It was probably explained a lot of times, but let us repeat: Customer service is an interaction with the customers that applies to all businesses and tracks the complete customer lifecycle. Customer service software-based tools improve the overall customer experience and performance of customer support agents who use the same tools.
However, customer service and customer support typically use the same software tools. We will highlight some distinctions between customer service and customer support to understand better the tools used for customer support.
Customer support is a part of customer service. It is reactive, technical support that applies to customers that have technical issues with a product or service. Agents of customer support must have specialized knowledge about the technical aspects of the business they support.
The large overall picture of both is the same – they are helping customers to get the best value from the product or service of the business they use.
Types of Customer support tools are:
- Service desk
- Live chat
- Messaging
- Phone support
- Knowledge base
1. Help Scout
Help Scout is an all-in-one customer support tool created to support customers easily. It is recognized as the leader in this field and one of the easiest to use tools in 2021.
These are the features that Help Scout provides: shared inbox, live chat, in-app messages, and knowledge base. You can integrate Help Scout with all other tools you already use, which is a plus.
The support team will be able to collaborate easily, share experience, and personalize conversations with customers using Help Scout, resulting in better and faster support.
Help Scout has three pricing plans: Standard ($20/mo), Plus ($35/mo), and Company ($60/mo).
2. Zendesk
With Zendesk, you can provide continuous support to your customers. Whether you provide support via live chat, messaging, or voice, it makes no difference. Even if they change their location or device, the conversation will remain connected.
Zendesk allows you to create a help center or community forum that customers can use when they like.
Zendesk has AI-powered bots so that you can personalize conversations with customers. They won’t need to repeat themselves if your agents change or escalate customer tickets to a higher level.
Zendesk offers three pricing solutions per agent/per month: Suite Team ($49), Suite Growth ($79), and Suite Professional ($99).
3. LiveChat
The LiveChat‘s main feature as a Customer Support tool is providing fast and easy to use support. It will increase customer satisfaction, and your support team will have access to the right tools and knowledge base.
Chat tools (some of many available with LiveChat) are message sneak-peek, cannel responses, chat tags, file sharing, chat activities, chat transfer, etc.
Streamlining that LiveChat implements are: Engage → Respond → Nurture → Improve
With LiveChat, your support team can use automatic chat routing and direct customers to the right department (Support, Sales, and Finance) to get fast help that will resolve their issue.
LiveChat has four pricing plans that are calculated per agent/ per month. Offered Pricing plans are Starter, Team, Business, and Enterprise.
4. Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk‘s advantage as a Customer Support tool is in the context-aware help desk. The primary Zoho Help Desk capability as a support tool is Omnichannel:
An Omnichannel ticketing system is a software developed to prioritize, track and automate support teams and agents. This feature manages all customer conversations with your support team.
Also, customers can use email, chat, phone, social media, or website to communicate with customer support. This system will increase the efficiency of customer support and overall customer satisfaction. Zoho Desk has a Free plan (an excellent solution for small businesses, supporting 3 free agents) and three paid plans Standard, Professional, and Enterprise.
5. LiveAgent
LiveAgent is a platform for Omnichannel Customer Support, and also it is a customer support tool that you can use for a variety of business solutions. It can be adapted for use in industry or as a use case (one product, multiple use case scenarios).
Products that LiveAgent has for customer support agents and customers, which can be used as a way of communication are:
- Ticketing
- Live Chat
- Call Center
- Social Media
- Knowledge Base
- Customer Portal
LiveAgent has a Free plan with some limitations in features use, and three paid plans: Ticket ($15/agent/mo), Ticket + Chat ($29/agent/mo) and All-inclusive ($49/agent/mo).
6. Knowmax
Knowmax is a full-suite enterprise-grade knowledge base management platform designed by CX experts with more than 10 years of experience. This single-sign-on access platform is completely DIY and no-code, requiring no coding knowledge. The platform can be used to create customer service scripts with the help of a call center scripting tool tool and can be used to curate, disseminate, and update internal and external organizational knowledge.
The knowledge management platform’s function is to provide the right information to all users through a single source of truth.
Conclusion
Probably all the tools mentioned above you know as customer service tools. But you see that these tools have a special set of features (products), designed just for customer support.
The main advantage of using these tools by your customer support is in their automatization. Further, it will enable support agents to channel customer issues to the right department or person, so their questions or problems will be promptly and successfully resolved and answered, for mutual satisfaction.
