Choosing the perfect customer service tool for your business is easier said than done. You need to keep in mind multiple aspects, from features to ease of use to pricing, since one wrong decision could break your entire customer experience. To automate customer service in your business, you need to consider many things in mind to make things easier and smoother.
Knowing this, we have collated this blog that compares the 19 best customer service tools or we can say software solutions to help you make the right choice.
Table of Content
Top 19 Customer Service Software Tools For Your Business
CloudTutorial
CloudTutorial is a knowledge base platform that has the vital characteristics you require to assist consumers to find apt answers to their questions quickly. This knowledge base software for businesses and organizations is easy-to-use that permits the companies to author FAQs, articles, and help desk procedures with just a few clicks.
Best For: Customer support & helpdesk, and FAQ pages
Top Features
- Smart and quick search
- Unlimited article categories
- SEO-friendly knowledge base templates
- Layout customization
- User-friendly UI
- Customize contact form
Pros
- Quick Setup
- Typo Detection in the Search Result
- Detailed Reporting
Cons
- Only a knowledge base solution, no other help desk tools included
Zendesk
One of the oldest customer support software solutions, Zendesk combines tools for customer support, communication, and a knowledge center. The platform helps your customer service agents prioritize, track and resolve customer queries coming in from multiple channels. Zendesk tools are customizable and work well with other business software like Google Analytics and Salesforce.
Best For: Start-ups, SMBs, as well as large-scale organizations, that need a customizable, scalable solution.
Top Features
- Centralized customer information and history for quicker, flawless customer interactions
- Intuitive, user-friendly interface
- Self-serve help center to let customers resolve issues on their own
- Reporting tools to assess the performance
- Community forum creation to enable consumers to help each other and instill a sense of engaging community
Pros
- Hassle-free integrations with more than 100 leading business software tools
- Easy to use for anyone on the team, irrespective of their technical expertise
- Supports customer interaction across platforms, such as social media, text messages, and live chat
- Boosts team productivity as well as customer satisfaction
- Provides accurate and robust workflow
Cons
- The live chat tool may hamper website performance
- A bit too expensive
- Customer support
Freshdesk
Freshdesk’s cloud-based help desk software is a boon for any business receiving customer queries from diverse channels, including phone calls, emails, chats, social media, and the web. Wondering how?
The platform unifies all those communications into a single chat thread. That makes it simpler for your customer service teams to track previous conversations and access necessary information faster, enabling a prompt response every time. Not only this, but this customer service tool also helps businesses face different customer service challenges with their best possible solutions.
Best For: Business across sizes with an omnichannel sales approach
Top Features
- Ability to reach out to customers coming from different funnels leveraging a single platform
- Automation of repetitive support operation workflows
- Ability to create a knowledge base, help widgets and bots to empower customers and service agents resolve queries on their own
- Customizable dashboard and reporting tools to analyze team performance and customer satisfaction
Pros
- Intuitive and easy-to-understand user interface
- Anytime, anywhere access from any device no matter where you are
- Easy installation
- Streamlined information facilitate quicker customer support, boosting the overall client experience
Cons
- Complex ticket management on mobile devices
- Tedious report personalization
HappyFox
A powerful customer service application, HappyFox not only streamlines your ticket management operations but also enhances collaboration among your support team members. It comes in with a customer portal through which your customers can track the status of their tickets. Moreover, the platform can integrate with a plethora of top business apps, such as Google, Shopify, Salesforce, WhatsApp, Microsoft, and Jira, further simplifying the way you do business.
Best For: Every business that caters to clients based in different timezones using diverse languages
Top Features
- Offers multi-language customer support
- Allows you to automate repetitive processes
- Improves communication within your customer service team
- Offers canned responses to get back to customers faster
- Enables you to carry out support duties remotely
- Facilitates scheduling of analytics and reporting
Pros
- Auto routing of tickets
- Easy-to-use interface
- Quicker resolution to queries
- Hassle-free self-service due to a robust knowledge base
Cons
- Difficult to set up
- Customer service
- Difficult to export tickets
Sparkcentral by Hootsuite
With Hootsuite’s Sparkcentral, you no longer need to switch between various apps to respond to customers. Whether it is SMS, social media, live chat, or WhatsApp, this digital customer service app brings all your client queries into one place for clutter-free management. What’s more? You can easily integrate Sparkcentral with your existing business CRM to offer a seamless yet personalized customer experience.
Best For: Growing teams across industries
Top Features
- Brings in the centralization of your disparate client care channels
- Comes in with AI-powered chatbot functionality
- Offers seamless collaboration between chatbots and live agents
- Includes a smart dashboard for better organization of data
- Provides accurate customer engagement reporting, real-time team productivity as well as survey capabilities
Pros
- Quicker resolution to queries
- 360-degree view of customers
- Scalable as you grow
Cons
- Expensive for smaller teams
- Tough integration
LiveChat
One of the most popular customer service tools, LiveChat is trusted by the world’s leading organizations for its seamless customer interactions in real-time. Furthermore, it also doubles up as a reliable tool for lead generation as well as tracking for your sales and marketing team.
Best For: Start-ups, small-to-medium scale companies, and big enterprises wanting to score greater customer feedback & satisfaction
Top Features
- Ability to engage with visitors on your website in real-time
- Automated assignment of available support agents to chat requests
- Chat history to reduce repeated questions
- 24/7 customer support through a ticketing system
- Detailed analytics and reports to assess your efforts
- Internal communication channels to improve collaboration
Pros
- Higher customer satisfaction through personalized chats
- Increase in online sales and revenue
- Better tracking of leads and sales
- Ease of use
Cons
- No free version
- Lags on occasion
Intercom
Nothing can come close to conversational experiences when it comes to good customer service. And Intercom is one such customer service software that does it the best way. It blends technology to provide personalized customer assistance with human support. With its omnichannel approach, Intercom’s proactive and self-serve platform lets you resolve customer queries right where they are, faster than they had expected.
Best For: Both small-scale and large-scale companies keen to provide unparalleled customer experience
Top Features
- Unified interface to respond to customers driving in from multiple funnels
- Resolution of complex issues through one-on-one assistance
- Self-serve platform to answer repetitive queries automatically using help articles and bots
- Ability to address known problems proactively leveraging tools, such as outbound messages and product tours
Pros
- Strong customer relationship building
- Increased customer satisfaction
- Enhanced customer engagement with personalization and interactive tools
- Faster query resolution
Cons
- Poor customer service
- Expensive for small businesses
LiveAgent
Considered one of the best all-in-one help desk software solutions, LiveAgent blends in the power of a live chat box, call center, and ticketing system into its platform. It offers a sea of ticketing features, more than 130 in numbers, and integration with over 200 business tools you may already be using to elevate customer relationships and experience for your business.
Best For: Small to medium-sized organizations and enterprises active in diverse industries, including insurance, SaaS, and e-commerce.
Top Features
- Offers automatic distribution of tickets
- Automates organizational workflows as per your custom rules on SLAs, time, and action
- Allows you to create internal notes on every ticket
- Provides means to create multiple canned responses for a quick resolution to common questions
- Warns support agents if they reply to the same ticket simultaneously
- Lets you send surveys to gather customer feedback
Pros
- Increase in customer engagement
- Streamlined business operations
- Scalable to growing business demands
- Fully customizable
Cons
- Costly
- A greater learning curve due to extensive features
HelpCrunch
With HelpCrunch, your business can increase customer satisfaction by reaching out to them anytime, regardless of where you are. HelpCrunch works well on the web and mobile and includes a 24/7 self-service knowledge base to empower customers to find information on their own whenever they need it.
Best For: Online businesses across sizes and stature
Top Features
- Facilitates real-time customer conversations
- Offers a unified platform to manage all client communication in one place
- Empowers you to cater to customers 24/7, across channels and time zones
- Includes optimized knowledge base to foster customer self-service
- Allows customizations to suit your distinct brand image
- Offers setting up of automated emails and messages
- Enables support team to respond to customers on the go through a mobile app
Pros
- Anytime, anywhere access on web and mobile
- Faster customer responses across channels
- Insightful reports to improve customer satisfaction
- Customization and integrations with other tools you may be using
Cons
- Limited features in the basic plan
- Expensive for smaller teams
Sprout Social
With Sprout Social’s Engagement Tools, your customer service team can quickly connect with customers and efficiently address their requirements. That, in turn, helps in building and strengthening brand loyalty in your client base. The platform also provides insights into your campaigns and content performance on disparate channels to help you understand what your audience finds relevant and engaging.
Best For: Start-ups, agencies, and teams looking to serve customers better on social media
Top Features
- Unified inbox to monitor and respond to messages arriving from different funnels
- Review management across platforms to control your online reputation
- Automated Chatbots for faster responses
- Labeling and sorting of messages for effective communication access
- Social CRM for easy access to communication history and contact information for personalized, quicker resolution of issues
Pros
- Automated and customizable workflows
- Greater team productivity
- Increased customer engagement and experiences
Cons
- Customer support
- Difficult to scale
Help Scout
One of the trusted customer service tools, Help Scout empowers your business to establish customer relationships through multiple channels, such as live chat, emails, proactive messages, and help centers. It is known to simplify customer service tasks through automation, centralization, and collaboration.
Best For: Businesses of all sizes keen on elevating their customer experiences
Top Features
- Quick access to customer profile and previous interactions
- Shared inbox and other collaboration tools to empower your support teams to deliver human, personalized assistance
- Help center for self serve customer service
- Proactive messaging on the website and in-app for support and announcement
- Reporting to track team efficiency and customer satisfaction
Pros
- Ease of use
- Efficient, swifter customer conversations
- Integration with 50+ business tools
Cons
- Expensive for smaller teams
Pipefy CS
One of the best customer service software with a no/low code platform, Pipefy CS helps significantly improve your CSAT and customer success scores. Whether streamlining customer requests and automating emails or standardizing workflows, and optimizing the customer onboarding process, it ensures your customers feel valued through its streamlined interface.
Best For: Companies and entrepreneurs with zero to minimal technical background wanting to maximize customer support experience
Top Features
- Offers automated onboarding and customer service with feedback messages
- Enables sending automatic email updates
- Includes custom dashboards to streamline, manage and track information
- Allows you to define a standard workflow to centralize customer service tools
- Provides 360-degree visibility into all your support tickets
- Offers integration with popular tools, such as ERP, CRM, and databases
Pros
- Lower customer response times
- Easy to deploy and use
- Zero technological expertise needed
Cons
- Expensive pricing
- The mobile app isn’t that user-friendly
TeamSupport
TeamSupport is a well-known name in the B2B industry for effortless customer service and management. It comes in with multi-channel support so that your support team stays in sync to raise customer satisfaction while providing the customers with a pleasant experience.
Best For: B2B companies looking to aid its customer service agents in dealing with greater complexity support issues
Top Features
- Offers insightful customer management with information tracking and history
- Ability to determine trends based on customer data
- Provides workflow optimization through integration with tools like MailChimp, Slack and JIRA
- Simplifies internal communication among your team members through its web-enabled help desk
- Includes self-service customer portal where they can instantly find answers to their queries
Pros
- Omnichannel experience
- Streamlined customer support
- Simplified complex support issues
- Better team collaboration
- Stronger customer relationships
Cons
- Limited functionality
- Complex UI
- Relatively tough to set up and configure
Zoho Desk
For businesses finding it hard to manage customer requests from diverse channels like phone, email, website, social media, and chat, Zoho Desk can be of great help. It organizes conversations from multiple channels into a single place and fosters faster response and follow-ups.
Best For: Customer-centric businesses with a high request and interaction volume
Top Features
- Streamlined management of diverse communication platforms
- Automation of repetitive manual tasks
- AI-powered assistant to analyze consumer sentiments, identify ticket traffic anomalies and prioritize support tickets
- Self serve customer service platform with an engaging knowledge base and user community
- Hassle-free integration with established business solutions, for instance, Microsoft Teams, Trello, and Salesforce
Pros
- Improvement in service agent productivity
- 24/7 customer support through robust self-service
- Simplified process management
- Faster ticket resolution
Cons
- Limited customization
- Less user-friendly on mobile apps
HelpSpot
A simple help desk software, HelpSpot includes everything your customer support executives may need to fulfill requests more efficiently and in record time. It can be the right customer service software for your growing venture from robust reporting tools and automation to scalability.
Best For: Companies across verticals and sizes
Top Features
- Organizes emails into meaningful conversations
- Offers one shared inbox for better information flow
- Enables filtering, tracking, categorizing, and tagging of tickets for hassle-free management
- Allows creation of saved responses and easy sharing of the same
- Includes completely customizable contact forms as well as a knowledge base
- Packs in comprehensive reporting, custom fields, and automated processes
Pros
- On-premise and cloud availability
- Easy to use
- Organized conversations
Cons
- Functionality
- Customer service
Hesk
As a free help desk software, Hesk offers an interesting set of features to improve your customer experiences and retention percentage. With its basic service tools in place, the platform helps you organize, track, and solve client requests faster.
Best For: Entrepreneurs, start-ups, and businesses wanting great customer service functions at no cost
Top Features
- Offers ticket management with powerful ticket organization, assignment, and tracking
- Includes ticket prioritization
- Allows you to add notes to tickets for better customer communication
- Facilitates monitoring of time spent on each query resolution
- Packs in the ability to restrict agent access
- Provides comprehensive customer portals for self-service
- It empowers you to create canned responses
Pros
- Elevated customer support
- Faster response time
- Cloud availability
Cons
- Restricted features and functionality compared to other players in the market
Deskero
A renowned software offering help desk support, Deskero combines customer care with social engagement to strengthen its brand. The software includes everything you need in one place, right from live chat to social network integration to effective client management, to provide positive customer experiences.
Best For: Companies of all sizes and verticals looking for a better ticket system
Top Features
- Organizes customer requests into one place from different channels
- Allows you to tag, prioritize, group, and filter tickets
- Provides easy integration of social networks to promptly serve customers
- Offers instant, custom chat workflow
- Offers hassle-free reporting and team performance tracking capabilities
- Includes self-service portals for customers
Pros
- Effective customer engagement
- Solid security mechanism
- Integration with other tools
Cons
- Expensive for larger teams
Service Hub by HubSpot
From live chat to bots to knowledge base to automation to customer feedback tools to ticketing, HubSpot Service Hub is one of the best all-in-one customer service tools you can get for your business for flawless customer experiences.
Best For: Growing businesses belonging to any vertical
Top Features
- Offers real-time conversations with your website visitors
- Allows creation of a pool of articles and libraries to foster customer self-service
- Includes a help desk with ticket prioritization and routing
- Offers tools, for instance, customer feedback surveys, to measure customer happiness
- Packs in smart reporting to measure performance
Pros
- Faster response time
- Stronger consumer relationships
- Enhanced team collaboration
Cons
- Tricky to set up
- Cost
Salesforce Service Cloud
With Salesforce Service Cloud, you can develop end-to-end customer engagement and extend support from wherever you are. The platform empowers your customer service team to resolve requests faster without compromising on personalized communication.
Best For: Businesses looking for a comprehensive help desk and CRM system
Top Features
- Offers multi-channel support for customer communication
- Organizes communication in one place
- It brings automation to business operations with smart workflows
- Simplifies account and contact management
- Provides productivity tools to help your agents perform better
- It consists of intelligent reporting with shareable and actionable insights
- It comes in with AI-enabled chatbots
Pros
- Accelerates the response time
- Easy access to information
- Streamlined workflow
Cons
- Steep learning curve
- Limited customization
- Complex feature implementation
Conclusion
Customer service, as we all know, can either make or break your business. Manual management of customer requests can get tiring, confusing, and time-consuming, especially for a large-scale business receiving 1000s of queries every day. That’s when switching to an effective customer service software solution proves to be a fruitful decision.
We’ve discussed and compared the best customer service tools in this blog, enabling you to make the right choice. Identify your requirements first, compare them against the features offered by the tools and select the one that best fits your needs.
In case, if you are still finding it difficult to choose the right software for your business, it is advisable to start with CloudTutorial and take advantage of a 14-day FREE trial. This software makes it easier than ever to answer your customers’ queries before you finish your coffee!
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