Who is a Virtual Assistant?

A virtual assistant (VA) is a skilled professional who works independently to provide professional support. The VA primarily works from a remote location, communicating through the internet to have tasks completed. Although the concept of virtual assistance has been around for a while, VAs have particularly become an increasingly popular way for professionals to find support in their duties. Hiring a VA is also more cost-effective and efficient because you are working with a professional.

Who Needs a Virtual Assistant?

Virtual assistants offer their services in almost all industries, helping professionals and business owners complete mundane tasks. Although most people assume that VAs are only hired by people working in large companies or those who are successful, anyone can benefit from the services of a virtual assistant. If you are wondering who needs a virtual assistant, the answer lies in the number of daily tasks that need to be completed. If you feel overwhelmed by your duties or have a lot of tasks to complete on any single day, you probably need to hire a VA. Whether you are a manager, top executive, or just a team member, a VA can be valuable in your duties.

Why You Need a Virtual Assistant

The main reason you would need virtual assistance is if you are spending too much time managing daily tasks and you are not meeting your business goals. Assigning some of the daily tasks to a VA will leave you with more time for strategic planning. Here are some of the specific reasons why you need a virtual assistant:

1. You Get Overwhelmed with Administrative Tasks

You may need a VA if you are always drowning in administrative work and spend too much time on tasks like scheduling appointments, coordinating meetings, maintaining calendars, managing emails, answering phone calls, social media management, and data entry. A virtual assistant will take over these administrative burdens, ensuring you have more time and energy for strategic thinking and building client relationships.

2. No Longer Have Time for Long-Term Strategic Planning

Without proper strategic planning, your business will soon react. You start missing out on sales outreach opportunities and difficulties generating leads. A professional VA can help you invest more time in strategic thinking. Since they will handle the general administrative support services, you will have your time well organized for strategic planning. You will have time to focus on the bigger picture of your ventures instead of mundane tasks.

3. You have Inconsistent customer support.  

Your customer support may be suffering from slow response times, incorrect information being offered, a lack of follow-through with clients, or varying overall experience depending on who the customer interacts with. Hiring virtual assistants who specialize in customer support can help rebuild your brand voice and provide a consistent experience for all customers.

4. Constantly Falling Behind On Routine Tasks

You notice that your to-do list is out of control, and this has already turned into a domino effect. You are struggling with delayed blog posts, neglected social media updates, or pending customer responses.  Probably, you also have a backlog of expense reports that is likely to cause an accounting headache later. Hiring a VA in this case will have a professional handle those pending tasks and clear the way for more important activities.

5. Your Business is Growing Faster Than You Can Keep Up

If your business is experiencing rapid growth, it can be difficult to keep up with everything. With the increased workload, you are more likely to be stretched thin. As you take on new clients, expand your product offering, and enter new markets, the quality of your work can be affected if you’re doing it solo. Hiring a VA will allow you to do a lot more and serve your growing business much better.

Hire A Virtual Assistant with Octopus Tech

Hiring a good virtual assistant can transform your business. If you notice the above signs, it is probably time to get a VA to aid you with your daily tasks. Get in touch with us at Octopus Tech and let us help you get the extra support you so desperately need.

The post Signs You Need a Virtual Assistant (And How to Hire One Right) appeared first on Octopus Tech.

However, finding the most suitable customer support software can be challenging as most of them have the same attributes that let you achieve similar goals. 

To help you find the right fit customer service software for your support team, we have created this extensive piece of information that will cover all the basics of software for customer services. It includes the meaning, essential features, types, benefits, and factors to be taken care of while choosing a customer service software. 

In the end, we have also covered the 12 best customer help desk software that you can opt for  better customer service management. 

What Is Customer Service Software?

It is a tool that uses a set of functions that assists an organization in collecting, organizing, responding to customers, and preparing reports of various user interactions. 

The main role of an app for customer service is to convert the messages of different communication channels into tickets and then representatives of the customer service outsourcing company track the queries, operators respond to the issues, prioritize their reactions based on needs and requirements, resolve the problems of customers, and manage the overall tasks of agents. 

Software for customer service solutions manages different communication channels such as live chat, messaging apps, and emails. It also integrates with different platforms like group chat apps and social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and many more. 

A customer service tool also provides a knowledge base to users, handles inbound and outbound communications, come up with analytics dashboards, and integrates with various automation software. 

Software for customer service is also linked with CRM software so that operators can easily get access to their customer’s data or their purchase history immediately. 

Many platforms provide solutions based on industry, compatibility, usage, features, and scale of business. 
This guide will help you choose the best software for your customer success team that will ultimately grow your business.

Important Features Of Customer Service Software

While there is a considerable difference between different software depending on the scope and usage, there are still certain common features that are present in all customer service management software.

Table Of Contents:

1. Integrated CRM
2. Multi-channel ticketing system
3. Integration with systems
4. Team collaboration
5. Reports and analytics
6. Automatic call routing
7. Customization options
8. Automation of functions.

1. Integrated CRM

Software that provides customer service solutions should have a built-in CRM as your customer support team will need immediate access to the customer data at the time of the query. 
When a user’s information will be shown to an operator in their help desk system, they can quickly solve the problems by providing real-time customer support.

They would not even have to waste their prime time logging in and logging out from different applications which they use.

2. Multi-channel ticketing system

This feature allows representatives to track and resolve the issues of clients related to various products and services. 

The software integrates tickets from multiple channels such as email, social media, phone calls, messages, etc. into its platform so that they don’t have to switch among various mediums and enter passwords to chat with your customers. 

You also need to ensure that the software that you choose supports your communication channel so that you can interact with your audience without any hindrance. 
For example – If you want to make or receive a phone call by using your customer care software, then ensure that it provides blended call center services too.

3. Integration with systems

The software that you pick for your company should provide active integrations with the communication tools that you use every day for effective customer lifecycle management. 

The primary goal of a customer service app is to lower the usage of external tools and to improve the productivity of agents.

For example – 

• Getting information about your internal systems that inform customer service decision

• Knowing details about your eCommerce services apps like Shopify or WooCommerce that you use to serve your customers. You can view details and product information about your shopper’s orders or refunds directly into your software. 

• Getting new users or knowing their information and intention from the social media channels integration.

4. Team collaboration

The customer support team can improve performance and transparency by sharing the tickets with different team members. They can also divide complex issues into smaller subtasks and resolve them altogether. 

An excellent customer service solutions software will let your team solve the hurdle together under tickets so that everyone in a group can find out possible solutions and obtain a quick answer of it. 

The collaboration feature allows individual team members to use their skills in the area of expertise and to make notes to provide information to other staff members in resolving the query.

5. Reports and analytics

It allows companies to get deep insights and help them in understanding things like who their customers are, what they need, where they are facing trouble, and if their issues are being resolved completely or not. 

The software shows reports like time taken in solving issues, first call resolution rate, time to response rate, incoming requests volume, average call handling time, holding times, and many more. 

With robust reporting, customer service outsourcing companies can improve customer experience by tracking measures and performances, improving sales and marketing processes, and identifying customer satisfaction scores. 

Reports and analytics dashboards of software will give a bird’s-eye view of the ongoing functions and will save you from future escalations. 

For example – If the result in software shows a high call abandonment rate, the company can hire more representatives to reduce the long holding or waiting times. 

6. Automatic call routing

Customer service apps have a variety of features that makes sure that tickets are routed to the right representative and department based on the problems of a user. 

A sophisticated customer care software integrates with an automatic call distribution system and transfers the calls to agents who have taken few calls in the entire day or have been waiting for the longest to deal with the call. 

Administrators can also design custom rules for call routing based on the workflow of an industry. The call routing system ensures that your tickets are never on a wait and are always answered on time.

7. Customization options

The customer support help desk software that you choose should meet your company’s workflow and unique business needs. 

It should be able to extend its functions according to the requirements such as offering assistance in different languages or being able to access multiple accounts. 

With software, you can also customize your email address for multiple accounts, edit your support portal or change the URL of the help desk to improve the user experience.

8. Automation of functions

With powerful customer service apps, you can manage customer interactions by automating tasks and routing incoming calls intelligently to the most appropriate agent for a faster and more efficient response. 

For example – By automating processes such as sending follow-up messages or emails, agents can save ample time and can utilize that time in solving complex client queries. 

These are some of the vital features that are present in almost all customer support platforms that lets you deliver impeccable customer service. 

Note that there is no perfect software for customer support but you can always find the best fit that suits your business needs.

7 Types Of Customer Support Software 

Customer service channels have distinct characteristics and qualities that can greatly impact your business. 

It can either help a company internally by supporting its employees or externally by helping people in buying products and services or supporting them in resolving their issues. 

To determine which tool is right for your business, here are 7 types of customer support software you should consider.

Table Of Contents:

1. Call support system
2. Messaging apps
3. Live chat software
4. Social media Monitoring Tool
5. Email
6. CRM tool
7. Knowledge base tool.

1. Call support system

Even though people look to communicate with you through digital channels, a phone call is still the best interaction method for queries that require quick resolution. 

When a user speaks with an operator of a call center, both parties clearly understand each other without any misunderstanding. Effective phone-based interaction is flexible and helps in reducing the costs of a call center. 

For example – Software for customer service should be able to provide calling support worldwide so that a contact center doesn’t have to spend money on international calling minutes or installing any hardware devices. 

The support system that you choose should have call center capabilities and features like accessing customer data and history, should be able to generate tickets, an internal routing system, call recordings, and many more. 

2. Messaging apps

Messaging channels such as Apple Business Chat, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, LINE, and many more are gaining huge popularity in delivering customer service and have changed the way people communicate with a business. 

With its high convenience factor, people can easily communicate with their friends and family or contact a company regarding their query from anywhere and at any time. 

With its easy accessibility, it doesn’t require a person to wait on hold for a longer time instead they will get a quick response from a representative to their questions. 

If it requires follow-up with them on a phone call, then all the information and queries of a user will be generated under the same support ticket. With this, a company can easily grow its customer base and do great business.

3. Live chat software

It is one of the greatest proactive apps for customer service as users can easily contact you through your website by typing their query on the live chat tool that is present on your site. 

It is easily accessible from anywhere and it solves real-time problems of the shoppers when they face difficulty in browsing your website or in check out process. Live chat support services are used to stay ahead of any issue that might occur in the future. 

For example – A company can use the live chat tool on its checkout page to lower the rejection rate and provide answers to a user’s frequently asked questions. 

If representatives are busy providing live chat services, then chatbots can also be used here. 

According to the findings by SuperOffice, 82% of users are satisfied with the live chat support experience. 

Recommended Reading – Chatbot Vs. Live Chat: Which Is Best For Your Business?

4. Social media Monitoring Tool

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms have now become prominent places for buyers to seek support from various companies. 

Every business needs to have a presence on social networking sites to deliver the most fruitful customer service solutions. A representative of a company should always be active on your social media page to help users in solving their issues and turn them into happy customers. 

Suppose a client failed to reach a company’s help desk department, in this case, social media is always the last resort for them to approach your company which in turn automatically reduces your customer churn. 

5. Email

Email serves as both an internal and external form of support to a company. Email is a customer service platform that offers excellent flexibility and configuration as by just typing and clicking a button, you can send or receive thousands of emails. 

An app for customer service provides various advanced features such as customized templates, routing options, segmentation of customers, SLA monitoring, a record of customer profiles and data, and many more. 

6. CRM tool

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a customer care software that performs multiple functions. It includes recording customer data and information, preparing and organizing notes, connecting marketing and sales department, tracking customer interactions, sharing information with the higher departments, and many more. 

With this, a call center can accurately measure its metrics and can have access to a client’s data when a query is generated. It helps businesses to effectively manage relationships with clients and personalize the customer service process. 

You can also create an effective customer journey map by anticipating the needs of each client and giving them an individualized customer experience. 

As per reports by Forbes, almost 80% of consumers want to purchase products from a brand that offers them personalized service and experience.

7. Knowledge base tool

Knowledge base tools are customer support software that enables you to prepare, collect, organize, store, share and manage self-service knowledge base content of your website for your audience. 

Some of the popular knowledge base content includes video tutorials, FAQ pages, blogs, and articles. It is generally of two types:

• Internal knowledge base 

Here the resource is always private and a user first has to log in to get the complete information and is generally created for the employees of a company

• External knowledge base

It is usually public and can be accessed by anyone. This information is designed for the users so that they can have free access to the content and can get to know more details about the products and services of a company

These 7 common types of customer service software will always improve the processes and manage your business operations efficiently. 

It will also boost the customer experience and will assist you in collecting, analyzing, and preparing final reports.

Top 8 Benefits Of Using Customer Help Desk Software 

An app for customer service software can support your business in countless ways such as lowering your cart abandonment rate, building trust and loyalty in customers, generating more revenue, recording user interactions, and increasing customer satisfaction. 

Its solutions are for different goals that can be scalable, customizable, and easily adaptable. Here are some major benefits of using a customer support system.

Table Of Contents:

1. Provide a customized customer support service
2. Escalates customer satisfaction and loyalty
3. Smaller teams can work speedily
4. Solve customer concerns swiftly
5. Smartly scale up your business
6. Nourish your buyer’s relationship
7. Improve your operator’s experience and performance
8. Impart self-service to clients.

1. Provide a customized customer support service

Resolving clients’ issues can sometimes be challenging and can lead to customer support representative team burnout. However, agents’ working can now become much more productive and easier with a customer service platform. 

For example – With automation software, agents can focus on complex issues and avoid doing repetitive tasks such as following up with tickets and unanswered emails. 

2. Escalates customer satisfaction and loyalty

When your customer service outsourcing representatives will use customer service apps for support, they will deliver amazing service and will also provide quick and personalized responses to users. 

This will lower your attrition rate and improves your customer retention strategy by generating more loyal and satisfied customers.

For example – With help desk software, you can proactively chat or help shoppers in completing their checkout process or use monitoring tools to identify the metrics. 

3. Smaller teams can work speedily

With the growing demand, customer service teams need to provide an immediate resolution to issues to always stay ahead of the competition. 

This is not possible without using customer service solution software as with this, they will quickly resolve the tickets and prepare customer insights by identifying, collecting, organizing, and preparing reports to effectively improve customer satisfaction. 

A large team is not required when using support software as it assists members of a company by performing tasks carefully. 

4. Solve customer concerns swiftly

With automatic ticket routing, an appropriate agent will solve the problems of the users on time. 

Representatives will accurately listen to your customers and assist them by providing chatbot and live chat services to solve their problems faster and provide instant support. 

5. Smartly scale up your business

An app for consumer service makes your business customer-centric and lets your company grow on a large scale by satisfying the needs of the audience.

To maintain high-quality service, your customer success teams can collaborate to keep up with the satisfaction level and grow the client base. 

Specialized software will provide enormous features like call center automation, third-party integration, reporting, call routing, and many more. 

6. Nourish your buyer’s relationship

To strengthen the bond with your customers, perfect customer service management software can be used to make the whole process convenient and hassle-free and agents can communicate effectively with upset customers. 

For example – Using customers’ history and data from multiple platforms, you can answer all the questions from a single dashboard and make the entire process much more productive by saving time for agents and building a special bond with shoppers.

7. Improve your operator’s experience and performance

Customer care software can provide details to the agent whenever they need to streamline workflow with greater efficiency. 

Using features like tagging, workflow automation, and knowledge base integration can motivate and prepare agents to provide better customer service. 

By promoting healthy competition under employee motivation programs, each agent can scale their working efficiency and performance.

8. Impart self-service to clients

A customer service platform can deliver operators resources that users need at the right time through knowledge base management. 

For example – Providing articles, blogs, FAQs, and community forums can increase response time and user experience. 

Now you can turn your dream into reality using customer service solutions most appropriately and improve your shopper’s loyalty and interactions by building your brand’s reputation. 

5 Major Factors To Be Kept In Mind While Choosing A Customer Service Software

Table Of Contents:

1. Collaboration alternatives
2. Flexibility to scale up/down
3. Cost
4. Support system limitations
5. Supporting service

1. Collaboration alternatives

Check if the software provides collaboration options such as making calls, private notes, detection of agent collision, or internal chats. 

Remember that the app for customer service that you choose should elevate and make the entire procedure smooth and effortless.

2. Flexibility to scale up/down

Business experience changes, therefore it is crucial for you to select customer support software that allows you to add and remove representatives as required. 

For example – An eCommerce business can have more support tickets at the time of Black Friday Campaigns. Thus, they need more agents at that time to answer high incoming call volumes, chats, and emails. 

3. Cost

One should try to look for different options rather than going for a single software that is on the expensive side. 

For example – You can consider alternative options by checking out free or low-cost plans and features offered by competitors instead of going for large and expensive brands. 

4. Support system limitations

It is highly recommended to check the limitations of a customer service solution software as it can greatly affect your customer satisfaction score. 

There may be features that you want to use but maybe that particular software doesn’t provide that. 

5. Supporting service

Here, you can test the software by sending them a message on live chat or an email and see how long so they take to give you an answer. 

By testing the responsiveness of the company, you will get a clear picture of its service. You can also find out if they are providing 24/7 support assistance.

The 12 Leading Customer Service Software Platforms

If you are looking for high-performer customer support software, then you will be overwhelmed by tons of options available out there. 

To make things clear, we have curated a list of software along with its prices and features so that you can compare and find out the most efficient tool for your business.

Table Of Contents:

1. Help Scout
2. LiveAgent 
3. Zendesk
4. Fresh desk
5. HubSpot Service Hub
6. MailChimp
7. Sprout Social
8. SurveyMonkey
9. Jira Service Desk
10. Salesforce
11. Aircall
12. Zoho Desk

1. Help Scout

Customer service teams these days don’t find much time to install and learn a new tool which is why they look for an advanced enough technology that covers all the functions and features. 

The customer service platform you choose should be able to perform tasks quickly so that your agents can grow with them and provide a great experience to your audience. 

It is an all-in-one centralized tool that lets your representatives take advantage of the proactive support and share updates with you using its help widget, Beacon. 

Features:

• Manage live chat conversations and emails 
• Provide knowledge base to users
• Automatically saves response of customers to create a database
• Agent collision detection
• Generates team’s performance reports with metrics
• Automation and integrations
• Build customer profiles
• Track requests of customers

Price:

• Standard Plan – $20/Per Month/Per User
• Plus Plan – $40/Per Month/Per User
• Pro Plan – $65/Per Month/Per User

2. LiveAgent 

Whether you have a small or a large enterprise, LiveAgent is a perfect tool for businesses of all sizes. By being a customized software, it offers excellent collaboration and automation options. 

While it offers basic features like call routing and call transfers, it provides advanced features such as call backups and calls recordings so that clients can communicate with you even when your operators are busy. 

This customer service solutions software offers 140 help desk functions and integrations among different tools and third-party applications. 

It has a gamification approach where your team members can collect rewards after the completion of tasks so that they can work and grow with fun. 

Features:

• Service Level Agreement (SLA) management 
• Social media platforms monitoring and support 
• A shared centralized inbox that collects tickets from all integrated channels
• Offers data analytics and reports 
• Built-in customized CRM
• Automation and integrations
• Proactive chat support that uses a knowledge base
• Ticket routing
• Private notes

Price:

• Free Plan – $0/Per Month/Per Agent
• Ticket Plan – $15/Per Month/Per Agent
• Ticket + Chat Plan – $29/Per Month/Per Agent
• All-inclusive Plan – $49/Per Month/Per Agent

3. Zendesk

It is an omnichannel customer service solutions tool that comes up with a robust-ticketing system and runs on AI-powered bots that can be easily customized at your convenience. 

It scales up and down according to the needs of a company, implements quickly, and is an easy-to-use platform. Using a single interface, teams can collaborate to level up their performance by delivering fast and personalized responses which increase overall satisfaction and productivity. 

Although it is generally used by bigger teams as it is a complex tool and requires an initial set-up cost, they have some lower cost plans too. 

Features:

• Knowledge base
• Automation and integrations
• Self-service options
• Reports and tracking information
• Live chat support
• Routing tickets from all channels 
• API integrations
• Community forums
• SLA management
• Customers and third-party data storage
• Native integrations

Price:

• Suite Team Plan – $49/Per Month/Per Agent
• Suite Growth Plan – $79/Per Month/Per Agent
• Suite Professional Plan – $99/Per Month/Per Agent
• Suite Enterprise Plan- $150/Per Month/Per Agent

4. Freshdesk

It is a cloud-based omnichannel customer software that streamlines intelligent automation, collaboration with team members, bots integration and accepts requests of customers from different mediums into a single dashboard. 

You can improve the user experience and grow your business by leveraging the advanced AI of the tool. It provides benefits such as improving agents’ productivity, managing tickets, and delivering personalized and fast service with fewer efforts. 

This software also provides 24/7 customer support and comes with clear and transparent pricing and plans. With its scalability and customized features, it is a great fit for industries such as healthcare, retail, tour and travel, and eCommerce solutions. 

Features:

• Sandbox
• Agent shifts monitoring
• Provide knowledge base
• Collect tickets from social media platforms, live chats, and emails
• Generate customized reports
• Self-service to customers
• Community forums
• Automation of tasks
• Live chat support
• CSAT features
• Audit logs
• Native integrations

Price:

• Free Plan – $0 (Upto 10 agents)
• Growth Plan – $12/Per Agent/Per Month
• Pro Plan – $44/Per Agent/Per Month
• Enterprise Plan – $70/Per Agent/Per Month

5. Hubspot Service Hub

It is an all-around customer management software that connects with all your channels and brings data of your users into a single consolidated platform. It offers a free live chat and chatbot tool to purchasers so that they can broaden the functionality of their customer service outsourcing team. 

Its knowledge base software lets customers find the answer to their queries quickly on their own so that you can have a successful customer onboarding process. 

It provides agents a help desk software that supports them in the advanced ticketing system process to track a large number of inquiries. Its CRM platform aligns marketing and sales operations to deliver an impeccable experience to each customer interaction. 

Features:

• 24/7 customer support
• Provides knowledge base for self-service
• Omni-channel messaging support
• VoIP calling 
• Inbound calling
• Automation
• Shared inbox
• Advanced reports generation
• Customer portals
• Surveys 
• Customer feedback collection
• Live chat and chatbots

Price:

• Starter Plan – $45 Per Month
• Professional Plan – $450 Per Month
• Enterprise Plan – $1200 Per Month

6. MailChimp

This app for customer service is used by small businesses to generate email newsletters and to track their results and performance. In addition to this, MailChimp can also create targeted customer segments which make the process effortless for agents to send a customized personal marketing message to each client. 

This automation platform also provides features like reporting of sales, social posting, building eCommerce websites, and SEO tools. You can also make landing pages for websites or promotional campaigns and track their outcomes using this system.

Features:

• Landing page creation
• Email templates
• Targeting and re-targeting ads
• A/B testing
• Generate insights from the audience
• Automation of emails
• Creation of pop-up forms
• Customer journey tracking
• Management of contacts
• Reporting
• Live chat
• Monitoring social media sites

Price:

• Free Plan – $0/Per Month
• Essentials Plan – $10/Per Month
• Standard Plan – $14/Per Month
• Premium Plan – $284/Per Month

7. Sprout Social

It is a social media management platform that is used to monitor posts, engagements, and customer service across different social media channels. 

Due to its support services in marketing, sales, monitoring of multiple accounts, and engagement functions, Sprout Social will facilitate you to build conversations across all mediums from one single dashboard. 

With its smooth and efficient functionalities, your agents can deliver seamless and personalized client service to captivate your online customer base. 

Features:

• Reporting and tracking
• Scheduling posts
• Segmentation of audience 
• Analytics report
• Automation and integrations
• Social media management
• Social media monitoring
• In-app collaboration
• Response management

Price:

• Standard Plan – $89/Per Month/Per User
• Professional Plan – $149/Per Month/Per User
• Advanced Plan – $249/Per Month/Per User

8. SurveyMonkey

It is one of the most popular platforms to conduct free online surveys.  It gives you tons of functions such as customization and sharing options, fast and smooth survey creation, and analysis of the emotions and sentiments of shoppers. 

With this customer service management tool, you can create quick surveys that give you insights into your audience and their feedback on your products and services. 

It also provides numerous integration options to ease the workflow of an organization so that a company can collectively measure the responses of both customers and employees of your company. 

Features:

• Tracking of results
• Unlimited survey templates and questions
• A/B testing
• Analysis of performance 
• Personalization of surveys 
• Sharing results of surveys 
• Polling
• Integrations
• API
• Supports images, audio, and videos
• Multiple users can manage the data collected from the survey

Price:

• Individual Plan – $25/Per Month
• Team Advantage Plan – $19/Per month
• Team Premier Plan – $47/Per Month

9. Jira Service Desk

It is a project management and bug tracking tool used by software development teams. It assists the employees in creating, organizing, delegating tasks, and monitoring the working activity of each client. 

With this tool, employees can directly get help from Slack using its conversational ticketing feature. It provides knowledge base management to serve incoming queries faster. 

When both IT support teams and development teams collaborate using this software, they can rapidly address the concerns of clients. 

Features:

• Self-service knowledge base
• Tracking reports and metrics
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs) management
• Routing tickets
• API and automation
• Live chat support system
• Native integrations
• Collaboration options
• Service desk
• Conversational ticketing

Price:

• Free Plan – $0 (Free for 3 agents)
• Standard Plan – $20
• Premium Plan – $45
• Enterprise Plan – Customized

10. Salesforce

It is a CRM platform that offers customer support with various personalization options to enterprises. If your customer service team and sales team works with each other at times, then Salesforce is the most suitable option for your company. 

With this tool, you can automate the replies to most commonly asked questions on Whatsapp, Facebook messenger, Live chat, and SMS. Its slack brings together the marketing, sales, commerce, analytics, customer service, and IT team together via digital workflows.

Features:

• Self-service to users
• Ticketing system
• Automation and integration of data
• Real-time analytics and reporting
• Management of call center service
• CRM platform
• Data visualization

Price:

• Essentials Plan – $25 Per Month/Per User
• Professional Plan – $75 Per Month/Per User
• Enterprise Plan – $150 Per Month/Per User
• Unlimited Plan – $300 Per Month/Per User

11. Aircall

Phone support or call center services support is used by both small and large teams to deal with complex issues. It has also been seen that clients want to resolve difficult tasks in person or on the phone call with operators so that they can listen to the users in a better manner. 

Aircall is the best software for customer service who needs complete call center services. They have various plans for companies of all sizes which include call queuing, custom business hours, and IVR services. 

Features:

• Reports and analytics 
• Shared call inbox
• Automation and Integrations
• Call routing to the right agent
• Virtual contact center services
• IVR support

Price:

• Essentials Plan – $30/Per Month
• Professional Plan –  $50/Per Month
• Custom Plan – Customized as per needs

12. Zoho Desk

It is a context-aware and omnichannel support CRM platform that is essentially designed for sales-focused teams. This is ranked among the top customer support software that generates clients’ happiness, increases productivity, and builds brand loyalty. 

It is an ideal platform used to deliver customer service as it provides strong features and integrations such as time tracking of agents, shared inbox, chat support services, integrations, and many more. 

However, Its high-cost plan includes self-service, live chat services, Zoho Books, Zoho CRM, and Zoho mail. 

Features:

• 24/7 support
• Self-service
• Automation and integrations
• Reporting and Analytics
• Customization options
• Management of tickets from multiple channels

Price:

• Free Plan – $0 (3 agents)
• Standard Plan – $10/Per Month/Per Agent
• Professional Plan – $17/Per Month/Per Agent
• Enterprise Plan – $30/Per Month/Per Agent

Note – Check out all the above software to know their exact prices.

Conclusion: The ultimate goal is to service your clients 

Finding out which customer service software is best for your representatives as well as your audience can be a tricky task. If you want to enhance the process of your clients’ service, then choosing the right customer service apps can eventually improve client satisfaction, brand loyalty, and high revenue. 

You need to find the most appropriate tool that is flexible and meets all your demands and future needs of your business by considering your budget, features, and goals. 

This will help you to build an effective customer feedback strategy, reduce your churn rate and let you meet the expectations of your users. You need to stay focused while choosing the best support system and take your time in doing proper research to make a profitable decision. 

Software for customer service will ensure that you always respond to queries promptly by making sure that your trusted clients keep coming back to your business from time to time.

The post Top 12 Customer Service Software To Use In 2022 appeared first on Octopus Tech.

What if there are high call volumes of your customers? 

In this case, a company hires a call center outsourcing company that uses an interactive voice response (IVR) technology to turn frustrated customers into happy buyers quickly. Suppose, a shopper is trying to contact your support team member and they immediately hear a robotic voice that greets them and carries on the rest of the conversation. With the help of this voice, they manage to solve their concern by choosing from the list of options or that voice connects them to the most appropriate agent. 

This feature of interactive voice response allows callers to interact with the brand without getting connected to an agent. The call center that you choose for your business plays a crucial role in building your customer service because the experience that they get by calling your brand tells a lot about them like if they are going to be interacting with you in the future or not. 

If you are using an easy communication method by constantly adding value to the service, then you will successfully grow your customer base and create a delightful customer experience. IVR in call center acts as both a cost-effective and time-efficient tool for delivering customer support to your clients. 

Not sure if an IVR system is right for your business? In this article, we have covered in-depth knowledge on IVR which will help you know if it is the right fit for your business. 

What Is An Interactive Voice Response (IVR)?

Interactive voice response (IVR) is a phone system software technology used in contact centers that allow employees and customers to interact using a computer system through automatic voice or touch-tone dialing menus. 

It offers self-service to customers for faster first-call resolution practices. IVR call center systems perform various tasks such as announcing menu options to callers, playing a pre-recorded greeting to the user, transferring the call to the queue, and connecting the call of the customer to the most qualified representative. 

It also gives them self-service options such as letting them know the operating hours and balances of their account or sharing billing information. 

On the other hand, the callers respond to this IVR system either by speaking to the responses or by pressing the buttons on the keypad of their mobile phones. This intelligent routing system improves the customer experience and the overall service quality and efficiency of the contact center. 

For example – Once the call center IVR is connected to the other systems, it automatically gathers customer data and information which later helps in showing “Screen-pops” to the operators so that they can interact with the user having prior information about them. 

Additionally, IVR in call center can handle thousands of dialed numbers and offer menu options and unique greetings to each caller. The proper functioning of these features of the IVR call center is not possible without the intervention of human agents. 

IVR call centers are designed in a way that reduces the amount of time spent by agents on small tasks so that skilled agents can focus on solving the concerns of customers quickly. IVR provides features such as queue callback options, script designing, specific group calling, identifying the words of callers through automatic speech recognition, and routing calls to the most appropriate agent of the call center. 

Benefits Of Using Interactive Voice Response For Customer Support 

Adopting an IVR in call center can bring various benefits to a business. Here’s what you can expect by implementing this system:

1. Deliver a better customer service and experience 

No business can live without customers and therefore, it becomes imperative to provide better customer service and experience. A study shows that 48% of customers are looking for better customer service after the pandemic. IVR call center system ensures that if a customer asks the normal question, then there always be a quick response available for it. 

If agents are using a well-equipped IVR system, then it will meet the specific needs of each customer and it will eventually turn them into happy buyers. An IVR system provides time-efficient replies to customers, guide them to the right menu system, and connects them to the proper department that can carefully listen to your users. 

This as a result cut down the call volumes and saves time for both clients and agents. There are various customizable options that you can choose to personalize your interactions such as languages used, matching the information of the callers with their account numbers, and creating a successful customer lifecycle management. 

With a hassle-free and simple calling system, you can establish a ground for a better customer experience so that they can stick with your business for a longer period.

2. Offers self-service to customers

IVR lets you serve your people even when your representatives are not available. If users are calling outside of regular business hours, then they can get some basic information with an IVR menu. If you have a well-crafted IVR menu, then it can be used for all the basic customer queries and will help customers in finding the answers to their problems so that agents can focus on more complex requests. 

An advanced IVR system has biometric capabilities that reduce customer churn by recognizing customers’ data and information with their numbers and providing them answers accordingly. It can schedule an appointment or meeting with a client and also wish the callers their birthday. 

Various self-service tasks performed by an IVR include checking the balances of the user’s accounts, tracking shipping and order information, booking a meeting with an agent, and so on.

3. Personalized service to customers

IVR call centers provide great scope for personalization to build better relationships with clients and enhance real-time customer support. Each interactive voice response system is programmed to provide personalized greetings to users. It is possible with a CRM software integration that tracks the caller ID and their information. 

Besides addressing the name of each caller, it also offers various language options to tailor to the specific needs of callers. A personalized greeting and responding to the client’s language is essential if you are operating your business globally. 

4. Reduces the chances of errors

When IVR performs its tasks, it transfers the call to the most suitable agent of the call center department which is why it becomes less prone to errors. Inbound call center services of a contact center have a high call volume every day which can sometimes result in mental strain, long waiting times, and misrouting users. 

With manual call handling, there are high chances that calls can be distributed to the wrong operators. IVR in call center follows some logical sequence that makes a better judgment on call handling and transfers the call with an automatic call distribution system to the right agent. 

5. Improves first-call resolution practices

Customer wants solution quickly as they get irritated when their calls are transferred to different departments or when they need to talk to different agents. With call center IVR, their calls can be routed to an appropriate agent which improves the first call resolution rate of your customer service. To maintain this FCR rate, you can adjust the IVR Software as per the needs of shoppers. 

For example – If they have a question related to an invoice, then they can simply dial the numbers as being guided by an IVR menu system and get the answer in the first call itself. Or if you have launched a new product, then you can adjust the queries related to it accordingly in the system. 

6. Boosts the morale and performance of agents

IVR is not the replacement of your agents but it is developed to make the working life of agents much easier. An automated IVR is used to solve normal queries so that you can efficiently measure your call center performance. 

Agents can sometimes get frustrated and overwhelmed by the high call volumes due to which they won’t be able to quickly resolve the concerns of customers. This frustration can lead to unproductive and depressed employees. Thus, the interactive voice response system reduces the initial call handling of the operators. 

7. Gathers valuable data of customers

To obtain success in your business, you need to collect valuable data from customers for future use. The data collected by IVR call centers related to clients’ inquiries will help to improve your IVR setup and upgrade your business strategies. 

IVR call center systems reduce your operational costs, allows you to perform market research, and limit the need of hiring more agents. When a call is received by IVR software, it collects all the customer’s data or uses previous data to solve the needs of callers. 

8. 24/7 availability

A key aspect of every customer service is to provide round-the-clock support to users but employees are not always available for 24/7 support. In this situation, an IVR phone system will take care of all the needs when no one is available in the contact center. 

This builds trust and credibility in customers and there are high chances that they will return to your business. Even if they call you in the middle of the night, an IVR will greet them and perform all the simple transactions and functions to satisfy the customers. 

How To Adopt An IVR Technology?

Before adopting an IVR system, let’s have a critical understanding of its impact on your call center system. 

1. Understand your caller’s experience

To obtain deeper knowledge about the customer service offered by your call center, you must first understand the journey of your buyers. To have an IVR in call center, you must first put yourself in the caller’s place. For this, you can:

• Know how the calls are routed to the agents

• How much time does it take to route the call

• Perform an IVR call testing and examine the way it interacts with the users

• Identify how choosing multiple options from your IVR menu enhances the experience a buyer gets from your call center services 

2. Evaluate your current system of routing calls

Now that you know how your customers are getting experience from your IVR menu, it becomes crucial for you to monitor your current call routing system to follow the call center quality monitoring best practices. 

For this, you can fill in all your recordings and additional details in a customized form to compare the results of different calls at varied times. With this, you can identify weaknesses in different areas which can later help you to improve customer service. 

3. Measure all your call center metrics

Several call center metrics are important to measure in the call center IVR system. Some of the vital metrics include Average Handling Time (AHT), Call Abandonment Rate, and Call Containment Rate. Apart from this, you can also measure customer churn rate and retention rate. 

If all your measures are showing high performance and great results, then you are imparting a great customer experience and if any of these measures are showing low scores, then you can work on improving those measures. 

4. Track the results of changes in the IVR system 

If you are making modifications to your current IVR system or implementing a new one, then you should track the results of those changes. After this, you will be able to analyze how those changes can impact the overall functions. Your main motive should be to resolve the customer query without putting them on hold as according to a study almost 60% of consumers hang up the call if they are put on a hold for 1 or more minutes.

5. Gather feedback from your support staff

After checking the performance, you would want to know the changes in the operations from your representatives in your IVR call centers. 90% of buyers need an immediate response when they look for customer support from a company. 

You should always take feedback and discuss issues from your frontline support agents on your current IVR phone systems to identify all the loopholes. This will let you understand all your call center operations so that you can resolve all the hitches.

Interactive Voice Response: The Bottom Line

High-quality voice recognition is a key function of an interactive voice response system in the call center if your system does not support too many questions or doesn’t have proper voice recognition, then your customers may get frustrated. IVR call center offers a high level of personalization and self-service options to customers. 

With an IVR system, operators can respond to a large number of inbound calls of your business, reducing agents’ workloads to some extent. An IVR technology allows users to input their problems so that they can route them to the most suitable agent or department. 

It works according to the specific needs of clients and provides high-level menu options for different customer choices to improve the overall customer experience. You can also check out our blog on 10 expert tips for cold calling in 2022 to know more about call center services. 

The post What Is Interactive Voice Response (IVR) In A Call Center? appeared first on Octopus Tech.

There has been a major comparison between chatbot vs. live chat as people are confused about which of these two services delivers superior solutions with great performance and results. With the emergence of these two communication channels, customers can now get a quick answer to their queries and they don’t even have to communicate through email or phone calls. 

So, are you too confused about the right customer service platform for your business? Do you want live chat support or live chatbots? Or do you need both of them? 

How do they differ from each other in solving your business goals and providing enhanced real-time customer support?

Let’s jump straight into the details of these two channels. 

What Is A Chatbot?

A chatbot system is designed using conversational artificial intelligence (AI) to chat with users in a natural language via text messages, apps, websites, or telephone calls. It uses some pre-defined set of rules to perform a real-time chat interaction with a user. A customized build chatbot is provided by the chatbot agency that is used in varied industries such as healthcare, finance, tech companies, insurance, and many more. 

When customers type inputs, it navigates them to the destination which they are looking for but it is suitable only for basic inquiries that have a limited scope. If you want to simplify the initial work of the agents and generate human-like responses, then a chatbot is the best option for your company. 

What Is A Live Chat?

A live chat is an online app that enables you to chat with your website visitors in real time. Live chats are used by several companies as here an operator just has to type the response of the visitors inside the chatbox and simply send it to them. 

79% of tech-savvy customers prefer to choose live chat due to its immediate support access. For using a live chat, a user doesn’t have to install any app on their device or signup anywhere as they can simply chat with a representative by landing on your website. 

A live agent from your customer success team is responsible to handle ongoing queries of buyers and they are designed in such a way that any technical query that needs support will be handled by the allotted agent of the team immediately. They can also identify the motives, emotions, and interests of shoppers which helps them to modify their responses accordingly. This also helps you to collect more leads using the fundamental live chat approach. 

Chatbot Vs. Live Chat: Which One To Choose?

Both chatbot and live chat play a major role in resolving queries of users and providing them with a digital customer experience. But it depends on your business goals as you might need live chat support services or a chatbot or a combination of both. Here’s how:

Easy to use

Once you have live chat software installed, your operators can start communicating with your users. You need to invest appropriate time and money in training your agents effectively so that they can answer all the potential questions of your customers. 

If you provide them with a list of FAQs, knowledge base, and customer data information, then they can quickly respond to the queries and enhance the customer experience via live chat. 

While chatbot is a different case as if you are not investing in AI chatbots, then you need to design your custom bot. This means you need to create a step-by-step dialogue flow if you want to go beyond those welcoming messages in chatbots. 

Here are some steps by which you can create live chatbots:

• Research and identify the goals of your chatbot for every conversation

• Use a chatbot editor to design the flow of conversation. You should also remember that different customers can ask questions in various ways but their answers will always be similar. So, you need to carefully look at all these variations while framing the conversation

• Test the final chatbot

• Monitor and improve your chatbot using chatbot analytics

24/7 customer support

Providing 24/7 customer service has become a basic requirement for every business as you cannot make your people wait at any point in time. A study shows that almost 68% of customers will leave your business if you provide them poor customer service. 

Chatbot agency provides 24/7/365 support to the customers of your company. It offers a speedy and consistent solution to customers and its infinite availability will help you in lead management and boost sales. Chatbots can be used in building your customer base and customer engagement at various touchpoints. 

They can answer the most common customer query, recommend products and services to users, and book a demo or an appointment with an agent. It also lowers the workload of your representatives and they don’t even have to waste their time dealing with uninterested shoppers. 

On the other hand, live chat support services are available 24/7 which means your human operator will have to perform their duty round the clock. With this, your users can get quality assistance and support at any time of the day. 

Remember, if you have a large number of tickets and routine queries coming all day and night, then a chatbot is the highly recommended option for your company. But if you have fewer tickets every day that require more human intervention, then you should opt for live chat support services. 

Cost-effective medium

You need to take business decisions that generate more revenue at fewer costs. If customers are facing complex issues that need a detailed explanation, then live chat support services are the most suitable option. 

It is the most effective medium of communication as it helps agents to connect with users quickly, boosts your return on investment, enables them to convert the customers down the sales funnel, reduces the churn rate, and converts more website visitors into customers. On the drawback side, it requires you to pay additional costs such as training costs, salary costs, and infrastructure expenses. 

On the other hand, a chatbot is the most viable and attractive solution as a single chatbot can take place of 20 or more agents. Here, you don’t have to spend your costs on salary and other additional expenses and with this, you can lower your operational costs by 30%. 

Various chatbots agency design these bots in a way that improves your brand’s customer experience and makes the functions simpler to meet the endless needs of users. Chatbots let you automate the responses of your regular queries to build engagement with your customers. 

Accurate response by solving complex issues

Although a large number of companies use chatbots as an easy solution when it comes to accuracy, then no other tool can beat live chat agents. Chatbots use pre-defined patterns to answer simple customer questions but a live agent understands the context and provides the most accurate solutions. 

With the advancement of AI, chatbots agency may provide you with a chatbot that uses Natural Language Processing (NPL) and machine learning but they might not have the ability to think immediately during times of complex issues. 

There are certain cases when customers expect empathy from you to handle problematic situations. In this case, a live agent can be a fruitful option as they can understand the tone and emotions of users which can create a lasting impression. Live chatbots cannot create empathy and is suitable only for providing first-level support solutions. 

A live agent can accurately resolve complex issues in a short period but having both of these services will surely give more success to your business and let you acquire more customers with proactive chat support. 

Human involvement

Chatbots can run their features without the need for human intervention. This automatically saves your time, energy, and money and you don’t even have to hire an operator for this function. 

It can answer all the initial questions and also increases customer engagement so that the live agent can focus on more complex and strategic tasks while the chatbot takes care of customers’ needs. If you are using live chat support services, then a representative will always provide a human touch with real-time assistance to users.

It also establishes the natural flow of communication and timely response to customers by personalizing the greetings and conversations using the information of visitors to generate customer loyalty. Human operators can solve the most tricky questions through interactive visuals and as a result, this improves customer satisfaction. 

Customer loyalty brand satisfaction

In this discussion of choosing the right support technology between chatbot vs. live chat, it becomes highly essential for companies to meet customers’ expectations and improve their brand’s credibility. In the case of live chat, agents create meaningful conversations and improve engagement with the most active customers. 

They can also focus on improving the customer retention strategy of your business by building loyalty and satisfaction in users. According to Forbes, 71% of customers will not use your brand if you don’t have any customer service representative in your company, and 86% of customers would prefer to interact with a human operator when compared to chatbots. 

Live chats should be used by companies that have more technical queries as it requires personalized explanation. They address the issues of customers with their efficiency of problem-solving and quick query resolution without any hassle. 

However, AI chatbots are also extremely capable of delivering instant responses by generating small talk and boosting consumer satisfaction and with this feature, live chatbots will sound less robotic. 

With immediate responses, your users can become your loyal customers and even brand advocates. It offers frictionless customer service and allows you to measure the performance of your bots so that you can use the chatbot vs. live chat wisely. 

A quick response time

A response time is the total amount of time a prospect has to wait before they get the appropriate answer to their query. In this case, a chatbot is a leading platform as it provides instant responses to users. If you are using a customized chatbot provided by the chatbot agency and that particular chatbot is deployed on your website, then the waiting time of customers will be eliminated immediately. 

In the case of live chats, customers have to wait for a few minutes to get connected with the right agent but this time can also be minimized if you have sufficient and well-equipped team members in your organization. 

With chatbots, you get fewer hold times and quick response times when compared to live chat agents. About 59% of users will buy from brands that provide answers to their queries within a minute. Chatbots are always ready to establish the conversation with their “trigger words”. 

During the time of high-volume calls, it takes up multiple conversations at once and eliminates all the unwanted users. Shoppers can get a response in between 1-5 seconds by using chatbots which is much faster when compared to the agents who first connect with the client, search or recall the answer and then type that in the chat column. 

Personalized touch

When it comes to personalized touch, then live chat support services are a true winner. An agent can always have access to the customer’s data so that they can customize the message for each customer and there will always be a human touch in the conversation. 

Various companies can grow their eCommerce site with chat support services. Representatives can judge the emotions of customers and can shift their tone in both writing and oral communication. They will also create excitement in their tone that can make the communication effective with upset customers. 

A lack of personalization in conversation makes buyers feel that you don’t care about their precious time and money which can also lead them to shift to another business. AI-based chatbots have access to the data of customers and they provide them with solutions based on the intent of the customer’s messages. 

The best solution for a company is to use both these tools as bots can be used in the initial conversation and a human representative can continue the rest of the conversation. 

Chatbot Vs. Live Chat: The Best Solution

Now that everything is clear to you about chatbots and live chats, how will you decide which platform to choose for your business?

The best approach that you can use here is to opt for both these tools together to create a delightful customer service and experience. Based on customer inquiries and interactions, you can identify whether a chatbot or a live agent is the right fit for your business to build user interaction and generate brand loyalty. 

Complex issues can be solved by a live agent while simple queries can be resolved using a chatbot. But you can also use both of these technologies to deliver the best of both worlds to your customers and to succeed in your business. You can also check out our blog analysis on customer success vs. customer experience to know more information on how to deliver world-class customer support and assistance. 

The post Chatbot Vs. Live Chat: Which is best for your business? appeared first on Octopus Tech.