Customer care is the backbone of any successful business, especially in today’s competitive market. Providing excellent customer service not only retains customers but also builds brand loyalty and attracts new business through positive word-of-mouth. To achieve this level of service, businesses need to equip their teams with the right tools. These tools streamline workflows, enhance communication, and provide valuable insights into customer interactions, ultimately leading to improved customer satisfaction and stronger business growth.
This guide delves into some of the best customer support tools available today. We’ll explore a range of software solutions, highlighting their key features, pricing, and trial options to help you determine which tools can best enhance your customer care strategy and take your business to the next level.
1. Zendesk
Zendesk stands out as a comprehensive customer service software solution designed to empower businesses to deliver fast and personalized support at scale. Its award-winning platform is built to streamline customer interactions across multiple channels, ensuring agents can efficiently manage requests without juggling various dashboards.
Agents using Zendesk benefit from a unified workspace that centralizes customer requests from any channel, be it email, chat, social media, or phone. This eliminates the frustration of switching between different systems and allows for a more cohesive and efficient workflow. The ability to access a customer’s history of support issues and integrate with over 1,500 applications provides a 360-degree customer view, enabling agents to offer highly informed and personalized assistance. Collaboration is also simplified, with built-in integrations for tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams, facilitating seamless teamwork across departments.
Zendesk’s integrated AI is a game-changer for customer service teams facing high ticket volumes. By automatically identifying and categorizing incoming tickets based on priority, intent, sentiment, and language, AI ensures that requests are routed to the most appropriate agent based on their capacity, status, and skills. Furthermore, AI provides real-time guidance to agents, offering ticket summaries and suggestions to refine the tone of their responses, ensuring consistently high-quality interactions. Leveraging data from over 18 billion real service interactions, Zendesk’s AI is pre-trained to understand the nuances of customer service, allowing businesses to leverage personalized support capabilities from day one.
Advanced reporting and analytics are crucial for continuous improvement, and Zendesk delivers robust features in this area. These tools help businesses identify operational inefficiencies and understand evolving customer needs, enabling proactive adjustments to service strategies. Coupled with enterprise-grade security features, Zendesk ensures customer data remains secure, building trust and reliability.
Ease of use is a core principle of Zendesk, maximizing agent productivity and ensuring businesses can respond to customers with agility. Its out-of-the-box functionality eliminates the need for extensive development or third-party consultants, providing a quick time to value and a lower total cost of ownership. This makes Zendesk an ideal choice for businesses seeking a powerful yet user-friendly customer service solution to improve their customer care operations.
Pricing: Plans start at $19 per agent/month. A 14-day free trial is available to explore the platform’s capabilities.
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2. Intercom
Intercom offers a customer support solution centered around automation and messaging, designed to enhance the efficiency of internal customer service teams. Intercom Messenger acts as a powerful extension to existing support systems, streamlining communication and enhancing customer engagement.
Intelligent routing is a key feature of Intercom, ensuring inquiries are directed to the most suitable agents based on their skills, availability, and the customer’s interaction history. This targeted approach minimizes wait times and connects customers with agents best equipped to handle their specific needs. The platform seamlessly generates tickets from Messenger and other channels like email, consolidating them into a shared inbox for centralized management.
Intercom Messenger facilitates both live chat support and self-service options. Customers can engage in real-time conversations with agents or access self-help resources to find answers independently, catering to diverse customer preferences and issue complexities.
Intercom’s AI tool, Fin, elevates conversational support by intelligently answering frequently asked questions and proactively suggesting relevant help center articles. Fin also enhances agent efficiency by summarizing conversations within the inbox and automatically populating ticket details, reducing manual data entry and freeing up agents to focus on more complex issues. The Intercom marketplace further extends the platform’s functionality with over 350 integrations, allowing businesses to tailor the system to their specific workflows and needs.
Pricing: Plans start at $39 per seat/month. A 14-day free trial is available for businesses to experience the benefits of Intercom firsthand.
Recommended reading: Explore the Intercom integration for Zendesk and a detailed comparison of Zendesk vs. Intercom.
3. Salesforce Service Cloud
Salesforce Service Cloud is a robust customer service platform designed to provide agents with an omnichannel workspace, centralizing customer support activities for enhanced efficiency and customer satisfaction. Agents gain a holistic view of each ticket within their workspace, accessing crucial context such as customer contact details, past interactions, and purchase history. This comprehensive information empowers agents to deliver personalized and informed support.
The Swarming feature within Salesforce Service Cloud promotes team collaboration by enabling agents to bring in colleagues with specialized skills to assist on complex cases through dedicated Slack channels. This real-time collaboration ensures that expertise is readily available to resolve issues swiftly and effectively.
Salesforce Service Cloud allows for workflow customization, enabling businesses to automate ticket routing to the most appropriate support agent based on predefined criteria. Furthermore, its reporting and analytics features, equipped with pre-built dashboards, provide management with valuable insights into team performance across various channels. These reports can also include Swarming metrics, such as top responders and case resolution rates, offering a comprehensive view of support operations.
It’s worth noting that Salesforce Service Cloud, while powerful, can be complex and may require a longer learning curve for users due to its extensive feature set and integration capabilities within the broader Salesforce ecosystem. As Salesforce is not solely focused on customer experience tools but offers a suite of products for sales and marketing, businesses primarily seeking to enhance their customer service might find solutions specifically designed for customer experience to be more streamlined and easier to implement for their customer care goals.
Pricing: Plans start at $25 per user/month. A 30-day free trial is available, allowing ample time to assess the platform’s capabilities.
Recommended reading: Discover how Salesforce integrates with Zendesk and a comparison of Zendesk vs. Salesforce.
4. Front
Front is a customer service solution designed to streamline team communication and enhance customer interactions through a shared inbox and automated workflows. It allows users to configure automated workflows to manage customer inquiries and integrate various communication channels into a unified platform. The central shared inbox is a cornerstone of Front, consolidating customer inquiries from multiple channels into a single, easily manageable location.
This shared inbox automatically gathers customer inquiries from various channels and intelligently routes messages to the agent best suited to handle the request, based on skills and availability. Each customer interaction is meticulously logged, providing agents who engage with the account with access to a complete customer history, ensuring context and continuity in support interactions. Front includes built-in collaboration features, enabling teams to communicate and coordinate directly on tickets, fostering efficient teamwork. Unified reporting provides analytics on team performance and customer satisfaction, offering valuable insights for continuous improvement.
Businesses can also leverage Front to build a comprehensive help center, empowering customers with self-service options. Knowledge base administrators have granular control over user permissions, defining who can create, edit, and publish content, ensuring accuracy and consistency. The help center seamlessly integrates with the live chat system, allowing customers to effortlessly switch between self-service and direct customer support as needed.
Pricing: Plans start at $19 per seat/month. A 7-day free trial is available for businesses to explore Front’s features.
Recommended reading: See a detailed comparison of Zendesk vs. Front.
5. Tidio
Tidio is a customer service platform specifically tailored for small and midsize businesses, offering a comprehensive suite of tools to manage customer interactions effectively. It features a help desk ticketing system that enables users to organize and efficiently manage customer requests within a shared inbox. The software seamlessly converts emails, live chats, and social media messages into tickets, which are then routed to the team inbox for centralized handling.
Tickets within Tidio are highly customizable, allowing users to add notes and create custom tags for enhanced organization and categorization. Tidio automates ticket assignment to agents and can automatically close tickets upon resolution, streamlining the workflow. Furthermore, the system can send automated satisfaction surveys after each interaction, providing valuable feedback on customer service performance.
Tidio’s live chat tool is equipped with prewritten responses, empowering agents to quickly answer common questions and maintain consistent messaging. The chat window displays what customers are typing in real-time, allowing agents to prepare responses proactively, enhancing efficiency and reducing response times. Tidio also includes Lyro, a conversational AI chatbot, which can provide automated support to customers, handling routine inquiries and freeing up agents for more complex issues.
Pricing: Plans start at $29 per month. A free plan and a 7-day trial are available, making Tidio accessible for businesses of various sizes.
6. Bitrix24
Bitrix24 offers an online customer support software solution designed to provide omnichannel support and streamline customer request management from a single platform. It enables teams to manage customer interactions across various channels from a unified location, enhancing efficiency and consistency. Businesses can configure Bitrix24 to queue requests by channel, ensuring organized handling of inquiries. Additional customization options include creating prewritten responses and setting wait time rules to optimize response times and customer satisfaction.
Every customer interaction, regardless of the channel, is logged into the integrated CRM system within Bitrix24. The system automatically collects customer data and creates a new lead if a customer profile doesn’t already exist, building a comprehensive customer database. Bitrix24 also provides both prebuilt and customizable activity reporting features, offering valuable insights into support operations.
Bitrix24’s built-in video calling functionality allows agents and customers to connect face-to-face for issue resolution, adding a personal touch to support interactions. Screen sharing and recording capabilities enable agents to demonstrate solutions, guide customers through steps visually, and capture sessions for future reference or training purposes. Videoconferencing is also available for broader team collaboration, supporting group discussions with up to 48 participants, fostering internal communication and knowledge sharing.
Pricing: Plans start at $49 per organization/month. A free plan and a 15-day free trial are available, offering flexibility for different business needs.
7. HappyFox
HappyFox is a customer service solution and help desk management software provider focused on streamlining ticket management and enhancing omnichannel support. It features a robust ticketing system to help teams organize and prioritize customer requests. HappyFox provides a single customer view, consolidating interactions across all channels for a holistic understanding of each customer’s history and needs. Automation, customizable workflows, and AI-powered chatbots are integral to HappyFox, helping automate routine tasks and improve agent efficiency.
Managers can leverage HappyFox to effectively coordinate work schedules, defining team work hours and configuring schedules to align with service level agreements (SLAs). This feature also accounts for non-working hours when calculating time-based conditions, ensuring accurate SLA management.
HappyFox also offers comprehensive self-service options, including an online knowledge base, empowering customers to find answers independently and reducing the volume of support tickets. Customers can track their support tickets, participate in community forums, and access help center articles and FAQs—all within a unified self-service portal, promoting customer autonomy and efficient issue resolution.
Pricing: Plans start at $29 per agent/month. A free trial is available for businesses to explore HappyFox’s features.
Recommended reading: Learn about the HappyFox Workflows integration for Zendesk.
8. Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk is a customer support software solution equipped with tools and automation options specifically designed to streamline agent workflows and enhance customer interactions. Its omnichannel support capabilities provide a single-view dashboard, enabling agents to efficiently handle customer issues from various channels in one centralized location. The ticket management system within Zoho Desk allows for organizing tickets based on status, due date, and priority, ensuring efficient task management.
Additional features of Zoho Desk include self-service resources, service level agreements (SLAs) management, AI-powered assistance, an advanced response editor, and built-in analytics. The platform enables users to track customer data and generate reports with key performance metrics, providing valuable insights into support performance. Users can also create custom dashboards to visualize and monitor specific ticket metrics, facilitating data-driven decision-making.
Zoho Desk’s AI-powered assistant, Zia, adds another layer of intelligence to customer support. Zia can detect customer sentiment based on their language and automatically route tickets to agents with this crucial context, ensuring empathetic and effective responses. Furthermore, Zia can auto-tag tickets and proactively notify agents of unusual activity within the ticket workflow, enhancing agent awareness and responsiveness.
Pricing: Plans start at $7 per user/month. A free plan and a 15-day free trial are available, making Zoho Desk accessible to a wide range of businesses.
Recommended reading: Explore how Zoho integrates with Zendesk and a comparison of Zendesk vs. Zoho.
9. ServiceNow
ServiceNow is a cloud-based customer service tool designed for enterprises, offering a robust platform for managing complex customer service operations. It features a customer self-service portal that empowers users to create service requests or access help center articles without needing to directly interact with an agent. Customers can also engage in community forums to ask questions and share their experiences, fostering peer-to-peer support and knowledge sharing.
Businesses can leverage ServiceNow to automate workflows, streamlining repetitive tasks for agents and improving overall efficiency. Users can design processes to identify, log, resolve, and close incidents, minimizing manual data entry and ensuring consistency. The platform also supports the creation of cross-enterprise workflows, providing end-to-end visibility and management of service processes across different departments.
ServiceNow offers customer service management (CSM) tools enhanced with generative AI technology. Its Now Assist tool provides AI-powered suggestions for agent responses, improving response quality and speed. Additionally, ServiceNow’s AI offers intelligent suggestions to guide agents on the next best steps towards ticket resolution, accelerating issue resolution times and enhancing agent effectiveness.
Pricing: Contact ServiceNow directly for pricing details as it is tailored for enterprise-level solutions.
Recommended reading: See a comparison of Zendesk vs. ServiceNow.
10. LiveAgent
LiveAgent is a customer service tool with a strong focus on live chat functionality, providing a suite of features to enhance real-time customer interactions. Key features include a real-time typing view, enabling agents to see what customers are typing before they send messages, allowing for proactive response preparation. Customer service website monitoring for chat engagement and proactive chat invitations based on agent availability help businesses engage with website visitors effectively. LiveAgent’s universal inbox consolidates help requests from various channels and intelligently routes them to specific agents based on predefined criteria.
Beyond its robust chat tool, LiveAgent’s help desk includes built-in call center software with both inbound and outbound call capabilities, a comprehensive ticketing system, a knowledge base for self-service, and reporting and analytics tools for performance monitoring. Businesses can utilize call recordings for quality assurance and training, establish interactive voice response (IVR) flows for efficient call routing, and monitor agent activity in real time. Customers benefit from callback request options, eliminating the need to wait on hold and preserving their place in the queue.
Users can customize LiveAgent’s workflow automation using its Rules feature, enabling automation of routing, tagging, and ticket resolutions. LiveAgent is also highly customizable with a library of integrations to connect with third-party tools, extending its functionality and adapting to specific business requirements.
Pricing: Plans start at $9 per agent/month, making it one of the more affordable options. A free plan and free trials of 7 or 30 days are available for businesses to test the platform.
11. Freshdesk
Freshdesk, a customer service product from Freshworks, provides a platform for support teams to efficiently manage, prioritize, and respond to customer requests from a unified location. Its ticketing system gathers requests from multiple channels and consolidates them into a team inbox, providing a central hub for managing customer interactions. Trend reports within Freshdesk help teams analyze ticket activity, identify patterns, and optimize support strategies.
Users can configure ticket fields to automate routing, categorizing, and prioritizing incoming requests, streamlining ticket management processes. Custom ticket statuses can be created to provide agents with clear visibility into the current stage of each ticket. The system is also intelligent enough to detect when a customer ends a conversation with a “Thank you,” preventing accidental ticket reopenings and ensuring efficient closure processes.
It’s important to note that the Freshworks platform comprises three distinct systems: Freshdesk, Freshchat, and Freshcaller. Each system operates within its own workspace, requiring agents to potentially navigate between different tabs to access complete customer information. This separation can sometimes slow down customer service workflows and may lead to agents missing crucial context when customer information is spread across different systems.
Pricing: Plans start at $15 per agent/month. A free plan and a 14-day free trial are available for businesses to evaluate Freshdesk.
Recommended reading: See a comparison of Zendesk vs. Freshdesk.
12. Hiver
Hiver is a multichannel customer service help desk specifically designed to integrate seamlessly with Google Workspace, leveraging existing Google tools for customer support. Instead of requiring a completely new platform adoption, Hiver enhances familiar Google programs with essential customer service features, including shared inboxes, analytics, and service level agreement (SLA) management. Businesses that prefer to leverage their existing Google communication infrastructure can find Hiver a convenient and efficient solution.
Hiver’s shared inbox offers customizable views, allowing users to personalize their email display by choosing specific conversation categories and filters. The Conversation ID feature enables users to track email threads by assigning unique numbers, making them easily retrievable on demand. Built-in notes and @mentions (tagging) facilitate team collaboration directly within email threads, eliminating the need for forwarding or copying colleagues into emails, streamlining internal communication.
Additionally, businesses can create a knowledge base within Hiver to house frequently asked questions (FAQs), instructions, and troubleshooting guides, empowering customers with self-service resources. Customers can easily navigate through articles using an embedded search bar. If customers cannot find the information they need, they can directly submit a support ticket from within the knowledge base, providing a seamless transition from self-service to direct support.
Pricing: Plans start at $15 per user/month. A 7-day free trial is available for businesses to experience Hiver’s integration with Google Workspace.
13. ProProfs Help Desk
ProProfs Help Desk provides a customer support solution focused on simplifying ticket management and enhancing team collaboration. The software enables teams to efficiently manage, track, and resolve customer support tickets. It includes a shared inbox for team collaboration, allowing agents to view and manage conversations in one centralized location. Agents can prioritize tickets, automate routine tasks, and easily tag teammates into conversations for seamless collaboration.
Agents can access a customer’s complete ticket history and export conversations as PDF files for record-keeping and offline access. Private notes within tickets facilitate internal team communication through side conversations, without customer visibility. Collision detection is a valuable feature that helps prevent multiple agents from unknowingly working on the same ticket simultaneously, improving efficiency and avoiding duplicated effort.
ProProfs also offers additional features such as a knowledge base for customer self-service, enabling customers to access articles and FAQs independently. Its live chat software provides real-time support through a web widget, offering immediate assistance to website visitors. ProProfs also includes surveys to help teams collect customer feedback and track customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, providing valuable insights for service improvement.
Pricing: Plans start at $19.99 per operator a month. A free plan and a 15-day free trial are available, offering options for businesses of different sizes and needs.
Recommended reading: Learn about how ProProfs integrates with Zendesk.
14. Help Scout
Help Scout’s customer care software is designed to consolidate customer data, interactions, and history into a shared inbox, providing agents with comprehensive context for every customer request. This unified inbox offers features like private notes for internal team collaboration and collision detection to prevent agents from working on the same issue concurrently, enhancing efficiency and coordination.
Help Scout integrates AI tools, including AI Summarize and AI Assist, to further enhance agent productivity. AI Summarize helps agents quickly condense lengthy email threads into concise bullet points, saving time and improving information absorption. AI Assist provides intelligent text suggestions as agents type replies, improving response speed and consistency. AI Assist can also refine content, adjust tone, and translate text into other languages, improving communication quality and reach.
Businesses can easily administer short-form surveys and collect customer satisfaction ratings directly on their website or within their app, gathering valuable feedback directly from customers. Additionally, Help Scout features an apps and integrations directory offering over 100 integrations for support, marketing, e-commerce, communication, CRM, and analytics, extending its functionality and compatibility with other business systems.
Pricing: Plans start at $20 per user/month. A 15-day free trial is available for businesses to explore Help Scout’s capabilities.
Recommended reading: See a comparison of Zendesk vs. Help Scout.
15. HubSpot Service Hub
HubSpot Service Hub provides a shared inbox that equips agents with customer history, ticket information, and queue details, offering a comprehensive view for efficient support. HubSpot Service Hub seamlessly connects with HubSpot’s CRM to synchronize data across its suite of tools, ensuring consistent and up-to-date customer information. Agents can also utilize a mobile inbox to stay active and responsive while on the move, enhancing flexibility and accessibility.
With HubSpot Service Hub, businesses can create custom customer portals and feedback surveys, enhancing customer engagement and feedback collection. The customer portal allows customers to view, open, and reply to their support tickets, providing transparency and self-service options. Customers can also access the company knowledge base directly from the portal, promoting self-help and reducing support inquiries.
Users can automate follow-up responses based on survey results to gather deeper insights into customer feedback and address concerns proactively. Key performance metrics—including agent productivity, response time, and support volume—are readily available through the reporting and analytics dashboard. Each dashboard can accommodate up to 30 reports, offering detailed performance monitoring and analysis.
Pricing: Plans start at $18 per month for two users, making it a cost-effective option for smaller teams. A free plan is also available for businesses starting out.
Recommended reading: Learn about HubSpot for Zendesk and a comparison of Zendesk vs. HubSpot.
16. Kustomer
Kustomer is a customer service platform designed to help support teams efficiently manage customer interactions by providing a unified view of customer data. It consolidates customer data from various sources into a chronological timeline view, presenting agents with customer history, preferences, and interactions in a single, easily digestible format. Agents have access to prewritten replies, suggested actions, and ticket tagging options, streamlining workflows and improving response consistency.
Kustomer incorporates AI tools that utilize natural language processing to intelligently detect customer intent, enhancing understanding of customer needs and sentiment. It can analyze conversations and track customer sentiment, enabling businesses to identify both satisfied and dissatisfied customers, facilitating targeted interventions. Support teams can also leverage Kustomer’s AI to classify and route conversations based on the customer’s historical data, ensuring efficient and personalized handling of inquiries.
The platform provides live reporting and analytics dashboards displaying real-time customer service metrics, offering immediate insights into performance. Kustomer retains data for reporting for up to two years, providing a substantial historical data pool for analysis. Users can perform one-time data exports or schedule regularly recurring report exports for ongoing monitoring and reporting needs.
Pricing: Plans start at $89 per user/month, reflecting its more advanced feature set and enterprise focus.
Recommended reading: See a comparison of Zendesk vs. Kustomer.
17. Gorgias
Gorgias is a customer service software solution specifically tailored for e-commerce businesses, offering a help desk with a shared inbox system designed for collaborative customer query management. Gorgias integrates seamlessly with e-commerce platforms like Shopify, enabling agents to directly access crucial customer details such as customer data, order information, and order history directly within the support interface.
The software offers robust automation features, including AI-powered responses, prewritten responses for frequently asked questions (FAQs), and customizable templates to efficiently handle repetitive inquiries. AI intelligently scans incoming tickets to identify customer intent, automatically closing spam messages and answering legitimate requests such as order status updates, freeing up agents for more complex issues.
Gorgias provides a customizable interface, allowing businesses to build tailored workflows that automatically assign, tag, and close tickets based on predefined rules. Prewritten responses enable agents to deliver standardized answers to common questions, ensuring consistency and speed. The system can also accommodate rules to identify VIP customers, prioritizing their requests and ensuring premium service for high-value clients.
Pricing: Plans start at $10 per month, making it a very accessible option, particularly for e-commerce businesses. A free trial is available for businesses to explore Gorgias’ e-commerce focused features.
Recommended reading: See a comparison of Zendesk vs. Gorgias.
