Social Media Customer Service Software

TrustMaps are two-dimensional charts that compare products and services based on end-user satisfaction ratings and research frequency by prospective buyers. You can filter the data by company size, because small businesses and enterprises can have very different needs.

Products and services must have 10 or more ratings to appear on the TrustMap, and those above the median line are considered Top Rated.

Top Rated Social Media Customer Service Software include: Sparkcentral, Brand Embassy, Brand24, Freshdesk, Spredfast, Zoho Desk, and Conversocial.
Other Social Media Customer Service Software on the TrustMap include: Sprout Social, Hootsuite Enterprise, Sprinklr, Oracle Social Cloud, Desk.com, and Lithium Social Media Management.
A complete list of Social Media Customer Service Software is available here.

Social Media Customer Service Software Overview

What is Social Customer Service?

Social customer service—also called social customer support, social customer care, or social CRM—is the practice of proactively listening for and responding to support issues on social channels. The goal is to make support in the form of agents and knowledge available through the most convenient channel: social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. It is different from other approaches to CRM in that agents use social listening, tracking, alerts, and workflow automation features to identify and respond to all customers who have questions or problems, regardless of whether they create a support ticket or even contact the company directly.

Social media is typically not the sole channel for support; it is usually part of a multi-channel customer service strategy that may also include a call center, email support tickets, live chat, and/or a self-help portal.

Why is Social Media a Good Channel for Support?

Proponents of this approach say social is a promising support channel for two main reasons:

1. Most customers already spend a lot of time on social networks, and engaging in social media conversations is faster, easier, and less stressful than engaging over phone or email.

2. Customers often express their feelings around brands, products, and support experiences to their peers via social. They can post comments or questions on a brand’s profile page, tag @ or # mentions of the brand, or express more indirect complaints (like a status, or an un-tagged mention) that doesn’t anticipate a response from the brand. By responding to all of these cases, support agents ensure that the maximum number of customer needs are met. Because social media is a somewhat public venue, good social support experiences create positive PR and prevent complaints from going viral.

Which Products Facilitate a Social Customer Care Program?

Tools in this area fall into two buckets, depending on their primary category:

1. Social media management software with specific service & support features, like Conversocial, Lithium Social Web, Spredfast Conversations, HootSuite Enterprise, and Sprinklr. These tools tend to have strong monitoring features, and are good at detecting latent support issues, customer satisfaction crises that could go viral, and other opportunities to intervene. They allow users to identify customer service priorities and respond within the social platform, but they integrate with CRM and help desk solutions for more advanced things like automatic support ticketing and support case management.

For more information about social customer care programs and how businesses are leveraging SMMS software to provide customer service through social media, read the “Use Case #1: Social Customer Care” section of our Buyer’s Guide to Social Media Management Software. Note that while all of these products have features to enable social CRM, Conversocial and Lithium Social Web are the only two designed specifically around this use case.

2. Multi-channel help desk software with integrations to social profiles/networks, such as Freshdesk and Desk.com. These tools usually include automatic ticketing, alerts, integrated self-help content, and ticket routing logic that incorporate social support issues into the normal customer service workflow. (For example, support agents may have a universal inbox, where issues from social, live chat, email, etc. are amalgamated, or customers seeking help on the company’s social page may be re-directed to self-help content from the main knowledgebase.) They tend to excel at monitoring direct mentions, tagged posts, and posts to the brand/product profile, but they do not cover indirect complaints or identify issues that are likely to go viral. Help desk social channels are also usually limited to Facebook and Twitter, whereas SMMS tools may have broader channel coverage.

Sprout Social

240 Ratings

Sprout Social is a social media management platform for businesses. This platform powers smart social communication for leading brands around the world including Anthropologie, GrubHub, Hyatt, MailChimp, Spotify and Zipcar. Sprout Social is available via a web browser, iOS and Android apps. Sprout...

Spredfast

101 Ratings

Spredfast is a social media management platform. Key features include: Plan and Organize Social Campaigns, Manage Real-Time Engagement, and Learn and Prove Social Impact

Hootsuite Enterprise

221 Ratings

HootSuite Enterprise provides a centralized platform for managing streams from different social media channels and posting/ engaging across channels simultaneously. It also has strong team / workflow features and good mobile apps.

Sprinklr

95 Ratings

Sprinklr is a platform that is designed to manage and enrich customer experiences across multiple social channels and websites. This solution addresses the need to manage the growing number of social channels and their expansive user bases that impact an organization.According to the vendor,...

Lithium Social Media Management

41 Ratings

Lithium Social Media Management combines powerful publishing and response feature sets for social media marketing and customer service. Social Publishing Marketing users can sharpen their social strategy and publish better content with collaborative planning. According to the vendor, key benefits...

Desk.com

52 Ratings

Desk.com offers world class helpdesk, ticketing, and customer support. Desk.com is an all-in-one ticketing and support solution targeted for fast growing companies. Desk.com collects and organizes all of an organization’s customer conversations (Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, chat) into a prioritized...

Sparkcentral

19 Ratings

Sparkcentral provides a cloud-based customer engagement platform that caters specifically to customer care teams within large enterprises, enabling them to deliver real-time social customer service. Sparkcentral's software generates profiles on every social customer, and ensures that the right...

Freshdesk

75 Ratings

Freshdesk is a SaaS based customer support software for businesses of all sizes. The vendor's value proposition is that Freshdesk is priced affordably, and is free forever for any number of agents. There are four other plans available that come with a whole lot of features. The vendor says...

Conversocial

14 Ratings

Conversocial is a social customer service software that enables companies to engage in large volumes of social media conversations with their customers. The cloud-based software combines intelligent prioritization with team management workflows to enable companies to quickly and efficiently join...

Brand Embassy

11 Ratings

Brand Embassy is social customer service software designed to deliver human connections at scale. The vendor aims to help companies with high volume social customer service demand prioritize and automate the right parts of the customer experience to create relationships built on human connections....

Brand24

10 Ratings

Brand24 is an online monitoring application. The application allows users to identify and analyze online conversations about their brands, products and competitors. Users can track and engage in online conversations that are relevant to thier business. Brand24 gives users instant access to...

Zoho Desk

24 Ratings

Zoho Support is a Saas help desk / ticketing system aimed at SMBs. I competes most often with Zendesk, and Desk.com.

Coosto

3 Ratings

Coosto is a single solution for social media applications. Organizations can use this solution to monitor their brand and reputation, respond to questions from their customers, detect leads or plan and publish their social media content in 150 languages and 200 countries. The vendor says their...