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Customer service software supports customer service representatives to record, document, route, capture, keep track, resolve and report customer issues using a trouble ticketing system. The process is commonly known as help desk software.
Businesses use customer service software to manage and run service interactions either by phone, web, email, social media or face to face. Given the evolving technology, there are thousands and thousands of software solutions on the market. Sometimes choosing the best software that suits your business goals and the nature of your business can be a bit hectic. However, before you choose the software you want to implement into your business, it is important first clearly to understand;
What is customer service software?
Standard features service software must have
The type of a buyer you are and the business type
Business goals and affordability
How the software will benefit your business?
The best customer service software in Zimbabwe
1. Monkeypesa
Monkeypesa is a customer support software catering to multiple arms of your business - from sales marketing, automation and customer support. With the spirit of helping small and medium enterprises grow and thrive in business, Monkeypesa is a user-friendly tool. The pricing, features, analytics, easy to interpret dashboard makes it simpler for the users.
MonkeyPesa Features:
Team collaboration
360-degree view of customers
Livechat software
Ticket routing
API
Automation
Community forums
Self-service portal
Insights, analytics and reports
Human Resource and payroll
Live Chat
Bulk SMS and email management
Monkeypesa has a live-chat portal that allows customers to interact with a customer service agent right from the company's website. Clients use this chat-enabled service to reach out to the company for inquiries. The service is very pertinent for businesses and companies relying heavily on their websites for traffic and customers.
It is important to note that clients do not want to be stranded for long waiting for replies. Therefore, employ a large team or use multiple software such as chatbots to automate some chat interactions. Live chat software enables agents to solve customer issues in real-time and from wherever they already are. It makes the process comfortable as it is instant and doesn't need a physical meeting. Here, the reps can catch issues instantly during the conversation.
Email management is another crucial aspect of MonkeyPesa customer support software. Email interactions are notorious for being slow, especially if few monitoring agents and a high volume of emails daily. Customers may need a response faster than some email service strategies can provide, especially when the conversation requires more than an initial email and a reply.
Any capable customer service team should possess a central and accessible knowledge base to simplify simple inquiries. MonkeyPesa lets you build a knowledge base backed up by well-written articles for customers to peruse through searching for answers. Without the articles, there is no knowledge base. A knowledge base is the end product of collecting and organizing that information into a usable form. This feeds directly into the self-service portal. This is the ultimate test for your customer support. This section is filled with an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) database and a knowledge base that contains other information like product specs and case studies. Customers can easily comb through these and find answers from queries of those before them.
Social Media is a very relevant tool of sales and marketing today. Every passing day, there is a new social media channel your clients and prospects sign up for. MonkeyPesa provides a centralized location for all your social media interactions — tweets, posts, reels, videos, comments, replies, Direct Messages. Accessible Communication is a giant step into maintaining good relationships with clients. Strong relationships generate more sales and support, improve client satisfaction, and can even reduce business expenses.
2. Salesforce
Salesforce is a software used to track and monitor customer service, commerce, service, IT, sales and marketing activities in a business or company alongside helping teams work from anywhere and keep in touch with customers.
Salesforce helps to engage with customers anywhere, sell smarter, offer good customer service, and allow teams to work from anywhere. Salesforce believes that in bringing people together, there is power, and so they help build bridges between companies and customers. Salesforce values trust, innovation, and equality.
Salesforce CRM has a range of products and solutions for different industries, and it covers almost all industries, for example, manufacturing, engineering, health care, education, construction and many others.
Salesforce Pricing
There is a free trial version for 30 days with a few features
Small businesses CRM of about ten users are charged $25 each user per month
Complete CRM for any team size goes for $75 for each user per month
A profoundly customizable sales CRM goes for $150 for each user per month
Unlimited CRM power and support package goes for $300 per user per month
Salesforce features:
Mobile friendly
Process automation
Account and contact management
Opportunity management
Lead management
Reports and dashboards
account integration
activity dashboard
collaboration tools
cataloging/categorization
call logging
appointment management
appointment scheduling
audience targeting
call center management
calendar/reminder system
Salesforce sales cloud pricing plan; essential goes for $25 per user per month, professional goes for $75 per user per month, enterprise goes for $150 per user per month while unlimited goes for $300 per user per month.
3. Zendesk
Zendesk customer service software helps businesses to grow good relationships with customers. A good relationship enhances a good customer experience which results in customer retention, continued support and productivity.
Zendesk customer service software is user-friendly, easy to implement and can fit into the business needs of any business. Zendesk customer service software serves SMEs. Zendesk brings together big teams while concentrating on high regard issues in a company. To help your business meet all its customer needs. Zendesk equips your business with the required tools to meet your customer needs on the different channels of communication they preferably use while customizing a good experience for each individual.
Zendesk customer service software has tools to help you manage a business with multiple customers and agents while customizing support to solve customers’ problems. These tools include; advanced workflow capabilities, Al-powered automation and self-service.
For small teams, Zendesk is suitable for efficiency. Zendesk gathers all the customer data in a single and centralized workspace, making accessibility easy. In addition, Zendesk has tools to help you capture customer data such as; customer questions to share the required information.
Zendesk has tools such as; Omnichannel which helps startups consistently keep in contact with clients, give them the best customer experience and win their reliability. Other support services to enhance consistent engagement with clients include; phone, email, and chat and they are all put in one place hence free access.
Features of Zendesk customer service software include:
Livechat software
Ticket routing
API
Tracking and reporting
Knowledge base
Native integrations
Automation
Community forums
Self-service portal
Zendesk customer service software gives a free credit for six months with access to tailored resources and a growing network and community of customer experience experts.
4. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign caters to all business sizes with mega automation that integrates email marketing, marketing automation, CRM, and machine learning for powerful segmentation and personalization across social, email, messaging, chat, and text. Over 70% of ActiveCampaign's customers use its 300+ integrations, including Shopify, Square, Facebook, and Salesforce. Pricing starts at $9 a month.
Why should you use ActiveCampaign?
Customizes sends based on parameters.
Automates individualized experiences across all your customer touchpoints
Uses customer lifecycle to choose content, send time and delivery channel for each customer.
Keeps track of client's interests and behavior
Creates customized campaigns with minimal effort
ActiveCampaign Prices: Get’s started at just $9 per month for the basic plan, $49 per month for the Plus plan (unlocks CRM features, advanced integrations), $129 per month for Pro, $229 per month for Enterprise Plan.
ActiveCampaign effortlessly combines and integrates with other software, applications and tools. These include; Microsoft, Shopify, Facebook, Salesforce and more. ActiveCampaign provides a perfect customer service experience that surpasses the traditional touchpoints, for instance, emails. Instead, the service software offers a personalized, high-touch experience for businesses, however channels, additional teams, locations and customer segments.
ActiveCampaign eliminates silos between data sources, communication channels and teams. This aids businesses in scaling their customer relationships via connected experiences that span the customer lifecycle. ActiveCampaigns’ customized expertise helps businesses computerize a genuinely personalized, real experience so that clients can widen their relationships.
ActiveCampaign features include;
unlimited sending
sending newsletters
subscription forms
marketing automation
landing pages
Facebook custom audiences
lead and contact scoring
conversation
attribution reporting
predictive content with machine learning
custom domain
dedicated account rep and more.
5. Creatio CRM
Creatio service software is a tool that easily automates business processes in the shortest time possible. Creatio CRM is a customer service software with a different synergy of unified CRM and a platform for marketing, sales, and customer service.
Midsized and large companies usually use Creatio CRM service software to manage customer relationships from the time a customer is a lead, throughout the whole sales cycle. Creatio software has cloud-based and on-premise software installations and deployments. Creatio service software is a tool that increases marketing to complete customer journey and accelerate lead to revenue, speeds up complete sales cycle from leads to repeat sales and aligns customer engagements to boost timely service delivery.
Creatio service software has a centralized platform where contact data, service delivery history, social media profiles, corporate relationship structures, and interaction history are gathered, kept, or secured. This becomes simpler for users to keep track of tasks, calls, messages and client cases.
Features of by creatio;
lead management
opportunity management
field sales
channel sales
orders and invoices
sales performance and operations
sales activity and management and platform capabilities.
Creatio pricing plans: creatio pricing starts at $35 per user per month.