You have a great product but that’s only half the battle. Today, customer service is key in building and retaining a large client base. Whether you’re just starting out or part of an established business, here are some of the best WordPress customer support plugins to help your business thrive.
Zendesk for WordPress
Zendesk’s unique ability to turn WordPress blog comments into private, individual support tickets is a major plus. This keeps a situation from escalating publicly on your site and also offers personalized customer service. Zendesk features web widgets, pre-defined ticket responses, and a customer service search history. The downside to this system is price. Advanced functionality costs more with premium Zendesk at $59 a month per person compared to $20 dollars a month with Help Scout.
ThriveDesk
ThriveDesk is a contemporary WordPress custom support software specially built for WooCommerce Merchants. You can instantly connect to WooCommerce and let your agents track the customer, view their WooCommerce store, transaction history, and even refund, cancel, or allow straight out of the ThriveDesk dashboard without logging into your WordPress website. ThriveDesk is the most viable option to chose by WordPress E-commerce users with many WordPress CRM’s and other tools.
Help Scout Desk
Help Scout boasts reduced complexity along with lower cost. This is great for newcomers using customer support plugins. It lets you import your ticket history from sites like Zendesk and Desk.com to help with a seamless transition, and they offer 24×6 support. Help Scout claims to make interactions more human, arguing that automated responses, while faster, don’t build customer trust. The con is that some features, like live chat, are not yet available. Others, like teams and custom fields are only available in the plus plan.
Awesome Support
Features like complete ticket history, customizable email notifications, and unlimited file attachments are promising. There’s even an automatic agent assignment feature that assigns new cases to the agent with the least amount of open tickets for the fastest customer service. Awesome Support grabs you with their low pricing, but do your research. Many of their features are only available through paid add ons. Depending on your needs this system could be more expensive.
WP-LiveChat
This system lets visitors ask questions as they peruse your site which is great for maximizing your chance of landing new clients. WP-LiveChat has both free and paid options depending on your needs. You can also receive notifications on your desktop when a new live chat window is opened, and records of any missed chats are kept in the database. The con is if you don’t have a large staff, or can’t monitor your site consistently yourself, a lag in response time will actually hinder your customer satisfaction.
FAST WordPress Support Ticket Plugin
Timing is truly everything, and a fast response system is key in keeping customers happy. This system is great if you have a high traffic site and need to ensure smooth system operation. It can connect to both WordPress, WooCommerce, and Envato and there no extensions or add ons needed. This site is best for developers who design themes and plugins and e-commerce business owners.
AIO Support Center Plugin
This is a straight forward support ticket plugin. Its best feature is the ability to store pre-made responses to support questions which can be automated to clients, saving you a lot of time. You can also use customizable AIOSC shortcodes in front-end pages so your customers don’t have to go the back-end to use the Support Center. The downside of this program is in order to respond to tickets via email, your web host must be able to support cPanel, sub-domain creation, and webmail.
Sola Support Tickets
The interface of Sola is very similar to the Posts interface in WordPress. If you are easily overwhelmed by new formats then this may be the customer support plugin for you. It has an easy to use management platform for opening and dealing with support tickets and lets you keep notes about each one making it easy to track progress. You can get the premium version for only $29.99, making it one of the cheapest options. But if you’re looking for a more visually complex system, this isn’t the one for you.
JS Support Ticket
This is a Bootstrap based customer support system for WordPress bloggers. This means visitors can create new support tickets from within the front-end and don’t have to click on separate support pages. JS also gives you the ability to place a dynamic support icon anywhere on the site, making it easy for visitors to contact you. The best part is a lot of features are free. The downside is twenty-four hour customer support isn’t available and if you’re not proficient in shortcodes this could be a problem as custom fields are required in certain scenarios.
Deciding the specific needs of your company will be key in weighing the pros and cons of each customer support plugin listed here. Depending on your priorities, any one of these systems will function beautifully in helping you to launch and maintain great customer service.
