Customer support software program is tough to buy. There are tons of of choices in the marketplace, all with similar-sounding options and comparable pricing.
That will help you rapidly compile a shortlist of choices to think about, we reviewed dozens of help instruments, digging deep into their options, buyer opinions, and pricing.
The outcome: We discovered 17 customer support software program platforms which are on the high of their recreation with options that cater rather well to various kinds of companies and help fashions.
Overview of the most effective customer support software program
Get a fast abstract of our picks for the most effective customer support software program under. If you need extra details about any of those instruments, we share our detailed opinions of every platform later on this article.
Assist Scout is the most effective general customer support software program due to its ease of use and affordability. Help clients throughout a number of channels, and get entry to AI options that assist you ship higher help sooner.
Zendesk is the most suitable choice for big enterprise corporations with advanced wants and excessive help volumes due to its highly effective reporting and in depth customization choices.
Gorgias is a wonderful alternative for ecommerce corporations because of its deep integrations with platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento.
Jira Service Administration is good for inside help groups. It is constructed on ITIL finest practices and gives options for incident, downside, and alter administration.
Entrance is the most suitable choice for groups that primarily supply help by way of electronic mail. It means that you can handle shared and private inboxes in a single, unified view.
Aircall is a best choice for groups primarily offering telephone help . It has options like name routing, IVR, and name teaching to enhance agent efficiency.
HelpDocs is the most suitable choice for groups that solely supply self-service help. Its easy-to-use data base builder has highly effective options for creating and managing assist content material.
Olark is a superb devoted dwell chat resolution with highly effective options like searchable transcripts, chat routing, and pre-chat surveys to collect buyer info.
Sprout Social is a superb possibility for social help. It consolidates messages from varied platforms right into a single stream and gives instruments for social listening.
ChatBot provides an easy-to-use, no-code chatbot builder that permits you to create automated dialog flows to reply frequent questions and resolve points.
HubSpot Service Hub is a wonderful alternative for a mixed CRM and help resolution that makes it simple to collaborate and get a unified view of the client throughout all groups.
Bettermode is the most suitable choice for groups that need to construct a neighborhood discussion board. It gives a platform for purchasers to work together with one another and help brokers to be able to share data and remedy issues.
Hiver gives a easy solution to handle shared inboxes and collaborate on buyer emails as a workforce with out leaving Gmail.
Intercom is good for groups that need to present AI-first help. Its superior chatbots and automation options assist you resolve buyer points rapidly.
SupportBee is an effective possibility for groups that have to create portals that enable clients to trace the standing of their requests and entry personal data base content material.
SimpleTexting is the only option for groups that supply SMS help. It gives options for sending and receiving textual content messages, managing contacts, and automating replies.
Chatwoot is nice for groups that need a self-hosted, open-source customer support resolution.
What’s customer support software program?
Customer support software program is a system that companies use to trace, handle, and resolve buyer points. It helps groups set up requests obtained from a number of channels, reply to these requests extra rapidly, and entry the information they should ship customized help.
Phrases like “assist desk software program,” “ticketing system,” and “service desk software program,” are additionally generally used to check with instruments within the customer support software program class. Nonetheless, “assist desk” extra typically refers to instruments that assist groups help exterior clients, whereas “service desk” usually refers to instruments that assist groups help inside clients. Extra on that under.
The various kinds of customer support software program
Customer support software program can check with instruments that assist corporations help exterior clients (i.e., your organization’s clients) or inside clients (i.e., different people employed by your organization). And it may be used to ship help throughout all the other ways you obtain help requests, or it is likely to be specialised to ship help on a single channel solely.
That will help you discover the proper instrument on your wants, it is useful to know the completely different sub-categories of customer support software program. Here is a helpful desk that gives an outline of all the various kinds of customer support software program and who they’re finest for.
| Sort of customer support software program | What it does and who it is best for |
|---|---|
Assist desk software program | Used primarily by groups that help exterior clients. Permits groups to ship help throughout a number of channels. |
Service desk software program | Used primarily by IT groups that help inside clients. Permits groups to ship help throughout a number of channels. |
Shared inbox software program | Utilized by groups which are centered on electronic mail help. Good for non-urgent points or for requests that will require follow-up. |
Name heart software program | Utilized by groups that ship help over the telephone. Nice for points that should be dealt with in real-time. |
Information base software program | Utilized by groups that solely supply self-service help. Nice for giving clients fast solutions to often requested questions. |
Dwell chat software program | Utilized by groups which are primarily centered on chat help. Nice for points that should be dealt with in real-time. |
Social media software program | Used primarily by B2C help groups. Nice for consolidating help requests from a number of social profiles into one place. |
Chatbot software program | Utilized by groups who need to automate their help. Nice for answering easy questions which have easy solutions. |
CRM software program | Utilized by gross sales, advertising, help, and buyer success. Nice for monitoring all interactions with particular clients. |
On-line neighborhood platforms | Utilized by corporations with passionate, engaged clients. Nice for enabling clients to help one another. |
Figuring out precisely which kind of help instrument you want earlier than you begin evaluating choices will assist you put collectively a shortlist and decide way more rapidly.
The advantages of utilizing customer support software program
Utilizing a fundamental shared electronic mail handle will be an effective way to ship help when what you are promoting is small. However as what you are promoting and workforce scale, you are going to want a platform that helps you handle requests extra effectively. Listed below are a number of the advantages that customer support software program brings to the desk:
Give extra responsive and extra constant help. Options like automated workflows, tagging, data base integration, saved replies, and AI assist your workforce spend extra time serving to clients and fewer time preventing their instruments.
Collect buyer insights. Simply determine, acquire, and set up buyer suggestions, characteristic requests, bug studies, and use instances to allow them to be used to enhance your product/service and improve buyer satisfaction.
Work higher collectively. Customer support software program helps you stop duplicate work, maintain monitor of buyer queries, coordinate a response throughout a number of groups, and ship up-to-date solutions.
Analyze and report. Use the built-in reporting options of buyer help software program to know adjustments in help quantity, workforce productiveness, kind and dimension of buyer, and way more.
Scale up your service. Keep high-quality service as you develop through the use of instruments that may coordinate a number of groups of brokers to help an unlimited buyer base by way of organizational options, automation, and third-party integrations.
When you’ve gotten greater than a few individuals working collectively to help clients, upgrading to a devoted customer support platform is the proper alternative.
Key options of customer support software program
The characteristic set of platforms constructed for customer support covers a variety, however it may be usually categorized right into a handful of focus areas:
Omnichannel help: Omnichannel help options assist you get buyer communications from a wide range of channels — equivalent to electronic mail, dwell chat, and social — into your assist desk. Search for platforms that both present built-in help for all the channels you get requests from or supply integrations with different platforms.
Ticket administration: Ticket administration options take all of these incoming communications and set up them, serving to you prioritize and route requests extra simply. Search for platforms with workflows, customized fields, ticket tagging, and customized views.
Workforce collaboration: Collaboration options enable a number of brokers to work collectively on incoming requests. Search for platforms that allow you to create completely different groups, assign conversations to particular person brokers, write personal notes on conversations, and point out teammates on tickets, in addition to provide you with a warning if another person is already responding.
Self-service channels: Self-service options let your clients discover solutions to their questions on their very own with out having to contact your help workforce. Search for platforms that allow you to create a data base or launch an AI-powered chatbot that is educated on replies or assist heart articles that your workforce has already written.
Automation: Automation options let expertise deal with the rote give you the results you want so you’ll be able to give attention to the requests that want a human contact. Search for platforms with chatbots that reply easy FAQs and options that write draft replies to clients, translate replies into completely different languages, or route requests to the proper groups.
Integrations: Integrations make it easy to attach your help platform to the opposite instruments you employ for work. Search for integrations along with your CRM, ecommerce platform, billing software program, bug-tracking software program, and some other instruments that home the client knowledge you may have to ship customized help.
Studies and analytics: Options for reporting and evaluation assist you to higher perceive issues like who your clients are, what they’re making an attempt to get performed, the place their clients run into hassle, and what they want. Search for methods with each pre-built studies and the flexibility to create customized studies for the information you want.
The 17 finest customer support software program
Now that you already know precisely which kind of help software program you want, you can begin evaluating the options and choices of the completely different platforms in the marketplace.
By contemplating the individuality of their options, the competitiveness of their pricing, and their capacity to cater to companies with very particular working fashions, we narrowed down the market to the 17 finest customer support software program choices, listed under.
We additionally included some runner-up instruments to think about if the precise instruments we really useful aren’t fairly proper on your workforce.
1. Assist Scout – Finest customer support software program for affordability and ease of use
Assist Scout stands out because of its ease of use, affordability, highly effective options, and give attention to serving to groups ship distinctive help.
Shared inbox
Working in Assist Scout begins in its inbox. The inbox homes your whole buyer communications throughout all channels — electronic mail, dwell chat, and social — in a single place. It is a one-stop store on your whole help workforce with options that make it simple to collaborate and reply requests rapidly:
Use collision detection to see when another person is already engaged on a request. Your workforce will not have to fret about tripping over one another ever once more.
Create a number of inboxes to handle a couple of model or electronic mail handle. Have completely different individuals engaged on various kinds of requests? Assign points to particular person brokers or particular groups (finance, HR, advertising, and so on.).
Construct workflows to mechanically route conversations to the proper locations. Wish to ship all billing-related emails to the finance workforce? Create a workflow!
Create saved replies to answer to often requested questions in seconds with beforehand written, pre-vetted solutions.
Snooze conversations for a later date/time. That is useful for getting non-urgent requests out of the way in which or as a reminder to observe up with a buyer when you should get extra info earlier than replying.
Add inside notes that solely your workforce can see to provide teammates a heads-up on a dialog or present useful assets for brand new workers you are coaching.
Get assist answering a request with @mentions in inside notes that alert particular groups or coworkers {that a} dialog wants their enter.
Create tags and customized fields and add them to conversations — both manually or by way of workflows — to alert reps to essential conversations (like emails from VIP clients) or simply discover conversations on particular subjects (like product requests).
Construct completely different views to filter conversations by particular situations which are essential to you. See solely conversations with a VIP buyer tag, clients which have been ready for a reply for greater than 24 hours, and extra.
Schedule replies to be despatched at a time and date of your selecting — perhaps at a extra affordable hour when you’re working late at evening or after just a few hours if you count on an engineering bug will likely be resolved.
Each dialog you open in Assist Scout additionally has a buyer profile within the sidebar that exhibits info just like the buyer’s firm, electronic mail handle, and placement in addition to any earlier help conversations your workforce has had with that buyer.
Self service
Docs is Assist Scout’s data base instrument. You should use it to create a searchable buyer assist heart by publishing articles and organizing them into collections and classes, making it simple for purchasers to search out the solutions they want rapidly and on their very own.
However clients do not have to go to your assist heart to get self-service help. Assist Scout additionally provides Beacon — a widget you’ll be able to embed in your web site or in your app that lets clients get solutions immediately by an AI-powered chatbot that is educated in your assist heart content material (or some other web site you specify).
Dwell chat
The Beacon widget will also be used to supply dwell chat help to your clients. Beacon is versatile and will be set as much as present solely the precise choices you need to make obtainable: dwell chat, AI, or electronic mail help.
Whereas clients can get prompt AI solutions utilizing Beacon, they will additionally simply ship an electronic mail to your workforce or provoke a dwell chat if they can not discover the reply they’re on the lookout for.
Among the finest issues about dwell chat in Beacon is that you may set it up in order that the chat possibility is just proven when somebody in your workforce is obtainable to reply questions.
AI options
The place different buyer help platforms are shifting to an AI-first mannequin, Assist Scout designed its AI options to help the people that ship help — not change them. You should use it to:
Summarize prolonged emails and threads to simplify them when routing/escalating them to different groups with AI Summarize.
Repair grammar and spelling points, modify size and tone, and/or translate replies and assist heart articles earlier than sending or publishing them with AI Help.
Create a draft reply to a buyer query (that you may assessment earlier than sending) with AI Drafts.
Present AI Solutions when clients search Beacon for self-service help.
Assist Scout’s AI Drafts and AI Solutions are educated on content material out of your assist heart and previous buyer conversations, making responses way more correct and useful.
Pricing
Free plan and trial obtainable. View Assist Scout’s present pricing.
Study extra about Assist Scout:
2. Zendesk – Finest enterprise customer support software program
Zendesk does every part a assist desk can do — electronic mail, telephone, dwell chat, self-service, and social help — and has each characteristic inside these instruments you could possibly ever need or want. This makes it an ideal possibility for groups with advanced help operations. If deep customization is a necessity, Zendesk is your only option.
Zendesk’s Sunshine™ offers you the flexibility to create customized purposes that work within Zendesk. You are able to do issues like embed procuring carts in your dwell chat conversations, combine help natively into your cellular app, and construct workflows that use not solely the information obtainable in Zendesk but additionally some other platform you employ.
For extra technical groups, these purposes will be constructed on AWS utilizing well-liked programming languages and Zendesk’s API. For non-technical groups, Zendesk provides low- and no-code instruments so you’ll be able to construct purposes with no need developer assist.
Whereas these items may sound interesting whatever the dimension of what you are promoting, additionally they make Zendesk way more advanced to onboard and use. Based on buyer opinions:
“It could really feel a bit overwhelming at first due to all its options.”
“Zendesk has superior and sophisticated options that require IT assets for configuration and customization. This might be a barrier to startup corporations.”
“The in depth options aren’t intuitive sufficient, so some coaching is required for brokers and directors.”
Pricing
Free trial obtainable. View Zendesk’s present pricing.
3. Gorgias – Finest ecommerce customer support software program
Gorgias is considered one of solely a handful of instruments in the marketplace which are absolutely centered on ecommerce buyer help. It provides in depth integrations with the foremost ecommerce platforms — Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce, and PrestaShop. Shopify is even one of many firm’s traders.
So far as its assist desk, Gorgias helps all the normal channels — electronic mail, chat, social, telephone, and self-service. When clients attain out for assist, a sidebar shows all the info you should reply, together with earlier conversations, orders, monitoring numbers, opinions, and subscription particulars.
For bigger ecommerce companies, Gorgias additionally has automation options that assist you automate your work. You should use guidelines to route tickets mechanically, ship prompt AI replies to buyer questions, and create reply templates and customized variables.
For those who resolve to make use of Gorgias’ AI agent to auto-reply to buyer questions, you may have to spend a while upfront coaching it. You begin by coaching it in your model, insurance policies, and knowledge. After that, you assessment all of its solutions and supply suggestions to assist it enhance. If you’re completed, it should reply to tickets and shut them for you.
Pricing
Free trial obtainable. View Gorgias’ present pricing.
4. Jira Service Administration – Finest inside customer support software program
Jira is an ITSM platform that helps you consolidate your whole service operations right into a single instrument, making it simpler to align the efforts of IT, growth, and buyer help groups. Whereas it may be used like a assist desk for buyer help, it’s totally a lot an IT-first platform constructed for IT operations groups.
Jira Service Administration comes with all the key options you’d look forward to finding in a service desk, together with a request portal, data base, SLAs, asset monitoring, and alter requests. It additionally has a sturdy API that permits you to combine with just about some other platform to and from which you should move knowledge.
The place Jira Service Administration actually stands out is with its automation options that assist groups velocity up their work. You may mechanically reply to help questions utilizing AI-generated solutions which are educated in your data base; triage, assign, and prioritize tickets; and detect precedence alerts.
As one buyer wrote on G2: “As soon as constructed, it provides so some ways to automate, makes every part circulate so significantly better, and alerts all events.”
Pricing
Free plan and trial obtainable. View Jira Service Administration’s present pricing.
5. Entrance – Finest customer support electronic mail administration software program
Whereas a lot of the different shared inbox and assist desk instruments on this listing assist you handle workforce electronic mail addresses like help@ or assist@, Entrance permits you to handle each workforce and private electronic mail.
You may assign emails you obtain in your private inbox to different workforce members, point out workforce members in personal feedback on an electronic mail to get their assist, and even share your whole inbox with a teammate — both quickly or completely.
This works rather well for companies and consultancies with shoppers which have one major level of contact at what you are promoting.
When somebody in your workforce goes out of city, you’ll be able to merely grant entry to their inbox to whoever’s filling in to allow them to make certain consumer questions and requests proceed to get addressed whilst you’re out.
Past letting you collaborate on private emails, Entrance has loads of the useful options you may discover in any electronic mail help system: automated workflows, buyer dialog histories, reporting, auto-assignment, and message templates. Moreover, you should use its built-in AI to summarize threads and draft responses.
Pricing
Free trial obtainable. View Entrance’s present pricing.
6. Aircall – Finest customer support name heart software program
Most assist desk instruments do not supply telephone help out of the field, so in case your workforce solely gives buyer help by telephone, you may have to search for name heart software program as a substitute. For the decision heart use case, Aircall is our best choice.
Aircall works on the cloud, so you do not want any {hardware} to make use of it. You may create native and worldwide toll-free numbers, create direct extensions, and arrange name routing by way of IVR so calls go to the proper groups. If you should collaborate on calls, Aircall has a name conferencing characteristic for as much as 5 individuals.
For those who solely supply telephone help on sure days of the week or hours of the day, you’ll be able to create schedules to dictate when calls are accepted. Outdoors of that schedule, calls are despatched to voicemail so clients can depart you messages even if you’re unavailable.
Different options embrace blocking numbers (stop spam and bot calls), heat transfers (replace one other rep earlier than transferring a name), name assignments and notes (for if you want somebody who’s not round to reply a buyer’s query), and queue callbacks (let clients request a return name as a substitute of ready on maintain).
Lastly, in case your workforce provides telephone alongside different forms of help, Aircall has integrations with all the well-liked assist desks.
Pricing
Free trial obtainable. View Aircall’s present pricing.
7. HelpDocs – Finest customer support data base software program
Virtually each assist desk in the marketplace provides a data base characteristic. Nonetheless, if all you want is a data base, these instruments are going to be overly advanced and expensive. That is the place HelpDocs is available in. It offers you precisely what you should let your clients discover solutions to their questions on their very own.
HelpDocs has all the options you’d count on from a data base. Write and publish articles, type them into collections, publish your assist heart by yourself area, and optimize your articles to make them simple to search out — whether or not clients are looking out your individual assist heart or utilizing a search engine.
No design or coding expertise are wanted to make your assist heart look nice — HelpDocs provides eight completely different templates you’ll be able to apply to fashion your data base. When you’re engaged on it, you’ll be able to publish adjustments to a growth atmosphere to get it absolutely able to go earlier than pushing it dwell to your clients.
You may create articles utilizing HelpDocs’ WYSIWYG editor. It permits you to apply easy formatting like bolding, italicizing, and including hyperlinks in addition to extra advanced elements like block quotes, code blocks, movies, buttons, accordions, and tables.
In case your workforce is extra technical and also you need to do extra customization, that is doable, too. You may write your individual CSS to make your assist heart look precisely such as you need and code whole articles utilizing HTML or Markdown.
Pricing
Free trial obtainable. View HelpDocs’ present pricing.
8. Olark – Finest dwell chat software program for customer support
Olark is a superb possibility if all you are on the lookout for is dwell chat. That is all it does, and it does it nicely.
To arrange dwell chat by Olark, you embed a widget in your web site and/or in your app. You may customise it to match your branding, add kinds to get extra info from clients earlier than the dialog begins, and see buyer particulars like earlier conversations and pages considered on the again finish.
Olark additionally provides chatbots that allow you to reply often requested questions mechanically, and the wonderful thing about them is that Olark will construct and prepare them for you. You will not should spend weeks coaching the AI in your knowledge; you simply hand that work off to the Olark workforce.
For groups with extra advanced operations, Olark provides a number of superior options referred to as PowerUps. Use co-browsing to let a buyer share their display screen with you so you’ll be able to see what they’re seeing, translate languages to offer worldwide help, and consider transcripts of each dialog your brokers have had.
Olark can also be very centered on making its product accessible. It is ADA compliant and has obtained certification from a third-party evaluator that it exceeds WCAG 2.1 AA requirements.
Pricing
Free trial obtainable. View Olark’s present pricing.
9. Sprout Social – Finest social customer support software program
Logging out and in of a number of completely different social networks to test for and reply to buyer questions is extremely time-consuming. A social media help instrument like Sprout Social simplifies the method by aggregating your whole buyer interactions throughout all social platforms into one place the place you’ll be able to handle all of them.
Sprout Social works with Fb, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Threads, TikTok, X (Twitter), YouTube, and Fb Messenger. It additionally helps social listening on Reddit, Tumblr, and the final internet so you’ll be able to see what clients are saying even after they do not straight tag you.
You may see all mentions, tags, and conversations in Sprout Social’s inbox and may reply to them straight from there. You additionally get detailed metrics on the way you’re doing along with your social help. Monitor common deal with time, see particular person reps’ case completion charges, and monitor your CSAT and NPS scores throughout all interactions.
This makes it nice if social is your major or solely help channel. Nonetheless, it does not supply some other assist desk options, so if you should present help in different methods, you may want one other instrument. Sprout has integrations obtainable for HubSpot Service Hub, Zendesk, Dynamics 365, and Salesforce Service Cloud.
Pricing
Free trial obtainable. View Sprout Social’s present pricing.
10. ChatBot – Finest customer support chatbot software program
Whereas making a assist heart is an effective way to assist clients assist themselves, some clients will nonetheless battle to search out what they want in your documentation. If that is the case for what you are promoting and you’ll’t present human-led help, you could need to take into account including a chatbot to your help choices.
ChatBot crawls all the pages of your web site and assist heart and organizes these pages into particular classes like merchandise, billing, and returns. You may reorganize the classes as wanted and take away outdated or irrelevant pages from the database to make sure the bot does not use these pages as assets.
As soon as it is able to go, you’ll be able to launch your bot in your web site, in your app, and on Fb Messenger or Slack.
Nonetheless, when you simply need the chatbot to be the primary line of help but additionally have brokers obtainable to deal with extra advanced queries, you are able to do that with ChatBot utilizing its dwell chat characteristic. It should switch messages to an agent as wanted, and if nobody is obtainable, it creates a ticket on your workforce to observe up on.
Pricing
Free trial obtainable. View ChatBot’s present pricing.
11. HubSpot – Finest customer support CRM software program
For those who’re working an organization the place most of your buyer help is dealt with by the gross sales workforce by way of account managers or buyer success, a CRM that has built-in help instruments is likely to be the most suitable choice. HubSpot excels on this use case as a result of it provides each a CRM and help software program by its Service Hub.
HubSpot’s CRM is easy to make use of however will be as highly effective as you want it to be. It tracks your whole interactions, mechanically identifies corporations, clusters people into their firm profiles, and means that you can view each interplay you have ever had with a buyer, together with electronic mail exchanges and name recordings.
You may connect contracts to buyer profiles to simply discover the small print you should help them, create automated reminders or offers for upcoming renewals, and add dwell chat to your web site and app for immediate help. You may even combine dwell chat with Slack to have conversations present up in a particular Slack channel.
HubSpot additionally has an extremely thorough and up-to-date assist heart, a neighborhood the place you may get assist with issues you’ll be able to’t discover the solutions to in its official documentation, and buyer success reps for every buyer if you want human help.
Pricing
Free plan and trial obtainable. View HubSpot’s present pricing.
12. Bettermode – Finest buyer self-service software program
For those who’re trying to actually supercharge your self-service choices, Bettermode is certainly value wanting into. With it, you’ll be able to create a data base, help neighborhood, and as many personal buyer portals as you want.
To begin, you should use Bettermode to create a public data base on your clients. Your articles will be set to public or personal, and all of the choices you should optimize your articles for search engines like google and yahoo are built-in. You may set up your articles into collections, add tags, and embrace a search operate for customers to search out what they’re on the lookout for rapidly and simply.
Subsequent, you should use Bettermode to create a help neighborhood. Neighborhood members can publish questions and recommendation, and different neighborhood members can reply and react to these posts. As anybody working in help is aware of, there are particular clients who’re nearly as well-versed in your product as you’re. With a instrument like Bettermode, clients get entry to that useful resource, giving them one other avenue to get help after they want it most.
For those who solely need clients to have the ability to be a part of your neighborhood, you should use single sign-on (SSO) to tie your neighborhood accounts to your product’s login credentials. SSO can also be useful in creating buyer portals. Create personal communities for particular clients, limiting entry to these communities to solely customers from that buyer’s group. Bettermode additionally helps personal messaging for one-on-one conversations.
Pricing
Free plan and trial obtainable. View Bettermode’s present pricing.
13. Hiver – Finest customer support software program for small companies
Hiver is a superb possibility for small companies which have been utilizing Gmail or Outlook for buyer help and need to improve to a system that is not going to have an enormous studying curve. Hiver sits on high of Gmail/Outlook and offers you tons of the forms of collaboration options that help groups want as they scale.
With Hiver, you’ll be able to create a shared inbox for an electronic mail handle like help@, then choose which of your customers ought to have entry to that inbox. Collision alerts let workforce members know which requests are already being labored on so you’ll be able to keep away from duplicate effort (and replies), and electronic mail notes and @mentions let groups talk privately about requests when wanted.
For those who want extra superior options, Hiver has these too. You may assign particular requests to the workforce members finest geared up to reply them, arrange round-robin to keep away from cherry-picking within the queue, and even set SLAs for goal response instances. Hiver even has some AI options that may write draft responses for you and mechanically shut tickets that do not want a reply.
Pricing
Free plan and trial obtainable. View Hiver’s present pricing.
14. Intercom – Finest AI customer support software program
Whereas nearly each customer support platform in the marketplace now provides AI options, Intercom is the one one which’s gone all-in on AI. It calls itself an “AI-first customer support platform,” and AI is baked into practically all the platform’s options.
Fin 2, Intercom’s AI agent, mechanically replies to help requests obtained by way of electronic mail or dwell chat. You prepare it on the way to reply by giving it sources to study from, which may embrace your earlier help replies, your assist heart articles, knowledge from linked third-party integrations, and different one-off paperwork you submit.
You can even direct Fin on what to do with questions it could actually’t reply by itself. Intercom has a no-code workflow builder the place you’ll be able to arrange routing timber that inform Fin the place to ship requests that want human consideration primarily based on the kind of request it’s.
So far as how Fin replies, you’ll be able to choose completely different choices for the tone it makes use of and the way lengthy its replies ought to be. And also you’re capable of entry detailed studies on Fin’s efficiency: what number of requests it solved with out human intervention, how clients rated their interactions with Fin, and what subjects you obtain probably the most requests about.
Pricing
Free trial obtainable. View Intercom’s present pricing.
15. SupportBee – Finest customer support portal software program
If you need to have the ability to help your clients individually in their very own customized portals, SupportBee is likely to be the proper possibility on your workforce. It permits you to create portals on your clients that do not require a login to entry; as a substitute, clients entry their portals by a non-public URL.
Inside the portal, clients can see all the help requests ever submitted from any member of their workforce. This may also help scale back the variety of help requests you obtain; clients can see if another person has already submitted a ticket on the identical concern and in addition learn your reply to learn how to resolve the difficulty on their very own.
Along with portals, SupportBee has shared inbox and data base options that allow your workforce collaborate on incoming requests and create articles for buyer self-service.
Pricing
Free trial obtainable. View Help Bee’s present pricing.
16. SimpleTexting – Finest SMS customer support software program
With SimpleTexting, you’ll be able to obtain and reply buyer questions by way of textual content message. Any questions you obtain go into your shared inbox in SimpleTexting, and you’ll reply to them out of your laptop — no precise texting required.
SimpleTexting is nice for customer support as a result of its shared inbox has plenty of the identical options you may discover in electronic mail help platforms:
Create reply templates that allow you to ship pre-written replies to often requested questions in seconds.
Schedule texts to be despatched at a later date/time so you are not texting individuals in the midst of the evening.
Snooze incoming texts to have them disappear out of your inbox quickly and reappear later when it is time to observe up.
Add personal notes for different workforce members that clients cannot see.
These are all options for one-to-one texting, however SimpleTexting additionally has mass texting options for sending out essential notices to your whole clients.
Pricing
Free trial obtainable. View SimpleTexting’s present pricing.
17. Chatwoot – Finest open-source customer support software program
Chatwoot is ideal when you’re on the lookout for an open-source help instrument that you may self host. It is frequently maintained — the final replace as of penning this publish was three weeks in the past — and practically 250 individuals have contributed to its code on GitHub.
Out of the field, Chatwoot comes with all the options you’d count on to see in help software program: a shared inbox, data base, dwell chat, and social integrations with Fb, WhatsApp, Instagram, and extra. You may additionally discover channel-specific options like canned responses, personal notes, workflows, and groups.
In fact, the wonderful thing about open-source software program is that you may construct in something you want that the software program does not already include, however its present lengthy listing of options means it is prone to have plenty of what you want already constructed.
Pricing
Free plan and trial obtainable. View Chatwoot’s present pricing.
Trade-specific buyer help platforms
All the platforms above are industry-agnostic — they’re constructed to work for all various kinds of customer support groups in all various kinds of industries. Nonetheless, some industries have very completely different enterprise fashions or are required to stick to extra strict pointers which may make the instruments above a poor match.
For those who’re on the lookout for a instrument constructed particularly for the wants of your {industry}, listed here are just a few further choices to think about:
Manufacturing Cloud for Service is Salesforce’s help product constructed particularly for manufacturing groups.
Epic’s MyChart software program lets medical services ship safe messages to and obtain messages from their sufferers.
OperaDDS digitizes plenty of the executive work for dentists’ places of work but additionally lets sufferers talk securely with their dental suppliers.
Shopmonkey lets mechanics ship messages and estimates to their clients, in addition to monitor stock, generate invoices, and course of funds.
CivicPlus provides a number of options for presidency officers and places of work to speak and replace their constituents, together with a mass texting system, 311 request supervisor, and public information request administration system.
Jobber is an all-in-one platform constructed for area companies corporations that comes with help instruments like buyer portals, two-way textual content messaging, and automatic reminders.
What’s the most effective free customer support software program?
For those who want software program that can assist you handle help requests however have no finances for a instrument, we advocate wanting into the free customer support software program choices under:
Assist Scout: On Assist Scout’s free plan, you get one inbox, a data base, dwell chat, social media help, and AI options for limitless customers and as much as 100 contacts per 30 days. This makes it good for groups which have a number of individuals offering help however do not obtain a large variety of incoming requests from completely different clients.
Zoho Desk: Get one shared inbox and one assist heart for as much as three customers. This makes it good for groups that get plenty of help requests from completely different clients however solely have a handful of workforce members reviewing and replying to these requests.
HubSpot Service Hub: Get one inbox, dwell chat, and social help for as much as two customers. Whereas this plan is extra restrictive when it comes to customers than Zoho Desk, it does allow you to present social help, which Zoho Desk doesn’t embrace in its free plan.
UVdesk: Get a shared inbox and data base for limitless customers. You additionally get entry to integrations with Shopify, Magento 2, Opencart, and Prestashop, making this a very good possibility for ecommerce groups on the lookout for a free help instrument.
tawk.to: Get free dwell chat for limitless requests and limitless customers. For those who solely need to supply dwell chat, tawk.to is a superb free possibility that is stuffed with options. Nonetheless, you’ll have to be okay with having tawk.to branding in your dwell chat widget.
Tidio: Get a free assist desk, dwell chat, and social help for as much as 50 dealt with conversations per 30 days. Tidio’s free plan is not as versatile as Assist Scout’s, nevertheless it does embrace a Whatsapp integration, which Assist Scout does not supply.
Jira Service Administration: Get a shared inbox, data base, dwell chat, and buyer portals for as much as three customers. It is a nice possibility for small, inside and IT help groups, in addition to external-facing groups that have to construct buyer portals.
Bitrix24: Get free dwell chat for limitless customers and requests, plus limitless help on one social media channel. Bitrix’s free plan permits you to ship social help on Fb, Instagram, and Telegram, so it may be a very good possibility if you wish to supply help by way of Telegram.
Choosing the proper customer support software program for what you are promoting
Shopping for customer support software program may look like a easy process on the floor, however when you begin entering into the weeds, it could actually rapidly turn out to be overwhelming. Listed below are some tips about the way to finest method the method to make it as painless as doable.
Reply three questions earlier than you begin procuring
Answering the three questions under is a useful first step for anybody starting their help software program search.
What are you on the lookout for in a help instrument?
It’s exhausting to search out the proper instrument when you don’t know what you’re on the lookout for. For groups looking for their first help instrument, take into consideration your present wants in addition to your projected future wants.
For instance, you could solely plan on providing electronic mail help initially, however you already know inside the subsequent yr you need to add chat help. Because you don’t need to change instruments each few years, it’s good to attempt to anticipate these future wants.
For those who’re switching from a present instrument to a brand new one, it might look like you’re finest served specializing in the place your present instrument is missing, however that might be a mistake. Although you do need to handle any deficiencies, you additionally have to listing out what’s working nicely in your present instrument. If not, it’s doable you’ll find yourself simply buying and selling one downside for an additional.
How pressing is your want?
It’s good to examine a world the place you’ve gotten on a regular basis you should take trials of software program, sit in on demos, and collect each element. Nonetheless, that’s hardly ever actuality. If you’re beginning your search, it’s essential to be very trustworthy with your self about how a lot time you truly should discover a resolution.
Nonetheless lengthy you assume it’s going to take to discover a instrument, double that timeframe. Which will sound excessive, nevertheless it’ll assist you set expectations for others. And when you end early, chances are high individuals gained’t be upset.
If you already know you want a instrument rapidly, it’s best to have fewer preliminary instruments to assessment. In case you have a bit of extra time, you’ll be able to have a bigger base pool of instruments to take a look at and may schedule extra demos.
Do you’ve gotten some other constraints?
Along with time, there are different constraints to think about as nicely. For instance, many groups have some stage of finances constraint. Although some might have a clean test, it’s hardly the norm.
One other side to consider is any constraint you’ve gotten because it pertains to connecting to different instruments. For instance, when you’re presently utilizing a sure CRM, you most likely want a help instrument that integrates straight with it. It’s essential that any new instrument you spend money on suits nicely along with your present software program stack.
Create a shortlist of help instruments to think about
After you’ve answered the above inquiries to get your bearings, you’ll need to put collectively a shortlist of potential instruments to think about.
As with every buy, an awesome place to start out is studying opinions. Websites like G2 and Capterra are nice assets to see how present clients really feel in regards to the instruments you are contemplating.
After studying opinions, take into account reaching out to different help professionals in your community to see if they’ve any further insights or instrument ideas to supply.
Outdoors of non-public connections, it’s also possible to take a look at completely different on-line communities to supply some extra views. A neighborhood like Help Pushed can provide you entry to numerous help professionals who might be able to additional assist you in your search.
Consider the instruments in your shortlist
After getting a shortlist of instruments you need to take into account, you should dive deeper to higher perceive every providing and the way nicely it matches up along with your wants. Issues like demos with a salesman and hands-on expertise with a product are useful in absolutely understanding any software program you’re contemplating.
Request a demo
Through the demo, ask all of the questions you want answered. Salespeople know their merchandise very nicely, so don’t shrink back from utilizing them as a useful resource.
Measure workforce match with a trial
Demos are nice for gathering info, however to be able to actually perceive how a instrument works, you should truly use it. Many help instruments supply the flexibility to attempt the product out, and that is one thing it’s best to do.
More often than not, there’s a trial interval of round one to 2 weeks. In these instances, you often have full entry to all options of the product. For some, after the trial interval, you’re moved all the way down to a free plan with a restricted characteristic set. For others, you’re merely locked out of the account after the trial.
Because it’s a bit extra concerned, chances are high you’ll need to restrict the variety of trials you pursue. Analysis exhibits having too many choices begins making us extra indecisive and fewer glad with our closing alternative, so it’s best to maintain your variety of trials decrease — most likely round three to 4 choices.
Submit a help request
One final thing you are able to do is definitely attain out to the help groups for the ultimate contenders with just a few questions. By doing so, you’ll get a greater thought of the extent of help they provide and what you’ll be able to count on when you resolve to turn out to be a buyer.
Resolve which instrument is true on your workforce
If doable, take into account taking a weeklong break after your closing demo name or trial to make sure you’re in a position to take a look at issues with contemporary eyes. And if there have been others concerned within the course of, this can be a good time to fulfill up and examine notes. It’s very doable you’ll have a bias towards a sure instrument. By partaking with different opinions, you’ll restrict the results of any bias you’ll have.
Shopping for help software program generally is a huge endeavor, nevertheless it should not be one thing you dread. If you plan forward and are considerate in regards to the course of upfront, you’re capable of restrict some struggles and set expectations for your self and others. So maintain an open thoughts, search numerous opinions, modify your expectations accordingly, and also you’ll be set.
