The top 7 helpdesk solutions for Shopify ecommerce brands
Kelli Trapnell
·February 20, 2023
If your brand isn’t prioritizing the customer experience above all else, you’re at a critical disadvantage.
Just one negative customer service experience—waiting too long, or not getting an effective resolution to their problem—can stop a shopper from giving you a second chance. In fact, 58% percent of shoppers are likely to switch brands after a poor customer experience. But the reverse is also true: 91% of shoppers are likely to make another purchase after a positive customer support interaction.
The key to customer loyalty is delivering a great experience every time, and helping shoppers navigate their roadblocks quickly and effortlessly by providing the right combination of human- and automation-delivered customer support experiences.
Learn more about how a positive shopper experience can make or break your brand in The Future of Shopper Experience
Shoppers want to resolve their problems quickly. They’re also looking for a holistic experience in which the brand delivers answers with full context on the customer’s journey. That includes their purchase history and previous customer support interactions across all channels. They also want a range of ways to connect with brands, including phone support, live chat, SMS, and email.
Use a sophisticated helpdesk solution that incorporates a mix of channels and integrates with all of the other marketing and ecommerce tools you’re already using, to deliver a seamless customer experience. The best helpdesk tools use both live support and automation to help shoppers answer questions and solve problems more quickly.
Here are our top helpdesk recommendations for Shopify merchants.
If you want an integrated platform to manage all of your shopper communication: Gorgias
Gorgias offers seamless integration with your Shopify platform, enabling merchants to view their shoppers’ entire transaction history within the helpdesk platform. Using this tool, Gorgias agents can make updates and get insights to help provide shoppers with better support. Gorgias also offers automation tools that can reduce manual labor and speed up resolution time, automating up to 33% of customer support interactions with macros, autoresponders, and other automated workflows. Even better? Loop integrates with Gorgias, so your returns can be even more effective.
What sets Gorgias apart:
- Provides machine-learning sentiment analysis
- Support tickets can be generated automatically based on set conditions
- Edit orders and manage refunds directly within the platform
- Integrates all customer support channels into one simple interface
If you want to automate customer service conversations without compromising quality: Kustomer
Kustomer, now owned by Meta, offers a seamless customer support platform that integrates a 360-degree view of all shoppers and their brand interactions across channels. That includes your site, app, social media, and support channels. The solution offers a range of self-support options and an AI-driven chatbot that makes it easier than ever for your shoppers to solve their own problems without involving live support agents. This helps you reserve your agents for the specialized cases that need human support.
What sets Kustomer apart:
- Robust, searchable help center for both customer-facing and internal knowledge
- Data permissioning to ensure that sensitive data isn’t shared widely
- Workflows to automate common tasks and functions
- Recommended next steps based on AI sentiment analysis
If you want access to granular data insights to improve your CS operations: Richpanel
Richpanel is an all-in-one helpdesk solution with multichannel integration that helps you deliver personalized customer support interactions at scale. Richpanel offers shoppers automatic personalized responses based on their user history. This enables merchants to solve problems more quickly and deliver a flawless customer experience. The solution also offers detailed insights on ticket resolution and other support metrics, helping you track which agents are most efficient, the average wait time per channel, and other important data points.
What sets Richpanel apart:
- Community forums where shoppers can help each other problem-solve
- Intelligent routing to agents that shoppers have engaged with previously
- Seamless escalation based on sentiment analysis
- Ticket collaboration between agents
If you want a solution that you can stick with as you scale: Zendesk
Zendesk offers a suite of solutions for connected communications, including sales, customer service, and internal support for team members. The robust platform offers a conversational CRM and helpdesk solution with different options for brands of all sizes, including startups, SMBs, and enterprise. Because of this flexibility, Zendesk provides the resources to help brands scale without the need to switch platforms as they grow. Better yet, Zendesk integrates with your Loop account, making your returns even smarter.
What sets Zendesk apart:
- Custom dashboard views defined by role or specialization
- SLA metrics dashboard and analysis
- Mobile app for support agents
- Integrated CSAT surveys
If you’re a small team looking for a budget-friendly solution: Reamaze
This Shopify app offers many of the same integrations and automation features as its enterprise-level contenders, but with a low starting price of $29 per month, with add-on costs tied to additional users, rather than ticket volume—so you can get the benefit of best-in-class features even as a small or solo team. The solution offers a live chatbot with automated exchanges such as “check order status” to resolve issues instantly.
What sets Reamaze apart:
- Co-browse feature that lets support agents take over the shopper’s screen to provide hands-on support
- User-based pricing that makes it a budget-friendly option for small teams
- Live dashboard to view shopper interactions and deliver custom messages
- Manages Shopify orders directly through the dashboard
If you want a more collaborative approach to customer support: Groove
Groove is a customer support solution designed for small businesses, with a comprehensive, 30-day free trial. Groove offers a shared inbox with an intuitive interface where CS agents can delegate and prioritize tasks, and share internal notes and notifications. The platform offers live chat on every page of your site, with an automatic move to email if the shopper gets disconnected. Shoppers can also access the searchable knowledge base from every page of your site, reducing the need to contact support.
What sets Groove apart:
- Free 30-day trial
- Intuitive CS inbox that connects with Gmail, Slack, and Shopify
- Ability to assign tasks to different team members and discuss tickets internally
- “Collision detection” to stop multiple team members from responding to the same customer query
If you want to provide phone support even during your off-hours: Gladly
Gladly is a commerce-focused customer support platform that offers multi-channel integrations to help you support your shoppers wherever they feel most comfortable—chat, email, SMS, social media, voice, and more. Plus, Gladly displays all shopper interactions in a single conversation stream, regardless of how they reached out. Gladly’s voice solutions include voice recognition features to help shoppers navigate to the right pre-recorded information or the right support agent.
What sets Gladly apart:
- Pre-recorded messages and text-to-speech technology that enables shoppers to get the answers to their questions over the phone instantly
- Delivers automated alerts and messages over any channel, including voice
- Enables shoppers to effortlessly switch between channels without losing the context of the conversation
- Intelligent routing to find the right agent or support channel based on the shopper’s situation
All of these helpdesk solutions are integrated with the Shopify ecosystem, and many of them (Gorgias, Kustomer, Richpanel, and Zendesk) also offer seamless integration with Loop, so that you can easily incorporate shopper returns data into the context of your shoppers’ journeys to facilitate a better support experience.
Delivering a great customer experience is paramount to maintaining customer loyalty. Using best-in-class technology to deliver personalized communication and support to your shoppers at scale across the channels they prefer, means you’ll be able to build a strong brand with shoppers who’ll follow you anywhere.
Take your customer experience to the next level with post-purchase support and automation. See what Loop can do for your brand.
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