9 Customer Service Tools To Boost Your Team’s Collaboration Efforts
The undeniable fact of the business world is that you cannot have a great product without an excellent customer support team.
Yeah, you might have developed a top product, but you would need an efficient bunch of professionals to manage your customers’ queries.
In these times when customers are known for switching brand loyalties often, your customer support team has to be on its toes to satisfy your esteemed clientele. Customers’ demands and expectations are changing rapidly. To cope with their ever-changing and increasing needs, businesses today need to combine a skilled workforce with the best customer service tools to deliver the goods.
That said, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and confused when choosing the right tool from the plethora of options available today. Remember, not every tool is designed to serve your customer support team’s requirements. You need to understand your team’s and your business’ needs first and then pick the right customer service tools for your business.
To help you in this, I am going to share a list of 9 amazing customer service tools made for team collaboration.
9 Top Customer Service Tools To Empower Your Support Team
#1 Freshdesk (Customer Service Software)
Freshdesk is an online cloud-based customer service software with all the tools you need to grow your business. Freshdesk provides helpdesk support with smart automation to help your tech support teams to achieve more in less time.
Designed to enable businesses of all sizes to easily access customer engagement, Freshdesk allows you to streamline your company’s customer support using the customer service software so you can efficiently manage your customers as you scale. This tool lets you support customers across various platforms like social media, email, chat, phone calls, etc.
Main Features Include:
- Ticketing
- Collaboration
- Automations
- Help Widget
- Reporting and Analytics
- Scheduling Dashboard
- Curated Reports
Pricing: The Paid plan starts from $15 per user/month.
#2 ProofHub (Team Collaboration and Project Management)
ProofHub is a top-rated project and team management software that allows your customer support team members to be on the same page with each other for a quick resolution to customers’ problems. With this all-in-one software, your customer support team can collaborate efficiently and stay updated on all recent developments.
ProofHub is easy to understand and has no learning curve, making it easier for every member of your team to use it without any hassles. Quick communication and file sharing enable users to save time and maintain transparency in operations.
Main Features Include:
- Note-taking and file sharing
- Task Management
- Group Chat
- Discussions
- Scheduling Calendar
- Timesheets
- Custom Reports
Pricing: The Ultimate Control plan is priced at $89 per month, billed annually.
#3 MobileMonkey (Chatbot Platform)
MobileMonkey is a multi-channel chat customer service tool that lets your customer support teams connect with customers in real-time via Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Chat, SMS, and Website Chat. MobileMonkey is the only platform that allows marketers to make Facebook ad bots, native webchat bots, and SMS bots in one place.
The platform’s simplicity makes it an ideal choice for marketers, support teams, and entrepreneurs in smaller companies. You can make a chatbot answer customers’ queries or integrate it with Shopify to monetize your Facebook fan pages.
Main Features Include:
- Chatbots
- OmniChat technology
- SMS Marketing tools
- Facebook Ad Bots
- Web Chat tools
- Messaging automation
- Contact Growth tools
- Free Facebook Lead Generator
Pricing: The Paid plan starts from $14.25 per month, billed annually.
#4 Jira (Service Management)
Jira is Atlassian’s IT service management (ITSM) solution that is designed and created to empower development and operations teams to collaborate effectively. This enables them to swiftly respond to business changes and deliver top-of-the-line customer service experiences.
Jira Service Management can be used to quickly set up a customer service desk. By doing this, your customer service team can easily receive, track, manage, and resolve customers’ requests.
Your customers can send requests through email, a customizable help center, and an embeddable widget. Using Jira Service Management software, you can categorize service requests, issues, incidents, and changes by organizing and prioritizing customer requests in a single location.
Main Features Include:
- Request Management
- Incident Management
- Problem Management
- Asset Management
- Change Management
- Configuration Management
- Knowledge Management
Pricing: The Paid plan starts from $20 per user, per month.
Go ahead and read about the Freshdesk-Jira integration here.
#5 Zendesk (Customer Service)
Zendesk is a cloud-based customer service management software that is designed to improve communication exchange between businesses and their customers. Seamless conversations across channels lead to increased productivity and overall customer satisfaction.
Zendesk Support helps you save money by having to pay for and use fewer tools and store all your customer data in a single location. Zendesk Guide allows you to empower agents and improve self-service by gathering all queries of your customers. Zendesk Live Chat helps your teams make instant connections with customers and address their queries faster.
Main Features Include:
- Zendesk Messaging
- Zendesk Suite
- Zendesk Sunshine
- Zendesk for SMBs
- Zendesk for Startups
Pricing: The Paid plan starts from $49 per user, per month, billed annually.
#6 Hootsuite (Social Media Management)
Hootsuite is a social media management platform that helps your teams engage with customers through social media channels. Hootsuite encompasses almost every aspect of the social media manager’s role. Your teams can bring together all your social media campaigns in one place, schedule, and publish content across various channels from a secure web-based dashboard.
Hootsuite helps your customer support teams have seamless communication with customers across public channels, solve their problems, and use their feedback to improve the product/services.
Main Features Include:
- Automatic Scheduling
- Social Media Monitoring
- Performance Reporting
- Basic Task Management
- Advertising Content
- Analyze Results
Pricing: The Paid plan starts from $17.40 per user, per month.
#7 Mailchimp (Marketing Platform)
Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing platform that enables businesses to create and forward email newsletters, signup forms, and event invitations to their clients, customers, and other interested parties. Mailchimp allows your customer service teams to manage mailing lists, create custom email templates, and automate entire marketing campaigns.
Automated messages reach your customers at the right time for an elevated customer service experience. With all relevant data and insights in one place, you can analyze what’s working (and what’s not) and get recommendations to further improve your services.
Main Features Include:
- Audience Management
- Creative Tools
- Marketing Automation
- Insights and Analytics
- App Integrations
- A Directory of Trusted Pros
Pricing: The Paid plan starts from $15.80 for up to 100,000 contacts and 5 audiences
Read about Freshdesk-MailChimp integration to find out how it adds value to your business and customers.
#8 SurveyMonkey (Customer Service)
SurveyMonkey is a customer service tool that allows businesses to create and conduct online professional surveys. Businesses and their customer service teams can collect feedback, opinions, concerns, and criticism from both potential and existing customers through this powerful application.
This online survey platform enables businesses to analyze feedback via weblink, email, mobile chat, and social media, and take data-driven actions. With SurveyMonkey, you get a plethora of customer surveys to gather insights into product feedback and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). Freshdesk now integrates with SurveyMonkey!
Main Features Include:
- Plan for individuals and multiple users
- Collaboration on surveys from creation to analysis
- 150 plus expert-written surveys for any project
- Copy-Paste functionality
- File upload questions
- Embed survey questions
Pricing: The Paid plan starts from $21.40 for 3 users/month.
#9 Zoho Desk (Customer Service Software)
Zoho Desk is a cloud-based help desk solution that helps you efficiently manage your customer support activities. Zoho Desk accumulates interactions from different mediums (social media, phone, chat, email, forums, forms, self-service portals) and stores them in one place. This efficient tool can be used by businesses of all sizes.
Zoho Desk allows your customer service teams to assign, track and set up alerts easily on help desk tickets. This application enables your customer support staff to provide the right solutions for customer tickets, improve resolution time, and help your customers proactively.
Main Features Include:
- Ticket Management
- Contextual Artificial Intelligence
- Self-Service
- Agent Productivity
- Automation
- Extensibility
- Insights and Impact
Pricing: The Paid plan starts from $9.90 per user/month/billed annually
The Big Picture
These days businesses cannot afford to leave even a single customer unsatisfied. Providing top-notch service has become quintessential to maintain your existing customer base. Hence, your customer support team has to use the right mix of skills and technology to provide a delightful customer experience.
The customer service tools mentioned above are some of the best you can have to improve and simplify your support team’s collaboration efforts. These tools are packed with powerful features in a centralized location to promote efficiency and enable support teams to deliver exceptional customer service.