We are sure you won’t be surprised if we say that customers and their satisfaction are the top priority for any business. And it was always so, even when the first entrepreneurs didn’t fully realize the direct relationship between their profits and the quality of customer experience (actually, in those days, this term didn't exist). Today this principle is clear even to those just starting their business journey.
Nowadays, we deal with a demanding audience when the global market is based on competition and companies are ready to do practically everything to win a bigger market share. And if you want your business to succeed and satisfy customers, it must meet many modern requirements. And one of these requirements is the existence of a comfortable platform or communication channel for building strong customer relationships. That’s where customer service apps enter the game.
In this article, we talk about different types of customer service software, their role in your business growth, and explain why so many companies today turn to web development services.
What is customer service software?
Foremost, we offer to ensure that you have a complete right understanding of what customer service software is.
The term customer service software can be used to describe any software solution that is intended to help companies to interact with people that use their services or buy their products.
Such solutions usually allow companies' employees to communicate with customers, respond to their questions, process their inquiries, and inform them about important changes or events.
Customer service software programs are often integrated with CRM systems so employees can view the history of interaction with each client. As a result, all support team members can better understand the context of working with this client regardless of the channel used for communication.
In other words, we can say that customer service systems aim to enhance customer service quality and facilitate delivery thanks to accumulating and processing all customer information under one roof.
Key tasks of customer service apps
Let us summarize what customer services applications can do:
- Ticket management
- Customer satisfaction tracking
- Customer management
- Employee performance monitoring
- Reporting and analytics
- Product Monitoring
- Task management
- Live communication
- Collaboration
About some of these tasks, we will further talk in more detail.
Benefits of using customer service software
Customer service applications greatly facilitate a wide range of tasks for a company, boosting the demand for such solutions among businesses that work in many different spheres. Let’s have a look at some of the most important ones:
- Accurate ticket tracking. Without appropriate software, it is quite a typical situation when a ticket can be lost, leading to unpleasant consequences, including serious financial and reputational damages. A customer service tracking system can help avoid such situations, as it is intended to automate ticket routing and its status monitoring. As a result, team leaders and managers will always be able to see the progress of processing each inquiry and get alerts of pending tickets.
- Processes automation. Thanks to automation, companies can avoid huge volumes of paperwork, manual document processing, and other routine administrative tasks.
- A better understanding of customers’ needs. By accumulating all tickets, inquiries, cases, problems, and solutions, companies can greatly expand their customer databases, access valuable information, and better feel the market needs.
- 24/7 support. Online customer service applications allow clients to send their requests even after a business day. Received emails can be immediately turned into tickets and allocated for an available specialist when they start working.
- Better targeting and personalization. All clients are unique. However, their differences can be caused not only by their personal preferences but also by the signed contracts and agreements and, consequently, the service packages you provide to each customer. Customer service systems can route tickets directly to the right specialist who works with particular tasks or has already worked with a particular client.
- Possibility to create a knowledge base. When creating a FAQ section on your portal, you must recollect what your clients usually ask. If you have a customer service app, it can send resolved tickets directly to a knowledge base that you can further use to enrich your FAQ.
- Possibility to build a testimonial base. It is not always easy to encourage all satisfied customers to leave their reviews on your platform. But customer service tools can catch positive opinions, for example, when provided in emails or recorded calls. Of course, first of all, you should get permission from a client, but then you can use their words to place them on your portal or external platforms.
Types of customer service apps
In different sources, you can find different classifications of customer service software. Therefore, we offer you to consider the following:
- Customer service web apps (call center & self-service, help desk). Often, these apps focus on a product's technical side and, consequently, the break-fix aspect. However, in many cases, customers can get wider information about the product and a consultation from a support team.
- Customer portals. These web portals provide customers with full visibility into their interactions with a company. To get access to the full functionality of portals, users should log in, and then they can view different types of content posted by a company and work with different files and services online. Among the solutions for creating client portals, we should mention Zendesk, AzureDesk, Huddle, HappyFox, and Accelo.
- Chatbots. These solutions can deal with your customers' requests while all support team members are busy with other tasks. You can use chatbots on your company’s portal as well as on your social media accounts.
- Online banking, lending, and payment software. Such solutions exclude clients' need to attend bank branches to deal with their financial needs. This solution usually includes chatbots, messaging functionality, a FAQ section, a knowledge base, etc. There are solutions for bank clients such as NexorONE, EBANQ, CapitalDigital, Plaid, and Acorn.
- Messaging platforms. Today there is a wide choice of messaging apps, including mobile ones. While they may not be appropriate for dealing with serious issues, they are very comfortable in conversations that presuppose many yes-no answers. This way of communication is often chosen for such tasks as getting confirmation of an appointment or delivery time. The range of examples is wide: from Microsoft Teams and Google Chat to WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook Messenger.
- Ecommerce web apps. Many retail companies go online, offering their clients to make purchases via their eCommerce platform. You can read more about these apps here.
- Customer analytics. This software is intended to systematically study customer behavior and data to understand general trends, detect the most profitable clients, and make better business decisions. Examples of such solutions are Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, and Woopra.
- Advertising & digital signage apps. These apps are used for managing ad tasks (like Google Ads, Bing Ads, AdMob) and promoting your brand/products (Yodeck, NoviSign, OptiSigns).
Let’s build a solution that will fully satisfy your business needs and meet all the strictest requirements that you may have. Our team is not afraid of challenging tasks!
Customer support software: main features and functionality
It is quite an obvious fact that different ready-made customer service platforms may have different features, and, of course, when you order the development of a similar solution tailored to your needs, it can be enriched with any functionality you wish. However, on the list below, you can find the most basic features that many of the available solutions have.
- Email management. Thanks to the possibility of creating an all-in-one inbox, all messages across different channels are accumulated in one location. In addition, employees will have access to email history, the status of the tickets related to particular emails, and the base of automated reply scripts.
- Ticket management. A ticketing system is an important feature that helps organize the work with requests, questions, and customer complaints. All these messages are transformed into so-called “tickets” that will be further assigned to specialists who deal with each precise issue.
- Live communication. Communication tools are an irreplaceable part of customer service software. Today, such software can have traditional online chats or voice/video calls functionality and AI chatbots that will provide customers with the necessary information without the involvement of a support team.
- Customer tracking. These tools are intended for analyzing behavior and interaction history. With this information, your support team can monitor the number of requests received from each client, see how many haven’t been closed, and when to process tickets. You can also measure customer satisfaction.
- Project management. This functionality will let your team easily collaborate and track the project's progress. Thanks to shared project management tools, all team members will know task statuses and won’t need to duplicate the work already done.
- FAQ or self-service. Often, customers do not need to interact with a human to solve their issues. Therefore, FAQ and self-service sections are intended directly to allow customers to access the desired information without the need to wait for a reply from a support team. Moreover, thanks to the fact that customers can get some info on their own, a support team has more time to concentrate on more complicated cases.
The world of technologies and the requirements for high-quality software solutions are changing quickly. To build a solution that will bring real value to you and your clients, it’s crucial to understand all the latest tech trends clearly. Therefore, we recommend you consider the following option and enrich your product with some of them that will be the most appropriate in your case.
- AI chatbots. Artificial intelligence and machine learning have made it possible to create chatbots that can simulate human communication. Today, AI-powered solutions can provide customers with basic information and answer general questions without the involvement of the company’s agents. It is predicted that in the future, the role of chatbots will become even more significant as their functionality and capacities will be expanded.
- Internet of Things. It is one of the most interesting directions in the tech world that is actively expanding these days. IoT unites devices in a single network, which allows close monitoring and analyzing important data related to customers’ behavior, preferences, and needs. Moreover, connecting devices directly to support services is possible with IoT solutions. As a result, a support team can receive reports about bugs automatically.
- Big Data. Thanks to solutions that simultaneously process huge volumes of data, companies access valuable information about customers, including their tastes, interests, needs, etc., from different sources. With this information, businesses can provide more personalized services and more accurately analyze the changing tendencies in clients’ behavior. If you want to learn more about the opportunities you can enjoy with the help of big data tools, we offer you to read one of our previously published blog posts. Just follow this link.
At Geomotiv, we will be happy to assist you at every step of software development.
Our seasoned engineers work with different programming languages, tools, technologies, and frameworks, which allows us to transform all ideas into reality. To find out more about what we can offer you, please send us your requests via the form on our website and get a free consultation with our experts!
