11 Must Have Software Features for Customer Support Management

As we add more technology to our lives to meet our business needs, the customer support software system has become increasingly essential. It’s now much more than just a ticketing system! It’s evolved into a vital supply of customer data and information.

As you evaluate your own customer-centric systems and processes, here are 11 must have features to look for in a customer support software system…

1) Customer Distress Measurement – Customer churn has become a serious problem for many companies. By keeping an eye on customer distress, you’ll be able to prioritize which customers require the most retention time and efforts.

2) Automated Ticketing System – One of the best ways to free up more resources to focus on retention efforts is to automate tasks that were done manually in the past. Support software can automate ticket routing, reminders, and much more so your team can focus on what really matters.

3) Sentiment Analysis – For those mundane processes that fall out of the scope of automation, it’s time to turn to AI solutions instead. Sentiment analysis is excellent at instantly interpreting large blocks of ticket text to understand the tone (or feeling) so you can assign them accordingly.

4) Public and Private Ticket Actions – Once a ticket is assigned, it’s important that all conversations around it stay in one place. That’s why software with both public customer interactions as well as private internal actions on the same ticket page is perfect for consolidating communication.

5) Ticket Tagging – Once the ticket has closed, you shouldn’t forget about it forever. Instead, look at how the ticket was solved and tag it accordingly. This way, when a similar issue pops up in the future, a quick examination of your tags will show you how the problem was resolved in the past.

6) SLAs – Because different customers expect (and pay for) different results, it’s important that you hold up your end of your Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Customer support software with sophisticated SLA tracking offers extensive customization and alerts to meet even the most complex agreements.

7) Unique Ticket Queues – One tactic to ensure you respond to tickets in a timely fashion is by leveraging unique ticket queues for each agent. This way, agents receive tickets assigned directly to them based on their specialties and customer preferences so they can work through them quickly.

8) Built-in Ticket Deflection Technology – Another tactic for focusing on the right issues is to reduce the amount of mundane tickets. Support software with built-in ticket deflection solutions, such as chat and self-service, work well to decrease your overall ticket volume.

9) Product Version and Inventory Tracking – All companies in the B2B (business-to-business) industry know how important it is to understand what products and inventory your customers have. By keeping this information directly in your support software, you reduce the back and forth and solve issues faster.

10) Real-time Reporting – All of the features above are great, but how can you quantify the impact of them? A software solution with real-time reporting makes it easy to understand the direct impact certain features are having on customer communication and your bottom line.

Click here to download our whitepaper on how important effective reporting is for B2B support managers!

11) Mobile app – What good is software if you can only access it from a computer? You need a solution with a customer support mobile app so you and your team can view and respond to tickets on the go, as well as look up important customer information wherever you are.

We hope this list of features helped you better understand what’s in leading support software suites on the market today. These technologies are now customer information hubs and remain a cornerstone of many customer success operations around the world. Looking forward, expect even more features to be added around AI and automation in the next decade!