabling a 360-degree view of the customer. Agents can access customer information easily, improving the quality of interactions.

  4. Training and Onboarding: Train your team effectively on using the customer service system. Ensure they are proficient in its features and capabilities. Regularly update training to keep up with software updates and changes.

Feedback Collection: Use your software to collect customer feedback after each interaction. Analyze this feedback to identify areas for improvement and address customer concerns promptly.

5 Current trends for customer service platforms

Here are some emerging trends in the customer service industry that you should consider when choosing a customer service platform.

1. Self-service is becoming more popular among customers

According to a survey, about 69% of customers try to solve their issues themselves before reaching out for support. This trend highlights the importance of offering robust self-service features within your customer service platform, such as knowledge bases, FAQs, and troubleshooting guides.

2. The rise of messaging platforms

Nearly a third of customers messaged a company for the first time in 2020, and 74% of those say they will continue to do so. After 2020, WhatsApp ticket requests jumped to more than 200%. 

With messaging platforms experiencing a surge in ticket requests, it's crucial for businesses to integrate messaging capabilities into their customer service platforms to cater to this growing trend.

3. Customers expect personalized customer service

According to McKinsey, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. And 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen. If consumers don’t like the experience they receive, it’s easier than ever for them to choose a different business.

To meet this demand, customer service platforms should enable businesses to collect and utilize customer data effectively to deliver tailored support experiences.

4. Social media customer service 

About 63% of customers expect social media support from brands. Customer service platforms should offer social media plugins to help businesses efficiently manage and respond to inquiries and concerns on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Many customer service platforms provide integrations with social media management tools, which will help you accelerate your support service on those channels.

5. Omini-channel is becoming the norm

In a survey, 40% of consumers cited “multiple options for communicating” as the most important feature of a company’s customer service department.

An omnichannel approach, where interactions across various channels (email, chat, phone, social media) are seamlessly integrated, has become essential. Customer service platforms should facilitate this integrated, consistent customer experience across channels.

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Frequently asked questions about customer support software

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Is it easy to implement customer service software?

Well, this depends on the customer service software provider. For instance, Freshworks Customer Service Suite's intuitive UI and onboarding make it easy for businesses to go live in no time. However, other solutions might have a steep learning curve and require some hand-holding with the implementation.

How do you migrate data while switching to customer service software?

Migrating data from a shared inbox or one customer service platform to another can seem daunting. But with the right support from your customer service solution provider, it can be an effortless process. For instance, Freshworks Customer Service Suite's team helps you identify technical requirements and existing workflows and develop custom integrations to ensure your data stays intact.

How to manage customers' data securely through customer service tool?
  • Access controls: Limit access to customer data to only those employees who need it to perform their job. Freshworks Customer Service Suite has an in-built authentication module where users can be authenticated either using the authentication module within Freshworks products or via the customer’s SSO.

  • Encryption: Encrypt sensitive customer data in transit and at rest to protect against unauthorized access. For example, Freshworks Customer Service Suite encrypts all data sets using AES-256-bit standards, with the keys being managed by AWS Key Management Service.

  • Data backup: Regularly back up customer data to a secure location to prevent data loss in case of a system failure or breach.

  • Security updates: Keep the customer service system and related systems up to date with the latest security patches and upgrades.

  • Employee training: Train employees on the importance of data security and best practices for protecting customer data.

With data security becoming one of the non-negotiable compliances applicable to any company across the globe, it’s important to evaluate customer service system on how it enables you to protect customer data and be compliant with necessary regulations.

What is a good free customer service system you can start with?

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.