7 Best Free Customer Service Software For Small Business & Startup

If you want to take good care of your customers and earn their credibility, you must serve them 24/7. But as a human, it is quite impossible to interact with your customers all the time. Here comes the purpose of using a tool so that it can serve instead of you when you're out of touch.

There are several customer support software to choose from around you. But, according to your business size and budget, you need to identify which one is the best choice for you. 

To make it a bit easier, I've compiled a list of some of the best free customer service software.

Let's check it out. 

What is Customer Service Software?

Customer service management software is the middleman between you and your clients. They are there to make sure that your customers can experience the full benefits of your products and to help improve them through helpful customer feedback.

Without customer support, you or someone else in the organization would be spending most of your time dealing with customer issues rather than doing the work you should actually be doing. This would eat up tons of hours you should be using on finding ways to improve your products and grow your business.

Why You Actually Need A Customer Support Software?

1. ​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. 
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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 support 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

ThriveDesk

ThriveDesk is a simple, affordable customer support software for exemplary customer service. It is the best solution for Bootstrap-based SAAS startup, WordPress theme or plugin business, and eCommerce business. ThriveDesk is so easy to use with built-in functionalities like shared inbox, CRM, Live chat, Reporting, Knowledge base, Email Signature Generator, and a lot more integration.

Key Features

• Shared Inbox
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Live Chat & Chat Bot
• Knowledge Base
• Email with unlimited addresses
• Email Signatures
• Contact form
• Ticket file attachment size
• Customizable chat form
• Offline messaging
• Ticket file attachment size
• Incoming email authentication
• Automated replies from the knowledgebase
• Proactive messaging
• Conversations reporting
• Help Desk Integration
• and many more...

Help Scout

Help Scout is the all-in-one platform designed to convert, support, and delight your customers. It has a simple design but has all the features that good ticket management software needs. If you value your money, then go for Help Scout.

Key Features

• Multi-Channel Support: Set up email and chat for your team in minutes, so nothing slips through the cracks.
• Easy Integration: Integrate easily with your other platforms including Slack, HubSpot, and Salesforce.
• Chat Window: A chat window displays on your site if a team member is available to help.
• Easy access: Access the customer support platform via the iOS and Android apps.
• Deliver Instant Answers: Create content that's working for you and your customers 24/7.
• Keep Everyone in the Know: Send targeted messages to announce something new or help customers onboard.
• Find Your VIPs: Keep track of important customer data and activity to ensure a great experience.
• Look Smarter in Meetings: Intuitive, built-in reports make for valuable "aha" moments with your team.
• Chat with Customers: Chat that's easy for your team to manage and never leaves customers hanging.

Zendesk 

Build your own solution with Zendesk Sunshine, the open and flexible CRM platform. Sunshine is built on AWS and lets you seamlessly connect and understand all your customer data—wherever it lives. It's fast, powerful, and gives you the freedom to build whatever you want. 

Note: Looking for some Zendesk alternatives? Get it from here. 

Key Features

Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk is the industry's first context-aware help desk software that helps businesses focus on the customer. From increasing your agents' productivity, to crunching through performance metrics, to working in sync with other apps that you use, get to the core of your customer service efforts. 

With the Zoho Desk app for iOS and Android, agents can catch up, collaborate and provide top-notch customer support, wherever they are. 

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

Freshdesk is a free support ticket system app with several features that can help your team deal with issues and complaints with efficiency. Some of these include email ticketing, social ticketing for your social channels, and team collaboration so you could work on resolving issues faster.

Freshdesk's pricing plans are based on the size of your team, but its free plan has all the essentials you'll need if you're just starting out. It runs on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android.

Key Features 

• ​Ticketing Support: Accept and manage tickets from multiple channels (email, website, social media, etc.)
• Dedicated Call Center: You can quickly set up a cheap call center to field phone calls from customers.
• Gamification: Your customer service reps can earn points and rewards for finishing customer requests to make it more fun.
• Knowledge Base : A CMS to allow you to create attractive help documents for customers.
• Reporting: See which times and days of the week produce the most tickets, and when your customer service reps are most productive. 

Kayako

Kayako's help desk software is a full suite of tools including live chat software that's quick and easy to integrate, and an organized shared inbox, making our solutions easy and affordable to use. 

Its fully integrated help desk software allows companies of all sizes to provide exceptional customer service in multiple languages across live chat, email, facebook and twitter.

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

​Freshservice is created to provide a top-class cloud customer support for businesses of all types and sizes. The system flexes a plug-and-play ITIL construction, which makes it easy for users to deploy and implement right off the bat.

Key Features

• ​Easy to Use and Setup: Freshservice's modern and intuitive UI requires minimal to no training, and is customizable to IT and non-IT needs.
• Multi-Channel Support: Automate tasks and provide support for issues raised via email, self-service portal, phone, chat, or in person.
• Gamify Your Service Desk: Turn your service desk into a highly engaging and fun experience for your agents.
• Information at Your Fingertips: Maintain records of contracts, hardware, software, and other assets, including all details from from acquisition to expiry.
• Best Rated Mobile App: Leverage the best rated mobile service desk app for iOS and Android and support your high impact employees who are on the road.

EngageBay

EngageBay is an affordable customer support software designed for SMBs, solopreneurs, agencies, and startups. The platform has an easy-to-use interface with powerful tools to help you offer exceptional customer service. The Service ‘Bay’ offers both traditional ticketing systems and live chat for versatility -- and is completely free for up to 15 users. What’s more, it seamlessly integrates with EngageBay’s marketing and sales solutions.

Key Features:

• Ticketing System: EngageBay offers a simple ticketing system to help you issue tickets and resolve customer issues.
• Groups: You can create ticket groups based on the type of issues and route the ticket to the appropriate agent or team.
• Labels: EngageBay lets you improve work efficiency through ticket labeling, which also helps in automation.
• Canned Responses: You can create predefined responses to common queries so that your agents have quick and consistent replies. This also reduces response times.
• Workflows: You can create powerful and complex workflows to automate mundane and repetitive tasks -- thus saving time and improving customer satisfaction.
• Live Chat: Live chat lets you have personalized communications with your customers in real-time. Proactive chats can interact with your customer until an agent is ready to take over.
• CRM Telephony: You can contact customers, record conversations, take notes, and do more without having to leave the software.
• Free CRM: EngageBay’s free CRM is built into the customer support software so that you have access to all important customer information in one place.
• Integration: EngageBay offers dozens of customer support integrations so that you can connect with your favorite applications.