For business owners, the variety of customer service solutions can appear mind-boggling, so it’s useful to have clear criteria at hand when choosing one. A key aspect here is the set of features a customer service platform provides. This can determine whether a solution fits the business workflow and its goals or not. Since every business is different, there is no universal approach here. However, there is essential functionality that you should demand from any modem paid solution.

Ticket management

The most significant component of a customer support platform is the ticketing system, which is used to organize consumer inquiries. This feature converts every incoming customer request into a ticket or task and integrates several conversations across multiple channels (thinks, WhatsApp, Instagram, email, etc.) with a person into a single stream. Customer support software should also allow employees to assign a ticket to a certain specialist and add tags for easier classification of issues. Other essential ticket management aspects include content search, which allows you to easily identify all inquiries that include certain keywords, and analytics, which helps to assess staff performance and uncover the most common sorts of inquiries.

Communication channels integrations

A customer support platform should serve the business as an all-in-one inbox that consolidates all channels used by a brand to communicate with its audience into a single stream. Provided by the CS platform application programming interfaces (APIs) facilitate the integration of instant messengers and social media accounts into it. Here, it is critical to opt for a solution that offers solid APIs for integration in order to avoid frustrating disconnections in the future.

Knowledge base

A self-service knowledge base serves as both a passive customer assistance tool and a product guide. Using a CS platform integrated solution to set up a knowledge base, you can effectively grow website traffic and expand your customer base on a daily basis. Meanwhile, many customers who prefer to solve issues on their own would be grateful for having a convenient option to do so.

Task manager

Because lead nurturing is essentially a set of routine tasks performed by sales reps and account managers, a customer service platform must include an easy-to-use tool for tracking client interactions and storing any relevant information in the system, as well as an ability to set reminders and manage assignments. This way, not a single email proposal will be left unsent and no customer inquiry is left unanswered!

Automation

Customer service platform users may utilize templates to generate a library of ready-made answers to frequently asked queries and quickly input them into conversations by using dedicated hotkeys. Also, chatbots and even basic scripting can easily substitute human operator involvement, when, for example, there is a request for shipment tracking information. Modern CS software can effectively analyze keywords present in customer requests and provide one of the canned answers, generate a personalized one or send a relevant link.

Analytics

With the help of accurate figures, the company’s management may make sound improvements to the company’s operations, strategy, and marketing. With this in mind, a customer support platform should monitor a wide range of customer relationship indicators and give a thorough overview of them. These should contain information on incoming queries, such as the number of inquiries received, the most popular issues, classification by source, and so on. Also, metrics on staff performance, such as average response time, number of tickets resolved daily, and customer rating, can be quite useful for determining the most valuable team members.

Data policy compliance

Complying with all data policies out there, such as GDPR, LGDP, and others, can get time and money-consuming, but failing to do so might lead to hefty fines and a ruined reputation. To decrease the amount of time required to check the data privacy laws of each country where you sell your products or services and how your business operations meet them, choose a customer service platform that adjusts its data handling and other actions according to the latest regulations.