In today’s fast-paced business environment, providing exceptional customer care is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity. Customers expect prompt, efficient, and personalized support across various channels. To meet these demands and exceed customer expectations, businesses need to equip their customer service teams with the most powerful and effective tools available.
This comprehensive guide delves into a curated list of the top customer care service tools that can transform your support operations. We’ll explore each platform’s key features, pricing, and trial options, empowering you to make informed decisions and select the solutions that best align with your business needs and customer support goals. By leveraging these tools, you can streamline workflows, enhance agent productivity, and ultimately deliver unparalleled customer experiences.
1. Zendesk
Zendesk stands out as an award-winning customer service software designed to empower businesses to deliver fast and personalized customer support at scale. It’s a comprehensive solution that enables agents to efficiently manage and respond to customer requests across any channel from a unified workspace. This eliminates the inefficiencies of switching between multiple dashboards and provides a seamless experience for both agents and customers.
Agents gain a holistic 360-degree view of each customer, accessing crucial information such as past support interactions, preferences, and relevant history. This is facilitated by over 1,500 plug-and-play integrations, allowing Zendesk to connect with your existing business systems and data sources. Collaboration is also streamlined, with built-in integrations for platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams, enabling agents to seamlessly connect with teammates and other departments directly within Zendesk.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is deeply integrated into the Zendesk agent workspace, providing intelligent assistance to manage high ticket volumes while maintaining exceptional customer satisfaction levels. Zendesk AI capabilities include intelligent ticket routing based on conversation priority, intent, sentiment, and language, as well as agent capacity and skill sets. The AI also acts as a real-time guide for agents, offering ticket summaries and suggestions to improve the tone and effectiveness of their responses. Powered by insights from over 18 billion real service interactions, Zendesk AI is built to understand the nuances of customer service from day one.
Advanced reporting and analytics dashboards provide actionable insights into operational efficiency and evolving customer needs. These analytics enable businesses to adapt quickly, optimize processes, and proactively address customer pain points. Furthermore, Zendesk prioritizes data security with enterprise-class security features, ensuring customer data is protected and compliant with industry standards.
Zendesk is designed for ease of use, focusing on maximizing agent productivity and enabling businesses to operate at the speed of their customers. It’s a complete, out-of-the-box solution that doesn’t require extensive development resources or third-party consultants, resulting in a rapid return on investment and a low total cost of ownership.
Pricing: Plans start at $19 per agent/month. A 14-day free trial is available.
Explore more Zendesk pricing plans.
Take 30 seconds to start a free Zendesk trial or request a Zendesk demo.
2. Intercom
Intercom offers a customer support solution centered around automation and messaging, designed to empower internal customer service teams. Intercom Messenger acts as a powerful extension to a business’s current support infrastructure. Intelligent routing capabilities ensure that customer inquiries are directed to the most appropriate agents based on their skills, availability, and the customer’s interaction history.
The platform effectively manages tickets generated through Messenger and other communication channels like email, consolidating them into a shared inbox for streamlined management. Intercom Messenger facilitates both live chat support for immediate assistance and self-service options, empowering customers to find answers at their own pace using help center resources.
Intercom’s AI-powered tool, Fin, provides 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 key ticket information, reducing manual data entry. Intercom also boasts a robust marketplace with over 350 integrations, extending its functionality and compatibility with other business tools.
Pricing: Plans start at $39 per seat/month. A 14-day free trial is available.
Recommended reading: Learn about the Intercom integration for Zendesk and how Zendesk vs. Intercom compare.
3. Salesforce Service Cloud
Salesforce Service Cloud provides a robust customer service platform designed to equip agents with an omnichannel workspace for delivering exceptional support. Agents gain immediate access to relevant context for each ticket directly within their workspace. This includes comprehensive customer contact details, a history of prior interactions, and purchase history, enabling personalized and informed support interactions. The Swarming feature enhances team collaboration by allowing agents to bring in colleagues with specific skills to dedicated Slack channels for efficient case resolution.
Salesforce Service Cloud enables agents to customize workflows to match specific business processes and automatically route tickets to the most qualified support agent, optimizing efficiency and response times. Comprehensive reporting and analytics features, featuring prebuilt dashboards, empower management to effectively monitor team performance across all channels. Reports can also track Swarming metrics, such as top responders and the breakdown of open and closed cases, providing valuable insights into team productivity and effectiveness.
It’s worth noting that Salesforce, while powerful, can be complex and may require a longer learning curve for users, as noted in user reviews. As Salesforce is not solely focused on customer experience but offers a broader suite of sales and marketing products, businesses seeking a dedicated and streamlined customer service solution may find software specifically designed for customer experience to be more efficient in achieving their support goals.
Pricing: Plans start at $25 per user/month. A 30-day free trial is available.
Recommended reading: Learn how Salesforce integrates with Zendesk and how Zendesk vs. Salesforce compare.
4. Front
Front presents a customer service solution engineered to streamline communication and enhance team collaboration through automated workflows and a unified shared inbox. The shared inbox is a central hub for all customer inquiries, automatically consolidating messages from various channels and intelligently routing them to the agent best suited to handle the request.
Every customer interaction is meticulously logged within Front, providing agents with access to a comprehensive customer history. This ensures that any agent interacting with an account has the necessary context for providing informed and consistent support. Built-in collaboration tools facilitate seamless team communication on tickets, promoting efficient problem-solving. Front also delivers unified reporting capabilities, offering analytics on team performance and customer satisfaction metrics.
Businesses can empower customers with self-service options by building a comprehensive help center within Front. Knowledge base administrators have granular control over user permissions, defining who can create, edit, and publish content. The help center is seamlessly integrated with the live chat system, allowing customers to easily transition between self-service resources and direct customer support when needed.
Pricing: Plans start at $19 per seat/month. A 7-day free trial is available.
Recommended reading: See how Zendesk vs. Front compare.
5. Tidio
Tidio is a customer service platform tailored for small and midsize businesses, offering a suite of tools to manage customer interactions effectively. Featuring a robust help desk ticketing system, Tidio allows users to efficiently organize and manage customer requests within a shared inbox. The software can convert emails, live chats, and social media messages into trackable tickets that are routed to the team inbox for centralized management.
Tickets within Tidio are highly customizable, allowing users to add detailed notes and create custom tags for enhanced organization and categorization. Tidio can automate ticket assignment to agents based on predefined rules and automatically close tickets upon resolution, streamlining the workflow. The system can also trigger automated satisfaction surveys once an interaction is completed, gathering valuable customer feedback.
Tidio’s live chat tool is equipped with prewritten responses, enabling agents to quickly answer common questions and improve response times. The chat window offers a real-time typing view, allowing assigned agents to anticipate customer inquiries and prepare responses proactively, even before the customer sends the message. Tidio also incorporates Lyro, a conversational AI chatbot, to provide automated support and handle routine customer requests.
Pricing: Plans start at $29 per month. A free plan and a 7-day trial are available.
6. Bitrix24
Bitrix24 delivers online customer support software designed for omnichannel support and efficient customer request management. The platform enables teams to manage customer interactions from a single, unified location, regardless of the communication channel. Bitrix24 can be configured to queue requests by channel, ensuring organized handling of inquiries from different sources. Further customization options include creating prewritten responses to common questions and setting up wait time rules to manage customer expectations.
Every customer interaction across all channels is automatically logged into the integrated CRM system. The system intelligently collects customer data and creates a new lead record if a customer profile does not already exist, building a comprehensive customer database. Bitrix24 also provides prebuilt and customizable activity reporting features, offering insights into support performance and customer interactions.
Bitrix24’s built-in video calling functionality allows agents and customers to connect face-to-face for more personalized and effective issue resolution. Screen sharing and recording capabilities enable agents to visually demonstrate solutions, guide customers through complex steps, 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.
Pricing: Plans start at $49 per organization/month. A free plan and a 15-day free trial are available.
7. HappyFox
HappyFox is a dedicated customer service solution and help desk management software provider, offering a comprehensive suite of features to streamline support operations. At its core is a robust ticketing system that helps teams organize customer requests effectively. HappyFox provides a single customer view, consolidating interactions across all channels for a unified support experience. Automation, customizable workflows, and AI-powered chatbots are integral to HappyFox, automating routine tasks and boosting agent efficiency.
Managers can leverage HappyFox to effectively coordinate work schedules and optimize team resource allocation. The platform allows defining team work hours and configuring schedules to align with service level agreements (SLAs). The scheduling feature also accounts for non-working hours when calculating time-based conditions, ensuring accurate SLA management.
HappyFox enhances customer self-service with an online knowledge base, empowering customers to find answers to common questions independently, reducing the need to generate support tickets for simple inquiries. Customers also gain access to features like support ticket tracking, community forums for peer-to-peer support, and comprehensive help center articles and FAQs, all accessible through a unified self-service portal.
Pricing: Plans start at $29 per agent/month. A free trial is available.
Recommended reading: Learn how HappyFox Workflows integrates with Zendesk.
8. Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk is a customer support software solution that focuses on providing agents with powerful tools and automation capabilities to streamline workflows and enhance efficiency. Zoho Desk offers omnichannel support through a single-view dashboard, enabling agents to manage customer issues from various channels in one centralized location. The ticket management system is highly organized, allowing tickets to be sorted and managed according to status, due date, and priority, ensuring timely resolution.
Key features of Zoho Desk include self-service resources to empower customers, service level agreements (SLAs) to ensure timely responses, AI-powered assistance to enhance agent productivity, an advanced response editor for crafting effective communications, and built-in analytics for performance monitoring. The platform allows users to track critical customer data and generate insightful reports with key performance metrics. Customizable dashboards enable users to visualize and monitor specific ticket metrics that are most relevant to their support operations.
Zoho Desk incorporates Zia, an AI-powered assistant, that intelligently detects customer sentiment based on their language and automatically routes tickets to agents with this valuable context. Zia can also auto-tag tickets for better organization and proactively notify agents of unusual activity within the ticket workflow, improving responsiveness and issue resolution.
Pricing: Plans start at $7 per user/month. A free plan and a 15-day free trial are available.
Recommended reading: Learn how Zoho integrates with Zendesk and how Zendesk vs. Zoho compare.
9. ServiceNow
ServiceNow is a robust, cloud-based customer service tool specifically designed for enterprise-level organizations with complex support needs. It features a comprehensive customer self-service portal, enabling customers to initiate service requests or access help center articles without needing direct agent interaction. Customers can also participate in community forums to ask questions, share experiences, and find peer-to-peer support.
ServiceNow excels in workflow automation, allowing businesses to automate repetitive tasks and improve agent efficiency. Users can design custom processes to effectively identify, log, resolve, and close incidents, eliminating redundant data entry and streamlining workflows. The platform also supports the creation of cross-enterprise workflows, providing end-to-end visibility and management of complex service processes.
ServiceNow integrates customer service management (CSM) tools with generative AI technology, further enhancing agent capabilities. The Now Assist tool provides AI-powered suggestions for agent responses, improving response quality and consistency. ServiceNow’s AI also offers intelligent suggestions to guide agents toward the most effective next steps for ticket resolution, accelerating resolution times.
Pricing: Contact ServiceNow for pricing details.
Recommended reading: See how Zendesk vs. ServiceNow compare.
10. LiveAgent
LiveAgent is a customer service tool with a strong focus on live chat functionality, offering a comprehensive suite of features for real-time customer engagement. Key live chat features include a real-time typing view, proactive customer service website monitoring to identify chat engagement opportunities, and proactive chat invitations triggered by agent availability and defined rules. LiveAgent’s universal inbox aggregates help requests from various channels and routes them to the most suitable 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 robust reporting and analytics tools for performance monitoring. Businesses can utilize call recordings for quality assurance, establish interactive voice response (IVR) flows for efficient call routing, and monitor agent activity in real time. A convenient callback request feature allows customers to request a callback instead of waiting on hold, preserving their place in the queue.
LiveAgent provides customizable workflow automation tools through its Rules feature. Rules can be configured to automate ticket routing, tagging, and even ticket resolutions based on predefined conditions. LiveAgent is also highly extensible through a library of integrations, enabling seamless connectivity with various third-party tools and platforms.
Pricing: Plans start at $9 per agent/month. A free plan and free trials of 7 or 30 days are available.
11. Freshdesk
Freshworks’ customer service offering, Freshdesk, provides a centralized platform for support teams to effectively manage, prioritize, and respond to customer requests originating from various channels. Its ticketing system consolidates requests from all connected channels into a unified team inbox for streamlined management. Trend reports offer valuable insights into ticket activity, helping teams analyze patterns and optimize workflows.
Users can configure ticket fields to automate key processes such as routing, categorizing, and prioritizing incoming requests, improving efficiency and response times. 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 interaction concludes with phrases like “Thank you,” preventing accidental ticket reopening and ensuring accurate ticket status management.
It’s important to note that the Freshworks platform is comprised of three distinct systems: Freshdesk, Freshchat, and Freshcaller. Each system operates within its own workspace, requiring agents to potentially navigate between multiple browser tabs to access complete customer information. This separation can introduce inefficiencies and potentially lead to agents missing crucial information when handling customer interactions.
Pricing: Plans start at $15 per agent/month. A free plan and a 14-day free trial are available.
Recommended reading: See how Zendesk vs. Freshdesk compare.
12. Hiver
Hiver is a multichannel customer service help desk specifically designed to integrate seamlessly with Google Workspace. Rather than requiring a completely new platform adoption, Hiver enhances existing Google programs with essential customer service features, including shared inboxes, comprehensive analytics, and service level agreements (SLAs). Hiver is an ideal solution for businesses that prefer to leverage their existing Google infrastructure for customer communications.
Hiver’s shared inbox offers customizable views, allowing users to tailor their workspace by choosing specific conversation categories and filters to personalize the emails they see. The Conversation ID feature enables users to track email threads efficiently by assigning a unique number to each thread, making it easy to resurface conversations on demand. Built-in notes and @mentions (tagging) facilitate seamless team collaboration directly within the email thread, eliminating the need for email forwarding or copying.
Additionally, businesses can create a comprehensive knowledge base within Hiver to house frequently asked questions (FAQs), instructional guides, and troubleshooting resources. Customers can easily navigate through knowledge base articles using an embedded search bar. If customers are unable to find the information they need, they can conveniently submit a support ticket directly from within the knowledge base.
Pricing: Plans start at $15 per user/month. A 7-day free trial is available.
13. ProProfs Help Desk
ProProfs Help Desk offers a customer support solution designed to simplify ticket management and enhance team collaboration. The software enables teams to efficiently manage, track, and close support tickets. It features a shared inbox, providing a central location for team members to view and collaborate on customer conversations. Agents can prioritize tickets based on urgency, automate routine tasks to improve efficiency, and tag teammates directly into conversations for seamless collaboration.
Agents can access a complete customer ticket history and export conversations as PDF documents for record-keeping and offline access. Private notes within tickets facilitate internal team communication and collaboration without customer visibility. Collision detection is a valuable feature that helps prevent multiple agents from unknowingly working on the same ticket simultaneously, avoiding duplicated effort.
ProProfs Help Desk extends its functionality with a knowledge base for customer self-service, allowing customers to access helpful articles and FAQs independently. Integrated live chat software enables real-time support through a web widget. ProProfs also offers surveys to collect valuable customer feedback and track customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores.
Pricing: Plans start at $19.99 per operator a month. A free plan and a 15-day free trial are available.
Recommended reading: Recommended reading: Learn how ProProfs integrates with Zendesk.
14. Help Scout
Help Scout’s customer care software is designed to streamline customer support by consolidating customer data, interactions, and history into a shared inbox. This unified view provides agents with the necessary context for every customer request, enabling personalized and efficient support. The shared inbox includes features such as private notes for internal team collaboration and collision detection to prevent agents from simultaneously working on the same issue.
Help Scout incorporates AI-powered tools, including AI Summarize and AI Assist, to enhance agent productivity. AI Summarize intelligently condenses lengthy email threads into concise bullet points, saving agents time and effort in reviewing past interactions. AI Assist provides real-time text suggestions as agents type replies, improving response speed and consistency. AI Assist can also refine content, adjust tone, and translate text into different languages, further enhancing communication effectiveness.
Businesses can administer short-form surveys and collect customer satisfaction ratings directly on their website or within their app, gathering valuable feedback at the point of interaction. Help Scout also features an extensive apps and integrations directory, offering over 100 integrations across various categories including support, marketing, e-commerce, communication, CRM, and analytics, extending its functionality and connectivity.
Pricing: Plans start at $20 per user/month. A 15-day free trial is available.
Recommended reading: See how Zendesk vs. Help Scout compare.
15. HubSpot Service Hub
HubSpot Service Hub offers a powerful shared inbox designed to equip agents with comprehensive customer context, including customer history, ticket information, and queue details. HubSpot Service Hub seamlessly integrates with HubSpot’s CRM, ensuring synchronized data across its suite of tools and providing a unified view of customer interactions. Agents can also utilize a mobile inbox, enabling them to stay responsive and manage support requests while on the go.
With HubSpot Service Hub, businesses can create dedicated customer portals and custom feedback surveys to enhance customer engagement and gather valuable insights. The customer portal empowers customers to view, open, and respond to their support tickets independently, promoting self-service and reducing support volume. Customers can also access the company knowledge base directly from the portal.
Users can automate follow-up responses based on survey results, enabling proactive engagement and deeper understanding of customer feedback. Robust reporting and analytics dashboards provide visibility into key performance metrics such as rep productivity, response time, and support volume. Each dashboard can accommodate up to 30 reports, offering comprehensive performance monitoring capabilities.
Pricing: Plans start at $18 per month for two users. A free plan is available.
Recommended reading: Learn about HubSpot for Zendesk and how Zendesk vs. HubSpot compare.
16. Kustomer
Kustomer is a customer service platform focused on helping support teams efficiently manage customer interactions and deliver personalized experiences. It consolidates customer data from diverse sources into a unified timeline view, providing agents with a chronological thread of customer history, preferences, and interactions. Agents have quick access to prewritten replies, suggested actions, and ticket tagging options, streamlining workflows and improving response consistency.
Kustomer incorporates AI tools that leverage natural language processing to intelligently detect customer intent. The AI can analyze conversations and track customer sentiment, enabling businesses to identify both satisfied and dissatisfied customers and proactively address concerns. Support teams can also utilize Kustomer’s AI to classify and route conversations based on the customer’s historical data, ensuring efficient ticket handling and agent assignment.
The platform provides live reporting and analytics dashboards that display real-time customer service metrics, offering immediate insights into performance. Kustomer retains data for reporting purposes for up to two years, providing a long-term view of customer service trends. Users can perform one-time data exports or schedule regular report exports for ongoing analysis and reporting needs.
Pricing: Plans start at $89 per user/month.
Recommended reading: See how Zendesk vs. Kustomer compare.
17. Gorgias
Gorgias is a customer service software solution specifically designed for e-commerce businesses. It offers a help desk with a shared inbox system that enables support teams to collaboratively manage customer queries efficiently. Gorgias seamlessly integrates with leading e-commerce platforms like Shopify, allowing agents to access critical customer details directly within the support interface, including customer data, order information, and order history.
The software offers robust automation features, including AI-powered responses, prewritten responses for frequently asked questions, and customizable templates to handle repetitive inquiries. AI intelligently scans incoming tickets to identify customer intent, automatically closing spam messages and providing immediate answers to legitimate requests such as order status inquiries.
Gorgias provides a highly customizable interface, empowering businesses to build automated workflows that automatically assign, tag, and close tickets based on predefined rules. Prewritten responses ensure agents can deliver standardized answers to common questions quickly and consistently. The system also supports the creation of rules to identify VIP customers, enabling prioritized handling of their requests and ensuring premium customer experiences.
Pricing: Plans start at $10 per month. A free trial is available.
Recommended reading: See how Zendesk vs. Gorgias compare.
