8 Customer Service Software To Build Lifelong Customer Relationships

No ship can sail right away.

You always have to prepare a checklist, inspect the safety equipment on board, and check in with the crew.

It’s the same for customer service teams—they always have to keep in contact with customers to support them fully before, during, and after they purchase your product or service to ensure business growth.

Thus, they need a tool that will support them throughout the process as well.

That’s why this article will serve as a guide to help you choose between powerful customer service software that have a wide range of features that will only improve the customer experience by both assisting them and exceeding customer expectations.

Let’s start!

 

1- Salesforce Service Cloud

Salesforce Service Cloud as a customer service tool

Salesforce is a customer support software that helps customer support teams to get in touch with customers quickly and as efficiently as possible, thanks to the support it provides on ANY channel.

Creating workflows that take your business processes to the next level, Salesforce can scale and support all of your customers in only one place. Furthermore, it includes the key features below:

  • lightning service console,
  • case management,
  • knowledge base,
  • service process and automation,
  • omni-channel routing,
  • service analytics,
  • call center management and CTI integration,
  • automation with macros, and
  • asset and order management.

Salesforce Pricing

  • Essentials plan: $25/month per user when billed annually (up to 10 users)
  • Professional plan: $75/month per user when billed annually
  • Enterprise plan: $150/month per user when billed annually
  • Unlimited plan: $300/month per user when billed annually

*All the plans above include a free trial, making it possible to try them out before committing to an annual purchase.

2- HubSpot Service Hub

hubspot crm

A product of HubSpot CRM serves as a customer support software that helps you deepen customer relationships.

Helping you deliver personalized service to your customers, this customer support tool strengthens the bonds you have with your customers through improving your agents’ communication with customers.

Going into detail, this customer service platform offers conversational tools, a shared inbox, a customer portal, automations, a knowledge base, customer feedback and custom surveys, and reporting—aiding customer support agents throughout an effortless experience that will guarantee customer loyalty.

With HubSpot CRM as your customer support management tool, you can:

  • perform user, role, and access management on selected data, features, and many more,
  • allow customization for users in terms of texts, logos, and chat colors,
  • track vital metrics regarding the performance of customer support and improve workflow,
  • set up an automated reply to the support tickets based on their specific category and collaborate on tickets with ease,
  • create surveys to send out to customers and analyze their responses to find ways to boost the support team’s performance.

HubSpot Pricing

  • Individual plan: 100% free (no credit card required)
  • Starter plan: $50/per month for 2 seats ($45/per month when billed annually) + per additional user cost is $25 and $23, respectively
  • Professional plan: $500/per month for 5 seats ($450/per month when billed annually) + per additional user cost is $100 and $90, respectively
  • Enterprise plan: $1,200/per month for 10 seats with a cost of $120/per additional user

*To decide on a better plan that suits your needs, you can always contact HubSpot’s sales team, as each plan has a button below leading you there.

3- Zendesk

Zendesk as a customer service tool

Zendesk is a customer service tool that helps agents provide support anywhere they are, thanks to its chat features.

Keeping everything in one place, it contains all social channels that customers can reach, including messages, live chat, email, voice mail, and social platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger—which helps you to deliver a seamless customer experience, increasing the chance of driving more qualified leads and closing more deals.

Moreover, Zendesk offers a help center and community forum that can be integrated into sites to urge the concept of customer self-service, AI and bots to deliver instant answers, and real-time analytics and reporting to get customer insights that will set customer service teams up for success.

Zendesk Pricing

  • Suite Team: $49/month per user when billed annually
  • Suite Growth: $79/month per user when billed annually
  • Suite Professional: $99/month per user when billed annually
  • Suite Enterprise: $150/month per user when billed annually

*All the plans above include a 30-day-long free trial, making it possible to try them out before committing to an annual purchase.

4- Freshdesk

Freshdesk as a customer service tool

A powerful product of Freshworks, Freshdesk is a well-known customer service software solution that helps customer support teams create personalized experiences that are special for each segment of the customer base.

This help desk software contains an omnichannel look to your customer service agents so that they can deliver exceptional support that’ll end up increasing customer satisfaction, ensuring happy customers in the long run. TO make both potential and existing customers happy, Freshdesk displays advanced features, such as custom ticket status, linked tickets, and multi-channel support.

While you can create a different name for each stage that tickets are in via custom ticket status, linked tickets help you send coherent and urgent messages according to the previous tickets that are linked. AND omnichannel support that involves email, live chat, phone, social media, website, and WhatsApp provides agents with a platform on which they can manage all support channels with ease.

Moreover, Freshdesk has the key features below:

  • Powerful ticketing system that includes a team inbox and service level agreements,
  • Multi-channel support that includes e-mail ticketing, integrated phone support, live chat, feedback widgets, Facebook and Twitter integrations, and mobile apps in one place,
  • Increase in team productivity, thanks to gamification and automations,
  • Self-service culture via knowledge bases and community forums,
  • Global support that you can get due to multi-product support, multiple languages and time zones, and multiple SLA policies,
  • Great security, including a custom SSL certificate, trusted IP, single sign-on, configurable password policy, role-based access control, custom mail servers, and email signing,
  • Smart reporting that contains insights, reports, and customer satisfaction surveys,
  • Apps that will support all of your processes, including self-service portals, FreshThemes, and native apps.
Freshdesk customer service section

With Freshdesk as your customer service software, you can:

  • arrange, classify, and assign your support tickets to agents across multiple channels within a shared team inbox where you can use canned responses to deliver quick pre-built responses to customers in the blink of an eye,
  • make use of agent collision detection to make sure agents aren’t working on the same ticket, ticket field suggester to categorize incoming tickets automatically, and thank you detector for avoiding reopening replies that include thank you,
  • utilize SLA management to set up the right requirements for each party, custom ticket status to create custom statuses for tickets’ stages, and scenario automation for automating previous actions,
  • collaborate on tickets by using team huddle, shared ownership, linked tickets with which you get to link responses based on previous similar issues and responses, and parent-child ticketing that help you divide issues into sub-issues,
  • manage customer interactions with chat features that work across multiple channels, including email, phone, live chat, social media, website, and WhatsApp,
  • operate service tasks easily by splitting them into service groups, and get a better view via scheduling dashboard,
  • use time tracking, intelligent ticket assignment, time-triggered automations, event-triggered automation, as well as automatic email notifications to get notified when customers reply,
  • urge self-service by using chatbots that are powered by Freddy AI, help widgets that display solutions based on issues, and feedback mechanism to get notified when a customer leaves a comment on an article, 
  • and many more, including custom reports, customer segments, and identity and access management.

ALSO let me fill you in on the fact that Freshdesk has a 21-day trial for you to try it out!

Freshdesk Pricing

  • Free plan: $0 (up to 10 agents)
  • Growth plan: $15/user per month when billed annually ($18/user per month when billed monthly)
  • Pro plan: $49/user per month when billed annually ($59/user per month when billed monthly)
  • Enterprise plan: $79/user per month when billed annually ($95/user per month when billed monthly)

*All the plans above include a 21-day-long free trial, making it possible to try them out before committing to an annual purchase.

5- Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk as a custoemr service desk

Zoho Desk is a customer service solution that is capable of doing many on matters like ticket management, self-service, agent productivity, and automation.

To give more detail, Zoho Desk can help you reduce your response time, as well as many other prospects that would improve the customer service process, by offering the services below within its platform:

  • multichannel,
  • live-chat,
  • KB bot,
  • auto-tag tickets,
  • reply assistant,
  • multi-brand help center,
  • knowledge base,
  • mobility,
  • workflows,
  • custom functions,
  • integrations,
  • reports and dashboards,
  • time tracking, and many more.

With all the features above, you’ll be able to lessen your workload by automating the manual work, make use of AI by creating a knowledge base, and manage tickets across several channels, thanks to the multichannel view that Zoho Desk grants you.

Zoho Desk Pricing

  • Free plan: €0 (up to 3 users)
  • Standard plan: €9/month per user when billed annually (€18/month per user on monthly subscriptions)
  • Professional plan: €15/month per user when billed annually (€30/month per user on monthly subscriptions)
  • Enterprise plan: €26.25/month per user when billed annually (€45/month per user on monthly subscriptions)

*All the plans above include a 15-day-long free trial, making it possible to try them out before committing to an annual purchase.

6- Help Scout

Help Scout as a custoemr service tool

Help Scout is a customer conversation management software that is known for being flexible, affordable, and easy-to-use.

Having more than 12,000 customers around the world, Help Scout excels at enhancing the customer service experience by managing customer communications skillfully through a single platform that contains robust business service features: shared inbox, live chat, in-app messages, knowledge base, reporting, and integrations.

Thanks to the elements that Help Scout includes in its shared inbox, it earned the badge of “Best Usability in 2022” on G2. These elements are assignments, private notes, saved replies, and tagging, all of which accelerate the process for customer service representatives since it becomes significantly easy to move between categories, channels, and features when dealing with customer requests.

Help Scout Pricing

  • Standard plan: $20/month per user when billed annually ($25/month per user on monthly subscriptions)
  • Plus plan: $35/month per user when billed annually ($40/month per user on monthly subscriptions)
  • Company plan: $60/month per user when billed annually

*All the plans above include a 15-day-long free trial, making it possible to try them out before committing to an annual purchase.

7- Intercom

Intercom as a customer service software

Trusted by names like Amazon, Amplitude, Atlassian, Microsoft, and Meta, Intercom is a customer support solution that has its own messenger called Intercom Messenger.

Supporting both customers and support teams, Intercom consists of an end-to-end ticketing workflow, help center articles that include essential information regarding customer issues, and reporting system that puts forward crucial metrics to help you track the support teams’ performance.

Additionally, this customer service management software offers an omnichannel with several social media channels, premier services with white-glove services, and top-notch security.

So, just like Intercom says: support, engage, and convert!

Intercom Pricing

  • Starter plan: starting from $74/month per agent when billed annually

*As Intercom’s pricing structure isn’t revealed on its page, it might be a good idea to contact its sales team. On another note, it has a 14-day free trial for you to try before making any commitment.

8- LiveAgent

LiveAgent as a customer service software

LiveAgent is a customer service solution that many business owners of all business sizes know, thanks to the pricing structure it has.

However, good quality service for a decent price isn’t the only thing that LiveAgent offers; it also offers 135 features, including agent collision detection, contact forms, filters, multiple ticket tabs, split tickets, chat history, max queue length, call routing, and analytics overview.

Unlike the other tools, LiveAgent includes gamification in its UI by giving place to benchmarks and leaderboards, levels, and rewards and badges, which help increase the motivation of each agent significantly.

LiveAgent Pricing

  • Free Plan: $0 (limited features)
  • Ticket Plan: $15/agent per month
  • Ticket + Chat Plan: $29/agent per month
  • All-inclusive Plan: $49/agent per month

*All the plans above include a 14-day free trial, making it possible to try them out before committing to an annual purchase.

Conclusion

Understanding (potential) customers’ needs and supporting them throughout the whole customer journey is a crucial step that you have to take in order to build a long-lasting relationship with your customers.

To do so, it would be a LOT better to have a platform to help you and your customers go through good times and bad times together.

AND this article provides you with that—the customer service tools that are here to skyrocket customer service teams’ performance.

Frequently Asked Questions


What systems are used in customer service?

Some of the systems that are frequently used in customer service are ticketing, live chat, messaging, self-service, and email.


What makes a great customer service?

To provide customers with a great customer service, all agents have to do is perform the required action that customers want without any delay—which could be enlightening them thanks to real time data, answering all the questions they have regarding the product, or connecting them to another department for further assistance.


How do you master customer service?

One agent has to have background information concerning the area of expertise, detect the needed piece of information, and be able to convey that piece of information to customers smoothly.

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Renk Mert

Renk Mert

Sugar, spice, and everything nice... These were the ingredients chosen to create the perfect creative content writer. But UserGuiding accidentally added an extra ingredient to the concoction: *sass*. Thus, the daydreamer Renk with an undying love for cats was born. Feel free to contact me via LinkedIn to talk about user onboarding, inbound marketing, and even the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.