There are a plethora of businesses that provide various services ranging from website development to sales & marketing support. Any service provider, take for example a WordPress theme house, would find it difficult to handle all the customer queries and difficulties at the same time. We need a mechanism to handle all customer queries and find solutions to their problems both effectively and quickly.
You could use a Live Chat plugin to chat with your client and sort out his or her problems. Or you could employ a ticket generation system, so that you can deal with a given set of client problems at a time. And finally, you can try and prevent your client from ever needing to personally contact you by providing a comprehensive FAQ section on your website so they can help themselves.
A roundup of a few of the best plugins to help with your customer support services.
WP Awesome Support
Developed by ThemeAvenue to deal with customer problems and increase the customer satisfaction of their own customers. This plugin works with WordPress seamlessly and supports multiple agents. You can add any number of support agents with WP Awesome Support.
The design employs Bootstrap but can be deactivated, if need be. The plugin is responsive and mobile ready, that way your customers can reach you on the go! Installation is a breeze with a setup assistant.
Your clients can upload files easily including ones from their Dropbox and Facebook accounts with Ink Filepicker. The plugin also provides a feature called Live Suggestions which includes articles or answers on your FAQ page, so as to reduce your effort and save you from having to personally solve each client’s problems. The plugin supports quick replies, intelligent ticket attributions, powerful permission management, email notifications, Envato compatibility and provides advanced style compliance.
Price: $33
Demo & Release Page | Download
Chat X
A live chat plugin that provides an elegant and easy solution for direct communication between you and your client.
Chat X uses Firebase which means all your conversations are temporarily stored on Firebase and after the conversation is complete, the conversation data is saved on your own servers unlike most AJAX chats.
As you can see from the above screenshot the user experience is very good with beautiful crafted chat boxes.
Even at the operator end, the plugin makes it easy to handle more than one client at a time effectively. In fact, the plugin can handle 50 (1o operators and 40 visitors) users at a time. You can customise the colors, widget sizes and login forms from advanced settings. The plugin also supports multilingual usage.
Price:$24
Demo & Release Page | Download
WP Flat Visual Chat
A WordPress chat plugin that can enable you to visually guide your clients. You can chat and simultaneously guide your clients visually through the different elements on your website. The plugin is built on a powerful backend console. The plugin uses AJAX real time chat and chat logs can be easily managed.
The front end colors and text are customizable. You can view the IP addresses of those seeking to use the live chat and also their countries and cities. If someone were to visit your website the chat bar is very enticing to click on and clarify doubts, if any.
Price:$21
Demo & Release Page | Download
Visitor Chat
Another easy to use live chat plugin for WordPress websites. The plugin supports multilingual use and is easily customisable. You can chat with multiple visitors, view and manage enquires. The plugin’s ability to handle multiple conversations is limited only by your servers, that being said you should be able to run 10-15 conversations at a time without any problems.
You don’t always need to have your browser open, the Windows client can be used to chat from your desktop. The fee for the plugin is a one time payment, there aren’t any recurring charges.
Price: $33
Demo & Release Page | Download
Live Chat
Live chat provides an easy chat facility for you and your website’s visitors. The plugin is mobile ready. With Live Chat you can create canned messages for your clientele and provide contact form fallback. Filter through your conversation history and search for specific conversations.
The widget in use can be modified for better viewing by changing colors. This plugin can be used without limit and extra charges.
Price: $28
Demo & Release Page | Download
FAQPlus
FAQPlus is a plugin designed to put up an FAQ section on your WordPress site. The plugin is built on customizable CSS and has over 25 animation effects. The plugin comes with Font Awesome icon set and an unlimited color palette. You can add images, videos and text as part of your FAQ section with ease.
If you want to change the appearance, you can do so with a drag and drop feature and reorder the items on the FAQ page. There is no limit on the number of questions that you can put up as part of your FAQ section.
Price:$18
Demo & Release Page | Download
Superior FAQ
Superior FAQ allows you to create FAQs as you would a custom post and list them anywhere on your website. You can add FAQs to all categories or only specified categories. The plugin provides 3 shortcodes; one for FAQ Listing, one for FAQ Search Box and the last one for Most popular FAQs.
The plugin also provides an intelligent voting system, so users can vote only once. The plugin is loaded with 2 layouts, multiple effects and icon sets. You can use excerpts as part of the listings, instead of full descriptions.
Price: $16
Demo & Release Page | Download
Sugar FAQs
Sugar FAQs is a plugin that specializes in FAQ management. The FAQs are displayed in a stylish Accordion style for efficient viewing by a visitor. The plugin plays well with any theme and it works even if you decide to use your theme’s default layout.
The plugin also provides a feature that permits the visitor to submit a question, the admin can choose to answer or reject the question. The plugin provides the admin with an email notification, when new questions are submitted. Shortcodes are available for use and the plugin comes in 9 different color schemes.
Price: $14
Demo & Release Page | Download
FAQ WordPress Plugin
Another FAQ management plugin with which you can create multiple FAQ pages. The admin can use either list style FAQ or accordion style FAQ. You can create custom templates and use this FAQ plugin to address the concerns of your visitors.
Price: $15
Demo & Release Page | Download
AIO Support Center
Use this plugin to create a powerful ticket generating system for your WordPress website. The plugin uses a user friendly interface for both admin and customers. AIO support centre also provides auto responders with custom email templates.
Price: $25
Demo & Release Page | Download
SupportEzzy Ticket System
Support Ezzy is an FAQ and ticket generating plugin all rolled into one. The user can generate unlimited tickets and have multiple support agents. You can cover a diverse array of departments and products by compartmentalizing the work of your support agents by department and product.
Support agents can transfer a ticket to another agent with internal notes. The plugin color can be altered easily to suit your WordPress site. The plugin also provides Woo Commerce integration, Envato integration, Email piping & routing integration and 3 layout templates.
Price: $26
Demo & Release Page | Download
WooCommerce Product FAQ Manager
This plugin can be used to produce an unlimited number of FAQs on a WordPress site. It is very easy to create FAQs on different products. The plugin supports global FAQ management, live FAQ search, dedicated FAQ tab on each product page, predefined themes, custom theme panel and extensive customisation options.
Price: $18
Demo & Release Page | Download
Support System
Support system provides an easy to use interface for you and your client to solve their problems effectively.You receive email notifications when new tickets arrive, which translates into quick turnaround times. The plugin allows you to assign tickets to specific members of your support staff.
The plugin’s editor provides options for you to add styles and images in your responses. The dashboard menu is used to view, create and submit tickets. Tickets are tracked with status details, ensuring that no one is in the dark about what’s happening.
You can also create an FAQ area and enable voting options, so that existing members can help judge how useful the FAQs are in solving user problems. You can embed videos in your FAQs.
Price: $20
Download
WordPress HelpDesk
A plugin to streamline the generation of tickets by customers and the process of reviewing and replying to these tickets. Replying to tickets is very much similar to replying to emails with this plugin. The email configurations are straightforward and you can assign the work to support agents with ease. You can use advanced filtering options to search and find messages that you are looking for.
Price: $97
Demo & Release Page| Download
All of the above are premium plugins. A few free plugins to complete my round up.
Casengo Live Chat Support
A fully functional plugin for enabling live chats on any WordPress site. And you can also use this plugin to answer questions across social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook or via the email. You can manage multiple sites from Casengo Support. Casengo Support can help you handle large mailboxes and also reports on support stats. Plugin offers hybrid messaging to work seamlessly with live chat and email/social media.
Free
Download
Zopim Live Chat
Zopim is a plugin that uses a live chat for the purpose of higher conversion rates on eCommerce websites. A majority of would be buyers often back out of purchases when their concerns aren’t addressed promptly, this plugin can be used to do just that. The plugin is used to pursue prospective clients and guide them to make purchases on your website.
Free
Download
Live Chat by Flyzoo
Use this plugin to create fully featured group chats with avatars, emoticons, including image and video sharing with automatic preview. The plugin can be used to provide live support. You can provide access to chat rooms by embedding them into pages.
You can track visitors live and employ pop out chats to improve user experience. Color customization is possible. The plugin can utilise current WordPress accounts and at a time, employ multiple support agents.
Free
Download
Key4ce osTicket Bridge
An advanced ticket management system that can help generate, review and reply to customer queries.
Free
Download
Conclusion
It’s rather difficult to point to one plugin and call it the best plugin. I guess it depends a lot on what you’re looking for in terms of providing support for your customers. Be it Live Chat, Ticket Generation or a FAQ, you should be able to find a plugin from the roundup that solves all your problems. As the one size does not fit all.
Written by Vishnu Supreet. TV shows and PC games keep me occupied, when I get time off from my Bachelors degree in mechanical engineering. I engross myself in technology, invest in the stock market and read cool stuff! And a freelance writer for hire! I pen my personal thoughts on my little WordPress blog!
Connect with Vishnu on Google Plus / +VishnuSupreet and Twitter / @vishnusupreet.
