⚙️ 6 Best Customer Service Automation Software Solutions for 2024
Customer expectations keep rising to never-seen levels, and businesses must develop new ideas and strategies to keep up. AI and automation are some of the answers to this problem, but many companies brag about cutting-edge technologies on their website, so it can be hard to know what's the real deal. But don't worry – here are our top 6 picks of the best customer service automation software.
Read more: Mastering the Language of Customer Service: The Power of Word Choice in Service Scenarios - A Guide
6 best customer service automation software solutions
Glassix
Glassix is a comprehensive, AI-enhanced customer service automation software. Unlike many other solutions, it’s truly omnichannel. It also leverages the power of the well-known GPT-4 engine to provide the best possible customer experience and help your teams excel at customer support.
Features
- AI-powered unified inbox – Streamline communications with a unified inbox (SMS, email, Messages for Business, social media, plus a WhatsApp widget)
- Omnichannel communication – Offer a consistent quality of customer interactions on different channels
- Conversational AI with GPT-4 – Respond to customer inquiries quickly and effectively without human effort, thanks to the power of ChatGPT-4
- Human-to-bot and bot-to-human handoff – Eliminate disruption and swiftly transition communications between customer service agents and bots, depending on the scenario
- Drag-and-drop chatbot flow builder – Deploy automated responses and interactions using a no-code, drag-and-drop interface
- One-click chatbot deployment – Deploy chatbots across different channels with a single click. See our omnichannel chatbots guide for more information
- Auto-suggested replies – Create effective, accurate responses easier thanks to context-based, real-time suggestions
- Automatic conversation tagging – Help your support customer service team by categorizing and tagging conversations automatically
- One-click conversation summaries – Summarize customer conversations to understand customer issues and requests better
- Generative AI chatbots – Automate the handling of customer interactions with powerful AI chatbots
- Template-based automation flows – Optimize customer support processes and be ready for different scenarios thanks to templates for automation flows
Pricing
Our omnichannel customer support software offers three pricing options:
- Starter – $49/user/month. The plan for small businesses (up to 5 users)
- Growth – $65/user/month. The option for growing companies (2-9 users)
- Enterprise – Custom pricing. Enterprise-grade plan
There’s a 20% discount with annual billing. We also offer a 30-day free trial for Starter and Growth plans.
User ratings
Capterra: 5 (6 reviews)
Intercom
Like Glassix, Intercom is a customer service automation solution with a strong focus on AI tools and enhancements. It allows companies to optimize customer support and shorten the time users wait for help. For more information on Intercom, we advise you to read our Glassix vs Intercom comparison piece.
Features
- Omnichannel – Use Intercom omnichannel software to direct all communication to one AI-enhanced inbox
- Fin AI agent – Access an AI-powered chatbot to resolve up to half of your support volume instantly and without human effort
- AI insights & reporting – Generate insights to drive decisions and optimize customer engagement and experience
- Workflows – Automate workflows thanks to a drag&drop builder that doesn’t require any coding
- Help center – Let users fix their problems by themselves or with the help of the community
- Knowledge hub – Offer a centralized library for various content sources
- Tickets – Get everyone on the same page to streamline collaboration and maximize efficiency
- Outbound messaging – Send users proactive messages to get ahead of issues and reduce inbound volume
- Integrations – Integrate with Salesforce, Jira Cloud, HubSpot, Stripe, Slack etc. Access a Zapier integration for even more options
Pricing
Intercom has three plans:
- Essential – $39/seat/month. For startups, small companies and individuals
- Advanced – $99/seat/month. For growing teams
- Expert – $139/seat/month. For large support teams
Intercom offers a 14-day free trial.
Image source: Intercom
User ratings
Capterra: 4.5 (1055 reviews)
Front
Front is another AI-enabled customer service software and a Freshdesk alternative. It offers businesses practical collaboration and automation tools that allow them to streamline and optimize their customer service processes.
Features
- Omnichannel inbox – Get a shared, multichannel inbox
- Knowledge base – Provide your users with self-service tools they can use to fix their problems without your input
- Collaboration – Improve team coordination and alignment to resolve issues customers face swiftly
- Live chat with AI enhancements – Automatically delegate simple queries to AI chatbots to offer users quick support without human input or let them use live chat
- Workflow automation – Access workflow automation to optimize communication management and efficiency
- Analytics – Track metrics, measure performance and generate reports to drive decisions and improve customer experience
- Integrations and APIs – Integrate with various third-party tools such as HubSpot, Salesforce, Jira etc.
Pricing
Front offers the following pricing plans:
- Starter – $29/seat/month. Essential features
- Growth – $79/seat/month. Provides features for optimizing performance and streamlining support workflows
- Scale – $99/seat/month (only available with annual billing). Contains advanced user management options and offers total workflow flexibility
- Premier – $229/seat/month (only available with annual billing). Enterprise-level services
Depending on the plan, you can save $10-$20/seat/month with annual billing for the first two plans. There are also add-ons such as AI answers available from the Growth plan and higher, which you can purchase for an additional price.
User ratings
Capterra: 4.5 (263 reviews)
Zendesk
Zendesk Support Suite is a comprehensive platform for optimizing and automating customer service and one of the best Intercom alternatives. It integrates multiple support channels – chat, voice, email, social media etc. – into a single platform and provides a seamless support experience.
See also: 10 Best Zendesk Alternatives for Small Businesses to Check Out in 2024
Features
- Messaging and live chat – Offer your customers instant access to help on various channels (social media, website, within the app etc.)
- AI and automation – Access an AI customer service assistant built on countless real user interactions
- Data privacy and protection – Use an access log, advanced data retention options, advanced redaction, data masking, encryption etc.
- Help center – Create a knowledge base for your users to empower agents and optimize self-service
- Agent workspace – Offer your agents a workspace they can use to streamline their work and deliver support easily
- Voice – Access customer information right away and speak with your users directly to solve their problems faster and more efficiently
- Workforce engagement – Optimize team efficiency and engagement using powerful AI-powered tools
Pricing
Zendesk has four pricing plans:
- Suite Team – $69/agent/month. For teams that require essential features
- Suite Growth – $115/agent/month. Advanced options for growing companies
- Suite Professional – $149/agent/month. For businesses that need more in-depth, customizable analytics and additional options
- Suite Enterprise – Custom pricing. For large-scale companies
You can save $14-34/agent/month (depending on the plan) with annual billing.
User ratings
Capterra: 4.4 (3906 reviews)
Freshdesk
Freshdesk is an AI-powered customer service automation platform and one of MessageBird alternatives. Businesses can use it to optimize customer support operations. It’s multichannel (allows connections via phone, email, chat and social media) and provides a good selection of automation and solid features (ticketing, self-service etc.).
Features
- Ticketing – Optimize ticketing with team inbox, agent collision detection, SLA management, thank you detector, ticket field suggester etc.
- Collaboration – Make use of linked tickets, shared ticket ownership and parent-child tickets to improve team collaboration
- Omnichannel – Contact users via email, phone, chat, social media, WhatsApp or let them write tickets directly on the website
- Automations – Automate ticket dispatch, assign emails and chats to agents and enable time-triggered maintenance tasks and event-triggered automation
- Self-service – Allow customers to find help by themselves thanks to a help widget, AI-powered chatbot, automatic solution suggestions etc.
- Analytics – Gauge customer satisfaction and create custom, curated reports for a more in-depth understanding of agent performance
- Customization – Customize the portal, agent roles, ticket forms, apps, objects and URLs. Segment customers to personalize support
- Security – Use custom SSL certificates, identity and access management features and IP and network restrictions
Pricing
Freshdesk offers four pricing plans:
- Free – Essential features for up to 10 agents
- Growth – $18/agent/month. The plan for growing businesses
- Pro – $59/agent/month. This tier is for high-performance teams
- Enterprise – $95/agent/month. Enterprise-grade support
Annual billing offers a discount (around 20%). You can also buy modules such as Freshcaller and Freshchat separately.
User ratings
Capterra: 4.5 (3289 reviews)
MessageBird
MessageBird is a comprehensive communication platform that allows companies to engage with customers through various channels, such as SMS, Email and WhatsApp. The solution also offers other modules for marketing, payment management etc.
Features
- Comprehensive customer support – Support your clients via email, live chat, phone, SMS, WhatsApp and social media
- Customer satisfaction – Collect customer feedback to measure your support’s effectiveness and evaluate customer satisfaction
- Chatbots – Deliver personalized support 24/7 on various channels and in many languages
- Automations – Offer your audience instant assistance and personalized recommendations thanks to AI-powered features
- Dialer – Let sales teams make calls, generate AI-driven call summaries and monitor their performance
Pricing
MessageBird has two pricing plans based on the number of monthly contacts:
- Contact-based pricing – €45/month with up to 30,000 emails, SMS or WhatsApp sends, global coverage and access to key features
- Enterprise pricing – Custom pricing for companies that require more than 50,000 monthly contacts
The website also allows you to evaluate the cost based on specific numbers of SMS/WhatsApp messages and shortcode, longcode or alphanumeric numbers.
User ratings
G2: 4.2 (66 reviews)
Capterra: 4.5 (151 reviews)
What to look for in a customer service automation platform?
Here are the selection criteria we used to choose the automated customer service tools for our list.
- Key features – Good customer service automation tools should allow you to unify communication channels and provide powerful chatbots (ideally with an option to seamlessly transition between an AI bot and a human employee). AI enhancements and automation are also a boon.
- Integrations – Various systems and solutions you use (CRMs, communication apps etc.) should work seamlessly with the chosen customer service automation platform, so out-of-the-box integration options are critical.
- Pricing – Price is always a factor when considering new systems and solutions for your business, and this case is no different. Be sure to look at the general pricing information and potential hidden costs (such as modules or add-ons you need to buy to get the complete functionality you want etc.)
Best customer service automation software: Comparison table
Ready to transform your customer service?
Choosing the correct automation software is critical to keeping up with customer service trends, and the lack of some features – like automation and omnichannel communication – can seriously affect your business’s productivity.
Any of the options presented in this article will serve you well, but if you want a truly omnichannel, AI-powered customer service software, you should try our Glassix. It’ll help you organize and optimize your processes, automate customer service tasks and make communication with customers much more manageable. Interested? Sign up right now!
FAQs
Here are answers to some common questions regarding customer service automation and customer communication management software.
What is customer service automation software?
Customer service automation refers to using technology to automate and optimize a business's customer service. Customer service automation software is a solution that allows businesses to manage customer interactions and offer support services with minimized human effort.
What software is used in customer service?
Many solutions help with customer communication management and streamline and optimize customer service. Tools such as Glassix, MessageBird, Zendesk, etc., are available.
What is an example of automated customer service?
Chatbots are a good example, providing users with instant responses to their questions without human intervention.
Is AI used for customer service?
Yes, companies implement AI customer service to enhance and personalize customer experiences, automate customer service workflows, and streamline communication. Moreover, automation can be a great answer if you want to optimize customer service costs.
