Here’s a major understatement: People like doing things online. As a result, a lot of interactions that were once over the phone — or even in person — have moved to the digital sphere. Additionally, with social media dominating so much of our time online, it’s no wonder that people have increasingly gravitated toward it for a number of things, including customer service interactions.
When a lot of help desks were originally developed, customer service via social media wasn’t so common. But as it has grown in popularity, many existing tools have added a social layer, making it easier for teams to handle those requests in the same ways they would any other, creating social media customer service tools.
In this article, we cover why social media customer service tools are useful, offer some options for those in the market to consider, and give a few tips on how to choose the right one for your team.
Benefits of social media customer service tools
There are a few main reasons why investing in a social media customer service tool is important:
Better customer experience.
Improved transparency.
Deeper insights.
Better customer experience
Customers like options, whether it's a variety of products and services or how they get in touch with you. Since social media is so ingrained in our everyday lives, having it as an option through which customers can contact you is incredibly convenient (and desirable) for them. In fact, 64% of X (formerly Twitter) users said they’d rather send a direct message to a dedicated support handle than call a business.
Improved transparency
When managing social media customer requests in-app, it can be easy for things to fall through the cracks. With a dedicated tool, everything is in one place and easier to track. You can also do things like change a status or add notes for additional context, which isn’t possible in-app.
Deeper insights
If you’re managing social requests natively, you’re missing out on a ton of potentially useful data. With a social media customer service tool, you can get insights into things like which social channels have the highest request volumes, what types of questions are most common, and other trends that can help you manage incoming social messages more effectively and efficiently.
The 9 best social media customer service software
Below are nine of the best social media customer service software options currently on the market. Our list consists of a number of tools, some of which are more customer service oriented and others that are more social media management oriented.
Help Scout
SocialPilot
Hootsuite
Freshdesk
Gorgias
Zendesk
Sprinklr
Sprout Social
HappyFox
1. Help Scout
Best social media customer service software for customer-focused teams.
Help Scout is a customer communication platform boasting a number of different tools to help you deliver outstanding customer experiences. One of the marquee tools of the platform is Inbox. It’s a centralized place for agents to organize and respond to customer requests, including Facebook and Instagram messages.
You can increase response speed to social messages with a number of useful features like saved replies and AI assist. Saved replies are drafted responses you can quickly recall for routine requests. AI assist is helpful for doing things like shortening messages, changing tone, or even translating text into a different language.
Additionally, Help Scout offers useful insights through Reports that can help you spot trends and get more information about the types of questions people ask on social media, when they ask them, and how often customers use those channels.
If you’re an ecommerce brand, Help Scout integrates with Shopify and other marketplaces, making it easy to manage requests all in one place without switching between tools and tabs.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $22/user per month.
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2. SocialPilot
Best social media customer service software for marketing teams answering social messages.
SocialPilot is a social media management and listening tool. Generally speaking, it has more of a marketing bent with things like scheduling capabilities for posts and a built-in content calendar. The tool also has a social inbox where incoming messages and comments are housed.
Though it’s more marketing-focused, you’re still able to see and respond to messages from a number of different social media sites. You can also set it up to look for mentions of your brand, which helps you connect with customers even when they don’t message you directly.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $25.50 per month.
3. Hootsuite
Best social media customer service software for social media support teams.
Similar to SocialPilot, Hootsuite is generally more associated with marketing functions for social media. However, over the past handful of years, they’ve added in additional features geared more toward customer service interactions.
For example, they have a shared inbox feature where all incoming messages and comments are housed. You’re able to assign different conversations to different reps both manually and automatically. Further, you can create automated responses for certain types of requests, tag conversations to understand what they’re about, and even get trend insights through reports.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $99 per month.
4. Freshdesk
Best social media customer service software for teams new to social media support.
Freshdesk is a more customer service-oriented tool. It includes a number of different support tools like a shared inbox, knowledge base builder, and live chat widget. It can also connect to a number of different social sites, letting agents manage and respond to messages directly from the tool.
Similar to some others on the list, you’re also able to do things like create drafted responses and assign conversations to different agents. Freshdesk also has reporting capabilities, giving teams additional insights.
Price: Free trial and plan available. Paid plans start at $15/agent per month.
5. Gorgias
Best social media customer service software for ecommerce teams.
Gorgias is a customer service platform generally associated with ecommerce teams. It simplifies support by providing a central hub for all your communication channels, including email and live chat. You’re also able to handle social media requests from a number of platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
To boost your team's efficiency, Gorgias offers AI-powered features like workflow automation and smart routing. These features can handle repetitive tasks and ensure inquiries reach the right agent, freeing up your team to focus on complex issues and building customer relationships. The main difference of Gorgias is their volume-based pricing. All of their plans have interaction limits, and exceeding those limits incurs additional charges, so the monthly cost can vary.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $10 per month.
6. Zendesk
Best social media customer service software for enterprise-sized teams.
Zendesk is a customer service tool generally associated with large, enterprise-sized teams. They offer a diverse feature set, including some tools to interact with customers over social media such as a shared inbox where you can centralize incoming requests.
They also have reporting capabilities to better understand what types of requests come from social media. Further, they have AI bots you can use to respond to customers on certain social media channels, helping customers get quick responses while reducing volume for human agents. However, it’s good to note that some of their AI features must be purchased as add-ons.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $19/agent per month.
7. Sprinklr
Best combined social media marketing and customer service software.
Sprinklr is a customer experience management platform that lets teams handle requests from a large number of social media sites. With their support-specific product, you get a central inbox to manage and respond to incoming requests across social channels as well as more traditional support channels like voice, chat, and email. There are also efficiency tools like AI bots to help customers get faster responses.
Along with those tools, you also get access to trend data to learn about when customers reach out, what types of questions they ask, and what channels are most popular. Rounding out the list of features is the ability to do things like skills-based routing for certain requests and get feedback through CSAT surveys.
For businesses looking for a single platform for both social support and marketing, there’s a plan that gives you social media marketing tools, like post scheduling and social listening, in addition to the support features above.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $199/seat per month.
8. Sprout Social
Best social media customer service software for large social media teams.
Sprout Social is another tool that excels in social media planning and posting. With it you can schedule posts, view engagement rates, and do social listening to see what people are saying about your brand.
It also offers a unified dashboard where users can see incoming messages and comments all in one place. They can respond to and manage messages from the dashboard, making it easy to handle interactions from a variety of social sites.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $199/seat per month.
9. HappyFox
Best social media customer service software for teams needing task management features.
HappyFox is a help desk solution that gives teams access to a number of customer service-oriented tools like a shared inbox and a knowledge base tool. They also have a couple of integrations with social sites like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) that let you turn direct messages and comments into tickets.
Some other standout features are task management capabilities — meaning you can add different tasks to a ticket. You can also create ticket templates to prefill certain data for common requests. Last, you can organize tickets into categories to keep everything easily accessible.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $9/agent per month.
Tips for choosing the right tool for your business
Truth be told, many of the social media customer service tools on the market today are pretty similar. That said, there are a few questions you can answer that should provide additional clarity on which one is the best fit for you.
Who owns social support? If your customer support team is in charge of answering social media requests, it probably makes more sense to use a tool that falls into that category — like Help Scout or Freshdesk — since they’ll have access to additional useful customer service tools. On the flip side, if your marketing team owns it, then it’s probably better to use more of a social media management tool like Sprout or Hootsuite because it gives them the additional functionality they need for marketing activities.
What social sites do you provide support on? If a tool doesn’t integrate with a social site you provide support on, chances are it’s not the right fit. Look for options that link to your preferred platforms. Also consider how good the connection is and what functionality the integration offers, as that can vary widely. It’s also good to learn about the process of connecting the platforms.
What resources do you have for setup? Certain tools are more complex to connect with social platforms. If you have developer support to help with those things, then it’s probably not an issue. However, if you’re solely responsible for setting it up and you aren’t very tech savvy, it’s best to look for options where setting up the connection to your preferred social platforms is easy to do.
Moving forward
As social media support grows in popularity, so does the need to have social media customer support software. Having dedicated social capabilities will help your team be more efficient and give you the needed tools to deliver a great customer experience over social media.
