What is Customer Service Software?
Why You Actually Need A Customer Support Software?
- Never Miss a Ticket: A loss ticket can send a customer on a rampage and, worse, you lose his business. A Customer service software automates ticket routing and tracks ticket statuses to ensure all customer inquiries are accounted for. So, never miss a ticket using any of them or a free online customer support software.
- Automate Processes: Time-consuming repetitive processes like ticket sorting, routing, queuing, routine reporting, and other administrative tasks can be automated and save your support team time for more important tasks.
- Gain Customer Insight: As you accumulate tickets, issues, resolutions, cases, and support interactions, your customer database becomes a trove of insights on your market. Using analytics you can run reports on key metrics and discover patterns or trends that otherwise may have escaped the naked eye.
- Deliver 24/7 Support: Many solutions provide a way where customers can send their inquiries via email outside of business hours. The emails are automatically transformed into tickets and routed to the first available agent during office hours. This way, you are essentially providing all-day, year-long access to your customer service.
- Build a Knowledge Base: Resolved tickets can be channeled to a knowledge base to build your FAQ portal. The more unique cases you receive, the more robust your FAQ portal becomes. Eventually, recurring customer inquiries can be routed to this portal and remove repetitive workload off your support team's daily schedule.
How Support Channel is Related to Support Software?
As we discussed before, a support software works precisely as a customer support channel. Usually, a Support Channel is a communication channel utilized by a business to interact with end-users in its care. It can be a Multi-channel customer service solution when you or your company use a call center, a help desk, and a live chat service, and a support share index.
The primary strategy for a customer support channel is to reach customers with products and services, just like a customer service software does. Let's see some of the multi-function support channels parameters, what they actually do, and their pros and cons over a support software.
- Email: In online business, email customer service is the most commonly used via for most companies. In fact, 91% of consumers use email every single day, which is a massive distribution for any service channels.
- Call Center: Although it's an old fashioned support solution, however, the reality is that a large number of customers still expect it. Many of them prefer speed and fast work, that's why 68% of people still support phone call interactions.
- Help Desk: Another older version of customer service but still the most effective solution.
- Live Chat: Its true mobile calls are more speedy, but live chat is a bit more convenient for customers than call. Getting questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase is much more trustable.
- Social Networks: Almost every business turn over to social media to grab potential customer from there. Therefore, a support base also established to meet and greet the demand of their customer and to give the appropriate solutions.
- Forums: Another great source of looking for a solution. It is very popular with the community-based business. Just post your problem with details, and the corresponding executive or admin gives you the answer as soon as possible.
Best Free Customer Service Software
Help Scout
Key Features
- Integrate easily with your other platforms including Slack, HubSpot, and
- A chat window displays on your site if a team member is available to help.
- Access the customer support platform via the iOS and Android apps.
- moments with your team.
HubSpot Service Hub
Key Features
- Like most other all-in-one of the best free customer support software, HubSpot comes with a team inbox.
- Incoming emails are automatically turned into tickets, agents can respond using templates, canned responses or short videos.
- Turn the most frequent support questions and tickets into a knowledge base. According to a Microsoft stat cited by Hubspot, 90% of people expect companies to have a self-service customer help section online. This type of feature also reduces the load on your support team.
- Call customers via VOIP from inside your account, or from a phone.
- Conversational bots can help your customers with easy, routine queries by referring them to support documents or the most appropriate live chat agent.
- Tickets and emails are built into HubSpot's free CRM so you have a detailed profile of the customer.
Zendesk
Key Features
- Flexible ticket management with automated workflow
- Multi-channel support: email, web, phone, chat, social media
- Mobile support with native iPhone, iPad, and Android apps
- Robust reporting and advanced analytics
- Customer-facing web interface that you can easily brand
- Knowledgebase portal and community forums included
- Over 100 out-of-the-box integrations with 3rd party apps
- SSO with Twitter, Facebook, Google and SAML
- Pre-built: Salesforce, SugarCRM
- Open API enabling seamless integration into your business
- Multi-brand support with linked accounts
- Unlimited, free "light agents" (Enterprise plan only)
- Group rules and macros
- Screencasting
- Public and private forums
- Full CSS rebranding
- Multi locale (timezone and languages)
- Export ticket views to CSV
Zoho Desk
Key Features
- Ticketing System
- Call Center Software
- Social Support Software
- Agent Productivity
- Knowledge Base and Forums
- Company-wide Collaboration
- Reporting and Insights
- Help Desk Essentials
Freshdesk
Key Features
- website, social media, etc.)
Kayako
Key Features
- Solid ticketing system
- Live chat widget to embed on your website. You manage the chats in the backend with your tickets and emails.
- You can actually use the chat tool for free. If you like it, you can upgrade to get access to the email management system and advanced features like automation.
- The customer service tool stores the complete history of customer interactions.
- Automation consists of triggers and actions. For example, you could configure it to assign any ticket that comes in from Twitter as "high priority", or send you a message if a negative rating comes in.
- Easy integration with over 700 apps.
Freshservice
Key Features
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- Automate tasks and provide support for issues raised via email, self-service portal, phone, chat, or in person.
- Turn your service desk into a highly engaging and fun experience for your agents.
- Maintain records of contracts, hardware, software, and other assets, including all details from from acquisition to expiry.
- Leverage the best rated mobile service desk app for iOS and Android and support your high impact employees who are on the road.