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Published March 12th, 2016 by

Customer Service Software for Small Business

Typically, we focus on the role that customer relationship management software (CRM) plays in helping the small business grow. CRM was created for helping businesses in building relationships with existing and new customers. Recently another class of software has evolved to meet the needs of small business in streamlining and enhancing the customer service experience. This customer service software helps with essential functions such as ticketing, issue tracking, chat, and knowledge capture to streamline the solutions to new problems.

We have already touched on customer service software in a previous article. In case you missed it, we are going to summarize some of the key points and make a few recommendations for software packages you can check out to help your small business grow into something more.

Customer Service Software Features

Naturally there is a broad array of features offered by a variety of software suites. We are going to go over a few to get your wheels turning on how customer service software can help your business.

Live chat: Perhaps you havcustomer service software for small businesse visited a website and seen a popup for live chat. This is a common feature because it is so useful. It gives your business the ability to directly engage with potential customers to answer their questions. This goes a long way towards improving the customer experience and building brand loyalty, before they have even made the first purchase.

Customer self-service: People are becoming increasingly independent, and this is reflected in the growing trend to include customer self-service functionality in customer service software. It’s basically a repository of questions and answers, or issues and solutions. The customer has some problem with their widget, so they visit your website to find out how to fix it. This saves them the trouble of calling in to the support line, and frees up your associates from dealing with someone who is more than capable of solving their problem on their own. This is a win win for everybody involved.

Knowledge Base: related to the FAQ for your customers is the knowledge base. This is a sort of internal list of frequently asked questions that lets your customer service personnel more quickly diagnose and solve problems for customers that are brave enough to call in for answers. As new problems are encountered and solved, they can be added to this database to cut down on time spent solving the same problems over and over.

Ticketing: this is a mechanism for tracking issues in real time. Customer calls in and a ticket is created. This ticket can be transferred to various personnel within the organization so that the customer doesn’t have to explain the issue all over again. A proper ticketing system goes a long way towards improving the customer experience, which is really the point of customer service software.

Considerations for Purchasing Customer Service Software

One of the most critical considerations you need to make is: will this software help automate the weakest links of my customer service organization? After all, it is your weak links that hold you back from being the best business possible. If the software doesn’t address your weaknesses adequately, don’t buy it.

Of course, this necessitates an objective and honest evaluation of the status of your organization. The best place to get this evaluation is from your customers. Start by issuing a survey to find out what the weak links are. Give rewards for feedback, as people are not likely to respond to a request to add yet one more thing to their to do list. Once you have this feedback, you are ready to start hunting for the appropriate software.

When you are ready, here are some other things to consider.

Another requirement fcustomer service software for small bizor any business is affordability. This is why web based customer software is quite popular among small businesses. Web based deployment is a feasible solution for small businesses because it helps in drastically reducing the upfront investment. Usually the web based deployment has a monthly subscription and that is more convenient to pay in comparison to huge costs in the case of an on-premises installation.

Secondly if a small business opts for an on-premises system then it will require more manpower for handling the IT system. One of the biggest hurdles for a small scale business is budget so a web based CRM software is often an ideal choice.

Ease of use is going to be a huge factor, as well. If your customer service reps are in the dark about how to use the software, your organization can be crippled. Make sure that the software is relatively intuitive and user friendly, and that you can get some sort of training on its use. Ideally you would have representatives from the software vendor on site to do the training, but failing that you should have access to training videos and articles.

What should be the budget for your customer service software

Figuring out what to budget for your web based CRM software can be difficult, but we’re here to help.  As mentioned above you need to analyze the requirements. If you want to test whether the software meets your requirements then the solution is to opt in for a trial, which many vendors offer. When you try the software then it will give you a better idea whether it will address your needs or not. This way you will not be afraid to make an investment on customer relationship management software. The trial will help you understand the pros and cons of the software first hand, which is always better than just reading them from a blog article. This will help you to be able to make a smart investment in the future of your small business.

Phenomenal Customer Service Software for Small Businesses

Here is a list of customer service software that you should consider.

  1. HelpShift: Nowadays everyone is working in a fast paced environment so you have to address the needs of your customers quickly and efficiently. HelpShift CRM allows you to deliver appropriate customer support right from your app. This app provides a messaging system to respond to those clients who are using mobile devices. When you use this app then your customer will not have to visit your website to look for answers. This app allows video and image attachments as well.
  1. Zendesk: This is yet another popular customer service software. It offers a multi-channel ticketing system. Zendesk is a smart solution because it stores the live chat communication, emails etc in one location. Self-service troubleshooting is also offered to those clients who wish to find the solution to their issues on their own. What makes Zendesk an ideal option for small businesses is the affordability; you just have to pay about $1 per agent.
  1. Olark: Focuses on the core aspects of a small business and that is boosting sales along with live support. Olark gives the opportunity to a business to get hold of a potential customer through live chat. It also transfers the detailed history of the customer to the sales team. This way the team can relate to the customer’s needs in a much better way. You need to pay about $15 per month for a single operator. However, you will get the core features with this package.
  1. ClickDesk: This software allows you to integrate a live chat facility on your website. This means that now you can easily give on demand support to your clients and guide them about your products. ClickDesk offers various modes of communication. You can opt in for video calls, Voice Over Internet protocol and instant messaging so the choice is completely up to you.
  1. HappyFox: One neat feature of this customer service software is that it can get hold of requests from various channels and easily convert them into tickets. This software helps you to identify the core issues that are becoming a hurdle in the success of your business. Another feature is that it can easily be integrated with apps like Salesforce or Google apps for streamlining customer support. It is another cost friendly option and you just need to pay about $19 per member for small businesses.
  1. Freshdesk: This customer service software adds transparency to customer support. This software greatly helps to improve the collaboration among team members. When a ticket opens up then all the team members can view the ticket and this is what makes communication and customer support a lot more convenient. Freshdesk helps to identify which agent is working on a ticket. The benefit of this feature is that the entire team knows what the issues of a customer are. For example, if the ticket is assigned to another team member it will become easier for him to catch up with the details by looking at the existing information. This makes things much easier for a small business to bring organization in its procedures. Another facility offered by Freshdesk is that a free version is also available to be used by a small business. The best package can be chosen as per the needs of the business.

Conclusioncustomer service software

As you can see, there is a large number of help desk software available. Many of these packages integrate functionality from CRM software to give you a sort of all-in-one solution to your small business needs.  These integrated solutions may be just the thing you’re looking for to help boost your small business into the realm of medium sized business and beyond. They can help with that by acting as a force multiplier. They let one person accomplish the work of many through the use of clever features and workflow streamlining/automation.

We hope that this has been informative. We look forward to seeing you in our next article.

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