Customer Support App Reviews

If you haven’t noticed yet, we’re pretty fanatical about support. When it comes to the tools we use to support our customers, we’ve tried a lot. Being the sharing types that we are, customer support tool reviews seemed a natural thing to do.

Every support app is a little different. Some focus on covering lots of support channels while others just focus on one. Some are made for big teams and others just for the small teams. Sorting through all of them can be a challenge so let me help out a bit.

Here’s the ones that we’ve taken a look at so far.

Help Scout

Help Scout does one thing really, really well – provide the best way to do email support. The team focuses on that first as the driving force behind their product. And I gotta say, they do it well

Tender

Tender is a great little support app with all of the features a growing support team might need. It seems to be geared toward start-up type organizations, with a minimalist design, only the features you need, and an “easy as email” feel.

Desk

Desk is made by the very successful folks behind Salesforce, a well-known CRM tool. Desk goes beyond emails and tracking tickets, it allows for social media integration, live chat, and even phone support. It’s no wonder then that companies like DirecTV, Square, Vimeo, and many others turn to Desk for their support app. Since it’s the app I use every day at 37signals, I’ve also written about what it’s like from that point of view.

UserVoice

UserVoice provides the whole deal. When you sign up with them, you’ll get feedback forums, a knowledge base system, a support ticket tool, and reporting for all that. It’s definitely targeted towards the company that wants everything in one system.

SupportBee

SupportBee allows you to use an email-based workflow. You can reply to the support request as a normal email and it will be stored on SupportBee and then sent to the customer. That way you can work from inside your email inbox or login to the app and reply to customers from there.

HelpSpot

When you think help desk, think HelpSpot. It’s designed to handle anything you want to throw at it. Email support, phone support, web support – you name it, it can handle it. There’s a reason why big teams like Campaign Monitor and the University of Michigan use it and trust it.

If you use one that’s not listed here, I’d love to add your review to the list. Just get in touch with us here.

Now on to the reviews!