The best customer service tools can make your business come across as professional, and even bigger than it really is.
However, many of the tools out there can get really expensive. As small business owners, we don’t have the money to dump into a million different tools or hire someone for every little task.
That’s why we at Formilla did some digging to find the best free (or low-cost) customer service tools to make your business really shine.
In this post, I’m going to reveal to you five of our favorite tools and how to use them to take your customer service game to the next level.
Enough talk – let’s dive in!
READ MORE: How chat bots can help small businesses
If you haven’t heard of Fiverr yet, you’re really missing out.
Fiverr offers nearly every service imaginable, starting at just $5.
This is great news for small businesses like yours and ours. Here’s what we’ve used Fiverr for:
Affordable language translation
If you’re ready to start expanding into international waters, having a professional translator is a must.
We tend to translate things like customer support content (such as tutorials and FAQ pages) and voiceovers or captions for support videos.
Check out the two images below. We had translation work done on over 2000 words for just over $20!
Small web design work
Fiverr is also great for creating website banners, screenshots for a tutorial or blog, or creating a custom attention grabber that can accompany your Formilla Live Chat button.
When it comes to hiring professionals online, there are a few things you should know to ensure a good experience:
Overall, we love Fiverr and find it to be one of our favorite customer service tools. Oh, and one final tip: Don’t be afraid to ask for a few revisions to make sure you get exactly what you want. Communication is important – here’s an example of our response when getting some graphic work done:
Don’t you wish you could have one number for all of your customer support needs? Want to stop giving out your personal cell phone number to customers?
Enter Google Voice.
Google Voice is a perfect customer service tool for small businesses. It’s a free (or very affordable) way to reserve a single phone number to serve as your main customer support line.
It even lets you record a separate business voice mail message, gives you a separate voicemail box, and allows you to get a number with your local area code! We use Google Voice for our main support line at Formilla and post it on our site instead of our personal numbers.
Oh, the best part? You can route one number to all of your support reps’ individual lines.
Some other cool things we do with Google Voice include:
Now, let’s get you started!
Google Voice is pretty simple to setup, but here’s a quick and dirty walkthrough to help you reserve your number today:
Step 1: Setup a Google Voice account and choose a number for your business (it will link with your gmail account if you have one).
Step 2: Setup call forwarding to all of your support lines by going to Phones -> Add a phone.
Step 3: Record your voicemail message by going to Voicemail & Text -> Record New Greeting.
Viola! You now have a Google Voice number to display on your site.
Did you know the first ever telephone conference call was held in 190956? However, it wasn’t until the 1970’s that it gained popularity.
This method of bringing two or more people together into one call has long been a business tactic to help with sales, customer support, and onboarding. Now, you can get it for free.
Freeconferencecall.com gives you a toll-free number for international (and domestic) calls. You can start a conference call, and anyone with the access code can join.
What does a conference call have to do with customer service?
You can use this tool to start a screen share with your customers to show them exactly how to fix a problem.
Alternatively, you can use it to demo your product!
That’s not all – you can also record your sessions for future reference. This means you can focus fully on the call and not have to worry about taking notes or multitasking. If you feel you missed something, just go back and listen to it to capture every detail.
Another neat trick? You can use conference calls to onboard multiple customers at the same time.
Here’s a super quick video overview of all the features of Freeconferencecall.com:
You want your customers to love getting on a call with you, right?
Here’s how to make that a reality:
When it comes to conference calls, just be genuine and empathetic and you’ll do just fine. Heck, just be genuine and empathetic in life and you’ll do just fine.
Have you ever seen those useful screen capture videos of a business showing a demo of their product?
You can make one of them using our fourth favorite customer service tool: Screencast.com.
Yes, you can also do this using Freeconferencecall – but you have to hold a conference call to do it. With Screencast, you can create screen capture videos offline, without holding a call.
The potential here is huge:
One of my personal favorite uses of screencaptures is sending my customers custom videos where I speak to them directly. It’s a win-win – your customer gets a nice surprise and feels special, and you solve their problem.
Pro Tip: Don’t hesitate to use screencasts with internal team members as well. We regularly use them to visually communicate product defects or issues with our development team for quicker resolution.
By the way, this kind of creative problem-solving is one of the skills that make up excellent customer service!
Last, but certainly not least, we have live chat. We couldn’t talk about customer service tools without mentioning our live chat software!
Here’s why:
Live chat leaves 73% of customers feeling satisfied, compared to just 61% for email support and 48% for social media support.
Customers have come to expect live chat software, too. According to a Forrester survey, the percentage of customers who have used live chat for customer service has grown from 38% in 2009 to 58% in 2014, and it’s continuing to rise.
The cat’s out of the bag – live chat is here to stay and people are loving it.
First of all, go sign-up for Formilla Live Chat. Installing the software is super simple – you can just install our WordPress plugin. If you don’t have WordPress, installing the code manually is as simple as copy-paste.
Got it hooked up? Good! Let’s talk about what you can do with it now:
Automatically ask customers if they need help.
Sending an automated message that pops up like a notification encourages customers to ask questions, which gives you an opportunity to interact with them before they leave. It’s also an extra chance to capture their email to build a relationship with them.
Send canned responses.
Canned responses will help save you loads of precious time. Why type out a full response when you can press one button and shoot a whole answer to nearly every common situation. You can even make your own! Plus, canned responses are great for training new hires when they don’t know what to say.
Real-time visitor monitoring.
See who’s online at any given time and request a chat with any of them. Not only does this help you engage your customers – it also gives you insights into how they’re using your site so you can improve!
Now that you understand the benefits and features, here are a few extra tips to get the most from your live chat software:
There you have it: Six tips for better live chat support. We’re also working on a full guide to providing 5-star live chat support. If you’re interested in getting it when it goes live, enter your email below and we’ll send it to you!
READ MORE: How chat bots can help small businesses
Having the right tools is paramount to your success. A carpenter wouldn’t go into a house with just a hammer, and you shouldn’t go into customer service with just an email address.
Of course, these are only a few of the many customer service tools available. We only shared five of our absolute favorites that we believe will have a major impact on your customer service.
If you liked this article, let us know in the comments. You never know – we might just give you a few more tools to further upgrade your kit! Until then, good luck and don’t forget to share this article if you’ve found it helpful!
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We use Formilla on our web site at smartgovcommunity.com and we love it. One of our favorite tools for engagement with new customers and support for existing customers. Affordable and easy to implement & use. I’ve also been pleasantly surprised at the level of support – for such a low-price product, support is fast and accessible. You can see it on our site smartgovcommunity.com or paladindata.com
Thank you for your kind words, Kim! We’re ecstatic that you love our tool. 🙂
What can we do to make our blog even better for you? Do you have any burning questions about customer service or business in general that we can answer for you?
When looking for the best customer app, do not forget to read and check the reviews for you to have an idea of the app’s credibility and effectiveness for your customer support service. Prioritize in choosing a tool that can help you keep all emails, telephone, and social media conversations to make sure nothing gets lost.
Great tips, Hitesh. Thanks for sharing!
Great article. Screencast is best tool for create videos and share with friends. It’s very user friendly platform. Thanks for sharing this wonderful article with us.
My pleasure, Matts! Glad you found it helpful! 🙂