8 Best Customer Service Software: Ticketing System for Better Customer Support

Becoming a top customer service provider requires a few handy tools and tips that boost your service standards and support your business. Top customer service software should help you:

• Simplify your service process with customer service software
• Improve customer satisfaction (and let the stats do the work to attract more customers)
• Generate revenue 
• Measure results for improved performance

So how do we start at #1? Let’s backtrack first. 

What is customer service software? 

Customer service software is a set of tools designed to help organizations track, streamline, prioritize, and respond to customer support requests at scale. Here, we explore 8 market finds making it into our top ticketing systems software list.

Top Features To Look For in Customer Service Software

8 Best Customer Service Ticketing System Software List

1. Issuetrak

Pricing: $26-$77 per agent for Cloud Monthly

What distinguishes Issuetrak from other software options? Superior customer support, customization options, and more—Issuetrak staples you’d be hard pressed to find elsewhere. The buildable knowledge base and add-ons are part of Issuetrak's product, meaning you don’t have to deal with 3rd party integrations and can manage your customer service from a centralized solution. Issuetrak also offers cloud and on-premises deployment, which is becoming a rarity in any customer service SaaS solution.

Superior Customer Support

An outstanding customer service application starts from the inside out. In your search, look at how well a company serves its customers from the get-go. Have you noticed the poor reviews of Freshdesk? Or that Zendesk doesn’t even have a phone number, much less an easy pathway to get support? These hidden details matter. A company bent on providing excellent customer service will likely ensure its software will help you do the same.

Issuetrak’s 99% satisfaction ratings are consistently measured month-to-month. New customers enjoy white-gloved implementation and a dedicated Account Manager from the very first call throughout the entire relationship. What’s more, when you opt for our Support plan at $77 per agent per month, you get the benefit of unlimited free users. This is crucial for customer support, empowering infinite users opportunities to make and resolve requests, all at no extra cost to you.

Configurability 

While Jira users complain of inflexibility, Issuetrak's all-in-one customer service software takes pride in offering full configuration tools you can prime to match your operations. Customization options include:

• Custom templates for agents to provide standardized answers to customers
• Custom forms for quick, specific data collection
• User-defined fields branded to your business
• Personalization tokens in our Quick Notes feature for better relationship management
• Custom-designed webforms
• Dark mode for user preferences
• Time zones to reach customers anywhere
• And more—just ask our team!

Knowledge Base for Any User Base

Issuetrak’s Knowledge Base is internal by default, but you can choose to create an external-facing knowledge base for any user type. Issuetrak offers organizations the option of creating an anonymous public-facing self-service for customers to self-learn and troubleshoot without going through the motions of contacting support. Knowledge bases empower customers with troubleshooting capabilities while saving agents precious time to spend on more urgent items.

• In Issuetrak, you can convert all data from a ticketed issue into a Knowledge Base article. This is especially useful to agents who encounter frequently recurring issues. It saves agents tons of time to simply press a button and transfer all knowledge, notes, and solutions from a ticket to an article for all users to access.
  
  
• Issuetrak’s Custom Forms: you can embed a kbase article link right at the top of any Custom Form. Users filling out the form can cover all their bases by following the link to the article and acquiring any information they need, possibly eliminating the need reach out to an agent for further help.
  
  
• Furthermore, with Issuetrak’s Quick Notes, you can save pre-formatted settings for articles, helping agents quickly construct documents according to business requirements and styles. This also contribute to an enriched, consistent user experience.

Internal-facing knowledge bases also boost customer service standards. Knowledge bases help employees follow routine procedures and codes that are documented to business standards. They can self-educate and assist all customers with queries by referencing or sharing documentation from the knowledge base. 

Add-ons: Surveys, Billing, Chat & Webforms

Exceptional add-ons are custom-coded in-house. Our team feeds customer reviews directly into the Issuetrak product, ensuring our on-premises or cloud-based customer service software and add-ons acutely serve customer needs. 

• Surveys: While other customer service software tools use 3rd party subscriptions or integrations for surveys, Issuetrak builds its own Survey module into its product. Collecting feedback from within a centralized ticketing system allows for fluidity and deep improvements for your team, services, and product.
• Billing: Another module that is built into Issuetrak’s product, you can bill for hours of services you're providing your customers. 
• Chat: Instantly engage customers on the frontlines through Chatbot before routing urgent items to agents.
• Webforms: Implant this customizable form anywhere on your Issuetrak site. Configure its fields so you can collect the exact information you need from customers and solve their problems quickly.

SEE: Learn more about Issuetrak add-ons here.

 

Advance your help desk process and win customers over.

Download our infographic to learn which software features will improve your customer support process.

2. Kustomer

Pricing: $89 - $139 per user per month.

True to its name, Kustomer is a software tool specific to managing customer interactions.

Kustomer is most renowned for its AI functionality in detecting customer intent, responding to customers, and routing conversations based on historical data. Agents can generate pre-written replies, suggested actions, and ticket tagging options, which are helpful for crafting speedier replies and freeing up agent time for more complex, pressing issues. Other essentials like configurable business rules and omnichannel customer experience are included.

The downside to AI is the obvious lack of human interaction and discernment, which can ultimately turn loyal customers away. Kustomer may therefore be more useful for products rather than services, where policies may be more easily standardized.

Kustomer’s platform includes decent basics, such as live reporting and analytics dashboards for real-time metrics, and the ability to retain reportable data for up to two years. A nice perk unseen in competitors is Kustomer’s seasonal seating, giving you flex options during peak periods. Issuetrak’s agent count offers the same flexibility, where you can add or subtract agents at any time of the year.

Unlimited users, real-time dashboard metrics, single sign on, uptime SLAs, and enhanced routing are exclusive to Kustomer’s highest tier, whereas Issuetrak includes all of these in its $77 plan. Kustomer users get an API limit increase when they scale, whereas Issuetrak offers full feature access from the start.

3. Gorgias

Pricing: $10-$900+ per month with ticket limitations

For its integrations alone, Gorgias is great for B2C communications. Gorgias offers integration with e-commerce sites like Shopify for easy agent access to customer data, order information, and order history, which like Kustomer, makes it an ideal choice for product vendors.

Staple automation features include customizable workflows that automatically assign, tag, and close tickets, pre-written FAQ responses, templates to handle repetitive inquiries, and spam-resistant AI detection. A strong contender to Kustomer, Gorgias’s AI capabilities scan incoming tickets for customer sentiment. Notably, Gorgias uses rules to recognize and prioritize VIP customer requests.

4. HappyFox

Pricing: $39-$99 per agent per month, or starting at $1499 per month for unlimited agents

HappyFox’s ticketing system is similar to Issuetrak, helping support teams organize requests in a central place while offering omnichannel support. Also like Issuetrak, HappyFox helps managers define and configure their teams’ schedules to support service level agreements. Time-based event triggers help maintain compliance so that support teams can stay highly responsive to customers within their working hours. 

However, like many software tools listed here, HappyFox only offers Cloud deployment, making it impossible for data-sensitive industries to deploy. It also does not deploy easily to various devices; to best serve your existing customer base, you’ll be better off finding a solution that serves more than just Windows PC. Freshdesk offers a mobile app, and Issuetrak is accessible from any internet device, which both help meet customers where they are.

"HappyFox does not support any level of complexity. It doesn’t scale." 

- Capterra Reviewer

Furthermore, HappyFox’s pricing and support make the product and services less accessible than others. HappyFox’s lowest price point requires a multi-year contract, leaving you locked in to a product that potentially will not scale with your growth. Unless you pay HappyFox’s higher tiers up to $99 per user per month, you will have limited access to SLA notifications, an account manager, support, task management, storage, advanced reporting, and automated ticket routing. Without these essentials, it will be difficult to keep customers up to date or satisfied with your product and services.

Recommended reading: Issuetrak vs. HappyFox

5. Tidio

Pricing: Free plan available; plans with conversation limits at $29, $59, and $499 per month

Tidio’s free version is relatively robust. Social, WhatsApp, Email, and App integrations are included at all tiers, and Tidio offers both a mobile and desktop app.

Price is a caveat, however. There’s no custom branding, domain or email signatures except at the highest tier of a minimum $499 per month. For other tiers, the price is measured by conversation volume rather than by agent seat, which is dissimilar to other competitors on this list. Advanced analytics are also reserved for the higher tiers, leaving out key performance indicators (such as customer satisfaction and agent performance) at lower tiers.

There are a host of functions that you can only access when paying Tidio’s highest price point. Notes, templates, ticket routing, configurable permissions, canned responses, live support, and a dedicated success manager are also only available for higher tiers—all of which are staples that Issuetrak automatically offers, regardless of the payment plan you choose.

Given the extremes in pricing, Tidio feels best suited to very small businesses handling under 1,000 interactions per month, or large-scale enterprises willing to spend more than $500 per month. Overall, if you’re willing to shell out at top dollar, Tidio has a lot to offer for chatting with customers; however, it falls short compared to other full ticketing systems that don’t charge for necessary features.

6. Intercom

Pricing: $39, $99, or $139 per seat per month

Best known for its live chat software, Intercom leverages AI, bots, and rules to alleviate support teams from repetitive tasks and inquiries. Agent routing for workload management is only available at the highest pricing tier. Auto-fill fields and automation workflows are also relegated to the higher-priced tiers, placing Intercom below the bar when compared to competitors who offer these essentials with their basic plans. 

While live chat, inbound email, and social support are included, Intercom charges extra per outbound email, per SMS or WhatsApp, and per phone call—quickly adding unforeseen costs. The already high price point puts Intercom out of the running for the more budget-conscious and for those who want maximum feature access with their software purchase. 

No Pricing Tiers. Full Feature Access From The Start.

7. Freshworks Customer Service Suite

Pricing: $35-$131 per agent per month

Freshworks consists of three systems: Freshdesk, Freshchat, and Freshcaller. Users can configure ticket fields to automate ticket status changes, agent routing, and categorizing customer requests. Each system has its own workspace, forcing agents to open and jump between individual tabs to track down customer information. This risks slower customer service, agent overload, and the human error of missing crucial data points when answering customer requests. 

Depending on the size and scale of your customer service desk, you may only need to invest in one of Freshworks’ products. Before you do, however, there are other options that offer everything in one central platform. Issuetrak and HappyFox centralize their capabilities in singular platforms to streamline data, interactions, and reporting so that businesses can maintain compliance and uphold or improve upon customer service standards.

Of late, Freshworks’ customer service track record has taken a turn for the worse, providing slow, unresponsive, unknowledgeable tech support, and often using bot-generated solutions that yield unhelpful responses. (This is another danger of not properly balancing AI with human support teams.) Further complaints of sudden billing changes, spamming notifications, dysfunctional ticket routing, and wasted time on Freshworks’ glitchy app. 

As aforementioned, customer service software should also offer good customer service itself. Look for happy customers while you shop; for instance, Issuetrak surveys consistently yield 99% satisfaction month to month.

Recommended reading: Issuetrak vs. Freshdesk

8. LiveAgent

Pricing: $15, $35, $59, $85 per agent per month

As expected for a lower priced product, LiveAgent has finite feature limitations. Each pricing tier limits the number of email accounts, automation rules, knowledge bases, and live chat buttons. Other salient features are exclusive to higher tiers, too, such as reporting, SLAs, product training, audit histories, custom permissions, and white labeling.

Compared to other options that offer all of the above without limitations and with minimal price differential, LiveAgent might not be the best choice for companies on a growth trajectory.

However, LiveAgent includes a number of features to accelerate customer service, including customer service website monitoring for chat engagement and a built-in call center with inbound and outbound capabilities. Businesses can make call recordings, establish IVR flows, and monitor activity in real time. Customers can make callback requests instead of waiting on hold without losing their place in the queue. LiveAgent’s gamification approach to customer support encourages teams to earn points for completing tasks, building a fun support base from the inside out.

Other typical features put LiveAgent on par with Issuetrak, such as chat routing based on agent availability, a ticketing system, a knowledge base, and reporting and analytics tools. Like Issuetrak, users can configure LiveAgent’s workflow automation tools with rules to automate routing, tagging, and ticket resolutions. Where LiveAgent is customizable with a library of integrations to connect with third-party tools, Issuetrak consolidates a wealth of integration opportunities via Zapier. 

Getting the Right Customer Service Software For Your Support Team

Issuetrak aims to serve its own customers well, while providing ever-evolving software that revolutionizes help desk ticketing in all industries. From retail to manufacturing to healthcare, our software tool delights customers and employees by making service that much better. Get a demo with our experts and see how Issuetrak improves your support process!