07 May Best Customer Support Tools in 2022

When it comes to customer service, small businesses usually tend to fair better when compared to larger companies. This is partly because they have fewer customers and can therefore afford to treat everyone as an individual and offer a more personalized service.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, larger businesses with thousands of employees cannot compare. Most people report great issues with customer service and “feeling like just a number.”

This is partly because companies with more money sometimes just throw money at the problem and call it a day. But in reality, any company, big or small, can treat their customers to a supreme customer support experience with the right tools and effort. Various kinds of customer support tools are available on the market, ranging from help desks to phone chats.

So, instead of yammering on about one kind of support only, we’ll recommend a few different kinds so you can mix and match.

1. Freshdesk

Freshdesk is a top choice for those looking for an all-in-one helpdesk solution. It comes with comprehensive reporting capabilities and the best ticket monitoring and administration in the industry. But Freshdesk can engage your support personnel that truly sets it apart from other tools on the market.

Freshdesk Arcade is a unique gamification system that includes ticket resolution leaderboards and customized awards systems, allowing you to create objectives and prizes for your customer care staff.

Freshdesk encourages your support staff to go above and beyond to ensure customer satisfaction by making it simple for customers to request help and your team members to provide it. This makes it more suitable for smaller businesses looking to provide a truly stellar customer support experience.

2. Hootsuite

While Hootsuite is primarily a social media management software, it comes with many features for customer service and social media communication. So, if your business deal predominately with social media, it might be good to look at it as an option.

Your social media profiles like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, and others will automatically be connected through this software. The Hootsuite Inbox tool allows you to keep track of messages from several social media platforms in one location, allocate requests to support team members, filter out questions that require quick attention, and discard those that do not.

To make the whole thing as streamlined as possible, the system also employs machine learning algorithms to select the most appropriate automatic responses or identify a team member with the most relevant expertise on the subject, allowing for both chatbot and live conversations.

3. Zendesk

No list of customer service tools would be complete without one of the biggest giants in the industry. Zendesk is a web-based customer care platform that enables companies to provide solutions and assistance to customers via phone, email, live chat, and social media.

It also allows users to single-handedly create online help desk centers where customers can report their issues or search a public knowledge base for answers. Besides just these functions, Zendesk is probably the best option for providing phone support.

The phone system from Zendesk is designed to operate with current phone numbers and requires no new software or hardware to set up. Call transcription, agent forwarding, call handling schedules, call routing, voicemail-to-ticket, and call analytics are among the basic features. Calls can also be forwarded to agents’ mobile devices if they’re working from home.

Zendesk is a bit on the pricer side. Still, it’s also extremely comprehensive and requires virtually zero effort to use as it can easily be integrated with virtually any other tool the team is already using.

5. Nicereply

Nicereply is not a tool that helps set up a customer service hub. Instead, it’s there to improve an existing one. It’s a tool for tracking customer service efforts, creating successful surveys, creating feedback forms, collaborating with other support agents, etc.

Your customer service team can use Nicereply to collect feedback from every customer they encounter. Plus, there’s minimal training involved as you can add themes, change colors, and add logos to your surveys without any coding knowledge whatsoever.

You can also monitor ratings, track the effectiveness of automated emails, make reports, construct trend charts, set up automation rules, interface with other apps, and employ over surveying security. Nicereply offers a 14-day free trial and four different subscription plans based on your company’s size and the features you need. f

Final Thoughts

In any B2C business, the customer is king. And even though they may not always be right, to succeed, one must meet their desires and address issues in the best way possible. A competent customer service team paired with a capable tool will do just that.