Best Customer Support Software 2021
Customer support software generally comprises features like live chat, ticketing, a centralized inbox, and a Help Center. These features come together to provide businesses with different ways of getting in touch with customers and resolving customer issues.
Businesses of all sizes and industries should have some kind of customer support software. Today, customers expect websites to offer a variety of both self-help and agent-based help options. Things like tickets and live chat are also able to be responded to instantly, so customers will feel appeased with quick responses.
Customer support platforms vary greatly in terms of pricing, the included features, and what kinds of businesses each is best for. For example, Zendesk is more appropriate for enterprise-level businesses, while solutions like Help Scout are better suited for smaller organizations.
Our reviews are designed to help you decide whether or not a product is right for you. To learn more about our research process, check out this article explaining SoftwarePundit’s review methodology.
Highest Rated Customer Support Software
We’ve chosen the highest quality customer support platforms to review. These tools are popular with small businesses and have different features to support meetings within and across organizations.
Zendesk is a popular customer support software platform with top-of-the-line ticketing, chat, and help center features. It's more expensive than alternatives but correspondingly provides significantly more power.
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HelpCrunch is a modern and powerful customer communication platform. With features that help streamline customer support and marketing, it’s a solution that will benefit most teams, ecommerce organizations in particular.
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Freshdesk is a help desk software used by companies of all sizes to provide support to their customers. It's a reliable solution that won't break the bank for smaller businesses.
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Tawk.to is a free live chat solution with over 3 million users. It focuses solely on live chat, with features like ticketing and screen sharing, and tawk.to also allows customers to directly hire virtual assistants and chat agents. Tawk.to is the best free live chat software and would benefit any company searching for a free option.
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Zoho Desk is a mid-tier customer support software with features like ticketing, a Knowledge Base, live chat, and more. It's best for small to mid-sized companies and for those who already use other Zoho products.
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Gist is a customer messaging software with over 10,000 customers. Its notable features include event tracking and cross-channel campaigns. It is ideal for anyone looking for an affordable mid-tier customer messaging solution.
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Help Scout is an affordable customer support software. Help Scout is used by over 12,000 businesses and has a straightforward interface.
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Customer Support Software FAQs
Customer support software is used by companies of all sizes and industries to provide real-time support to customers through live chat, ticketing, email support and more.
There are numerous benefits that customer support software offers. These include:
- Instant connections with customers
- Providing self-help options to customers
- Engaging with website visitors via chat
Generally, customer support software platforms range from free to upwards of $100 per user per month. The tools are generally priced per user, and platforms usually offer a discount if customers choose a yearly subscription over a monthly plan.
Some popular tools are Zendesk, Tawk.to, Freshdesk, and HubSpot Service Hub.
Why You Should Trust Our Recommendations
The team at SoftwarePundit has been testing software since 2017. We’ve hand-tested over 250 software products in that time. We applied the same rigorous process to each piece of customer support software that we analyzed. The specifics of our customer support category research process are outlined below.
Katelyn led our analysis of customer support software. She has spent more than 200 hours evaluating leading customer support software systems. To test the customer support tools, she set up an account with each platform and tested key user workflows. She examined key features and analyzed differences between the software products.
In addition, all research and content was overseen by Bruce Hogan, SoftwarePundit’s Co-founder & CEO. Bruce has more than a decade of experience researching, building, and reviewing the world’s best software products. His technology advice has been featured on a wide range of media sites such as AngelList, CMSWire, Dental Economics, iPhone Life, Reader’s Digest, Thrive Global, U.S. News, and the Zapier Blog.
How We Selected the Best Customer Support Software
We used the same rigorous process to evaluate customer support software as all other software categories. For the customer support category, Katelyn invested several weeks researching, testing, and writing about the tools.
We interviewed real customers of the tools to understand the perspective of paying customers. We asked them about how they selected the tools, their favorite aspects of the tool, and whether it works well for their businesses.
Katelyn also obtained a free trial of each software tool listed above. She spent several hours testing the key user journeys in each software product. This allowed us to validate the features offered by each product, and to gain an understanding of the software’s usability.