8 Modern Customer Support Tools For Small Businesses

— May 3, 2017

Every small business owner out there knows that communication is the key to managing their customer support. In today’s highly-competitive world, brands need to push the envelope to win over their customers. To retain a happy customer base, they need to provide an unparalleled customer support.


With the evolution of social media, the way individuals reach out to various brands has also changed drastically. There are plenty of customer support tools that can make it easier for you to communicate to your customers in a better way. I have handpicked some of the most remarkable and effective tools that every brand manager and business owner should use to bring a much-needed change to their customer support. Let’s uncover them by taking one step at a time.


#1. Hiver


Attain flawless email support and collaborate with your team without any trouble using this smart tool. Not every business owner can have a dedicated app (or team) to handle their email customer support. With Hiver, you can make everyone in your team share a respective mailbox and say goodbye to the hassle of switching between multiple accounts.


Turn your Gmail into a help desk in no time by taking the assistance of this remarkable application. Let your team access the shared inbox on the go and assign various emails as tasks to individuals. This will let you keep a track of your entire email customer support operation under one roof. It also has an added feature of Email Notes. This will let your team add a descriptive note (or status) to emails in order to explain a customer query or any other support mail/ticket. Additionally, you can use its insights to evaluate the performance of your team and attain productive results in the future.



#2. Zendesk


Zendesk is undoubtedly one of the oldest and most reliable support ticket systems. The web-based customer support software is used by some of the leading organizations the world over.


If you run a business, then you must be getting different kinds of queries regarding your products or services as well. Instead of investing your time to answer your mails, redefine your customer support with a dedicated ticketing system. With its help desk support, you would be able to assign, track, and respond to a query in less time.


Not just to provide customer support, it can also be used to perform plenty of other tasks as well, such as internal communication, managing user guides, creating FAQs, and more.



#3. Intercom


If you want to provide immediate and dedicated support to your customers, then you can easily come up with a simple and effective communication channel via Intercom. This customer messaging platform will provide a complete communication solution to you, right from customer onboarding to their retention.


Don’t let your customer waiting and use its live chat feature to provide immediate support. Too many times, customers find it hard to buy a product as they are not able to gain the needed information from a business website. With a smart messaging feature, you can tap potential leads and provide personal solutions to them instantly. Not just that, it can also be used to retain your sales and give one-on-one support to your customers.



#4. Zapier


Automate your workflow by bringing different apps together using Zapier. The tool is sure to save your time by integrating the key features of various applications, letting you focus on your other important tasks. You can easily train your team and let them be a customer support ninja with this remarkable application.


Simply start by integrating various apps together and establish a seamless workflow to automate everything. Most of the times, customer support involves the performance of a few routine tasks. After setting up a proper channel, you can perform these tasks in seconds and gain fruitful results at the same time.



#5. Uservoice


Getting feedback from clients is also a vital part of customer interaction. With Uservoice, you would be able to make the most out of your client’s feedback and use it in your favor. It will help you evaluate and create better products for your customers. Additionally, you can use its insights to level up your marketing game as well.


Not just to get feedback, the application can also be used to conduct market research or get new product ideas. Needless to say, it can give you a whole new perspective regarding your products.



#6. CloudApp


Every individual who is associated with customer support knows the importance of sharing screens recordings and screenshots. With this amazing platform, you can easily share screenshots (and recordings) to your customer support team without any trouble. Additionally, it can be used to provide a dedicated technical assistance to your customers as well.


It is one of the most powerful visual communication platforms with an added security feature as well. Also, it provides in-depth analytics that can help you keep a track of various activities of your support team.



#7. Respond by Buffer


If you are associated with social media or content marketing, then you must have already heard of Buffer. To provide an extensive customer support for social media, it has come up with its unique application – Respond. It turns queries posted by your customers on popular social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook into tickets.


This revolutionary and one of a kind application will make it easier for you to provide support to your audience on social media. The tool has been designed particularly for customer support teams, so that they can distinguish social media marketing from customer support. No matter how small or big your business is, this remarkable application will certainly help you save the day.



#8. Freshdesk


Freshdesk is unlike any other ticketing or help desk system that you could have used in the past. One of the best features about the tool is that it supports multiple channels and platforms. Therefore, with it, you can collect requests from phone calls, social media channels, emails, live chats, and more at a single place.


Just invest a few minutes to setup the entire help desk system and automate everything else on the go. From dispatching automated tickets to collecting queries from various channels, the tool will do it all. Don’t put an extra effort to manually sort your tickets and give a new life to your help desk system with this powerful tool.



I hope these high-end customer support tools will come handy to you on numerous occasions. From managing an interactive help desk to collecting quick feedbacks, you would be able to do it all using the above-listed customer support tools. Go ahead and give these helpful tools a try and walk an extra mile to provide unmatched support to your customers. Do share your feedback regarding these tools in the comments below.

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Author: Pankaj Narang


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