Customer Support Tools for Online Courses – Top 15 Reviews, FAQs, More

Customer satisfaction is the key to driving your business upwards and increasing your reach. 

Customer support tools are softwares that help you do exactly that by helping you manage customer queries and responding to them in an efficient way. 

In this post, we’ll go over the best customer service tools available out there as well as give you an in-depth guide on how you can choose the most suitable one for yourself.

Now that we’ve had a quick look at the three best ones, let’s look at all the customer service tools we’ve rounded up for you in detail. 

Customer Support Tools for Online Courses – Top 15 Reviews

#1: Best Multi-Purpose Customer Support Tool – HelpCrunch Review

HelpCrunch has a staggering 4.7/5 stars rating on www.g2.com and it’s clear why: 

They have come up with an all-stop shop for all your customer care needs. 

Not only does it have powerful knowledge base functionalities that allow your customers to self-serve, but it also has live chat and easy ticketing features for you to stay organized.

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy HelpCrunch

Ease of Use: While HelpCrunch is definitely jam-packed with features, those features can become overwhelming to new users. It may take you some time to get used to its workflow.

Pricing: HelpCrunch has fairly reasonable pricing with the cheapest plan being $15 per month which includes live chat, ticketing, knowledge base, pop-ups, etc.

Platform Availability: HelpCrunch does a great job of ensuring you don’t have to switch between different platforms to respond to different customer queries. 

Technical Support: Their technical support is a little lackluster. Some of our queries took a few days to get addressed by their support team.

Best Multi-Purpose Customer Support Tool

The best multi-purpose customer support tool is HelpCrunch thanks to its plethora of features that users can take advantage of and that too, at an affordable price.

#2: Best Affordable Customer Support Tool – Crisp Review

Crisp is a tool that has many different features such as live chat, knowledge base and ticketing, all integrated with each other for easy management. 

It’s quite simple to use for newcomers and its pricing is quite reasonable too.

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Crisp

Ease of Use: Crisp features a user interface that is easy to navigate and get the hang of. 

Pricing: The pricing is one of the best we’ve seen in customer service tools so far with paid subscriptions starting from $25 per month.

Platform Availability: Crisp does not offer integration on different platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

Technical Support: The technical support is responsive and always eager to help.

Best Affordable Customer Support Tool

The best affordable customer support tool is Crisp thanks to its reasonable pricing plans that feature a ton of functionality and multiple logins.

#3: Best Customer Support Tool with a Chatbot – Drift Review

As a solo online course creator, you may not always have time to be available 24/7 to respond to your customers’ queries. 

This is where chatbots come in. Chatbots are powerful AI-controlled tools that can help your customers with their queries when you are not available. 

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Drift 

Ease of Use: Chatbots are notoriously difficult to configure but Drift has mastered the formula compared to other customer service tools with easy configuration.

Pricing: While Drift does have a free plan you can utilize, it only allows 150 emails per month. If you want more than that, it’s extremely pricey with the next plan being $400 per month. 

Platform Availability: Drift offers a wide range of channel availability so your customers can contact you in many different ways. 

Technical Support: The technical support is very helpful, empathetic and quick to respond. 

Best Customer Support Tool with a Chatbot

The best customer support tool with a chatbot is Drift because while there are other customer service tools that have chatbots, the one that Drift has is very easy to configure. 

#4: Best User-Friendly Customer Support Tool – LiveAgent Review

LiveAgent is a software that makes ticketing and live chat very easy to use. 

Among all the customer service tools we used, LiveAgent was the most intuitive to use thanks to its great user interface. 

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy LiveAgent

Ease of Use: LiveAgent features a great user interface that is easy to navigate and allows you to monitor all queries seamlessly. 

Pricing: Pricing is fairly reasonable with the help desk and knowledge base plan being $15 per month and their all-in-one plan with live chat and call center tools being $39 per month. 

Platform Availability: LiveAgent makes it very easy for your customers to contact you via many channels such as Emails, chats, calls as well as social media. 

Technical Support: Their technical support is quick to respond and offers detailed instructions to fix any issues you may have.

Best User-Friendly Customer Support Tool

The best user-friendly customer support tool is LiveAgent thanks to its intuitive user interface and easy-to-follow integrated functions.

#5: Best Live Chat Customer Support Tool – LiveChat Review

LiveChat is best if you’re looking for a simple solution to respond to customer queries via live chat. 

Along with live chat, it also has basic help desk features. This means that you can respond to customers via their Email as well.

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy LiveChat

Ease of Use: It’s quite easy to navigate its interface and since it’s a fairly basic tool, there aren’t a lot of functions that could overwhelm you.

Pricing: It’s very reasonably priced with its subscription being $19 per month. 

Platform Availability: LiveChat allows you to interact with users via its live chat and emails only. 

Technical Support: Their technical support is fairly slow to respond.

Best Live Chat Customer Support Tool

The best live chat customer support tool is Live Chat thanks to its message sneak-peek feature which allows users to see what customers are typing before they send their message and its easy-to-use interface.

#6: Best Simplified Customer Support Chat Tool – Olark Review

While it lacks customization options, Olark’s live chat tool is very simple, intuitive, and easy to use. 

It has everything you’d want in a live chat customer service tool such as chatforms, file sharing, customer history as well as automated messages.

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Olark

Ease of Use: Olark is a highly simple tool with just live chat functionality. Hence, it’s designed to be as simple to use as possible.

Pricing: Olark has a simple subscription plan of $17 per month which is pretty good for live chat software. 

Platform Availability: Since Olark only provides live chat functionalities, it’s not available on other platforms and channels. 

Technical Support: Their technical support was very courteous and had our issues resolved in no time. 

Best Simplified Customer Support Chat Tool

The best simplified customer support chat tool is Olark as it does just one thing and it does it super well: live chat. 

#7: Best Free Customer Support Tool – Chatra Review

Chatra is pretty much Olark but free. While it doesn’t have automated messages, it has everything else: unlimited chats, chat history, etc. 

If you want targeted chat messages and group chats for support agents, you can opt for their paid plan which is $19 per month. 

However, we don’t feel you’ll need that as an online course creator.

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Chatra

Ease of Use: Chatra is super simple to use as far as customer service tools go. It’s a great tool if you don’t have any experience with receiving customer feedback. 

Pricing: Chatra is free so, it’s safe to say that its pricing is pretty great. 

Platform Availability: Chatra only provides live chat to people that visit your course website. 

Technical Support: Their technical support is highly responsive. We experienced this first-hand and that’s what every review we came across says as well. 

Best Free Customer Support Tool

The best free customer support tool is Chatra. It’s a customer service platform that features live chat and nothing else. To be fair, as an online course creator, you don’t really need much else, at least at the start. 

#8: Best Customer Support Tool with SMS Alerts – Pure Chat Review

Pure Chat has a free subscription that gives you unlimited chats with full chat customization. 

It also features SMS notifications for whenever you have new chats; You get up to 100 notifications in their $39 per month plan and up to 1000 in their $79 per month plan.

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Pure Chat

Ease of Use: Just like with all barebones customer service tools, Pure Chat is also very easy to use since there aren’t a lot of features to get overwhelmed by.

Pricing: Their free plan offers everything you need as an online course creator so, their pricing is pretty reasonable. 

Platform Availability: You can only communicate with customers via live chat. Keep in mind that while you do get SMS notifications for new chats on your phone, you can’t respond to them via your phone. 

Technical Support: Their technical support is very courteous, responsive, and always eager to help. 

Best Customer Support Tool with SMS Alerts

The best customer support tool with SMS alerts is Pure Chat thanks to its SMS notifications feature which tells you whenever you have new chats. 

#9: Best Free Customer Support Tool for Audio Calls – ClickDesk Review

While ClickDesk has a free plan, it only allows 30 chats and 25 tickets per month. 

So, if you have more than 30 customers (which will most likely be the case), you’ll have to go for their paid subscription which starts from $14.99 per month. 

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy ClickDesk

Ease of Use: ClickDesk’s user interface is a little outdated and may be annoying to use for most people. 

Pricing: Their free plan is great if you have fewer customers and even their paid plans are quite generously priced. 

Platform Availability: While everything is done through ClickDesk, they do offer a lot of functionality within it such as audio calls and even video chat in their pro plan which costs $24.99 per month. 

Technical Support: Their technical support was slow to respond and did not offer an effective solution to an issue we were facing regarding unstable video connections.

Best Free Customer Support Tool for Audio Calls

The best free customer support tool for audio calls is ClickDesk thanks to its free plan that comes with the function of interacting via audio calls with your customers. The connection during audio calls is stable and the audio quality is high. 

#10: Best Customer Support Tool with Remote Sharing – Acquire Review

Acquire is an incredibly powerful tool with all the standard customer service features such as live chat, knowledge base, a chatbot, video and audio calls, etc. 

However, where it stands out is its remote sharing feature which allows you to watch and interact with your customers’ screen. 

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Acquire

Ease of Use: While the user interface is quite easy to navigate, the pure number of features available within Acquire may overwhelm some users at first. 

Pricing: Acquire is incredibly expensive with its cheapest plan being $300 per month which does not even include the knowledge base. For that, you’ll have to pay $950 per month. 

Platform Availability: Acquire is one of the best customer service tools that provides multi-channel support for maximum customer satisfaction. 

Technical Support: Their technical support feels quite impersonal even though they do a good job of fixing any issue you may have.

Best Customer Support Tool with Remote Sharing

The best customer support tool with remote sharing is Acquire which allows you to see and interact with your customers’ screen. As you can probably imagine, this can increase your customer support performance by a lot and maximize customer satisfaction.

#11: Best Customer Support Tool with Macros – HappyFox Review

Happyfox offers their live chat function as a separate package with their help desk function also being a separate package. 

If you want all of their features such as knowledge base, automation, and unlimited tickets, you can get it for as low as $39 per month.

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy HappyFox

Ease of Use: While most of their features are fairly easy to use, configuring macros is slightly more difficult than it has to be. 

Pricing: $39 per month is more expensive than most of the customer service tools in this post but it’s still fairly cheap. 

Platform Availability: HappyFox provides multi-channel support and organizes them into neat queries so you have no trouble responding to them. 

Technical Support: While their technical support was slow to respond to our issue, they did provide detailed instructions and fixed it immediately once they did respond. 

Best Customer Support Tool with Macros

The best customer support tool with macros is HappyFox thanks to their automation features which make it very easy for you to perform great customer service and improve customer relationships.

#12: Best Flexible Customer Support Tool for Customer Calls – Aircall Review

Aircall features an elegant user interface that is easy to navigate and is great if you wish to receive customer queries via calls. 

If you have a customer service team, this is a great tool to have thanks to its great call routing and conferencing features. 

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Aircall

Ease of Use: Its dashboard is very easy to use and provides you with everything you need in one window. 

Pricing: While the pricing is $30 per month, they only specify prices for annual subscriptions for some reason. 

Platform Availability: Aircall does not provide availability across different platforms.

Technical Support: Their technical support was very helpful and helped us with some connection issues we were having while making audio calls. 

Best Flexible Customer Support Tool for Customer Calls

The best flexible customer support tool for customer calls is Aircall thanks to its amazing customization options and high-quality audio calls. 

#13: Best Knowledge Base Tool – HelpJuice Review

HelpJuice is the most popular and widely known self-service knowledge base tool out there. 

It provides you with an enormous amount of customization options that you can use to incorporate FAQs and helpful articles to fit your personal brand. 

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy HelpJuice

Ease of Use: While it’s fairly easy to use, you will have to spend some time learning it to get full value out of it. 

Pricing: It’s quite expensive with two plans that are $189 per month and $369 per month. 

Platform Availability: HelpJuice is mainly a knowledge base tool and thus, does not provide communication across different channels. 

Technical Support: The technical support is amazing and provides detailed instructions in no time to fix any issues you might have.

Best Knowledge Base Tool

The best knowledge base tool is HelpJuice thanks to its incredible customizability options, easy-to-use interface and incredible technical support. 

#14: Best Social Media Customer Support Tool – Sprout Social Review

Sprout Social has some basic customer service options but its main focus is on social media management. 

If your brand is particularly utilizing social media, this can be a great option because you can provide customer service while boosting your social media presence at the same time. 

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Sprout Social

Ease of Use: All of its functionalities are laid out in a simple and elegant way that is very intuitive to use. 

Pricing: You pay $99 per month for its subscription which is fairly expensive especially since its customer service features are not that extensive. 

Platform Availability: Sprout Social is an amazing tool in terms of platform availability since it’s able to condense queries from every social media account you have. 

Technical Support: Their technical support is highly responsive and provides solutions to issues within a matter of hours if not minutes. 

Best Social Media Customer Support Tool

The best social media customer support tool is Sprout Social because not only can you perform effective customer support through it but you can also manage your social media accounts.

#15: Best Beginner-Friendly Customer Support Tool – AzureDesk Review

Customer satisfaction should be the top priority for you and that can’t be achieved if you’re having trouble navigating through your customer support tool.

AzureDesk is a beginner-friendly help desk software that can enable you to perform effective customer service, thus, maximizing customer satisfaction.

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy AzureDesk

Ease of Use: It’s extremely easy to use with easy descriptions of all its features and how to use them. 

Pricing: It features just one plan that is for $30 per month. With it, you get unlimited mailboxes, knowledge base as well as other features like tags for query categorization. 

Platform Availability: AzureDesk provides email integration as well as multi-channel communication for its users. 

Technical Support: The technical support is quick to respond, courteous and does its best to provide solutions in a simple and friendly way.

Best Beginner-Friendly Customer Support Tool 

The best beginner-friendly customer support tool is AzureDesk thanks to its easy-to-understand interface and simple setup. 

Buyers’ Guide

When you’re choosing a customer support tool for yourself, there are a number of factors you can keep in mind to narrow down your decision and choose the right one. 

Some of these important factors are: 

Ease of Use

You won’t be able to help your customers well if you can’t operate your customer support tool properly. 

Hence, it’s essential that whatever tool you choose, it’s easy to understand and easy to operate. This will make your job easier and allow you to help your customers in a much more efficient way. 

This is even more important if you don’t have prior experience with customer support tools. 

Go for something that has an intuitive interface so it does not take you a long time to get the hang of it. 

Pricing

As an online course creator, you’ll most likely not have a lot of budget to fund a monthly subscription for a customer support tool. 

This is because you need most of that budget for other tools that help you with course creation, marketing, and scaling as well. 

Thus, it’s ideal that you either go for a customer service tool that has a free plan or go for one that is relatively cheap. 

It’s usually a good idea to go for a tool that has a monthly fee of less than $50 unless you have a budget to go for something more pricey. 

Platform Availability

One of the most effective ways to perform customer support well is to allow your customers to send queries your way via as many different platforms as possible. 

Some channels you should consider being available on are: 

• Social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) 
• Your online course website
• Phone (Either SMS, call or both) 
• Email

Technical Support

It is of paramount importance that whatever tool you choose has good and responsive technical support backing it. 

This is because if you run into any issue, it will impact your ability to help your customers efficiently. 

Thus, it’s essential that your tool’s technical support team is responsive and helpful so that you can resolve any issue you’re having as quickly as possible. 

To find more about how to effectively use course management tools, CLICK HERE.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) 

What is a Customer Support or Customer Service Tool? 

Customer support or customer service tools (also known as customer service software) are tools that provide a centralized system for you to manage customer queries. 

These tools aim to provide you with an organized view of all customer queries so that they’re easy to manage and so, you can address all of them in an efficient way. 

What are the Different Types of Customer Support Tools? 

The main types of customer support tools are: 

Help Desk Software

These tools are the most basic type of customer service software. They enable you to keep track of user queries, manage them and finally, deal with them in an efficient way. 

They often have features that help you organize different types of queries so that they’re easier for you to manage. 

Messaging and Chat Bots

These customer support software allows you to chat instantly with people that are visiting your website. 

If you feel that you may not be able to keep up with customer queries through live chat, you could opt for software that has chat-bot functionality built in. 

Chatbots are usually powered by AI and are able to help your customers with common queries and queries that are fairly simple to solve. 

Knowledge Base Software

As opposed to seeking queries from actual people, many customers usually prefer to find solutions on their own. 

That’s where self-service knowledge base software comes in.  

Self-service knowledge base softwares are powerful tools that allow one-to-many sharing.

They also enable your customers to self-serve by finding solutions for common queries that have already been resolved.

As an Online Course Creator, What Type of Customer Support Tool would be Best for Me?

To provide effective solutions to your customers as an online course creator, we feel that customer service tools that provide messaging on several channels would be the best choice. 

If you can afford it, you can even go for a customer support tool that has chatbot functionality as well. However, they are relatively expensive. 

Be sure to constantly update that FAQs page so it stays relevant and continues to provide solutions to any common problems your customers might face.

Ideally, How Much Should I be Paying Monthly for a Customer Support Tool as an Online Course Creator? 

We recommend that you try to go for the most economical option possible. 

Many customer service tools have free plans that you can take advantage of but if you want to go for a paid plan, we recommend that you keep it below $50 per month. 

Final Verdict

This brings us to the conclusion of our post on the best customer service tools for online courses. 

In our opinion, the best customer service software is HelpCrunch since it provides the complete package all in one easy-to-use workspace. 

Let us know in the comments which customer service tools you’re using to provide customer service solutions.