What’s your favorite technology for customer service and why?
The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.
1. Freshdesk
We love Freshdesk, and it has improved our response times given the amount of emails we get on a daily basis. I can now actually assign emails to people within our company rather than forwarding them through email and not knowing whether it will be replied to on time or not. Now we can track every single interaction a client has had with our staff, so there is no miscommunication.
– Derek Capo, Next Step China
2. Email
It’s the easiest way to document and share what’s going on with a support issue so that anyone on the team can help out. Check out the tool Help Scout, which is an email-only support desk. It works like a charm.
– Wade Foster, Zapier
3. FuseDesk
We use FuseDesk, which is a service that integrates with our Infusionsoft application to track customer requests, emails and phone conversations and allows us to see the whole client or lead history before answering. Ever send a client the wrong information because you were looking at the wrong contact record? That’s no longer a problem!
– Kelly Azevedo, She’s Got Systems
4. Desk.com
Desk.com lets you monitor Twitter, Facebook, email and chat. Support today goes much further than just email. I’ve found their deliverability rates to be very high, and their setup is simple. The service is hosted, which means there’s no technical setup. You can use your own subdomain, which helps keep the trust of your customers, and they have a great knowledge-based system for publishing articles
– Dave Nevogt, Hubstaff.com
5. Live Chat
Customers are more comfortable chatting than using the phone. Agents can usually handle three to five chats at a time, and seeing the customer’s screen is extremely helpful in troubleshooting their issues.
– Josh Weiss, Bluegala
6. Help Scout
We implemented Help Scout two months ago, and I wish we had done so two years earlier. The product helps manage our entire service effort. The service is white-labeled, so all communications come from Modify. We create help templates to expedite the resolution process of most issues. Most importantly, we can track response time and customer happiness, which gives us metrics we can improve on.
– Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches
7. UserVoice
We’ve been using UserVoice for years, and it has been a vital piece of our customer service and development success. UserVoice has the unique ability to allow us to easily collect user feedback on features, bugs and suggestions and then turn those into support-request tickets over email. We are able to easily interact with users and provide transparency on the product roadmap and progress.
– James Simpson, GoldFire Studios
8. Zendesk
In the past three years we have answered nearly 25,000 emails, and Zendesk has helped us make sure we’ve responded to every single question. We can track metrics such as time to resolution and customer satisfaction. We’ve built macros and templates, so we can quickly respond to commonly asked questions but still edit the responses to make sure we address the customer’s question personally.
– Bhavin Parikh, Magoosh Test Prep
9. Ruby Receptionists
I use Ruby Receptionists for a couple of my companies’ phone lines. They are extraordinary at delivering great customer service for every call they get. Our customers love the friendly, helpful person they talk to every time they call us. The best part of this service is that they also qualify leads for us to help our office save time. It is a great service, and I never have to answer the phone now.
– Kyle Clayton, Jackrabbit Janitorial
10. The FAQ Page
The FAQ page can answer most people’s questions as long as they give you an idea of what they’re looking for. After clarifying the answer people are looking for, you can direct them to the appropriate online resource to get the answers they need. This is much more efficient than walking every customer through the same answers over and over again. You have an FAQ page, so don’t be afraid to use it!
– Russ Oja, Seattle Windows and Construction, LLC