31 Best Customer Service Software of 2023

Salesforce Service Cloud provides the tools to help businesses and customer service teams better understand their customers and efficiently resolve their issues regardless of complexity.

Why I picked Salesforce Service Cloud: The platform enables organizations and agents to support different customer contact points, from telephony (CTI systems) to email services, live chat, and messenger apps. The cloud-based customer service solution is also capable of managing a large number of service requests from multiple channels through a request distribution system known as omnichannel presence and routing.

Service Cloud can be configured to automatically route tickets/cases, leads, or other service requests to the most suitable, available customer support agent or employee. It can also be configured to distribute tasks according to personnel availability, skill set, and capacity to manage inbound work. And the system allows users to update their work status in real-time.

Salesforce Service Cloud Standout Features and Integrations

Features include workflow and approval process automation, AI-driven automation technology, and account and contact management features to help customer support agents access the data they need when handling tickets and communicating with customers, including information regarding past interactions. In addition, their case management feature is designed to help streamline the entire pipeline to ensure quality customer service.

Integrations are available with numerous prebuilt solutions through their AppExchange to help admins and service teams automate faster. Salesforce provides users with ready-to-install partner solutions so they don’t have to start with a blank slate. This includes the building blocks for workflow automation, robotic process automation, and process libraries.

LiveAgent is a call center and help desk software that also provides full knowledge base management capabilities. It can be used to manage incoming email, phone, and chat support requests and to build a self-serve portal for customers.

Why I picked LiveAgent: Teams share a collective inbox view of customer support tickets, and the software can automatically assign tickets to agents. Spam filtering and follow-up scripts can also be automated using the system, and a built-in CRM stores customer contact data and activity history. In-app notifications alert support agents to tasks and requests that require their attention.

The software's knowledge base builder allows teams to create a self-serve help center for customers. The content editor has a WYSIWYG interface, making it easy for non-technical experts to produce help articles. Forums can also be created and moderated through the software, helping to promote community engagement and facilitating exchanges among customers. A feedback button can be added to the customer portal for teams wishing to collect suggestions for product or service improvements or favourite features.

LiveAgent Standout Features & Integrations

Features include automated ticket assignment, in-app notifications, call routing, call recording, multilingual live chat, website tracking, content management, customizable themes, WYSIWYG content editor, and a reporting dashboard.

Integrations include ActiveCampaign, BigCommerce, Clockify, Cloudtalk, Gmail, Jira, Magento, Pipedrive, Shopify, Slack, Trello, Twilio, and Webflow.

Zendesk is a funky, modern CRM solution that makes up words like “humblident” (humble + confident) and boasts offices in Dublin, San Francisco, London, Copenhagen, and Melbourne, to name a few. It combines the colorful, fun attitude that contemporary startups love with a good product for a more-than-fair price.

Zendesk offers an internal help desk solution for companies looking to elevate the level of care and support they provide their customers. It includes a self-service knowledge base, centralized business information, IT and HR workflow automation, and satisfaction trend reporting.

Why I Picked Zendesk: Zendesk has a lot of pricing options that start small and grow with you. It's easily scalable, which is exactly what a startup that is (fingers crossed) ready to expand immensely needs. You can sign up on one of their lower tier plans and with the flick of a switch expand into something more robust when you're ready. If you qualify as an 'early-stage startup,' you can get Zendesk free for 6 months.

Zendesk Standout Features & Integrations

Features include API access, chat, CRM integration, real-time alerts, self-service portal, instant chat integration, knowledge base, contact management, customer management, email integration, social media integration, support forum, workflow management, ticket management, and call integration.

Integrations include Salesforce, JIRA, Slack, Trello, JIRA, Zoom, Dropbox, Clubhouse, Asana, monday.com, Box, Nicereply, Harvestr, Shopify, Mailchimp, and dozens of other options.

Custify is a customer success software designed primarily for SaaS businesses. It focuses on all the aspects of consumer involvement with your business, including customer lifecycles, product adoption, and upsell opportunities. Custify can automate basic customer service actions, like welcome emails, low engagement jump-starts, and personalized renewal processes.

Basic customer service solutions can be handled by their entry-level plan but upgrading will unlock project management features and workflow automations that your team may find useful.

Why I Picked Custify: Custify assigns health scores to each SaaS client, which identifies potentials for churn or profit and flags your team to intervene with context-specific messaging where appropriate. Scheduled emails can be sent to sales, management, and stakeholders to keep them informed about company performance. 

Custify Standout Features & Integrations

Features include API access, customer management, click-to-dial, dashboards, lead management, and multi-user access. 

Integrations include Slack, email, SMS, analytics solutions, and your CRM. You can also use Custify’s native API to connect with more tools.

HappyFox is an all-in-one ticketing support software that pulls all incoming customer queries from any source (email, chat, phone, and social) into one dynamic dashboard. They have the ability to outsource complex and redundant workflows to a powerful smart rules engine, meaning that even higher-difficulty queries can be handled without manual intervention.

Why I Picked HappyFox: HappyFox lets you design your own no-code, SEO-optimized customer portal. This customizable customer portal can be SEO optimized and is available on a mobile app, all with on-brand visuals and messaging. It's mobile responsive and branded to fit your website's look and feel. HappyFox also features task management tools, help desk reporting, a flexible knowledge base/FAQ solution, and asset management.

HappyFox Standout Features & Integrations

Features include customer service, email integration, live chat, CRM integration, notification, and API access.

Integrations include Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Slack, and other collaboration apps.

Freshdesk is an omnichannel customer service software that can scale up or down by integrating with a suite of specialized first-party products for sales, marketing, HR, and IT. The basic plan comes with customer health scoring, proactive account alerts, goal and task management, and email campaigns. Freshdesk’s goal management module is particularly handy, as not every customer service software has these types of project management capabilities.

With it, you can tie big picture goals to detailed metrics; assign tasks with due dates, priority status, and an owner; build reusable templates for common goals and tasks; and track and measure your progress.

Why I Picked Freshdesk: Freshdesk boasts a lot of native integrations with other software you probably already use. This is vital for good customer service, as you'll want your CRM to speak to your website to speak to your ecommerce tools to speak to your ticket software. If you want no fuss, no muss integration support, Freshdesk is a great choice.

Freshdesk Standout Features & Integrations

Features include customer management, contact management, email integration, social media integration, support forms, analytics, dashboards, multi-user, scheduling, workflow management, ticket management, API access, chat tools, CRM integration, notifications, self-service portal, and knowledge base builder.

Integrations include Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Pipedrive, Oracle Netsuite, Insightly, Copper, Zoho CRM, Close, Zendesk, and a growing list of other useful apps.

TeamSupport is customer support software meant for B2B companies in that it excels at lower volume, high complexity customer support items. 

TeamSupport focuses on customer and ticket management but also fosters collaboration using “Water Cooler,” their internal messaging app and social network system. TeamSupport generates a customer distress index (CDI) for each client based on how many tickets they have and their average resolution time.

Why I Picked TeamSupport: TeamSupport assess which B2B clients might be getting frustrated, then prompts a customer service agent to intervene. Each client has a detailed profile of every customer interaction that shares real-time updates across your whole team. The customer and contact database is particularly useful for onboarding new agents who aren’t familiar with your customer base yet and makes team collaboration easier to achieve.

TeamSupport Standout Features & Integrations

Features include customer management, notifications, analytics, dashboards, task scheduling and tracking, API access, live chat, CRM integration, email integration, and social media integration. 

Integrations include Slack, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Salesforce CRM, and other corporate applications.

Kustomer is a CRM and customer service platform. Like most solutions on this list, they can tap into your customer base wherever they are online or offline: email, phone, chat, social, and messaging apps. They prioritize customer self-service and support multiple different written languages.

Why I Picked Kustomer: Kustomer offers plenty of AI-powered solutions for CRM and customer service, including automated triage and routing, smart self-service chatbots, and personalized customer communication suggestions. Their customizable chatbot is a standout feature, going so far as to host an image carousel of a customer’s past interactions to pull from and display at will.

Kustomer Standout Features & Integrations

Features include contact management, dashboards, task scheduling, customer service, workflow management, email integration, social media integration, customer health scoring, API access, no-code chatbots, and notification. 

Integrations include Shopify, Slack, Gmail, Twitter, and other social media and commerce apps.

Keap CRM is a sales and marketing customer support software that helps you capture leads, manage invoices, and compile client data. It is specifically designed for entrepreneurs. Features include marketing automation, a sales pipeline, a CRM database, payment collection, reporting and analytics, appointment tracking, and email campaigns.

Why I Picked Keap CRM: Keap is great for budding entrepreneurs who believe networking and professional growth are just as important as customer service strategies. It helps you build a personalized playbook to hone your goals and provides access to a community of like-minded business owners, including coaching opportunities. They host an engaged user community both on their website forum and via their Facebook group.

Keap CRM Standout Features & Integrations

Features include contact management, CRM integration, email integration, lead management, marketing automation, API access, lead scoring, task scheduling and tracking, conversion tracking, and multi-user access. 

Integrations include over 2500 applications, some natively and others using a paid account with Zapier.

Kayako is a CRM software that offers customer service in multiple languages across live chat, email, Facebook, and Twitter. It focuses on cross-departmental collaboration, which is something small and medium businesses (SMBs) can be better at using to the fullest.

Why I Picked Kayako: With Kayako, customer questions can be viewed by all agents so that a collaborative solution can be found quickly, leveraging the experiences of the company as a whole. Then, the dedicated agent can deliver a quick, personalized response to the customer on whatever platform they prefer. Your internal “knowledge base” then becomes your whole company and your different departmental teams, avoiding information silos and delivering better customer service.

Kayako Standout Features & Integrations

Features include customer management, notifications, dashboard, scheduling, task scheduling and tracking, API access, live chat, and email integration.

Integrations include Salesforce, Slack, Shopify, and other applications.