Imagine a call center where agents lack the expertise to resolve customer inquiries. Such a center might start losing customers and gain a bad reputation in the market. As a customer service manager, you can prevent such issues by investing in customer service software that automatically assigns tickets based on agents’ skills.
Customer service tools include several other features that track agents' performance, consolidate data, and optimize call center operations. Learning about these features will help you pick the right tool for your needs.
To help you with your search, this article highlights five key customer service software features based on the ratings given by verified software users. We also include the highest-rated appointment scheduling software for each feature.
1. Support ticket management
The support ticket management feature allows customer service teams to organize customer inquiries and issues into management tickets. Each customer interaction, whether via email, phone, or chat, is converted into a ticket. This ticket is then tracked, categorized, and assigned to the appropriate team member. The feature allows prioritizing customer requests, setting deadlines, and monitoring ticket status until resolution. It ensures that no customer request is overlooked and that each is handled efficiently.
What business problems does support ticket management solve?
The support ticket management feature helps customer support agents solve the following challenges:
Excess ticket volume: Excess ticket volume can overwhelm customer service teams, leading to missed or delayed responses and decreased service quality. Support ticket management automates the capture and routing of incoming inquiries, ensuring efficient classification and assignment of tickets. This feature prioritizes critical tickets, allowing them to be addressed first and preventing potential escalations. Moreover, the software evenly distributes tickets among team members to prevent overload and maintain a high level of productivity. Real-time tracking and analytics enable managers to monitor ticket volumes and adjust resources dynamically.
Inconsistent service: Varying levels of service quality and responsiveness can confuse and frustrate the customer, damaging the business's trust and loyalty. Support ticket management in the customer support system standardizes responses and ensures that all requests are handled according to the same protocols and service level agreements (SLAs). The system automatically categorizes and routes tickets to the appropriate agents based on their expertise and current workload, promoting a more uniform handling of inquiries.
Dissatisfied customer: Customers can be dissatisfied due to unresolved issues, delayed responses, or inconsistent service, leading to negative feedback and potential customer churn. The support ticket management feature in the customer service ticketing system mitigates this risk by ensuring systematic and efficient inquiry handling. Tickets are prioritized based on urgency and relevance, ensuring that critical customer issues are addressed swiftly. The software facilitates thorough tracking of each ticket's status, promoting timely follow-ups and resolutions. Additionally, the system allows for collecting and analyzing feedback, enabling continuous improvement in service delivery.
How users benefit from support ticket management
Here are some excerpts from the reviewers of support ticket management features describing how it helps them:
“Tickets can be put into workflows to assign to the correct department and engineers based on multiple criteria. This is very powerful and ensures tickets are not lost and can alert on whichever messaging platform you use at the same time.”
“We can manage tickets and separate IT tickets from the facilities tickets. We are able to streamline the tickets better than we could with the previous system we used.”
“We tracked the amount of times the ticket changed hands and tracked where the tickets were in the customer support lifecycle in order to quickly resolve issues for our customers. Its important to be able to manage this easily and with multiple users.”
Top 3 products with the highest ratings for support ticket management
We selected products for this article based on their average ratings between May 2022 - May 2024, which may differ from their current overall average ratings.
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Support ticket management feature rating
4.92/5
Device Compatibilty
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Support ticket management feature rating
4.81/5
Device Compatibilty
2. Real-time notifications
The real-time notification feature in customer service management software alerts service teams and customers immediately when there are updates or new information regarding their inquiries or issues. For service teams, these notifications can indicate new ticket assignments, status changes, or escalations, ensuring that agents respond promptly and efficiently. For customers, real-time notifications keep them informed about the progress of their requests, such as confirmations of received queries, expected wait times, and resolution statuses. This feature enhances transparency, improves communication, and helps build trust by keeping both customers and service teams continuously updated.
What business problems does real-time notifications solve?
The real-time notifications feature helps customer service and support teams solve the following challenges:
Overlooked critical issues: When critical customer issues—such as service outages, major complaints from high-value customers, or safety concerns—are not identified and addressed promptly, they can escalate into larger problems. These may include substantial financial loss, damage to the business's reputation, and legal repercussions. The real-time notifications feature ensures that urgent customer requests are immediately highlighted and escalated. When a high-priority ticket is created or flagged, real-time alerts are sent to the appropriate agents and managers, prompting swift action. This ensures that critical matters are addressed promptly, preventing them from being buried under less urgent tasks.
Inefficient performance reporting: Without real-time insights into employee activities and outcomes, managers may struggle to identify which agents are underperforming or where bottlenecks are occurring. The real-time notifications feature allows managers to track performance metrics such as response times, resolution rates, and customer satisfaction in real time. Such timely insights enable supervisors to identify performance issues early, provide targeted coaching, and adjust workflows or redistribute workloads as needed.
Customer churn: Customer churn, the loss of clients or customers, directly impacts a business’s revenue. It also increases the costs associated with acquiring new customers to replace those who have departed. Real-time notifications alert customer support teams when a customer issue might lead to churn due to unresolved complaints or repeated negative feedback. These notifications enable quick action, allowing contact center representatives to address concerns before they escalate into reasons for departure.
How users benefit from real-time notifications
Here are some excerpts from the reviewers of real-time notifications features describing how it helps them:
“Real time notifications can be important depending on the way the business handles requests. We used to have a specific turn around time for certain types of requests. However, when you keep ownership of a case, this feature can become very important”
“These are critical in getting my team moving to restore service as soon as something breaks. It also lets me know exactly when things have been fixed so I can start messaging the resolution to my customers.”
“When critical support tickets are created, our customer service agents are notified instantly, and can triage and elevate them within minutes.”
Top 3 products with the highest ratings for real-time notifications
We selected products for this article based on their average ratings between May 2022 - May 2024, which may differ from their current overall average ratings.
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Real-time notifications feature rating
4.70/5
Device Compatibilty
3. Contact management
The contact management feature in a customer service tool organizes and maintains detailed records of all customer interactions and personal information. This feature acts as a centralized database where customer service representatives can access vital information such as contact details, communication history, previous inquiries, support tickets, and purchase history. It enables marketing and support agents to provide personalized and informed support by having immediate access to relevant customer data. This enhances the efficiency of the service provided and improves customer satisfaction by making interactions more tailored and responsive. Additionally, this feature supports effective relationship management and marketing efforts by keeping customer data organized and readily accessible.
What business problems does contact management solve?
The contact management feature helps sales, marketing, and IT teams solve the following challenges:
Data silos: Data silos occur when information is isolated within different departments or systems, hindering a unified view of customer interactions and insights. This separation can lead to inconsistent customer service and inefficiencies. The contact database centralizes customer data from various touch points into a single, accessible repository. This integration enables real-time notifications across all service channels, ensuring that every team member is updated with the latest customer interactions and data.
Personalization challenges: Personalization challenges in customer service involve tailoring interactions to meet individual customer preferences and history, which can be difficult without access to comprehensive and current data. The contact database provides a unified view of customers' details, past interactions, and preferences. As new information is collected or customer interactions occur, the system updates in real time, enabling support agents to personalize their responses accurately. This capability ensures that customers’ needs are addressed as per the collected data and their previous interactions with the business, enhancing customer loyalty and satisfaction.
Missed sales opportunities: Businesses often fail to capitalize on potential upsells or cross-sells due to a lack of awareness about customer needs, preferences, or previous interactions. The contact database ensures marketing, sales, and support teams have immediate updates on customer behaviors and interactions. With this feature, when a customer shows interest in a product or engages in ways that indicate a buying signal, the system alerts sales or service agents in real time. This timely information allows agents to offer relevant additional products or upgrades, effectively increasing sales opportunities.
How users benefit from contact management
Here are some excerpts from the reviewers of contact management features describing how it helps them:
“Contact management is another important feature because it allows businesses to be able to store the contact information of their customers which in turn increases the efficiency or the business and allows for easy access of this information.”
“It allows business to manage their contact effectively ensuring that they have accurate and up to date information about their contact and can tailor their marketing and sales efforts to their specific needs and interests”
“Having contact management is imperative to understand the flow of business, customer engagement levels and have a central log of customer contact across a nationwide company.”
Top 3 products with the highest ratings for contact management
We selected products for this article based on their average ratings between May 2022 - May 2024, which may differ from their current overall average ratings.
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Contact management feature rating
4.72/5
Device Compatibilty
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Contact management feature rating
4.58/5
Device Compatibilty
4. Multi-channel communication
The multi-channel communication feature in customer support software enables support, sales, and marketing teams to interact with customers across various platforms such as email, social media, live chat, and phone from a single interface. This integration allows customers to choose their preferred method of communication while ensuring convenient service experiences. Agents can access and manage interactions from these different channels in one place, ensuring consistent and efficient responses. Consolidating communications helps prevent information silos and improves response times. This not only enhances customer satisfaction by meeting them on their preferred platforms but also boosts productivity by simplifying the management of customer interactions for service teams.
What business problems does multi-channel communication solve?
The multi-channel communication feature helps service and support teams solve the following challenges:
Channel fragmentation: Channel fragmentation occurs when customer interactions are scattered across multiple communication platforms (email, social media, phone, and chat) without integration. It can lead to inconsistent customer experiences, as information may not be shared across channels, causing confusion and inefficiencies. The multi-channel communication feature integrates all communication channels into a single interface and ensures that customer information and interaction histories are centralized and accessible, regardless of the communication medium. As a result, service agents can provide consistent and informed responses, enhancing the customer experience and optimizing service operations.
Resource inefficiency: Managing multiple communication channels requires more staff and time and may also lead to errors. This inefficiency is exacerbated by the need to switch between different systems and tools to access customer information and respond to inquiries, leading to prolonged response times and higher operational costs. The multi-channel communication feature simplifies these processes by integrating all communication channels into one platform. This consolidation reduces the time and effort required to manage customer interactions, optimizes staff utilization, and enhances overall productivity, making the customer service operation more efficient and cost-effective.
Missed engagement opportunities: Failing to respond promptly to customer inquiries on various platforms can potentially result in lost sales. It happens due to the challenges of monitoring and managing interactions across multiple channels simultaneously. The multi-channel communication feature ensures that no inquiry goes unnoticed, regardless of the channel used by the customer. Enabling timely and consistent responses allows businesses to capitalize on every engagement opportunity, improving customer retention and increasing the chances of conversion.
How users benefit from multi-channel communication
Here are some excerpts from the reviewers of multi-channel communication features describing how it helps them:
“I like Multi-Channel Communication as a way of managing conversations on a consistent platform and effortlessly linking live chat with other customer support tools or communication channels that may be of benefit to me and my team.”
“Helps in improving communication with customers or clients with any channel they prefer, it easily integrate other channels like sms , voice msg and other methods .”
“Due to the wide capability of multi channel communication, we've been able to bring our customers together and this has saved the organization a lot on marketing and advertisment”
Top 3 products with the highest ratings for multi-channel communication
We selected products for this article based on their average ratings between May 2022 - May 2024, which may differ from their current overall average ratings.
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Multi-channel communication feature rating
4.74/5
Device Compatibilty
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Multi-channel communication feature rating
4.60/5
Device Compatibilty
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Multi-channel communication feature rating
4.46/5
Device Compatibilty
5. Call center management
The call center management feature in customer support software includes a range of functionalities, including call routing, queue management, agent performance analytics, and real-time monitoring. This feature ensures that incoming calls are efficiently distributed among available agents based on predefined criteria, such as skill level or area of expertise, reducing wait times for customers. It also gives managers detailed insights into call metrics and agent productivity, enabling them to make informed decisions to improve service quality.
What business problems does call center management solve?
The call center management feature helps customer service managers solve the following challenges:
Inefficient operations: Inefficient operations in call centers, such as poor call routing, uneven workload distribution, and inadequate resource management, can lead to high operational costs and decreased customer satisfaction. The call center management feature implements advanced routing algorithms that distribute calls based on agent expertise and availability, ensuring balanced workloads and reduced wait times. Additionally, real-time monitoring and analytics provide insights into performance and operational metrics, enabling managers to optimize processes and resource allocation.
Poor service quality: Poor service quality in call centers can result from inconsistent call handling, lack of agent expertise, and inadequate response times, leading to customer dissatisfaction. The call center management feature facilitates better training and performance monitoring. It enables real-time supervision of calls and provides detailed analytics on agent interactions, identifying areas where service may not meet established standards. Additionally, calls can be routed to the most qualified agents based on their skills and experience, ensuring that customers receive expert assistance.
- Non-compliance with regulatory standards: Call centers that don’t comply with regulatory standards have to face legal penalties and damage to their reputations. The call center management feature provides tools for recording calls, securely storing customer data, and ensuring all interactions adhere to relevant laws such as GDPRThe General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a comprehensive data protection law in the European Union that sets guidelines for the collection and processing of personal information from individuals within the EU.or HIPAAThe Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a U.S. law that establishes national standards to protect sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without the patient's consent or knowledge.. The software also includes reporting functions that allow managers to conduct audits and ensure all practices meet regulatory requirements.
How users benefit from call center management
Here are some excerpts from the reviewers of call center management features describing how it helps them:
“the thing I like the most is that we can track all the calls by just entering the phone number or the agent name and it gives all data of when we called and for how many minutes we talked on that number.”
“In this feature it helps to businesses manage calls center operations efficiantly and effectively this feature includes automatic call distribution, intractive voice responce, call recording and monitoring and more”
“Helps to identify what the issues the customer is facing and also manages with the corresponding associates. Helps the team manager / team member to identify what can be done to make the changes effectively in responding the customer issue by resolving it.”
Top 3 products with the highest ratings for call center management
We selected products for this article based on their average ratings between May 2022 - May 2024, which may differ from their current overall average ratings.
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Call center management feature rating
4.90/5
Device Compatibilty
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Call center management feature rating
4.77/5
Device Compatibilty
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Call center management feature rating
4.70/5
