In today’s fast-paced business landscape, marked by evolving customer expectations and diverse service channels, the need for efficient customer service processes is paramount. That’s why we made sure this guide will help you speed up support efforts, amplify customer satisfaction, and ultimately elevate your overall service delivery.
Let’s delve into the transformative capabilities of these tools for improving customer service, paving the way for a more responsive, connected, and customer-centric approach to service excellence.
What different tools should you consider for improving customer service?
Below you’ll find a series of tools for improving customer service, each catering to a different core use case. Some of the tools that should be on your tool stack include:
- Help desk ticketing: A help desk ticketing system organizes and helps you manage incoming customer inquiries, requests, and issues.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM): CRM software enables businesses to effectively manage and analyze customer interactions throughout the customer lifecycle.
- QA automation: Quality Assurance automation tools automate the process of rating support tickets to ensure they meet quality standards.
- Knowledge base: A knowledge base solution provides a repository of information to help you offer self-service support to customers.
- Customer feedback: Customer feedback tools allow businesses to collect, analyze, and act upon feedback from their customers.
- Live chat: Live chat software enables real-time communication between customers and support agents via text-based messaging.
- Social monitoring: These tools track mentions, comments, and conversations about a brand [and its competitors] on various social media platforms.
Kaizo – Best for QA automation, performance coaching, and workforce engagement
With Kaizo’s revolutionary AI-based Samurai and Auto QA features, you can speed up ticket evaluation and identify the true reasoning behind negative reviews accurately.
Additionally, the tool automates sentiment and empathy analysis, instantly flagging tickets that require special attention. Customizable filters further allow tailored assessments based on your chosen criteria.
Kaizo also provides rapid access to summarized data from calls, transcriptions, and dialogues through GPT summaries. Moreover, you can extend its use beyond quality assurance to foster team engagement and motivation with AI-generated Missions and customizable goals powered by Kaizo’s proprietary game engine technology.
Core use cases:
- Quality Assurance
- Performance management
- Ticket analysis
- Performance coaching
- Workforce engagement
- And more!
Zendesk – Best for CRM capabilities
Zendesk offers a robust help desk platform that allows businesses to centralize all customer inquiries, complaints, and requests in one place. Its ticketing system, in particular, ensures that support agents can efficiently manage and prioritize customer issues, leading to faster resolution times and improved satisfaction.
Core use cases:
- Customer messaging and voice calls
- Help center builder
- Ticketing
- Agent workspace
- Workforce management
👉 Don’t waste any more time on manual Quality Assurance! Use Kaizo’s Auto QA within Zendesk to standardize and speed up the process while removing human error and bias. Try for free!
Gleap – Best for chatbot creation and management
Gleap is a customer support tool that leverages AI to help you create tailored chatbots. Alternatively, you can use their GPT-powered Kai bot that can assume a portion of your team’s tasks. Its ability to deliver responses mirroring human interaction lets you provide faster ticket resolution times right when your customers need it. Drawing from your knowledge base, FAQ content, and feature requests, Kai further ensures personalized and efficient customer interactions.
Core use cases:
- Live chat
- Knowledge base
- Support bot
- Surveys
- In-app bug reporting
SproutSocial – Best for social media customer support
SocialSprout offers advanced monitoring and analytics features that provide valuable insights into social media performance and customer interactions. You can use it to track key metrics such as response times, engagement rates, sentiment analysis, and customer satisfaction scores to measure the effectiveness of customer service efforts and identify areas for improvement.
Core use cases:
- Audience analysis
- Consumer research
- Customer feedback
- Sentiment research
- Crisis management
KnowledgeOwl – Best for knowledge base management
Need a centralized platform for creating, organizing, and maintaining a comprehensive knowledge base? KnowledgeOwl allows businesses to consolidate all relevant information, such as FAQs, troubleshooting guides, product documentation, and support articles, in one easily accessible location for both customers and support agents.
Core use cases:
- Cataloguing and categorization
- Content library
- Knowledge management
- Self-service portal
- Customer contact forms
Forumbee – Best for self-service offering
Going beyond just knowledge bases, Forumbee facilitates the creation and management of online community forums where customers can ask questions, share insights, and collaborate with each other. By fostering a sense of community among customers, you can use this tool to build stronger relationships with your customer base, encourage peer-to-peer support, and enhance overall customer satisfaction.
Core use cases:
- Discussion forums
- Knowledge base
- Community Q&A and analytics
- Moderation
- Customer ideation
SurveyMonkey – Best for gathering customer feedback
SurveyMonkey is a more complex solution that will work for companies that already have a solid customer base. If you’re just starting, SurveyMonkey provides a wide range of survey question types, including multiple-choice, open-ended, rating scales, and more to help you get that initial feedback.
Core use cases:
- Ready-made templates for measuring customer satisfaction, gathering feedback, and more
- Online forms
- Data-driven insights and reporting
- Market research solution
You don’t need all of them. Here’s how to choose the right ones for you.
Start by thinking of your most pressing needs. A live chat and CRM tool is a must regardless of the stage you’re at. Scale and bring over an entire support team and you’ll need a QA automation and knowledge base management system to provide better support services and speed up ticket resolution.
You should also take into account:
- Feature and use case set: We’ve listed some fundamental features for each tool above, but generally, you’ll have to pick from a ticketing system, live chat, knowledge base, social media integration, analytics, automation — or all of them.
- Integration opportunities: Ensure that the tool integrates smoothly with your existing systems such as CRM software, email, eCommerce platforms, and others.
- Cost and scalability: We’ve paired these two because, simply put, a low-cost solution won’t always scale with you.
- Customization: Look for a tool that allows you to customize the interface, workflows, and automation rules to match your team’s processes.
- Security and compliance: Ensure that the tool complies with industry standards and regulations regarding data security and privacy, especially if you handle sensitive customer information.
Ready to scale?Â
👉 Evaluate tickets faster with Auto QA! Use Kaizo to enhance and accelerate QA processes while eliminating human error and bias. Try for free today!
