The best customer service software for 2023

Customer service software is the backbone of a great customer experience. With customers now expecting an immersive, personalized experience with every brand interaction, it’s more important than ever to have the best customer service software.

Knowing which tools are suitable for your business and vetting providers can be easy with the right guide. We break down the basics of customer support software and detail the top customer service software so you can determine which one is right for you.

Table of contents:

• What is customer service software?

• Comparison chart of the top customer service software solutions

• 21 best customer support tools

• Features of customer service tools

• Benefits of customer support software

• Different types of software for customer support

• Customer service software best practices

• Current trends for customer service platforms

• How to choose the right customer service platform for your business

• Frequently asked questions

• Try customer service software for free

Customer service software is any program that helps an organization deliver support to the people who buy or use their products.

The most basic role of customer service software is to provide a centralized system, known as a ticketing system, where service agents can track, prioritize, manage, respond to, and resolve customer queries or employee requests.

Customer service software includes any tool that helps facilitate customer support, including knowledge bases, messaging apps, automation software, analytics dashboards, and more. It’s often integrated with CRM software to give agents access to contextual data (such as a customer’s purchase history) from external sources. This equips a support team with details about who a customer is, where they’re coming from, and why they’re reaching out—regardless of the channel.

1. Zendesk

Zendesk offers customer service software that empowers businesses to build effortless customer experiences. Conversations flow seamlessly across channels, leading to greater productivity and efficiency. With the Agent Workspace, agents can plug in and have a single view of the customer. This flexible platform allows your agents to deliver fast, personalized responses on any channel from a unified interface.

Zendesk for enterprise companies

Enterprise companies need the right balance of simplicity and sophistication to align large teams and technology around what matters most—the customer. Zendesk for enterprise can help you meet the needs of an evolving customer base on their preferred channels and provide personalized experiences.

A large, dispersed company means managing multiple agents and their unique skill sets. Zendesk equips businesses with the tools—like skills-based routing, AI-powered automation, and self-service capabilities—to meet the different types of customer needs. Our customer service software is quick to implement, is easy to use, and scales to fit the needs of businesses of all sizes.

The Zendesk ticketing system seamlessly integrates with other tools, data, and communications across all departments to ensure smooth customer interactions and fewer internal miscommunications. This cross-functional collaboration breaks down silos, allowing your agents to deliver fast, personalized responses on any channel from a unified interface.

Free trial: 14 days

Learn more about Zendesk enterprise customer service software.

Zendesk for SMBs

Zendesk gives smaller teams the gift of scalability and flexibility. Our complete customer service solution is powerful yet easy to use and works right out of the box for a fast time to value. It’s designed to help your customer service agents work better together, maximizing their time and energy. Plus, it’s simple to customize with the tools you already use, so you can build on your existing system.

By working within our centralized workspace, you’ll have all the tools necessary to keep track of customer questions and share the information they need, right when they need it. With AI-powered automations, your team can work smarter, faster, and reach more customers.

Free trial: 14 days

Learn more about SMB customer service software from Zendesk.

Zendesk for Startups

When you consistently meet and exceed your customers’ expectations, you win their trust and loyalty. Zendesk for Startups is an omnichannel support solution that empowers young businesses to meet customers where they are. With more than 1,200 integrations, you can customize your solution and consolidate interactions in one place via support channels like email, chat, and phone. You can also save time by providing self-service options.

The Zendesk for Startups Program provides a free six-month credit, including access to tailored resources and a growing network and community of customer experience leaders. This extended trial allows you to take the software for a spin and get a feel for what it can do for you—so when you make the leap and subscribe, you already know the features and benefits.

Free trial: 6 months

Learn more about Zendesk’s startup customer service software.

Zendesk pricing

Foundational Support

Support Team: $19 per user/month

Support Professional: $55 per user/month

Support Enterprise: $115 per user/month

Zendesk Suite

Suite Team: $55 per user/month

Suite Growth: $89 per user/month

Suite Professional: $115 per user/month

Suite Enterprise: Contact sales

Features:

• Unified omnichannel experience

• Sophisticated automation and workflows (SLAs and OLAs)

• Help center with intelligent self-service content gap identification

• Custom metrics, reports, and dashboards

• 1,000+ integrations

• Intelligent routing, skills based routing, and omnichannel routing

• No-code chatbot

• Flexible platform

• Trust and security

• AI-powered agent workspace

2. Intercom

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Intercom’s customer support solution uses automation and messaging to create a better experience for customers and internal teams. The Intercom Messenger works as a supplement to your existing support tools. The platform generates tickets through Messenger and other communication channels, such as email.

Messenger can provide live support through chat or offer self-service options for customers to find answers at their own pace. Intercom’s Resolution Bot offers automated support, like answering frequently asked questions or surfacing help center articles.

Features:

• Live chat for support

• Team inboxes

• Tickets

• Service-level agreement (SLA) rules

• Workload management

• Role-based permissions

• Outcome reporting

• Help articles

• Chatbots

Pricing:

Contact Intercom

Free trial: 14 days

Learn more about the Intercom and Zendesk integration.

3. Salesforce Service Cloud

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This customer service software from Salesforce provides agents with a single view for optimized customer support. Customer data, prior interactions, purchase history, and ticket information are consolidated in one place, allowing agents to view relevant details and provide fast support.

Salesforce Service Cloud lets agents automate and customize workflows to create a more efficient experience. Omnichannel routing automatically routes tickets from channels (like messaging, chat, email, and phone) to the support agent with the skill set to best handle the issue. Additionally, reporting and analytics features with pre-built dashboards allow management to monitor team performance across channels.

Features:

• Case management

• Knowledge management

• Telephony and voice

• Automation

• Reporting and analytics

• Remote assistance

Pricing:

Essentials: $25 per user/month

Professional: $75 per user/month

Enterprise: $150 per user/month

Unlimited: $300 per user/month

Free trial: 30 days

Learn more about Salesforce for Zendesk.

4. Front

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Front is a customer service solution focused on human connection. Rather than treating customers as tickets, Front aims to create strong, personal relationships. Front’s platform offers features that boost efficiency and productivity and help teams deliver a great customer experience at scale.

Front boasts a shared inbox that automatically consolidates customer inquiries from across channels and routes the messages to the best-suited agent. Each interaction gets logged, allowing agents who touch the account to access customer history for future customer support. Front also includes built-in collaboration features so teams can generate solutions.

Features:

• Shared inbox

• Team collaboration

• Customer data

• Omnichannel

• Reporting and analytics

• Automated workflows

• Live chat

• Integrations

Pricing:

Growth: $49 per seat/month

Scale: $99 per seat/month

Premier: $229 per seat/month

Free trial: 7 days

5. Tidio

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Tidio is a customer service platform for small and medium-sized businesses. It can help you provide excellent customer service and, in turn, boost sales. The customer information software features many tools, including live chat to increase proactive communication, automated chat with canned responses, and customizable greetings for new and repeat website visitors.

Tidio’s smart ticketing system helps your teams stay organized and manage customer requests in one place. Tidio can turn emails into tickets that route to their own tab, making it easy for agents to check the statuses. Tickets are customizable, and agents can add notes and create custom tags for easy collaboration.

Features:

• Live chat

• Canned responses

• Multilanguage

• Visual chat builder

• Post-communication surveys

• AI response bots

• Smart routing to agents

• Omnichannel support

Pricing:

Communicator: $19 per operator/month

Chatbots: $19 per operator/month

Tidio+: $329 per operator/month

Free plan: Available

Free trial: 7 days

6. Bitrix24

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Bitrix24 offers free online customer support software for businesses of any size. The platform allows your teams to offer omnichannel support and manage customer requests from a single location. You can also configure it to queue the requests by channel. Additional customizations include creating canned responses and configuring wait time rules.

Every customer interaction from all channels gets logged into your CRM. The system collects customer data and creates a new lead if the customer does not have an existing profile. Bitrix24 also offers robust activity reporting features, both pre-built and customizable.

Features:

• Time tracking

• Custom reports

• Dashboards

• Knowledge management

• Configurable access permissions

Pricing:

Basic: $61 per month (up to 5 users)

Standard: $124 per month (up to 50 users)

Professional: $249 per month (up to 100 users)

Free plan: Available

Free trial: 30 days

7. HappyFox

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HappyFox offers a customer service solution for all types of companies, from SMBs to large enterprises. The software keeps teams organized and features a 360 customer view for omnichannel support. With automations and customizable workflows, HappyFox helps reduce tedious tasks, making agents’ day-to-day work easier.

HappyFox also offers convenient self-service options, so internal and external customers can find answers to questions without generating a support ticket. These self-service resources include help center articles, FAQs, and community forums—all available within the customer portal.

Features:

• Ticketing system

• Unlimited custom reports

• Automatic ticket scheduling

• Customizable end-user interface

• Omnichannel agent workspace

• Reporting and analytics

Pricing:

Mighty: $39 per agent/month

Fantastic: $59 per agent/month

Enterprise: $79 per agent/month

Enterprise Plus: $99 per agent/month

Free trial: 14 days

Learn more about HappyFox Workflows for Zendesk.

8. NICE inContact CXone

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NICE inContact CXone consolidates customer context and contact center controls into a single interface for more efficient agents and better customer experiences. NICE inContact has a breadth of features for more sophisticated service operations.

In addition to voice solutions, ticketing routing, and other standard customer service capabilities, NICE provides valuable workforce and quality management tools that enable your service managers to improve their team’s performance.

Features:

• Ticket routing

• Workforce management

• Customer surveys

• Live chat software

• Native integrations

• Knowledge base

• API

• Tracking and reporting

• Self-service portal

• Automation

Pricing:

Contact Nice

Free trial: 60 days

Learn more about Nice inContact CXone for Zendesk.

9. Zoho Desk

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Zoho Desk offers customer support software that makes it easy for your reps to provide great customer service. The platform has tools and automation options that help streamline your agents’ workflows and increase efficiency and productivity. Zoho Desk’s software provides omnichannel support with a single view so agents can handle customer issues in one place.

Other Zoho Desk features include self-service resources, SLAs, sentiment analysis, AI, an advanced response editor, and built-in analytics. The platform allows you to track the important customer data to deliver personalized support.

Features:

• Self-service resources

• Omnichannel agent workspace

• Reporting and analytics

• Mobile optimization

• Ticket collaboration

• Ticketing system

• Routing

Pricing:

Standard: $20 per user/month

Professional: $35 per user/month

Enterprise: $50 per user/month

Free trial: 15 days

Learn more about Zoho Desk for Zendesk.

10. Boss Solutions Suite

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Boss Solutions Suite provides businesses with a fully integrated ITIL-based help desk software and IT asset management solution available on-premise or on the cloud. This software is primarily designed for larger companies and serves a variety of industries.

In addition to ticket routing, knowledge management, and self-service, Boss Solutions boasts asset, incident, and change management capabilities. These features enable businesses to stay organized and serve both internal and external customers.

Features:

• Ticket routing

• Native integrations

• Knowledge base

• API

• Tracking and reporting

• Self-service portal

  Automation

Pricing:

Essentials: $19 per user/month

Professional: $39 per user/month

Enterprise: $69 per user/month

H4 Free trial: 14 days

11. Jira Service Management

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Jira Service Management empowers IT teams with a modern service desk that works right out of the box, including ITIL-certified processes. Developed by Atlassian, Jira bills itself as the solution to silos between developers, operations, and IT.

Businesses that don’t focus on IT customer service can still use Jira, but they may find the feature set to be beyond the scope of their needs. Jira offers a seven-day free trial as well as a free plan that can give you a feel for the software.

Features:

• Ticket routing

• Live chat software

• Native integrations

• Knowledge base

• API

• Tracking and reporting

• Self-service portal

• Automation

Pricing:

Standard: $21 per agent/month

Premium: $47 per agent/month

Enterprise: Contact Jira

Free plan: Available for 3 agents

Free trial: 7 days

Learn more about Zendesk for Jira.

12. LiveAgent

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If your service team spends a lot of time communicating with customers via live chat, LiveAgent is definitely a tool to consider. LiveAgent improves live chat service delivery with features like a real-time typing view, customer service website monitoring for chat engagement, and proactive chat invitations based on active agents and their availability.

LiveAgent is a solid solution for smaller service teams that use WordPress. And its large library of native integrations allows your team to seamlessly work it into their existing workflows.

Features:

• Ticket routing

• Live chat software

• Native integrations

• Knowledge base

• API

• Tracking and reporting

• Self-service portal

• Community forums

• Automation

Pricing:

Small business: $12 per agent/month

Medium business: $35 per agent/month

Large business: $59 per agent/month

Free plan: Available (with limited features and integrations)

Free trial: 14 days

13. Freshdesk

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Featuring an intuitive interface and affordable price, Freshdesk helps customer service teams streamline collaboration and automation. In the more expensive plans, Freskdesh provides all the features you’d expect in customer support management software, including team dashboards, social signals, ticket routing, and chatbots.

Another nice perk is that through Freshworks Academy, you can offload some of the burdens of training your agents on the new system. Freshdesk offers several plans for support desk or omnichannel services.

Features:

• Ticket routing

• Live chat software

• Native integrations

• Knowledge base

• API

• Tracking and reporting

• Self-service portal

• Community forums

• Automation

Pricing:

Growth: $18 per agent/month

Pro: $59 per agent/month

Enterprise: $95 per agent/month

Free plan: Available for up to 10 agents

Free trial: 21 days

Learn more about Zendesk for Freshdesk.

14. Genesys

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Genesys is a cloud-based platform that creates proactive, predictive, and hyper-personalized experiences for customers. With three levels of products, Genesys provides scalable customer service systems backed by AI technology. Even at the lowest price, Genesys offers key CS features like unified phone, email, chat, and text.

Genesys has several CS tools, with its Genesys Cloud CX 3 offering a more comprehensive system with voice transcription minutes and workforce engagement management. Larger enterprise-level companies can inquire about a personalized annual commitment.

Features:

• Speech-enabled IVR

• AI-powered voicebots

• Chatbots

• Tracking and reporting

• Outbound scripting

• Detailed records search

• Knowledge base

• API

• Interaction analytics

Pricing:

Genesys Cloud CX 1: $75 per month

Genesys Cloud CX 2: $90 per month

Genesys Cloud CX 2 + Voice: $110 per month

Genesys Cloud CX 3: $130 per month

Genesys Cloud CX 3 + Voice: $150 per month

Free trial: 30 days

Learn more about Genesys for Zendesk.

15. Hiver

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Hiver is a customer service help desk designed to work with Google Workspace. Rather than using a completely new platform, Hiver adds common CS features to your company’s existing Google Office programs, including shared inboxes, analytics, and SLAs.

Hiver is geared towards companies that don’t want to reinvent their existing Google communications, which makes it less feature-heavy than the other CS software options. This software focuses on boosting collaboration and increasing efficiency to save your agents and business valuable time.

Features:

• Customer surveys (CSAT)

• Analytics and reporting

• Automated tasks

• Workload and client distribution

• Simple integrations

• Shared inboxes

• Collision alerts

• Activity timelines

• SLA and business hours

Pricing:

Lite: $19 per user/month

Pro: $49 per user/month

Elite: $69 per user/month

Free trial: 7 days

16. Vivantio

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The Vivantio customer service software is a scalable service desk designed to manage B2B and B2C clients. Vivantio prides itself on streamlined service operations and integrations at an affordable price and includes ITSM and ITIL technology.

In addition to the usual CS features, Vivantio includes business insight software and customizable reporting functions. The interface is user-friendly, and it allows you to customize workflows for a more efficient agent experience. The software sets up quickly and has a variety of integration options.

Features:

• Self-service portals

• Case management

• Live chat software

• Simple integration

• Task management

• Ticket routing

• Customer impact maps

• Knowledge base

• Automation

Pricing:

Value: $42 per user/month

Vital: $52 per user/month

Velocity: $82 per user/month

Visionary: $142 per user/month

Free trial: 14 days

17. Help Scout

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Help Scout’s customer service software can help your team deliver excellent support across channels. The platform consolidates customer data, interactions, and customer history, so your agents have relevant context with every request. Help Scout offers more than 50 out-of-the-box integrations and allows you to integrate with your custom database.

Help Scout also features an API sidebar integration that allows you to automatically log important customer details in real time. You can sort, filter, and manage customer information and profiles all in one place.

Features:

• Ticketing system

• Reporting and analytics

• Shared inbox

• Intuitive interface

• Easy-to-use customer surveys

• Security and compliance features

• Third-party integrations

• Omnichannel agent workspace

Pricing:

Standard: $25 per user/month

Plus: $50 per user/month

Pro: $65 per user/month, billed annually

Free trial: 15 days

Learn more about Zendesk for Help Scout.

18. Olark

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Olark’s customer service software is easy to use and helps teams create a good customer experience. The platform comes with customization options that allow you to provide a complete brand experience to the customer. Reporting features allow management teams to monitor chat activity, volume, and ratings, giving them the best information to make informed business decisions.

You can easily configure the AI automation rules, so your teams can send personalized messages based on criteria such as location, referring URL, or browsing behavior. Previous conversations and interactions provide information that enables you to automate personalized greetings when customers land on your website.

Features:

• Automated messages

• Live chat analytics

• Searchable transcripts

• Customizable forms and greetings

• Proactive chat

• Routing

• Omnichannel agent workspace

• Precanned dashboards and real-time tracking

Pricing:

Standard: $29 per seat/month

Pro: Contact Olark

Free trial: 14 days

19. Aircall

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Aircall’s customer service software consolidates relevant customer information so your agents have context for each interaction. The software seamlessly integrates with plenty of customer service tools, like live chat and social messaging platforms, to provide support across several channels.

Automation features allow agents to sync call notes and tags, streamlining calls by reducing manual entry. This saves your team time to help them support more customers. The platform also offers in-depth analytics and reporting features so you can spot trends in recent interactions and find areas where you need to shift team resources.

Features:

• Reporting and analytics

• Call routing

• Blocklist numbers

• IVR

• Custom reporting

Pricing:

Essentials: $40 per user/month

Professional: $70 per user/month

Custom: Call for details

Free trial: 7 days

Learn more about Zendesk for Aircall.

20. Sprinklr

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Sprinklr offers AI-powered customer service software to help teams provide a fast, unified customer experience. The platform, called Unified-CXM, analyzes conversations from across customer-preferred channels, understanding sentiment and intent. This allows the software to automatically route tickets to the best agent for the support request.

This customer service software also features self-service resources, including help center articles, troubleshooting tutorials, and a community forum. AI-powered bots provide chat support for service around the clock.

Features:

• Live chat and email

• Voice channel

• Conversational AI and bots

• Case and community management

• Text and speech analytics

• AI routing

• Knowledge base

Pricing:

Contact Sprinklr

Free trial: 30 days

Learn more about the Sprinklr and Zendesk integration.

21. HubSpot Service Hub

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HubSpot Service Hub helps your support team stay organized while handling customer issues. The platform provides a single view that allows agents to see customer history, ticket information, and queue details. Key performance metrics are available with the reporting and analytics dashboard, so you can see opportunities for improvement and where you excel.

With HubSpot Service Hub, you can create customer portals and custom feedback surveys and automate simple tasks to streamline your agents' workflow. Live chat, chatbots, and social messaging integrations allow you to offer convenient, 24/7 customer support. HubSpot also has a mobile app for teams on the go.

Features:

• Knowledge base, community forum, and customer portal

• Reporting and analytics

• Ticketing system

• No-code chatbot builder

• Skills-based routing

Pricing:

Professional: $450 per month (up to 5 users)

Enterprise: $1,200 per month (up to 10 users)

Free trial: 14 days

Learn more about HubSpot for Zendesk.

While different customer support software may provide different tools, there are several core features that most CS software provides. Here are a few of the top features to look for in customer service software.

Unified omnichannel agent workspace

A unified omnichannel agent workspace is a key feature of a customer support tool. It provides a single view that consolidates customer data, interactions across channels, and ticket history—the entire customer journey—for all departments to access. This allows you to meet customers where they are and gives agents, management, sales reps, and anyone who touches the account the context they need to deliver a high-level customer experience at scale.

Analytics and reporting

Customer tracking and reporting tools let you measure and analyze customer history, behavior, and customer service metrics. This data is essential because it keeps track of how many requests you receive, how many tickets get opened when agents manage those tickets, and how satisfied the customer was with the experience.

Most customer tracking and reporting tools will also auto-generate graph reports for simple viewing and analysis.

Conversation routing and automation

Routing can help your team streamline workflows by automatically directing support tickets to the agent best suited to handle a request. Admins can configure the skills of individual agents and assign those agents to ticket types. When a created ticket matches an agent’s skill set, it will automatically route to that agent.

Additionally, automation can eliminate time-consuming tasks, freeing agents to focus on requests that need a human touch.

Integrations

The right integrations can help your team complete tasks faster and streamline internal and external communication. Consider customer service software that offers out-of-the-box integrations that allow you to hit the ground running and third-party integrations to supercharge your software.

Help center

Not every customer issue needs a full ticket or time with a customer service rep. Self-service options, including a help center and FAQ sections,let customers quickly find information without setting up a meeting or waiting on an available rep. These features also allow your reps to spend more time on complex cases.

Customer service platforms can benefit companies of all sizes and types—from global enterprises supporting millions of other businesses in multiple languages to small consumer-facing businesses that need to answer customer questions quickly without hiring an army of support reps.

Here are some key benefits of customer service tools.

Drives customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty

When service agents have the information and tools they need to provide fast, personalized responses to customers, they can deliver better service. With high-quality service, your customers are less likely to churn and more likely to become loyal buyers.

Customers go out of their way to buy from brands they’re loyal to—and more loyalty usually equates to more sales. By facilitating better support practices, customer service software can help your business grow with more satisfied, loyal customers.

Saves time and reduces costs

Customer service software arms your agents with time-saving tools that boost the employee experience, making them more productive and efficient. When you make their jobs easier, agents can provide the type of customer experience that boosts loyalty and revenue. Agents will stick around when they’re happy at work, reducing the costs of finding new talent to fill vacant roles.

Improves agent well-being

Customer service tools help agents access and use the customer information they need, when and where they need it. Features like shared inboxes improve internal collaboration and increase efficiency with streamlined workflows. The result is an improved agent experience that boosts motivation to provide better customer care.

Helps businesses make more informed decisions

Customer service software can help you gain valuable customer insights through multiple channels. This provides management with the data they need to make better business decisions.

Enables teams to be more productive and efficient

First-reply time is one of the biggest influencers on customer satisfaction. But with so many service channels and the growing demand for personalization, agents need customer service apps to help them respond to and resolve issues faster.

Customer service platforms enable your business to streamline knowledge base creation and management, saving agents time and providing customers with the answers they need. Plus, you can track how your customers are using your knowledge base to help inform further self-service improvements.

Customer service is both internal and external:

• Internal support means providing service to your employees

• External supporthelps the people who buy or use your products or services

Each customer service channel is often considered a different type of customer service. Here are the types of customer service support options by channel and deployment you should know about.

Types of customer support software by channel

Meet customers on their preferred communication channels for a seamless, convenient customer experience. Here are a few types of customer support software by channel.

Phone support

Speaking with a customer over the phone still remains an effective way to resolve problems, especially for high-stakes issues. It can be more efficient than back-and-forth email conversations or live chat, thanks to personal touches—like the tone of voice—that come with a phone call. Call center software can provide customer service reps with features like automatic ticket creation and call routing, call recordings, and a complete view of customer history.

Email

Email is the bread and butter of customer support and remains a preferred channel, especially among older generations. Email is a popular form of internal and external support. Human resources, payroll, and IT teams can use email to answer questions for full- and part-time employees.

Knowledge base, community forum, and customer portal

With a knowledge basecommunity forum, or customer portal, support teams can empower customers to self-serve. In fact, according to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2023, 37 percent of customers get angry when they don’t have the option to complete a simple task on their own.

But this is only possible if support teams have tools that make knowledge creation and upkeep easy. AI tools can use content cues to help you manage your knowledge base by flagging out-of-date content or when a new article topic is needed. This feature can also use agents’ collective knowledge to automate resolutions for low-touch tickets.

Messaging and live chat

The rise of messaging channels—like WhatsApp for Business, Apple Business Chat, and Facebook Messenger for business—has changed how people get in touch. Live chat software helps agents solve issues in real time from where customers already are, like your homepage or inside your mobile app. If a customer issue starts with a message and resolving it necessitates a follow-up phone call, all of that information is logged within the same support ticket.

AI-powered chatbots

You can integrate AI chatbots across channels for fast, convenient, around-the-clock customer support. Configure automated customer support to handle repetitive tasks, like providing tracking information or resetting passwords. Bots can also offer proactive support and self-help options, including help center articles and answers to FAQs. AI-powered bots can use data to personalize the conversation based on previous interactions and behaviors, creating a tailored, conversational experience.

CRM

A CRM helps you—as its name states—manage customer relationships. It collects customer data and interactions from across channels and consolidates them into one place, providing agents with everything they need to support the customer. The CRM’s single view breaks down silos across departments and allows teams to share data and insights, fostering better internal collaboration.

Types of customer service software by deployment

These types of customer service software are classified by deployment. Each has its own unique set of benefits and challenges for you to consider.

Cloud-based customer support software

Cloud-based customer support software is hosted “on the cloud,” or on the vendor’s servers. This type of software doesn’t require you to have a dedicated IT team to make updates, fix any bugs, or address issues. The vendor handles these tasks as part of your subscription plan. Cloud-based software also eliminates the need for a physical data center, ultimately saving you money.

On-premise customer service software

On-premise customer support software gets hosted on-site in your own data center. This type of software is common for businesses that handle a massive amount of data or sensitive information. You’ll need a dedicated IT team to make any updates to the software, handle bug fixes, and manage issues. You will also need to handle your own data security.

Open-source customer service software

Open-source customer support software allows open access to the source code. This means businesses can change the code, allowing for more customizable options instead of relying on plug-ins and standard integrations. If you pick open-source software as your customer service solution, you may need a highly skilled IT team with programming experience to complete the customization you desire.

Customer support software can enhance the customer experience, especially if your agents follow the best practices of using customer service tools. Here are some tactics the best customer service websites use that can help your team exceed expectations.

Meet customers where they are

Customers want to hop on their preferred communication channel to connect with your business for support, not have to search for the right phone number to call. Meeting the customer where they are—whether that be over channels like email, chat, phone, text, social media, or WhatsApp—can be a massive differentiator and a key way to cultivate loyalty.

Reduce ticket volume with AI and self-service

AI-powered chatbots can greet the customer when they connect with your business and find out what they need. They can offer self-service options, like FAQs and help center articles, to help the customer get answers or resolve issues. These resources are convenient and lead to higher customer satisfaction.

Invest in effective collaboration

Businesses understand the importance of investing in collaboration tools and its impact on internal and external customer support. Customer service software offers tools and integrations —with platforms like Slack, Asana, or Trello—to provide real-time and asynchronous communication and notifications. This helps break down silos and fosters effective team collaboration, creating great customer and employee experiences.

Collect and implement customer feedback

Customer feedback gives your business valuable insight into how customers feel about your brand, products, or customer service. You can use that information to understand what you’re doing well and where you need to improve. By gathering feedback through surveys like NPS or CSAT, focus groups, and agent interviews—or from data collected across channels by your CRM—your business leaders can also make informed, customer-centric decisions.

Plus, customers feel valued when they feel heard. When you collect and implement their feedback, it shows them you’re listening.

Be proactive

Proactive communication—like sending a notification about a shipping delay—can provide the transparency that builds customer relations and help boost sales conversions.

For example, a customer might have a single question that prevents them from completing a purchase. Before they abandon the online shopping cart, you can send a proactive message via live chat or automate an AI chatbot to reach out to resolve the issue and nudge the customer to complete the transaction.

While considering software for customer service management, keep in mind that the tool will evolve—and that’s a good thing. You want a flexible platform that can adapt as your business, technology, and the world evolves. That also means you need to keep an eye on any changes in customer service management techniques, so you can continue providing the best customer-oriented support.

Here are a few of the top customer service trends to remember when switching to new software.

Data-driven personalization is the price of entry

Tapping into data from across the organization to facilitate personalized, contextually relevant customer service isn't a particularly new concept. What is new is the greater accessibility of tools that enable data-driven personalization and a broader realization among executives of the value of customer data.

In the past, a truly data-driven customer experience was too resource-intensive for most businesses. But with more powerful, affordable software, tapping into data to serve your customers better isn’t so much a differentiator—it’s the price of entry.

Customer service teams are breaking down silos

Customers understand that businesses collect data—yet when they grant permission, they expect you to use it to create a personalized and immersive customer service experience. But what good is collecting customer data if you aren’t safely sharing it across teams?

According to our CX Trends Report, only 22 percent of business leaders say their companies share data well. These siloed teams lack relevant customer data, meaning their customer service may fall short of competitors who collaborate efficiently. A unified view of customer data helps break down data silos by giving teams the crucial information they need to deliver better experiences.

Conversational experiences are empowering customers

Customers expect your business to have full context of their issue, previous interactions, order history, or any information relevant to the conversation. They want fast, convenient service with fluid, natural conversations that they can control.

Conversational experiences empower customers with the ability to switch communication channels or carry on a seamless, asynchronous conversation with different agents, without having to repeat themselves.

AI experiences are becoming more evolved and seamless

Customers are becoming more comfortable interacting with AI. In our CX Trends Report, 72 percent of customers surveyed said AI improves the quality of customer service. AI chatbots learn from each interaction and can become more natural as they get more practice, offering friendly, personalized service across channels.

When customers reach out for support, AI-powered bots can connect with them immediately, accessing the customer’s stored data to tailor the language and conversation. Conversational AI can also understand if the customer is experiencing an issue—say, on the company’s shopping cart page—and proactively reach out through the chat window to offer assistance.

Consumer well-being and sentiment are reshaping CX

Understanding customer sentiment can be difficult, especially during a handoff between a chatbot and a live agent. Agents need to know if the customer is on the verge of leaving your business before the start of the interaction.

With intelligent AI, valuable information (including customer sentiment and intent) can be included on the support ticket. This provides the agent with the context they need to handle the interaction. Because AI uses machine learning, it gains more knowledge with every interaction, becoming more efficient over time.

Your customer service software is the key ingredient to your support team’s day-to-day operations. So, finding the right mix of tools is a big deal.

To help you think about what tools might be best for your team, here are a few FAQs and answers about customer service software.