Top 6 Solutions for Successful Customer Service Management (Plus a Bonus One)

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The numbers are very clear – retaining an existing customer is much more important than attracting new ones. For instance, the mere price of retaining an existing customer is five to seven times lower than attracting a new one. A return customer will also be much more likely to make a purchase.

Considering that customer service is the most influential factor for customers when deciding whether to stay with a company, its importance cannot be overstated.
These days, companies have powerful allies when it comes to customer service – the so called customer service management software solutions which dramatically increase the quality of the customer service a certain company can provide.

1. Zendesk

Zendesk is probably the most popular customer service solution on the market, with customers like Disney and Rovio among the companies that use their help desk software. Zendesk is a ticket-based customer service tool, which boasts features such as queue management, live chat, self-service, surveys and feedback, known issue management and it can even be integrated with social media, allowing the customer service team to handle inquiries that come via social media. It is an incredibly powerful piece of software and yet it feels so simple, both when you work in customer service and when you are the customer.

2. LiveChat

As its name would suggest, LiveChat is all about providing live customer service. When you load a website of a company that uses LiveChat, you are immediately greeted by a chat window (usually in the bottom right corner) and you are immediately put in contact with the customer service representative. Even after work hours, LiveChat stores the messages sent by customers and it keeps them stored for the customer service team to respond to later. While it seems like a simple piece of software, it is actually a very powerful tool that is trusted by tens of thousands of customers worldwide.

3. Zoho Support

Zoho Support is another heavy-hitter in the world of customer service tools and it might actually be the most feature-packed of them all. It is a fantastically versatile piece of software and the best thing is that it is absolutely scalable for businesses of different sizes. Whereas the majority of other solutions charge by the number of customer service agents, Zoho Support charges depending on how many requests the company has had over a certain period of time. It makes it one of the very best customer service management solutions for small businesses.

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4. SupportBee

If you are handling the majority of your customer service via email, then you cannot go much better than with SupportBee. It is a piece of help desk software that is built around the email experience where every message turns into a ticket which then kicks off the entire customer service process. It is a very simple approach and yet customer service agents swear that they are able to handle copious amounts of tickets using it. The plans are also based on the number of tickets, meaning that you never pay for what you do not need.

5. Kana

Kana produces three different types of customer service software. Kana Enterprise is aimed at large corporations that have to deal with thousands of customer service requests on a daily basis. Kana Express is geared towards small-to-medium companies with limited needs while Lagan Enterprise is aimed at the public sector where it turns into much more than just customer service software. In general, Kana products are everything you would expect from customer service software, designed for providing professional customer service every single time.

6. Freshdesk

Freshdesk is easily among the finest customer service solutions on the market. For one, it allows taking care of requests no matter where they came from. It puts everything in one place and allows for a streamlined experience for the customer service agents. It also has a great ticketing system and it is among the most advanced pieces of customer service management software when it comes to smart automation.

Bonus – Active Collab

While Active Collab is not technically a piece of customer service software, its versatility in team and project management makes it a perfect support tool for your customer service department. For one, it will help you better organize your customer service people while also providing insight into other departments, thus helping your customer service people be on top of everything that happens within the company.

Nate Vickery, Msc
Nate Vickery is a business technology expert and a futurist mostly engaged in finding and implementation of the latest technology trends into SMB and startups management and marketing processes. Nate is also the editor-in-chief at business oriented blog- Bizzmarkblog.com.

4 COMMENTS

  1. Hi Nate, how did you determine this list? Not that I would majorly disagree, but there could be a few other names in there, too …

    Cheers
    Thomas
    @twieberneit

  2. Hi Thomas,

    Just included most powerful and popular, and few that seem useful for specific tasks.
    Which ones would you add if I may ask?

    Cheers

  3. Hi Nate,

    I didn’t have any particular one in mind but the market is sufficiently crowded to warrant the question 😉

    G2Crowd lists more than 550.

    https://www.g2crowd.com/categories/customer-service/products

    Some examples include
    Helpshift
    Parature
    Getresponse
    Sparkcentra
    ChatWool
    My Livechat
    Olark
    Clickdesk
    Happyfox

    Acknowledging that you concentrated on SMBs, on the higher end we do have
    Desk.com
    SAP CRM, Hybris Cloud for Service, and Service Engagement Center
    MSDynamics CRM
    SugarCRM
    Oracle CRM, including their Siebel, OnDemand, Peoplesoft lines

    Rgds
    Thomas
    @twieberneit

  4. Modern world moving on systematic versions. Live chat is the best way to boost the traffic and leads. Several agencies offers online chat support services on 24 hours. Live chat module could help you move to the next level with your online company. Appreciate the post.

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