Your customers will make or break the success of your business. Happy customers keep coming back and spending more money, while unsatisfied customers will cause significant damage to your reputation.
In fact, an unhappy customer will tell up to 15 people about their poor experience. Negative interactions spread twice as fast as positive ones.
91% of customers who experienced poor service will never do business with you again.
On the flip side, eight out of ten consumers are more likely to buy from businesses again after a positive customer service experience. A 5% increase in customer retention can boost profits by up to 125%.
The numbers speak for themselves. Customer service must be a priority for every business.
Fortunately, the right customer service software can make this possible. Customer service solutions help ensure fast response times, positive interactions, and happy customers.
The 8 Best Customer Service Software of 2020
Customer service software is a saturated industry. There are so many options available on the market. But some of these tools are significantly better than others.
After researching and testing dozens of customer service solutions, I’ve narrowed down the top eight for you to consider.
As we continue you through this guide, I’ll give you an in-depth review of each one below. You’ll learn about the top features, benefits, use cases, pricing, and more.
Best Customer Service Software Reviews
Zendesk
• Free trial available
• Starts at $89/mo
• Flexible customized solutions
• Used by 150,000+ businesses
• Try for Free
Zendesk is one of the best overall customer service software solutions on the market today. It’s used by 150,000+ businesses, including big brands like Uber, Venmo, Shopify, and Slack.
The Zendesk support suite has everything you need to manage customer service communication across multiple channels. You can provide customer support via email, live chat, voice, Facebook, Twitter, WeChat, WhatsApp, and more.
The software makes it possible to connect all of your data sources to a single location. So when a customer contacts you for support, the right information will automatically be on display.
Zendesk is flexible, so it can support the needs of any business. You can get a customized solution that fits with your existing support environment.
Here’s a quick overview of the plans, features, and pricing for the Zendesk support suite:
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
The full-service support suite from Zendesk has it all. But not every business needs something this comprehensive. If you’re looking for something a little bit more basic, Zendesk offers more affordable options for smaller businesses.
- Essential — $5 per month per agent
- Team — $19 per month per agent
- Professional — $49 per month per agent
- Enterprise — $99 per month per agent
- Elite — $199 per month per agent
You can try any Zendesk software or support suite with a free trial. If you’re looking for a customized solution, contact the Zendesk sales team.
Salesforce Service Cloud
• Starts at $25/month
• Resolve cases quicker
• Streamline your on-site support
• Trusted by 150,000+ companies
• Get Started Now
Salesforce is an industry leader in sales CRM software. But they also offer tools and solutions for customer service. It’s trusted by 150,000+ companies across the world.
The Salesforce Service Cloud makes it easy for any business to build customer relationships while saving time and improving customer satisfaction. Brands like Yeti and Adidas are just a couple of well-known names that use this software.
Your customer service representatives will be able to resolve cases quicker with the insights and tools offered by Salesforce. The platform has a shared view of every customer interaction.
Set up self-service portals so your customers can access account information, view tutorials, and view knowledge base articles.
The Salesforce Service Cloud has capabilities to streamline your on-site support. Field service works, dispatchers, and on-site technicians can use these tools to resolve problems during the first visit.
Salesforce uses AI to predict recommendations and provide support with an intuitive chatbot service.
Let’s take a look at the plans and pricing for Salesforce Service Cloud:
Essentials — $25 per user per month
- Case management
- Service console apps
- Knowledge tools
- Telephony integration (CTI)
Professional — $75 per user per month
- All Essentials features
- Service contracts
Enterprise — $150 per user per month
- All Professional features
- Web services API
Unlimited — $300 per user per month
- All Enterprise features
- 24/7 support and configuration
All plans come with tools for collaboration, productivity, personalization, real-time insights, cross-sell and upsell tools, app integration, and solutions to automate processes.
Salesforce offers add-ons for things like field service workers, digital engagement, and location-based intelligence.
LiveAgent
• 100% free forever plan
• Upgrades starting at $15/mo
• All-in-one solution
• Simple and flexible tools
• Get Started Now
LiveAgent is a customer service solution that helps you manage all customer requests from multiple channels in a single platform.
No matter where your customers are, you can merge all communication and support to one place. LiveAgent saves you time, simplifies the process, and allows you to increase the profitability of your support team.
LiveAgent has tools for:
- Email ticketing
- Live chat
- Voice and video calls
- Social media integration
Here’s a closer look at the plans and prices for customer service software form LiveAgent:
Free — $0 forever
- 7 day ticket history
- 1 email address for ticketing
- 1 live chat button
- 1 phone number for call center support
Ticket — $15 per month per agent
- Unlimited ticket history
- Unlimited email ticketing
- Load data from your CRM
- Multi-brand support
Ticket + Chat — $29 per month per agent
- Unlimited live chat
- Real-time visitor monitor
- Chat invitations
- Chat satisfaction surveys
All-inclusive — $39 per month per agent
- Unlimited call center support
- Video calling
- Gamification
- Unlimited call storage
For all of the paid plans, LiveAgent has add-on pricing for features like social media integration, time tracking, audit logs, and more.
Overall, it’s a simple and flexible tool for managing live customers with ticketing and live chat.
Freshdesk
• Free 21-day trial
• Plans start at $15/mo
• Extensive list of features
• Trusted by 150,000+ businesses
• Try for Free
Freshdesk is another one of the most popular help desk solutions on the market today. Above all, it’s simple. That’s why it’s trusted by 150,000+ businesses, including American Express, HP, and Panasonic.
With Freshdesk, you’ll have access to an extensive list of features across a wide range of customer support categories:
- Ticketing
- Collaboration
- Field Service
- Automation
- Customer self-service
- Reporting
- Multi-channel support
It’s an excellent solution to streamline all of your customer connections in a single location. Freshdesk makes team collaboration and automation a breeze.
If you’re currently using another help desk solution and you’re unhappy with it, Freshdesk makes it easy for you to switch to its software.
Here’s an overview of the plans and pricing. All rates are based on an annual plan. The prices are a bit higher if you go month-to-month.
Sprout — Free
- Unlimited agents
- Email ticketing
- Team collaboration
- Knowledge base
- Ticket trend reports
- Social ticketing
Blossom — $15 per month per agent
- Automations
- Collision detection
- Marketplace apps
- Helpdesk
- SLA management
- Business hours
Garden — $29 per month per agent
- Time tracking
- CSAT survey
- Session replay
- Performance report
- Knowledge base with multi-lingual support
Estate — $49 per month per agent
- Automated ticket assignment
- Custom agent roles
- Custom portal
- Enterprise reporting
- Multiple time zones and SLAs
Forest — $109 per month per agent
- Ticket assignment based on skills
- Create a testing environment without affecting agents or customers
- IP Whitelisting
- HIPAA compliant
- Extendable API rate limit
Freshdesk has omnichannel add-ons and features for field service management for an additional fee. Try it free with a 21-day trial.
HubSpot
• 100% free forever plan
• Advanced features start at $40/mo
• Wide range of solutions
• Free software for customer service
• Try for Free
HubSpot is one of the most well-recognized CRMs in the industry. They have a wide range of software and solution suites for managing relationships with customers.
These offerings are segmented into three main categories—sales, marketing, and service.
The HubSpot Service Hub is what we’ll be focusing on here today. It’s an exceptional solution for managing customer issues through service tickets.
I like HubSpot because they offer free CRM solutions, including free software for customer service. Free features include ticketing, live chat, chatbots, team email, and a conversations inbox. You’ll also benefit from free email templates, closed ticket reports, and time-to-close reports.
HubSpot is proof that you don’t need to spend a ton of money on improving your customer service with software. This won’t cost you a thing.
For those of you who want access to advanced features and benefits, here’s an overview o the paid plans:
Starter — $40 per month
- Includes two paid users
- Canned snippets
- Meeting scheduling
- Agent productivity reports
- Calling
Professional — $320 per month
- Includes five paid users
- Ticket status, routing, automation, and pipelines
- Knowledge base
- 1:1 video creation
- Custom reporting
- Surveys for NPS, experience, and support
Enterprise — $1,200 per month
- Includes ten paid users
- Playbooks and goals
- Hierarchical teams
- User roles
- Single sign-on
- Integrates with Slack
All rates are based on an annual contract. You can get the HubSpot Service Hub month-to-month for 20% more.
HubSpot also offers exceptional product bundles for all CRM categories in a single solution. So if you want to get software for service, sales, and marketing from a single provider, HubSpot is the best option for you. Bundles start at $112.50 per month.
Groove
• Plans start at $9/month
• Team collaboration tools
• Customizable knowledge base
• Exceptional automation tools
• Get Started Now
Groove isn’t as popular and well-known as some of the other options on our list. But it’s still used by more than 10,000 businesses across 140+ countries.
If your company has outgrown email for customer support and you’re getting inquiries on multiple channels, Groove will be a top choice for you to consider.
This solution stands out from the crowd with its team collaboration tools. You can add internal private notes to discussions, quickly mention teammates to bring them in the loop, and assign specific tasks to members of the team.
Groove has exceptional automations to streamline your customer support. Set rules, tagging, canned replies, and custom folders with your preferences to eliminate busywork.
Another standout feature from Groove is the ability to customize your knowledge base. This is crucial for businesses that want to offer customer self-service tools.
The knowledge base themes are fully customizable, beautifully designed, and mobile responsive. Plans and pricing for Groove customer support software are as follows:
Starter — $9 per month per user
- One mailbox
- Knowledge base
- Live chat
- Web widget
- Assignments and mentions
Plus — $19 per month per user
- 5 mailboxes
- Full history of reports
- Rules
- API access
- 40+ integrations
Pro — $29 per month per user
- 25 mailboxes
- Teams
- WhatsApp and SMS
- Integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, and Jira
Company — Custom pricing
- Unlimited mailboxes
- Priority support
- Dedicated customer support manager
- SSO/SAML
- Enterprise-level security
I’d recommend Groove for small teams and startups. In fact, they have a special startup rate for businesses with less than ten employees. Eligible businesses can get a 93% discount off of the Pro plan.
Zoho Desk
• Free forever plan
• Upgrade starting at $12/mo
• Email ticketing & help center
• Mobile app access
• Try for Free
Zoho is one of the most popular names in the world of business software and CRM. The company has tools for sales, marketing, email, collaboration, finance, accounting, human resources, and business intelligence.
But one of the best solutions that they offer is Zoho Desk—IT and help desk software.
Zoho Desk has solutions for customer service agents, managers, and customers. But above all, it’s arguably the best customer service software for managing and closing tickets.
Let’s take a closer look at the plans and price points for Zoho Desk:
Free — $0
- Up to three agents
- Email ticketing
- Help center
- Private knowledge base
- Predefined SLAs
- Mobile app
- Multilingual help desk
Standard — $12 per month per agent
- Social and community channels
- Product-based ticket management
- Public knowledge base
- Escalations
- Workflow and assignment rules
- Supervise rules
- Customer happiness ratings
Professional — $20 per month per agent
- Multi-department ticketing
- Team management
- Telephony
- Automated time tracking
- Ticket templates
- Ticket sharing
- Mobile SDK
Enterprise — $35 per month per agent
- Live chat
- AI
- Customize help center
- Advanced process management
- Scheduled reports
- Validation rules
- Role-based data sharing
No matter how big, small, or complex your business is, Zoho Desk has a plan for you.
Help Scout
• Plans start at $20/month
• Certified B corporation
• High-quality software
• Used by 10,000+ businesses
• Try for Free
Help Scout is another lesser-known solution on our list. But with that said, it’s still a high-quality software for customer service. It’s used by 10,000+ businesses worldwide.
Help Scout is unique because it’s a Certified B corporation. They strive to make a positive impact on the environment and communities. So they go the extra mile to support organizations that share the same values.
If you have a nonprofit that supports human rights, environmental sustainability, or underrepresentation in tech, Help Scout will provide a significant discount on your customer service software.
Some of you might even be eligible for discounts of up to 100%. That’s right—free.
Even if you don’t fall into one of those categories, Help Scout is still a top solution for customer service. Here’s a closer look at the plans and prices:
Standard — $20 per month per user
- Three mail boxes
- Beacon with live chat
- Messages for up to 10,000 customers
- Reports
- Automated workflows
- 50+ integrations
Plus — $35 per month per user
- 10 mailboxes
- Custom fields and teams
- Salesforce, HubSpot, and Jira apps
- HIPAA compliance
- SSO/SAML authentication
Company — Custom pricing
- Unlimited mailboxes and docs sites
- Flexible users
- Concierge onboarding
- Dedicated account manager
- Enterprise-grade security
The rates above are based on an annual contract. Month-to-month plans are available for an additional fee. You can try Help Scout for free with a 15-day trial.
How to Choose the Best Customer Service Software For Your Business
What’s the best customer service software for your business? There are certain features and considerations to keep in mind as you’re evaluating different options.
This is the methodology that we use and recommend here at Quick Sprout.
Number of Agents
How big is your customer service team? Companies with five service reps won’t need the same software as a business with 50 agents.
Larger teams need features for things like collaboration and role-based ticketing, but that won’t be necessary for a smaller business.
Customer Communication Method
How are customers currently reaching out to your service team? How do you want them to do so moving forward?
There’s a software for everything. Whether it’s email, live chat, chatbots, or support tickets, you can find a solution to meet your needs. There are even tools for social media integration so all of your messages, including DMs and comments, can be managed from a single dashboard.
Feature Bundles
Every customer service software on our list does an exceptional job of marketing its top features. But with that said, you should only focus on the features you need the most.
For example, are you looking for customer service software specifically for live chat? LiveAgent will be a top choice for you. If you want a solution for your field service agents, use Salesforce Service Cloud. There are even tools for customer service, sales, and marketing CRM built into single product bundles.
My suggestion is this. Identify the features you definitely need. Then look for the right plan that has all of those features.
Price
The price for customer service software varies on a wide range of factors. Lots of solutions charge you based on the number of customer service agents on your team.
Available features in your package will also have a significant impact on what you pay.
Customer service is definitely not something you should skimp on. It’s ok to spend money. But with that said, not all of you need to go overboard. Small businesses, startups, and nonprofits with smaller teams can use free customer service software without compromising quality.
Conclusion
Every business must prioritize customer service. These are the top eight customer service software solutions on the market today:
- Zendesk — Best overall customer service software with support suite options available.
- Salesforce Service Cloud — Best customer service software for field service agents.
- LiveAgent — Best customer service software for live chat support.
- Freshdesk — Best customer service software if you’re switching from another platform.
- HubSpot — Best free customer service software and product bundles.
- Groove — Best customer service software for small teams and growth startups.
- Zoho Desk — Best customer service software for ticketing.
- Help Scout — Best customer service software for nonprofits.
Use this guide to help you find the best solution for your business. I made sure to include something for everyone on my list.
https://www.quicksprout.com/best-customer-service-software/
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