Customer Service Software

Improve your customers’ experience by structuring communication, data and workflows.

What is customer service software?

Customer service software is a platform for managing all communication, data and business processes needed to create customer loyalty and drive revenue. The software facilitates tasks and workflows among customers, agents, management, and other business departments.

Why do businesses use customer service software?

It benefits the business and strengthens customer relationships.

Increase revenue

Better collaboration and easy access to knowledge make it simple for agents to recommend new products, features, or solutions.

Improve operational efficiency

Automated workflows and notifications mean no time is wasted. Reporting and statistics provide decision-making insight to business management.

Build customer loyalty

Customers trust your service and support team because cases aren't lost, inquiries are handled quickly and help is provided without delay. Happy customers mean more referrals.

Enhance customer satisfaction

Time to resolution is faster because necessary data and resources are at an agent's fingertips. Escalations happen seamlessly, and help is looped back to the customer without delay.

Who uses customer service software?​

It benefits the business and strengthens customer relationships. It is used by everyone involved in building the relationship – customers, agents, and management.

Customers

Contact the service team and open cases.

Online access from which customers can open requests, get self-service support and view account details or help request status.

Customers can find answers, schedule appointments or open requests without having direct service team contact.

Let customers contact the service team in the way that's most comfortable – phone, email, chat, social media and more.

Customer service agents

Structure communication and process support cases.

All relevant customer data is displayed for easy reference – contact info, request history, equipment usage and more.

Catalog information for easy use. Customers use knowledge articles for self-service. Agents can easily share FAQs, how tos or any other information.

Capture all of the request details and any related communication or documents in one un-editable location.

Customer service management

Oversees operations and implements business processes or workflows.

Define and automate customer service workflows. Incorporate new forms, dynamic fields, approvals, notifications and even data from other systems.

From calendaring to SLAs to ticket histories, managers have complete access to what's happening in their department. Issues can be spotted and resolved quickly. Resources can be well planned.

End-to-end encryption and safe data centers reassure leaders that customer data is secure and that the company is at less risk.

FAQ

A customer portal provides a way for customers to connect with a business. The portal is an available to customers via a web browser, just like a webpage, so they can access services and information from anywhere at any time.

Some common features of a customer portal include the ability to:

  • Post links and notifications for customers to read
  • Provide access to a knowledge base or FAQs
  • Let customers login to access their account and equipment information
  • Allow customers to open cases with the service team

Often, it is possible to integrate a CRM tool with customer service software. For instance, OTRS as a customer service tool uses XSLT to access data in other systems. Important to note is that one of the OTRS features is a customer information database, so key details of a customer account are already available to agents.

Having a shared email box can help several team members to answer email questions from customers, but email systems lack a lot of the features and functionality that customer service software adds. Some of the prominent features that come with using a customer service tools are:

  • Multiple contact channels – customers don’t have to rely only on email to contact the support team. They can use chat, social, or a help portal.
  • Context-ready data – when a request is received by a customer service tool, it is automatically linked with related information, like customer details, order histories or equipment information. Agents have a much easier time knowing who the customer is and what they need.
  • Clear request histories – unlike with email, all actions that are taken to resolve the customer’s request are tracked in a read only history, so it’s easy for management to see how the situation changed over time.
  • Reporting, SLAs and KPIs – often, customer service teams have clear agreements made about how quickly requests must be handled. Reports can be run to examine key business operations and protect these agreements.
  • Notifications – requests never sit unattended because notifications can be automated and requests can be escalated if they have sat for too long.

These are only some benefits of using customer service software over a shared email box. To fully understand how customer service software supports and builds upon customer relationships, contact OTRS experts.

Customer service software varies in price depending upon the size and needs of a company. It’s best to speak with an expert about your company’s specific customer service software requirements to make sure the quote you get accurately reflects your needs.

The simple answer is “as many as your business needs.” Talk with your solution provider to best understand how the number of agents may impact the cost of customer service software.

OTRS newsletter

Read more about product features, interesting tips and events in the OTRS newsletter.

We use Keap. Privacy policy