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The motto of the game is to provide quality over quantity. Companies today are pushing to go the extra mile in catering to their clients. That’s because loyal customers are less likely to leave you for a competitor and more likely to recommend you. Loyalty above all. This translates into more business for you at a lower cost in marketing.
The support you offer your customers — both before and after they buy and use your products or services — helps them have an easy and enjoyable experience with you. Even in the age of technology, the human touch in helping customers is crucial. Customer service is meeting the needs and desires of any customer.
Customer service software helps representatives document, route, track, resolve, and report customer issues using their service or system. This technology greatly helps with customer relations management (CRM). These solutions streamline the issue resolution process by automating many common support activities. Ultimately, they improve agent productivity and increase customer satisfaction.
Common Features of Customer Service Software
Depending on the buyer you are, and what you are looking for in dealing with your customers, there are different features in each customer service software.
Live Chat: 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.
Analytics and Reporting: This helps reps generate custom reports on performance and customer satisfaction and help the entire organization adjust reviews.
Phone Support: A phone conversation remains a highly trusted form of addressing high stake issues. It happens in real-time and helps the customer service representatives catch issues instantly. In addition, it adds a personal touch to the relationship with the customer as they know they are speaking to someone willing to listen and help.
Email Support: Do not be misled. Email communication is not dead. It is an old but highly reliable and effective form of communication. A Human Resources, Payroll, or IT team, for example, could use email to answer questions for full-and part-time employees.
Messaging Apps: The evolution of technology has led to the birth of Apps like Telegram and WhatsApp that have changed how we all communicate. These Apps are a very comfortable alternative for customers who would not favor phone calls or email.
Knowledge Base: Manages a repository of descriptions to common or previously resolved problems. These resources might be available publicly via a self-service website or reserved for internal use by CSRs.
Multi-Channel Management: Allow customer interactions received through multiple channels, including phone, Web, email, live chat, mobile app, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
The best customer service software today
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. Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk is a customer service software that is commonly known as “the gold standard for great customer relationships”. The software helps businesses to get prospects, follow up with customers, generate more sales, increase profits and get more revenue. This is a soul aim for the majorly of the businesses.
Currently, Zoho serves over 250, 000 countries in over 180 countries and is trusted by some of the biggest brands around the globe. Zoho customer service software collects information regarding sales, marketing, and customer service activities and centralizes it in one place and that helps to align business activities. Furthermore, the software captures and records very critical customer information which may be helpful while doing a follow-up or any other engagement reasons.
Zoho customer service software can be personalized to meet the demands of every business irrespective of the nature and the size of the business. Zoho CRM is used by both startups and large businesses. The software caters to all modern industries including; real estate, healthcare, insurance, media, legal, restaurants, banking, travel, tax, freelancers, profit and non-profit making companies.
Zoho service software features include;
lead management
deal management
contact management,
workflow automation and more.
The software integrates with other applications and tools like; Evernote, MailChimp, Google Apps, Microsoft Office and QuickBooks.
Zoho service software pricing: Zoho has a free version that lasts for the first 15 days, but paid packages go for; a standard package is for $12 a month, Zoho Begin is for $7, professional goes for $20 a month, enterprise goes for $35, Zoho ultimate goes for $45 while the unlimited edition goes for $100 every month.
Benefits of Zoho customer service software:
Its products and functions are easy to use
Good for sales organizations mostly those with the complicated B2C sales cycle.
Refunds customers who are not satisfied with their services
3. Live Agent
LiveAgent is a great Hubspot Service Hub alternative for small and medium-sized e-commerce, telecom, and SaaS businesses that want to offer great customer service on a budget. This fully-featured help desk software helps you bring personalization to your customer interactions.
The best part about this tool is that it lets you combine all your communication channels like email, live chat, calls, and social media into a shared company inbox.
LiveAgent harnesses the power of an omnichannel universal inbox, real-time live chat, built-in call center, and a robust customer service portal. Personalize your communication by leveraging our customer segmentation, automation, built-in CRM, a powerful analytics package, and our customer knowledge base. Discover over 175+ help desk features and 40+ integrations.
LiveAgent features:
Ticketing system
universal inbox
time tracking
automated ticket distribution
tags
contact groups and more.
4. Fresh Desk
FreshDesk is suitable for businesses of all types and sizes. Its simple UI and straightforward features make it a popular choice with startups. In addition, the platform enables you to provide customer service across all social platforms with built-in AI and self-service capabilities.
Freshdesk converts requests coming in via email, web, phone, chat, and social into tickets and unifies ticket resolution across channels. Additionally, Freshdesk lets you automate workflows, provide self-service, manage SLAs, and measure metrics so that you can stay on top of all things customer support. Freshdesk also offers out-of-the-box features like an AI-powered support chatbot, predictive support capabilities, and field service management.
It's simple and easy to use. That’s why it’s trusted by 150,000+ businesses, including American Express, HP, Hugo Boss, Toshiba, Cisco, Honda, The Atlantic, QuizUp, and Panasonic.
Freshdesk top features are;
remote support
ticketing
collaboration
helpdesk software
omnichannel helpdesk
automation
compare helpdesk
self-service
field service management
secure helpdesk
reporting and analytics
customization.
5. Hubspot
Hubspot customer service software has helped millions of small, medium and large businesses to grow better. The software makes company collaboration easy mostly marketing, sales and customer service functions.
Hubspot customer service software has all the tools that any business would need to grow its sales and revenue. The software has an inbound marketing strategy that helps to generate traffic and more leads, convert leads into customers and get a higher return on investment.
Hubspot customer service software helps to manage customer data like emails, record calls and meetings, manage a sales pipeline and also aids sales personnel to keep monitoring customer contacts and deals. The software helps to monitor performance since it managers an insight into the sales activities.
Hubspot has tools that help to grow sales productivity, shorten the sales process and make it quicker. The customer service software makes it simpler to successfully keep in contact with customers, aid them to meet their business needs and continue to support through more purchases and referrals.
Hubspot popular features include;
free meeting scheduler app
social media tools
email tracking software
Ads software
emails marketing software
lead management software
pipeline management tools
sales email templates
free online form builder
free chatbot builder
free live-chat software
marketing analytics
free landing page builder.
The software has a free trial version for starts and smaller businesses but there are also other packages for instance; a starter package for $45 a month, the professional package goes for $450 a month while a package for big enterprises goes for $1200 per month.
Benefits of using Hubspot CRM:
Easy to use hence favouring small and medium enterprises
Gives a free trial version that lasts forever
Pricing and solution packages easily align with the kind of a business
Helps to understand CRM lead management
6. Zendesk
Zendesk’s customer service software empowers businesses to build effortless customer experiences. As a result, conversations flow seamlessly across channels, leading to greater productivity and satisfaction all around.
The Agent Workspace within Zendesk’s Suite equips agents with all the tools they need to collaborate, other teams, and deliver fast, personalized responses on any channel—from a single, unified interface.
Zendesk gives you the tools you need to manage omnichannel customer service. You can provide customer support via email, live chat, voice, Facebook, Twitter, WeChat, WhatsApp, and more.
Professional Support Suite — $89 per agent per month
Omnichannel support
Social messaging add-on
Self-service knowledge base
Dashboards and reporting for all channels
Talk partner edition
Multiple ticket forms
Enterprise Support Suite — $149 per agent per month
Roles and permissions with skilled base routing
Multi-brand support
Chat widget and web SDK
Content cues to identify knowledge gaps
24/7 live chat and phone support
