Customer service performance significantly impacts how businesses operate. According to Zendesk, 80% of companies consider increasing their investment in customer experience (CX). Given this data, getting the right customer service software is essential. In this article, we will explore the different customer service software options available to help you choose the best solution for improving customer service.
What is customer service software?
Customer service software is a platform that businesses use to manage and improve customer experience. Typically, it contains a ticketing system that gathers customers' requests from various channels, including phone, email, live chat, or messaging apps. Customer support agents can use predefined ticket responses, collaborate, and automatically tag tickets so they are easily referenceable. Alternatively, a customer support system can be a self-service guide through a knowledge base.
Advanced customer service tools like AI, reporting, and analytics can help automate repetitive tasks and make data-driven decisions, drastically improving a company’s support operations.
Moreover, businesses can integrate customer service software with other software like customer relationship management (CRM). The integration enables a 360-degree customer view and provides customized support.
The 10 Best Customer Service Software
Let’s explore the critical details of the best customer service software. We will briefly overview the software, pricing, and trial information.
1. Zendesk
Zendesk is a cloud-desk customer service platform that helps businesses in providing efficient and personalized customer support. Agents can easily respond to customer feedback and requests across any channel right from a single workspace. They can see essential information and seamlessly create a 360-degree customer perspective with 1,500+ plug-and-play integrations. In addition, agents can collaborate with colleagues and departments through Microsoft Team and Slack directly within the platform.
Pricing: Starts at $19 per agent/month. Offers a 14-day free trial.
2. Intercom
Intercom’s customer support solution utilizes automation and messaging tools for efficient day-to-day operations of internal customer service teams.
The Intercom Messenger works as a supplementary tool to a business’s existing support system. It allows businesses to direct inquiries to assigned agents based on skills and availability. Intercom generates tickets via Messenger and other communication channels and forwards them to a shared inbox. Likewise, Messenger can provide live support or self-service options for customers to find answers to their queries.
Pricing: Starts at $39 per seat/month. Offers a 14-day free trial.
3. Salesforce Service Cloud
This customer service software empowers customer support agents with an omnichannel workspace. Agents can see each ticket's information within their workspace. In addition, the Swarming feature allows teams to collaborate on requests by adding agents with particular skills to a dedicated Slack channel.
Since Salesforce is not just a CX tool but also offers a sales and marketing package, businesses looking to enhance their customer service may find it easier to achieve their goals.
Pricing: Starts at $25 per user/month. Offers a 30-day free trial.
4. Zoho Desk
If you're looking for a full-featured customer service platform with CRM integration, Zoho Desk is the right place. It offers ticketing, customer support automation, self-service features, knowledge base, and customer feedback tracking.
The only drawback might be the chat feature limitations, which you can also avail of unless you go for the most expensive plan. Despite that, the powerful features still make Zoho Desk the top customer service software available.
Pricing: Starts at $7 per user/month. Offers a free plan and a 15-day free trial.
5. HubSpot Service Hub
HubSpot Service Hub provides a shared inbox for agents packed with useful features such as customer history, ticket information, and queue details. The hub can be integrated with HubSpot CRM to sync information generated by its tools. Plus, agents can work anywhere with a mobile inbox.
Businesses can also create a customer portal and customer feedback survey through HubSpot Service Hub. Meanwhile, customers can access the knowledge base for instant responses to their concerns.
Pricing: Starts at $18 per month. Offers a free plan.
6. Front
Front is a modern customer service platform that helps users configure automated tasks and integrate more channels into a shared inbox. Businesses can also create a help center to assist in achieving customer self-service. Knowledge base administrators can also control user access and assign who can create, edit, and public content.
Pricing: Starts at $19 per seat/month. Offers a 7-day free trial.
7. Tidio
If you're a small or mid-sized business, Tidio can be a top choice for a customer service solution. Tidio has a help desk ticketing system that allows users to manage customer requests in a shared inbox. In addition, the software can convert emails, social media messages, and live chats into tickets that can be sent directly to the team's inbox.
Pricing: Starts at $29 per month. Offer a free plan and a 7-day trial.
8. Freshdesk
As part of the Freshworks software company, Freshdesk helps teams manage, prioritize, and respond to customer requests from a single platform. Its ticketing feature sends requests from various channels to a team inbox. Trend reports generated by the platform assist teams in analyzing ticket history.
Freshworks consists of three systems: Freshdesk, Freshchat, and Freshcaller. Unfortunately, each system has its own workspace, so agents need to open each system in an individual tab. This requires them to switch between windows to find customer information, which can affect customer service efficiency and cause agents to miss critical information.
Pricing: Starts at $15 per agent/month and offers a free plan and a 14-day free trial.
9. ServiceNow
This cloud-based customer service solution is designed for big companies and enterprises. ServiceNow features a customer self-service portal that lets users create service requests or read help center articles without interacting with an agent. Customers can also join a community form to ask questions and share their experiences.
ServiceNow's generative AI technology empowers its CSM tools with intelligent features. The Now Assist tool provides AI-powered response suggestions, and ServiceNow's AI guides agents through the ticket resolution process.
Pricing: Not disclosed. Contact ServiceNow for details.
10. Help Scout
Help Scout's customer care software integrates customer data, interactions, and history into a single inbox, empowering agents with the necessary information for each request. The inbox incorporates private notes for internal collaboration and a collision detection feature to avoid duplicate efforts on the same issue.
Additionally, Help Scout offers more than 100 integrations for marketing, e-commerce, communication, CRM, and analytics.
Pricing: Starts at $20 per user/month. Offers a 15-day free trial.
There you go—the ten best customer service software programs on the market today. Since we only provided brief descriptions and the base price of their subscription plans, it would be best to do in-depth research on the shortlisted software. This will help you choose the perfect partner for your customer service enhancement efforts.
