CustomersFirst.Net

18 best customer service software tools to enhance the customer experience

Customers expect to communicate with companies using the channels they prefer, which now represent a host of technologies to staff efficiently and connect to your tech stack. Here are some customer service tools that help a business provide great customer service.

1. Zendesk

Zendesk’s customer service software empowers businesses to build effortless customer experiences. Conversations flow seamlessly across channels, leading to greater productivity and satisfaction all around.

Zendesk Agent Workspace customer service software tool

The Agent Workspace within Zendesk’s Suite equips agents with all the tools they need to collaborate with each other, other teams, and deliver fast, personalized responses on any channel—from a single, unified interface.

Zendesk’s customer service software is quick to implement, easy to use, and scales to fit the needs of businesses of any size:

Zendesk for enterprise companies

Enterprise companies need the right balance of simplicity and sophistication to align large teams and technology around what matters most—their customer. Zendesk equips an enterprise organization with the tools it needs to meet the needs of a diverse customer base on the channels of their choice while ensuring the experience is a personal one.

A large, dispersed company also means managing multiple agents and their many unique skill sets. Zendesk provides flexibility to customize your support solution with tools like advanced workflow capabilities and AI-powered automation and self-service—which means tickets get to the right agents, and agents have the knowledge they need to solve any problem.

The Zendesk ticketing system also seamlessly integrates with other tools, data, and communications across all departments to ensure smooth customer interactions and fewer miscommunications within complex operations.

Pricing:

• Suite Team: $49 per user/month
• Suite Growth: $79 per user/month
• Suite Professional: $99 per user/month
• Suite Enterprise: $150 per user/month

Free trial: 14 days

Learn more about Zendesk’s enterprise customer service software.

Zendesk for SMBs

Zendesk gives small and mighty teams the gift of efficiency. It’s powerful yet easy-to-use and designed to help your customer service team work better together, making the most of their time and energy. Plus, it’s easy to customize with the tools you already use so you can build on what you have.

By working within Zendesk’s centralized workspace, you’ll have all the tools you need to keep track of customers’ questions and share the information they need, right when they need it. And, by using Zendesk’s AI-powered automations and dynamic workspaces, your team can work smarter, faster, and reach more customers.

Pricing:

• Suite Team: $49 per user/month
• Suite Growth: $79 per user/month
• Suite Professional: $99 per user/month
• Suite Enterprise: $150 per user/month

Free trial: 14 days

Learn more about Zendesk’s SMBs customer service software.

Zendesk for Startups

When you provide your customers with the experience they expect, you win their trust and loyalty in return. Zendesk’s omnichannel support solution empowers startups to be wherever their customers are. Integrate support channels like email, chat, and phone into one place, and save time by offering self-service options.

The best part? Zendesk for Startups provides a free 6-month credit—including access to tailored resources and a growing network and community of customer experience leaders.

Pricing:

• Suite Team: $49 per user/month
• Suite Growth: $79 per user/month
• Suite Professional: $99 per user/month
• Suite Enterprise: $150 per user/month

Free trial: 6 months

Zendesk for Startups provides a free 6-month credit—including access to tailored resources and a growing network and community of customer experience leaders.

Learn more about Zendesk’s startup customer service software.

Features of Zendesk’s customer service software

• Ticket routing
• Live chat software
• Native integrations
• Knowledge base
• API
• Tracking and reporting
• Self-service portal
• Community forums
• Automation

2. Sprout Social

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With the ever-growing adoption of social media for communication, customer service software that helps support teams deliver cohesive social support experiences is immensely valuable. Through its combination of sales, support, marketing, social media monitoring, and engagement features, Sprout Social helps facilitate conversations across all social media channels.

And by connecting social media teams and support agents, Sprout Social eliminates disconnected or siloed communication and workflows.

Pricing:

• Standard plan: $89/per user/month
• Professional plan: $149/per user/month
• Advanced plan: $249/per user/month

Sprout’s most popular Professional plan provides powerful tools for social business. For businesses requiring only essential tools, the Standard plan is the most economical.

Free Trial: 30 days

Features

• Reporting and analytics
• Automation
• Tracking and reporting
• Customer segmentation
• Social media monitoring/management
• Post scheduling

Learn more about Sprout Social’s Zendesk integration.

3. Hootsuite

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Hootsuite helps teams engage with customers and schedule content across multiple social networks from one secure web-based dashboard. Its wide range of features and a large library of integrations make Hootsuite a solid overall tool for service operations.

Combined with Zendesk through a native integration, you can use Hootsuite to create, update, review, and edit tickets from social media. With Hootsuite and Zendesk, you remove the silos that often pop up between social and support teams. The result is better, more seamless customer interactions across all channels.

Pricing:

• Professional: $49 for one user/month
• Team: $129 for three users/month
• Business: $739 for five users/month

Note: Enterprise companies with more than five users will need to request a quote.

Free trial: 30 days

Features

• Automation
• Tracking and reporting
• Customer segmentation
• Social media monitoring/management
• Post scheduling

Learn more about the Zendesk app for Hootsuite.

4. MailChimp

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MailChimp enables businesses to create, send, and track email newsletters, signup forms, and event invitations. Teams can personalize emails with targeted customer segments when integrating a customer support system like Zendesk Support.

But even more than that, for a smaller business, MailChimp can double as an all-in-one marketing platform. Though you’ll need one of their more expensive plans, you can use MailChimp to create landing pages and ad campaigns, track performance, and automate emails.

Pricing:

• Free plan: free up to 2,000 contacts
• Essentials: $11 per month (flexible price up to 50,000 contacts)
• Standard: $17 per month (flexible price up to 100,000 contacts)
• Premium: $299 per month (flexible price on unlimited contacts)

Although there’s no trial period for MailChimp, you can sign up for a free version of the plan with limited contacts and email sends.

Features

• Tracking and reporting
• Contact management
• Landing page and email design tools
• Automation
• Social media monitoring
• Live chat

Learn more about connecting Zendesk Support and Mailchimp.

5. Apple Business Chat

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With Apple Business Chat, customers can get answers to their questions, schedule appointments, resolve issues, and make purchases—without leaving the messenger.

To ensure a consistent and seamless conversational experience over custom messaging channels like Apple Business Chat, a business will need a messaging partner, such as Sunshine Conversations.

Pricing:

Apple Business Chat is free for Apple users and included with the latest iOS.

Features

• Native integrations
• Booking
• Payments
• Image/audio/video file support
• API

Learn more about integrating Apple Business Chat into Zendesk Support.

6. Facebook

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Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp enable customers to get fast, convenient messaging support on phones messaging support on phones all over the world. And they provide support for anything you could need to communicate including GIFs, images, emojis, videos, and more.

When integrated with a CRM through a messaging platform like Sunshine Conversations, customers can do everything from change a hotel reservation, pay a bill, or find the perfect lipstick color—all within the Facebook messaging App.

Pricing:

Free to create and use a Facebook messaging account
Integration with CRM platform dependent on CRM company choice.

Features

• Native integrations
• Booking
• Payments
• Image/audio/video file support
• API

Learn more about using popular messaging channels like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger with Zendesk.

7. SurveyMonkey

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SurveyMonkey is a customer service tool that provides businesses with templates for a plethora of customer surveys to glean insight into things like product feedback and CSAT. And with SurveyMonkey’s extensive library of integrations, you can easily work this tool into your existing workflow.

In other words, SurveyMonkey enables you to gather feedback from customers or employees with minimal disruption to you and them.

Pricing:

• Basic: Free
• Individual Advantage: $32/month
• Individual Standard: $99/month
• Individual Premier: $119/month
• Team Advantage: $25 per user/month
• Team Premier: $75 per user/month
• TeamEnterprise: contact sales for a quote

You can start with a Basic (free) plan to create and send surveys, but the best value Advantage plan for individuals provides unlimited surveys and questions starting at $32/month. The Team Advantage plan offers similar features but allows three or more users to work together beginning at $25/user per month.

Features

• Live results tracking
• Polling
• Tracking and reporting
• Image/audio/video file support
• Email distribution
• Native integrations
• API

Learn more about the SurveyMonkey app integration with Zendesk.

8. Slack

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Slack allows internal customers to seamlessly get support from IT or HR departments, from the same channel they use to communicate with their teammates. When combined with an AI-powered bot, like Zendesk’s Answer Bot, employees can self-serve over Slack at scale.

When integrated with a customer service software solution, Slack also enables agents to better communicate with each other when solving tickets for more streamlined collaboration and faster.

Pricing:

• Free plan available
• Pro: $6.67 per person/month
• Business+: $12.50 per person/month
• Enterprise Grid: contact sales for quote

Small teams can work under a free plan with basic productivity features, but upgrading to a Pro plan provides additional benefits like unlimited integrations and secure collaboration with outside companies. Business+ and Enterprise plans for larger organizations are also available.

Free trial: 30 days

Features

• Live chat
• Video conferencing
• Messaging
• Native integrations
• API
• Community forums
• Surveys

Learn more about Slack for Zendesk Support.

9. Recurly

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Recurly provides a versatile subscription billing management platform to handle the entire subscriber lifecycle. When integrated with a support system like Zendesk Support, agents will no longer have to switch to separate tabs or systems to view or change customer subscription details.

Plus, Recurly is powerful in its own right, enabling your team to easily manage subscriptions, offer discount codes, set up recurring payments, and more.

Pricing:

• Core: $199 per month
• Professional: contact sales for quote
• Elite: contact sales for quote

Free trial:

According to Recurly, upon request, plans may have a free trial period added.

Features

• Native integrations
• API
• Self-service portal
• Automation
• Subscription management
• Multiple payment options

Learn more about Recurly for Zendesk.

10. NICE inContact CXone

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NICE inContact CXone Agent consolidates customer context and contact center controls into a single interface for more efficient agents and better customer experiences. What really sets NICE inContact apart is its breadth of features for more sophisticated, larger service operations.

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

Pricing: Contact sales for a quote

Although you can try CXone free for 60 days, you’ll need to contact NICE for a quote to find out just how much this service will cost.

Free trial: 60 days

Features

• Ticket routing
• Workforce management
• Customer surveys
• Live chat software
• Native integrations
• Knowledge base
• API
• Tracking and reporting
• Self-service portal
• Automation

Learn more about NICE inContact CXone Agent for Zendesk.

11. EZOfficeInventory

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EZOfficeInventory enables organizations across the world to manage tickets and incidents regarding equipment, assets, and inventory.

Typical use cases might include an employee filing a ticket about their broken computer or a person in the field requiring help using a drill machine: EZOfficeInventory manages asset-related details while a support tool like Zendesk manages the ticket workflow.

Pricing:

• Essential: $35 per month
• Advanced: $45 per month
• Premium: $50 per month
• Enterprise: Contact sales for a quote

EZOfficeInventory offers a variety of plans based on the number of items you need to track. During a 15-day free trial, you can upgrade or downgrade your plan to find the best fit.

Free trial: 15 days

Features

• Native integrations
• Knowledge base
• Asset tracking
• Barcode scanning
• Maintenance scheduling
• API
• Tracking and reporting

Learn more about the EZOfficeInventory app integration with Zendesk.

12. 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. Their customers include public, education, and healthcare institutions.

In addition to ticket routing, knowledge management, and self-service, Boss Solutions provides asset, incident, and change management capabilities.

Pricing:

• Essentials: $19 per user/month
• Professional: $39 per user/month
• Enterprise: $69 per user/month

Request a demo to explore Boss Solutions’ complete suite of help desk software.

Free trial: 14 days

Features

• Ticket routing
• Native integrations
• Knowledge base
• API
• Tracking and reporting
• Self-service portal
• Automation

13. Jira Service Desk

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Jira Service Management empowers IT teams with a modern service desk that has everything they need out-of-the-box, including ITIL-certified processes. Jira is developed by Atlassian and it bills itself as the solution to silos between developers, operations, and IT.

All that said, non-IT customer service professionals may find that Jira’s feature set is excessive for their needs. If you’re not sure, go ahead and take JIRA for a spin; they offer 7-day free trials and they have a free plan that can give you a feel for the software.

Pricing:

• Free plan: free for up to three agents
• Standard: $20 per agent/month
• Premium: $45 per agent/month
• Enterprise: contact sales for quote

Free trial: 7 days

Contact Atlassian to extend your trial to 30 days.

Features

• Ticket routing
• Live chat software
• Native integrations
• Knowledge base
• API
• Tracking and reporting
• Self-service portal
• Automation

Learn more about Jira for Zendesk.

14. LiveAgent

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

LiveAgent is an especially 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. Plus it has native integrations for many of the most popular apps that support teams use.

Pricing:

• Free plan available
• Ticket: $15 per user/month
• Ticket + Chat: $29 per user/month
• All-Inclusive: $49 per user/month

Although LiveAgent offers a free plan, it has some limitations. Their most popular plan is the All-inclusive with ticketing, chat, and 180+ other features starting at $49/agent per month.

Features

• Ticket routing
• Live chat software
• Native integrations
• Knowledge base
• API
• Tracking and reporting
• Self-service portal
• Community forums
• Automation

15. Freshdesk

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Freshdesk helps customer service teams streamline collaboration and automation with its intuitive interface and affordable price. In their more expensive plans, Freskdesh offers all the key 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 burden of training your agents on the system.

Pricing:

• Support Desk Plan: Free
• Support Desk Growth: $15 per user/month
• Support Desk Pro: $49 per user/month
• Support Desk Enterprise: $79 per user/month
• Omnichannel Growth: $29 per user/month
• Omnichannel Pro: $59 per user/month
• Omnichannel Enterprise: $99 per user/month

Freshdesk offers a wide range of plans for Support Desk or Omnichannel. A basic Support Desk plan is free, but the more popular Enterprise Support Desk or Pro Omnichannel plans provide a greater variety of features.

Free trial: 21 days

Features

• Ticket routing
• Live chat software
• Native integrations
• Knowledge base
• API
• Tracking and reporting
• Self-service portal
• Community forums
• Automation

16. Genesys DX

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Genesys DX is a Cloud-based platform that works to create proactive, predictive, and hyper-personalized experiences for customers in all interactions. With three levels of products, Genesys offers scalable customer service software backed by AI technology. Even at the lowest price, Genesys offers key CS features like unified phone, email, chat, and text.

It’s worth noting, however, that Genesys is very AI-focused and might not be the best fit for smaller businesses.

Pricing:

• Genesys Cloud CX 1: $75 per month
• Genesys Cloud CX 2: $110 per month
• Genesys Cloud CX 3: $150 per month
• Genesys Choice: Contact sales for quote
• Genesys DX: Contact sales for quote

Lower tiers provide a range of helpful CS tools, but for a comprehensive system that provides voice transcription minutes and workforce engagement management, the Genesys Cloud CX 3 is $150/user per month. Larger enterprise-level companies can inquire about a personalized annual commitment.

Free trial: Not available

Features

• Speech-enabled IVR
• Voicebots
• Chatbots
• Tracking and reporting
• Outbound scripting
• Detailed records search
• Knowledge base
• API
• Interaction analytics

Learn more about Genesys for Zendesk

17. Hiver

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Hiver is a customer service help desk specifically 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 SLA.

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.

Pricing:

• Lite: $15 per user/month
• Pro: $39 per user/month
• Elite: $59 per user/month

Free trial: 14 days

Hiver has a 14-day free trial of its Elite plan for all users, after which you can choose the subscription level that’s right for you.

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

18. Vivantio

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The Vivantio customer service software is an all-encompassing, scalable modern service desk designed to manage B2B and B2C clients. Vivantio prides themselves on streamlined service operations and quick integrations at an affordable price and includes ITSM and ITIL technology.

In addition to the common CS features, Vivantio also includes business insight software and customizable reporting functions.

Pricing:

• Value: $42 per user/month
• Vital: $52 per user/month
• Velocity: $82 per user/month
• Visionary: $142 per user/month

Free trial: Not available

Features

• Self-service portals
• Case management
• Live chat software
• Simple integration
• Task management
• Ticket routing
• Customer impact maps
• Knowledge base
• Automation