With hundreds of customer service software (CSS) options out there, which one is right for your company? In this post, we look at the pros and cons of the 3 most popular CSS options so you won’t have to.
Wix Answers
Free, customisable customer support software
Wix Answers allows you to create your own help desk to support your customers any way you like. It covers several customer care features including: a ticketing system, knowledge base, call center and more.
Why it might be perfect for you: It’s free, which will come in handy for early stage businesses. Technofaq highlights the fact that it’s very simple to set up, which means if you’re short of techies or have them tied up elsewhere, this could be an alternative to have your css up and running by yourself. Users online highlight the exact same thing: easy to use, easy to customise, easy to set up.
Why it may not be what you’re looking for right now: getapp warns that Wix Answers only supports English. In a time when you need to break language barriers more than ever before, this could be quite a big flaw. Also, it’s still missing some basic functionalities such as a content collaboration with in-line comments, or table editing options.
Zendesk
Customer service software for businesses big and small
This help desk platform is used by 40,000 businesses of all sizes – including some pretty big names. Disney, Airbnb and Groupon are said to be customers, for example. The fact that it caters to SMBs as well as these multinational giants might be all the proof we need that it is a versatile service to host your customer experience.
Why it might be perfect for you: It might be no frills, no thrills, but it does a really good job: SupportNinja describes it as a good platform to start with if your are looking for a customer service solution that is quick to launch and nearly ready to go. “It is highly operational, functional, and gets the job done.” The big advantage though is that Zendesk is not only good to get you started but also as you grow, as it is highly scalable. They also provide multilingual customer support which might be good if you’re running an international business.
Why it may not be what you’re looking for right now: PCMag warns that Zendesk’s prices can get expensive if you need to use its best features or more than a handful of customer support agents.
Salesforce Service Cloud
Drag-and-drop customer support software
Salesforce is a big name in the CRM game: it has over 150,000 customers. Their Service Cloud is an innovative customer service software which your team can build without any coding. Or, as you have over 75 functionalities to pick and choose from and all you need is a few clicks to set them up. It allows your customer service agents easy prioritisation of tasks and tickets and a great search feature that works across Salesforce but also outside data sources. You can also use Macros to automate customer service responses which really speeds up your support, and have multilingual customer support.
Why it might be perfect for you: According to TechCrunch, Salesforce Service cloud “enables non-technical administrators to build a customer service organisation with connected services in less than a day.” So it’s a great choice if you want something versatile and smart but are short on developers. Also, if you already use Salesforce for any other service it might be a good idea to keep it all in one place.
Why it may not be what you’re looking for right now: Salesforce’s email processing might be more used for sales than Customer Support, as Toolbox Tech points out — nonetheless, its service cloud solution is still used by companies such as Adidas, American Express, or Coca-cola. Main concern is the price, however: at $65 per agent per month for its lower rung, it might put some boot-strappers off.
Freshdesk
Over 100,000 businesses use this customer care software
Freshdesk is a popular CSS option owned and developed by Freshworks. It has been tried and tested by businesses worldwide with several different products. Tools to manage your customer experience include an advanced ticketing system, a team inbox, integration with Facebook and Twitter, SLA management to make sure your team is answering everything within the time limits you promised your customers, and a feature that prevents two agents of trying to help the same customer. Flexible pricing means you only pay for what you need.
Why it might be perfect for you: FinancesOnline has named Freshdesk the Best Help Desk Software of 2017, due to wide range of features and reliability. It is easy to use, with a series of useful integrations, including multilingual customer support, and it also provides insightful reports. Freshdesk might be what you’re looking for if you’re a Small or Medium sized business.
Why it may not be what you’re looking for right now: PCWorld warns that Freshdesk doesn’t have any change management capabilities and that tickets can’t be tracked to assets. It’s built for SMBs and if your business is your growing past that point, these issues might be problematic.
Now that you know which customer engagement software is designed for smaller ops and which ones are meant to tackle global challenges, the choice is yours to make. What do you need the most? Out-of-the box software or customisation? Reliability or automation? And how much are you willing to spend?
These questions only you can answer, of course. After all, nobody knows your business better than you.
Oh. By the way: if you are figuring out how many agents you’ll need manning your customer service software, remember that Unbabel can help every single one tackle tickets across any number of languages with our multilingual support solution. Quickly and affordably, and with high quality translation too thanks to our AI-powered human translation.
Check out our list of integrations to see if the platforms you use can seamlessly integrate with Unbabel’s translation as a service, or build your own integration with our Translation API.
Source: https://unbabel.com/blog/best-customer-service-software/
