What Is Customer Support Software?

Customer support software is an automated platform used by organizations to manage, organize and track customer requests. It helps in streamlining the entire customer service process and ensures the faster resolution of support tickets. The tool helps provide omnichannel support and provides insightful reports to sales & CRM departments. This software acts as a backbone of businesses as it empowers them to handle multichannel interactions seamlessly. Moreover, users also get the facility of mobile-ready support to resolve issues on the go and update the status in real-time.

Why Use Customer Support Software?

Buyers are becoming more demanding every year, especially regarding the quality of customer service that companies provide. Owing to this, businesses across the globe are searching for new ways to keep up with this demand. One of the best methods to develop a better customer service strategy and provide world-class service is to adopt customer support software.

Using this software solution, you can drastically improve the quality of support, centralize the data, streamline communication, and provide accurate and faster resolution. Another benefit of using this software is that it will increase your agent's productivity and provide 24/7 self-help service access to customers.

Who Uses Customer Support Software?

Customer support software is mainly used by businesses and organizations of various sizes to handle customer inquiries, interactions, and support requests. It is specifically designed to improve the customer service process across industries such as technology, healthcare, hospitality, finance, retail, and many others. Technical support teams, sales teams. customer service teams and several other customer-facing departments prefer to use this software due to its wide range of benefits and features.

Common Features of Customer Support Software

• Multichannel customer support: Thanks to the easy-to-use interface, customer support executives can easily interact over various channels like voice, email, social media, chat, and more. Moreover, in some top-end support platforms, users don't have to open multiple screens to resolve the tickets. Also, the software allows customers to raise tickets through their preferred medium. Customer service representatives can also leverage these channels to quickly resolve queries within the specified turnaround time.
• Performance tracking: Modern customer service software tracks live chats, calls, and other modes of communication to analyze agents' performance and review customer calls. Moreover, the platform also lets supervisors seamlessly manage teams across multiple locations.
• Video chat feature: Video chat facility via the platform is important to optimize interactions with customers, especially for high-value communication such as technical support and banking services. Additionally, the instant video chat feature also helps in improving the quality of interaction, which results in faster resolution and customer satisfaction.
• Internal communication platform: All robust customer support software comes with an internal communication mechanism for smooth interaction between teams, managers, and external vendors. It allows the sharing of clarifications, live queries, & information requests, which can be regularly reviewed for training and recruitment purposes.
• Live reporting & monitoring: The live monitoring of both outbound and inbound calls is one of the most critical aspects of customer support platforms. Businesses get real-time insights into the outcomes of the calls. Moreover, the live reporting feature provides real time updates and in-depth analysis across multiple channels.
• Smart query ticket prioritization: This feature allows the agents to prioritize queries, escalate urgent or critical issues, transfer them to other teams and create a resolution channel for niche queries.
• Self-service portal: Customer support software has a self-service portal that is used by customers to find information, check the ticket status and raise service requests. The portal also offers a knowledge base with a large collection of videos, FAQs, how-to guides, articles and more. Moreover, some platforms also have the feature of collaborative spaces such as community forums where customers can share useful information and help each other on a particular topic.
• Knowledge management: Thanks to the knowledge management portal, the customer service reps get up-to-date and reliable knowledge about the company's products & services. This contextual knowledge increases their effectiveness and allows them to resolve customer-related issues faster.

Benefits of Customer Support Software

Customer service software transforms the way you interact with your customers. Let’s look at some important benefits of using this platform.

• Track your customers’ requests: Answering all the queries with perfection is an uphill task for customer service representatives, but it becomes easier with customer support software. This platform smoothens the way your agents handle all requests. All requests are automatically assigned a unique identification number so that executives can quickly search and find them to check the previous communication and outstanding issues.
• Boost your agents’ productivity: High-quality customer service software boosts the productivity of your customer service agents. With the help of this platform, they can easily track and pull queries within a few seconds. Agents get the facility to search for answers in a database, which saves a lot of time and enables them to answer every query with perfection. Moreover, they don't have to create manual help desk tickets, as the software automatically does this work for them.
• Solicit customer testimonials: Customer service software captures the positive experience of your customers. It records a call or tracks an email with permission so that it can be used on the website as a testimonial for your products and services.
• Increase sales & conversions: When buyers are searching for a product or service, they are often looking for ways to ask questions about pricing, expiration date, warranty etc. However, if you integrate the support software with social media handles, websites, chatbots and customer support channels, you provide them a platform to directly speak to your company. Their issues and answers can be resolved through the tool, resulting in a great customer experience. It encourages them to buy from you and put their trust in your products & services.
• Deliver 24/7 customer support: When you use customer support software, you offer a 24/7 self-service support system to your customers that provide them answers in the form of frequently asked questions (FAQs). They can even send email queries to your team, outside normal business hours. These queries are then transformed into tickets and routed to the first available agent. Moreover, customers can log in at their convenience, view request history and get quick resolutions to common technical problems.
• Transparency in customer management: Customer support software improves the customer experience by making it more transparent. It allows the agents to respond as quickly as possible via chat, phone calls or social media handles. The software makes you accessible to your customers and it helps in maintaining a two-way relationship with them.

Top 10 Customer Support Software

Trends Related to Customer Support Software

Here is the list of top customer support software trends you want to keep in mind when you are using or considering using the platform.

• Personalization based on data: The process of collecting data from all departments to facilitate relevant and personalized customer support is not exactly new. But in the latest process, the software is allowing data-driven personalization so that your customer service executives are aware of the journey of every customer.
• Rise of video communication: Today, most companies are leveraging the advantages of video communication to interact with customers and make it more personal & efficient. From resolving customer support issues to shopping advice, the facility of live virtual video meetings is helping in building a strong relationship with customers. This mode is here to stay, as it allows the client to see and seamlessly talk to a company representative.
• Providing proactive customer support: In traditional customer support, when customers face any issues, they reach out to the company, and they are routed to the resource that could help them in resolving their problem. But, nowadays, the fastest-growing organizations are delivering proactive customer support. Instead of reacting to a query, these companies tailor their service according to their client's requirements. In fact, some enterprises are building dedicated success teams as a replacement or to complement the support teams.
• Machine learning: In 2023, machine learning and other emerging customer support trends will help companies in improving their customer experience. Start-ups and large organizations are using chat support & AI technology to provide effective service at reduced costs. Predictive analysis is also proving to be extremely effective. Scenarios that would require help from the customer support team can be easily predicted. Moreover, using machine learning customer service will give businesses a much-needed boost in the highly competitive domain.

How to Select the Best Customer Support Software for your business?

When customer support teams are backed by reliable software solutions, they can shift their focus to the bigger picture to provide unforgettable customer experiences. But there is a wide range of customer service software available, hence choosing the right platform for your business can be a challenging task. That's why below we've mentioned some critical points that'll help you find the best software.

• Software should be easy to use: Software with complex features and capabilities can be a headache for your customer service team. You should remember that the purpose of using software is to simplify the process, not complicate it. Therefore, the software you choose should be simple to set up, easy to navigate and increase the efficiency of your agents.
• Scalability: As your business grows, your customer service requirements will also change with it. Can the chosen software grow with your requirements? For instance, you may be using email support now, but after a certain period, you may also require video or website chat support feature as your business grow. Similarly, if you plan to expand to other markets outside India, you need to make sure that customer support software should follow the suit.
• Integration: Whatever solution you choose, it should integrate with CRM, emailing and other solutions to provide better customer insights. Other applications it must support include business intelligence, business productivity, app connectors, and email clients. Additionally, make sure that software comes with an open API so that you can easily integrate it with your apps when required.
• Access on the go: While your customer service agents are stationed at their workstations, managers should be able to access the software from any device. No matter where you are, with cloud-based software, you're always available to help your team during key decision-making or resolve escalated cases.