Whether you’re a web designer serving various clients or a developer who offers products, utilizing your website for customer support makes sense. It provides users with a way to both help themselves and receive help directly from you. Plus, it can serve as a means to organize support requests in a neat and tidy manner.
If your website runs on WordPress, then you have a wide selection of support-related plugins to choose from. They run the gamut from building a simple FAQ or knowledgebase all the way to full-blown ticketing systems. This allows you to build a support area that fits virtually any type of business.
With that in mind, here are 8 WordPress plugins that you can use to provide excellent customer service and support.
Tawk.To Live Chat
This plugin will enable you to place a widget from the free Tawk.To chat application onto your WordPress website (a free account is required). You can customize the widget’s look, which pages it displays on, and embed it anywhere with the included shortcode.
A handy scheduler is also included, which will display the widget only during your operating hours. As a bonus, you can use the service’s mobile app to answer queries from wherever you are.
SupportCandy – Helpdesk & Support Ticket System
With just a few clicks, SupportCandy will add a ticketing system to both the front and back ends of your website. Create an unlimited number of support agent users and assign them tickets, while premium add-ons enable you to automate the process.
Customers can submit tickets via their account or as guests. The plugin also supports custom fields, file attachments, and email notifications.
Knowledge Base for Documents and FAQs
One of the simplest ways to provide support is through a knowledge base. Knowledge Base for Documents and FAQs is a free plugin that will enable you to build up a support section in very little time.
Create up to three levels of categories and sub-categories, choose from a plethora of pre-defined styles and even implement an AJAX live search. Premium add-ons allow for features like custom layouts and hosting multiple bases on the same site.
Quick and Easy FAQs
FAQs are a great option for services or products that don’t need overly in-depth documentation. They’re also handy for providing useful pre-sales information. Quick and Easy FAQs creates a custom post type on your site that lets you add as many questions and answers as you need.
You can display your FAQs in various styles, including a simple list, filterable section-based list, and toggle. The display is handled through a WordPress Shortcode.
Ultimate FAQ
Ultimate FAQ will, like other FAQ plugins on this list, allow you to create an archive of questions and answers easily. You can create categories, display questions in various ways and even export them all to a PDF. But the bonus here is that the plugin can integrate with WooCommerce.
This could be quite a powerful feature for stores looking to offer pre-sales information to users. The premium version of the plugin enables a FAQs product tab to make things even easier.
WP Live Chat Support
In the right situation, live chat can be a very effective means of helping customers. It provides both a personal touch and an immediate response that helps to build brand loyalty. Using WP Live Chat Support, you can hold multiple one-on-one chats with customers – hosted right there on the same server with your WordPress site.
There are plenty of options, and no third-party subscriptions are required. However, if you want to have features like multiple agents (team members) or data trigger automations, you’ll need the pro version.
Awesome Support
If you’re looking for a full-fledged support ticketing system, you’ll want to check out Awesome Support. Use it to run a WordPress-based helpdesk that, between the free version and premium add-ons, has just about every feature you’ll need.
By default, you’ll have the ability to create an unlimited number of departments, agent accounts, custom priority levels, and more. Add-ons do things such as syncing product lists with either WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads, user reply via email, and Slack notifications – among others. There’s a lot of room to build a system that meets your needs.
weDocs
weDocs is a free plugin that caters to those who want to build and organize vast amounts of documentation on their WordPress website. The plugin UI sports a handy drag-and-drop feature for organizing items – great for getting articles in just the right order.
There is even a way to bring in documentation from an outside source, which could be a really huge help for those moving in existing content from somewhere else.
Support Options
What’s so nice about the plugins above is that they offer you different ways to provide support. You don’t necessarily need a big, complicated system to help customers. In some cases, a simple FAQ will do the trick. But it’s also great to know that more robust options exist if you need them.
The key is in helping people to help themselves first. This will cut down on the number of support requests you receive, and the hope is that if they do reach out to you for further assistance, you’ll be farther ahead by having resources readily available on your website.
Whichever path you choose, look for solutions that will make life easier for everyone involved. The choices above should get you off to a running start.
The post 8 Best WordPress Plugins for Providing Customer Support appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.
