10 Customer Service Apps for 2023

10 Customer Service Apps for 2023

You can simplify your customer service processes with the help of the right customer service app. These apps will help you respond faster, send reminders of pending support requests, and automate a few mundane tasks.

sanjana

October 30, 2022

10 mins read

Once you learn to ace customer service, you will not have customers but loyal brand advocates—which is why customer Service is the backbone of your brand. But let’s not forget that providing excellent customer service is not an easy task. There will be dissatisfied customers to appease and challenging questions to answer in a stipulated time.

The good news is you can simplify your customer service processes with the help of the right customer service app. These apps will help you respond faster, send reminders of pending support requests, and automate a few mundane tasks.

But choosing one could be problematic with plenty of customer service apps. You may even end up choosing the wrong one. Today, we’ve narrowed it down to 10 customer service apps for different organizations. Read on to find the one for you!

What is Customer Service Software?

Customer service software consists of a set of tools that helps agents to organize, respond to, and close customer support requests.

Support emails slipping through the cracks?
Keeping is the best helpdesk for Gmail that turns emails into support tickets that you can track, assign, and prioritize.

This software helps you to manage various communication channels like email, chat, and messaging. It will help you to integrate external apps like social media and group chat systems. You can also expect to troubleshoot customer requests successfully to deliver good customer service experiences.

How to choose the right customer service app for your business?

You don’t have to use the best customer service app out there. Instead, choose software that aligns with your company and team. Before deciding on customer service software, look at these tips.

Understand your requirements

Any software you pick can only play a supporting role, while the leading role is your team. So, it’s necessary to ask them about their challenges and requirements. If your team is already using helpdesk software, ask them what they like or dislike.

For example, service reps working with Gmail often complain of a cluttered inbox and no way to keep track of customer interactions. So, you should choose software that helps you cater to such issues.

Define your goals

Do you want to offer a sophisticated hand-holding service experience for a selected group, or are you looking to cater to a mass volume with a fast turnaround time? Understanding your goals will help you to choose a software solution accordingly.

Look at the functionalities your business needs

Customer service software has many features, but you have to narrow them down to the ones you will use the most. For example, will you use live chat, phone support, or both?

Also, note down the must-have features, like integrating your existing apps to achieve a smooth workflow. Do not forget to assess your resources with a limited budget, as that will help eliminate expensive apps from the list. Take note of other factors like ease of use, the number of users, scalability, and customizability.

Double-check the app’s ability to automate tasks

Customer service apps that help you to automate mundane tasks will increase your team’s productivity and allow them to offer faster resolutions. Some of the features to look for are:

  • Should automatically assign requests
  • Offers customized auto-responder templates
  • Allows the reps to save replies to the most common questions

Create a list

Once you have considered all the above points, create a list of apps that fit your requirements. Check their features, reviews, and recommendations to choose your top picks.

After your top picks, dive deeper and talk to their customer service agents and existing customers to get a clear picture.

Take a trial

After you have decided on the software, take a trial. Ask a few team members to take the trail and see if the tool fits your work processes and makes it more accessible. If your team members find it challenging to use the tool, avoid purchasing it, as you will have to spend more time training them.

Do a team review

Before purchasing software:

  • Ask your team what challenges they faced during the trial.
  • Try to resolve those with the app’s support team.
  • Do not opt for complex apps that take up training time and make your service reps even slower than before.

10 Customer Service Apps to Deliver Excellent Customer Service

  1. Freshdesk

Freshdesk is the best customer support software for enterprise teams. They have four support offerings—a support desk, contact center, omnichannel suite, and customer success software. There are pricing plan tiers for both, but the help desk solution is at the lowest cost.

freshdesk

Service teams of any kind can use Freshdesk, but it fits best with companies requiring field service management. It has policies and built-in service-level agreements, which ensures that field service support is prioritized.

Apart from that, this app assigns tickets based on the agent’s workload and skillset. It also offers features like AI responder and field service management as add-ons.

Key Features

  • Help agents quickly solve customer inquiries with a knowledge base and workforce automation.
  • Appeal to customers by being available on the channel of their choice
  • Create AI-powered chatbots to guide customers in solving their problems
  • Team dashboards to check which agent is working on what
  • All communication is unified, which helps agents provide suitable support

Pricing– Free plans are available, and paid plans start from $15/month per agent

  1. Zendesk

Zendesk encourages businesses to create seamless and compelling customer experiences. It is one of the best support applications for larger teams, offering a ticketing system to manage customer communication.

zendesk

Conversations flow effortlessly across channels like Email, Twitter, and Facebook in any of their plans. With their premium plans, it is possible to manage phone and chat conversations too.

They have a sleek user interface that helps your customer service agents view conversations across channels without leaving their browsers. This means that the customers can connect anytime, anywhere, and receive the same level of service from you.

Key Features

  • Manage support queues by redirecting the customers to your knowledge base
  • Integrate third-party tools in your chat box for banking, e-commerce, and more
  • Offers 1300 apps to integrate
  • Preview messages without opening the ticket
  • Built-in guided tour with videos to train the agents

Pricing– Starting at $19/month per agent

  1. Help Scout

Help Scout is perfect for growing teams with little budget and spare time to set up or learn about a new app.

Helpscout

This app helps manage emails and live chat from one centralized tool so that your team can work with a single support queue. You can also create a shared knowledge base with their tools to encourage customers to find solutions to their questions.

The customer support tool comes with pre-built reports to keep track of your team’s performance. Help Scout has a few plans with add-on options and the ability to create customized plans based on your team size.

Key Features

  • Offers saved replies feature, which helps agents to create canned responses.
  • Features that reduce hassles for agents internally by showing them if their colleague is working on a support ticket
  • Has customer profiles that show you past customer interactions and data
  • Automate repeated tasks so that agents can cater to other customers
  • A comprehensive mailbox with access to automation, organization, and collaboration tools

Pricing– Plans start at $20/month per user

  1. Olark

Olark is the best customer support tool for teams looking for standalone live chat. This app helps you to chat with your customers in real time. The best part about this tool is that it can be a substitute for phone support as it offers the same level of immediacy. It’s ideal for all team sizes, including small businesses.

olark

It allows you to organize customer data by storing structured notes and transcripts, which can help optimize your products and services. The software has straightforward pricing, no term commitments on most plans, and a la carte options. So, you can get the features you like and skip the ones you don’t want.

Key Features

  • Customized pre-chat forms to understand the issue in detail.
  • Automated messages to send suggestions or offers at the right time
  • Unlimited integrations to send chat data to sales and support tools
  • Real-time dashboards with reports on customer feedback and chat metrics
  • Customize the chatbot based on your brand

Pricing– Starting from $29/month per agent

  1. LiveAgent

LiveAgent is the best option to automate live chat. It combines communication from different channels like emails, chat, and social media into a comprehensive dashboard. This helps the agent to view all the previous contact and offer an informed solution to the current customer problem.

liveagent

The app can also stop your agents from burning out. It helps them set their schedule and change the status of tickets in the queue to new tickets when they are out of the office. Since all the communication happens in one place, another agent can pick it up, and the customers don’t have to wait for a resolution.

The unique part about this app is its gamification feature which encourages the support agents to complete tasks as they earn points and rewards. This motivates the team and makes customer service fun.

Key Features

  • Stylish live-chat widget which offers personalized real-time support
  • Built-in CRM with automatic chat routing
  • Automatically distributes tickets based on your agent’s workload.
  • Integrates 200+ tools
  • Train your agents with their vast knowledge base

Pricing- Starting at $15/month per agent

  1. Aircall

The software is suitable for any team size offering phone support. Companies offering complex solutions must-have phone support as more than 50% of customers prefer to pick up a call to resolve such issue.

aircall

Aircall makes it easy to manage phone support with the help of call queuing, IVR, and the option of setting up business hours. With these essentials, your team can set up phone support.

It offers various plans, and you can choose one that suits your budget. The tool provides desktop notifications of incoming calls with loud and clear rings so you do not miss a call.

Key Features

  • Voicemail which allows you to record calls to greet customers when you are away
  • Call routing helps you to direct calls to the correct agents by customizing distribution and ring rules.
  • It allows inbound callers to remain in queue until an agent is available to talk.
  • Call recordings that help you to confirm details and monitor the performance of your team
  • Stay available by forwarding calls to your mobile device when not in the office

Pricing- Starting at $30/month per agent

  1. Salesforce

Previously known as desk.com, it is an affordable customer service option for all businesses. It helps to integrate all customer communication from different channels like social media platforms, chat, email and phone.

salesforce

It creates a universal inbox that helps customer service representatives to respond efficiently through any channel. The app also tracks all customer journey stages in one place.

You don’t need an IT professional to set up the software; support is available, and setup is easy. Also, the first agent is free for life.

Key Features

  • Create tailored communication support on your customer’s terms, channel, and time frame
  • Agents can respond faster as it offers a complete customer view.
  • Share data to get comprehensive customer insights across service, sales, and marketing departments.
  • Manage all the communication channels in a single view
  • Build service the way your customers want with the app’s cloud platform

Pricing– Starting from $25/month per agent

  1. UserEcho

It is a unique app that allows you to collect feedback from your customers when they raise support tickets. If you are planning to collect authentic customer feedback, this tool is for you.

userecho

It is a forum-focused support tool where users can discuss new features to improve the product. They can even add comments and thoughts that you can view in your email support queue so you won’t forget the essential things for your users.

Apart from that, it offers a regular help desk and live chat solution. They have a knowledge base too, but it is a little challenging to set up because of their cluttered and dense UI.

Key Features

  • Allows you to create a community forum around your brand that helps the customers to give feedback and suggestions
  • It has a convenient voting system that allows you to understand what your customer likes or dislikes
  • Automatically searches for solutions in the knowledge base when a customer types a query to reduce the burden on the support team.
  • Can cater to omnichannel requests from one place
  • Set up auto-replies to notify the customers about receiving their email

Pricing– Starting from $25/month per user

  1. SurveyMonkey

If you want to gather an in-depth approach from customers about their experience with you, then SurveyMonkey is the right tool for you. It is affordable, and all kinds of businesses can use it.

surveymonkey

It allows you to create long and short surveys with the ability to customize questions that suit your customers instead of just asking them some random satisfaction questions. For example, if you want feedback on a specific product, you can add a dependency to the question, “Have you used the product?” If the answer is “No,” then it skips that customer.

The app also has a library of integrations that allows you to merge this tool into your existing workflow. You can ask your customers for a survey or feedback with minimal disruption.

Key Features

  • Collect surveys via links, social media, mobile chat, and email
  • Plans range from individuals to teams.
  • Library of templates to choose from
  • It helps you to collect feedback at every touchpoint through the customer journey to gain a deeper understanding of their expectations.
  • Respond to customer feedback directly from the platform

Pricing– Offers a free basic plan. Premium plans start from $19/month per user.

  1. Keeping

Keeping is a help desk that works in your Gmail. It is Gmail with extra features—precisely what teams use email for support needs. With Keeping, you get all the features needed to deliver exceptional customer service. You have agent allocation, in-built reports, customer history tracking, and assignment features.

Keeping is specifically designed to support the needs of small businesses and starting teams. When you use Keeping, you’re able to deliver exceptional customer service, and that too at affordable costs.

Keeping Screenshot

Key Features

  • Tag tickets with labels like order processing, after-sales, etc., and set priorities for urgent and non-urgent tickets.
  • Create and share shared knowledge bases with your team members for quicker responses.
  • Private notes allow you to discuss with different members without having to forward emails.
  • Shopify and Zapier integrations. Shopify allows you to view order status, while Zapier further connects Keeping with other applications like Slack.

Pricing– Starting from $8/month per user

sanjana

Sanjana Sankhyan is a freelance writer who specializes in delivering data-driven blog posts for B2B SaaS brands. She helps businesses attract more audience and sales with her writing. If not writing, you’ll find her helping other freelancers improve their work. Find her on LinkedIn or Twitter.

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