Customer Service Software

Customer service software is a ticketing system that documents, tracks, and resolves customer queries. It collates customer requests from multiple channels, such as phone, email, live chat, and social media, into a single portal so that agents can quickly and easily address the queries.

The software allows multiple agents to work on each ticket, making it easier for different departments to collaborate on solving the customer's queries. The tool also provides detailed reports and insights into customer interactions, helping organisations assess the quality of their customer service.

What are the benefits of customer service software?

Customer service software brings many advantages to businesses by enabling them to support, manage and maintain a relationship with their customers. Customer support software can help you realise the following benefits:

• Be able to collate customer queries across multiple channels: Customer service software collates customer queries from multiple platforms into a single stream. Whether it's a call to the helpline, an email to the support team, or a comment on your social media page, the tool generates a ticket for each customer query. These tickets get automatically added to the centralised stream, ensuring that no query is unaddressed.
• Reduce time that agents spend on each query: The software offers an easily searchable database for a quick reference. Agents can tag members of other teams or forward the ticket to the right team, directing the customer to the best resource. The standardised answers, easily editable templates, and the ability to simultaneously respond to multiple queries shortens the ticket resolution time.
• Increase customer satisfaction with faster issue resolution: The software lets users address each ticket as per priority and reduce the waiting time. It also organises the ticket resolution workflow and allows agents to collaborate on tickets. This shortens the resolution cycle and improves customer satisfaction levels.
• Get insights into the team's performance: Customer service software offers analytical capabilities, with customisable reports and dashboards, which provide insights into the performance of your support team. Find out the time your team takes to respond, how busy agents are on certain days of the week, and the frequent queries. This information can help you manage agents, improve their response time, and increase productivity.

What are the typical features of customer service software?

Below are the typical features of customer service software:

• Knowledge base: Build and manage a centralised, searchable repository of information regarding frequent and previously asked queries as well as the responses.
• Support ticketing: CRM management tracks interactions and autogenerates tickets for customer queries and service requests.
• Multichannel communication: Manage incoming and outgoing customer communication on multiple channels, including email, phone, live chat, and social media.
• Queue management: Manage the ticket queue to meet the team's needs and monitor the waiting time for incoming requests that haven't been routed.
• Live chat: Chat with customers to resolve their queries in real time.
• Appointment management: Schedule and manage interactions with customers.

What considerations should you take into account when purchasing customer service software?

When choosing customer service software, you must take into account the following:

• The solution's usability: A poor user experience (UX) is bad for business. The tool shouldn't slow down agents and lengthen the response time. Therefore, before you purchase a solution, try it out and ensure that the UI/UX is not too complicated or messy for your agents. After all, they have to use it every day and should be happy doing it.
• Integration with existing third-party apps: While most software integrates with other third-party applications, check whether your preferred solution and/or pricing plan supports integration with the other solutions you use. After all, it can be wasteful and painful to find out after purchase that the software doesn't support your applications.
• Omnichannel customer support: It allows you to centralise everything and make it easy to manage multiple communication channels. But not all businesses need to do it. If your customers are likely to reach out via chats or emails, choose a customer service solution that offers the option you need, so that you won't have to pay for channels that aren't being optimally utilised.

What are the relevant customer service software trends?

Customer service software trends include:

• Chatbots to improve customer self-service: Vendors are using chatbots to resolve customer queries in real time without a ticket. The technology can simulate interactions like a human and resolve simple queries such as about working hours, contact info, and status update. It also recommends relevant sections from articles in the knowledge base—such as if a customer doesn't know how to reset their password, the chatbot will direct them to a step-by-step description of the process. Businesses that use chatbots reported a 70% reduction in call, chat, and/or email queries.
• AI to increase the efficiency of agents: Customer service software providers are adopting artificial intelligence (AI) to make agents work smarter. Some are using it to automatically tag, categorise, and index tickets for easy reference, while others are using AI to determine customer distress levels and predict chat answers. AI can also recommend changes to existing articles based on how customers communicate their issues, making answers easier to find and understand in the future.

Capterra includes many listings of free customer service software, as well as customer support software for UK businesses.