Customers are an essential part of any business. And with the rise of competition among brands, customers have a variety of choices from a wide range of products or services available in the market, making customer retention very difficult.
The traditional way of having the best product to rule the market is not implementable today. Instead, providing the customers with the best customer experience is much more effective for customer retention. So customer support has become essential for any brand to ensure customers go through a smooth, seamless journey while using their product or service.
89% of customers tend to retain after a healthy customer service experience. 90% of people use customer service to decide whether or not to do business with a company.
Many software are available today, making customer service much faster and more effective. They help the customer support team manage different aspects of customer support which helps in customer retention. It is 5 to 25 times more expensive to invest in new customers than retain existing ones.
This blog will be a guide for you to know about the use of Customer Support Software and the best of them available in the market to boost customer retention.
What is Customer Support Software?
Customer support software uses multiple communication channels like email, live chat, messaging, and self-service. It also integrates with social media to access their groups and chat systems. It gets brands in direct touch with the customers. It enables them to organize and track their tickets, troubleshoot customer issues to fix them, and provide a good customer experience for customer retention. It includes tools such as messaging apps, automation software, analytics dashboard, etc. Companies typically use customer support software to provide faster and more efficient customer support across different channels from a single medium to increase engagement and customer retention.
Top 7 Customer Support Software you must know:
Zendesk
Zendesk customer service software helps to provide effortless communication across channels which leads helps to improve productivity and provide a healthy customer experience. It gives the right balance of simplicity and sophistication to align large teams and technology around the customers. This customer support software comes with integrated tools to meet the needs of a broad customer base. It also comes with AI technology to automate different functions without human interaction for customer retention. Moreover, it is quick to implement, easy to use, and scales to fit the needs of any business size.
Features of Zendesk Customer Support software:
- Ticket routing
- Live chat software
- Native integrations
- Knowledge base
- API
- Tracking and reporting
- Self-service portal
- Community forums
- Automation
Integrations of Zendesk Customer Support software:
- Slack
- Asana
- Typeform
- Trello
- Zapier
- Google sheets
Sprout Social
Social media is booming as a mode of communication. This customer support software allows the support teams to deliver immense social media assistance and stands out as valuable software. Sprout customer support facilitates conversations across all media channels by integrating sales, support, marketing, social media monitoring, and engagement features.
Features of Sprout Social customer support software to boost customer retention:
- Reporting and analytics
- Automation
- Tracking and reporting
- Customer segmentation
- Social media monitoring/management
- Post scheduling
Integrations of Sprout Social customer support software to boost customer retention:
- YouTube
Hootsuite
This customer support software helps enhance customer engagement and ensures content scheduling across multiple social media platforms through a standard web-based dashboard to help customer retention. It is equipped with a variety of features and is engaged in a large number of integrations. It is combined with Zendesk, and the integration makes it possible to create, update, review, and edit tickets from social media. It provides seamless customer engagement across all channels and makes a complete tool for customer support operations and customer retention.
Features of Hootsuite customer support software to boost customer retention:
- Automation
- Tracking and reporting
- Customer segmentation
- Social media monitoring/management
- Post scheduling
Integrations of Hootsuite customer support software:
- Proofpoint
- Brandwatch
MailChimp
This customer support software helps create, send and track email newsletters, signup forums, and event invitations. Customer support teams can target particular customer segments and personalize emails when integrating a customer support system like Zendesk support. You can also use it as an all-in-one marketing platform for small-scale businesses to increase customer retention. You can also buy their plans to create landing pages and ad campaigns, track performance and automate emails.
Features of MailChimp customer support software to boost customer retention:
- Tracking and reporting
- Contact management
- Landing page and email design tools
- Automation
- Social media monitoring
- Live chat
Integrations of MailChimp customer support software to boost customer retention:
- Quickbooks
- Shopify
- Squarespace
- Zendesk
- WordPress
Recurly
This chat support system provides an easy and effective platform to manage the subscription bills and handle the entire lifecycle of a subscriber to boost customer retention. Customer support agents do not need to switch to separate tabs or systems to monitor or edit customer subscription details when integrated with a system like Zendesk. Recurly allows to handle subscriptions and manage offer discounts, recurring payments, and more and helps in customer retention.
Features of Recurly customer support software to boost customer retention:
- Native integrations
- API
- Self-service portal
- Automation
- Subscription management
- Multiple payment options
Integrations of Recurly customer support software:
- Avalara
- Salesforce
- Kount
- Xero
- Vertex
- Zendesk
- Amazon Pay
SurveyMonkey
As the name suggests, it is a customer support software that provides businesses with customer surveys. It helps the customer support team glean insight into their products or services to improve their product. They yield feedback from the customers that help the companies to introspect and develop better products or services to increase customer retention. And because of SurveyMonkey’s extensive library of integrations, you can easily include it in the company’s existing workflow. It can run a survey and collect feedback for your company with minimal disturbance to you and your customers.
Features of SurveyMonkey customer support software to boost customer retention:
- Live results tracking
- Polling
- Tracking and reporting
- Image/audio/video file support
- Email distribution
- Native integrations
- API
Integrations of SurveyMonkey customer support software:
- Salesforce
- Google Drive
- Mailchimp
- Oracle
- Marketo
- Zoom
- Hubspot
LiveAgent
This customer support software allows a support team to engage in live chats seamlessly and conveniently. It is a great tool to consider for a service team who devotes a lot of time to live-chatting. It has features like a real-time typing view, website monitoring for chat engagement, and proactive chat invitations based on the active agent availability. It is beneficial for small-scale service teams who use WordPress. It also comes with a large number of integrations so that you can easily add them to your current workflow.
Features of LiveAgent customer support software to boost customer retention:
- Ticket routing
- Live chat software
- Native integrations
- Knowledge base
- API
- Tracking and reporting
- Self-service portal
- Community forums
- Automation
Integrations of LiveAgent customer support software:
- Cal4Care
- FlyNumber
- Firmao
- OneTone
- DID Logic
- iPlan
- TelnyxDatium
Final Thoughts
A company is about maximizing profits, which can only be done when the customers are satisfied. Nowadays, a company produces a brand image not only through its products and services but also by providing help with its products. Using customer support software to track, monitor, and provide assistance and service regarding a product can directly boost customer retention.
Customer support and their required software vary from brand to brand. We have provided you with the best choices, and you can choose the option that suits your requirements the most. But ultimately, all it aims toward is brand reputation and customer retention to maximize its profit.
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