8 Best Social Media Customer Service Software [2024]

Social media platforms are no longer just for connecting with friends and family. They’re becoming increasingly popular amongst businesses for providing real-time customer support.

There are a number of reasons why social media is a good platform for customer service. 

• Your customers are already there. It’s easy for them to reach out to you, and vice versa. 
• It allows you to provide quick and efficient responses to inquiries. 
• It displays a brand’s dedication to solving problems and creating positive interactions on social media. This boosts the brand’s reputation among the public.

Now, as a company grows, so does its customer base. In this scenario, managing customer service manually on social media can become overwhelming. 

That’s where a dedicated social media customer service software can help streamline the process. In this article, we explore the 8 best tools that can help with assigning, categorizing, and collaborating on social media customer queries. 

We will discuss their features, pricing, and pros and cons, so you can choose the right software for your business.

Table of Contents

• What is a Social Media Customer Service Software? 
• 8 Best Social Media Customer Service Software 
  • 1. Hiver  
    • Why use Hiver?
    • Pricing
  • 2. SproutSocial 
    • Why use Sprout Social? 
    • Limitations
    • Pricing
  • 3. Sparkcentral by Hootsuite 
    • Why use Sparkcentral? 
    • Limitations 
    • Pricing
  • 4. LiveAgent 
    • Why use LiveAgent?
    • Limitations
    • Pricing
  • 5. ZohoDesk 
    • Why use ZohoDesk?
    • Limitations
    • Pricing
  • 6. Sprinklr Social
    • Why use Sprinklr?
    • Limitations
    • Pricing
  • 7. Zendesk
    • Why use Zendesk?
    • Limitations
    • Pricing
  • 8. HubSpot
    • Why use HubSpot?
    • Limitations
    • Pricing
• Key Features of a Social Media Customer Service Software 
• Tips to Select the Right Social Media Customer Service Tool
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
  • 1. Which teams benefit from a social media customer service tool?
  • 2. Can social media customer service software integrate with other business tools?
  • 3. What features should businesses look for in social media customer service software?
  • 4. How does a social media customer service software handle privacy and security?
• Conclusion

What is a Social Media Customer Service Software?

A social media customer service software, often referred to as Social CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software, is a specialized tool designed to help businesses manage customer interactions on various social media platforms. You use it to track customer comments and mentions, and also respond to them in a timely fashion.

Let’s say a customer posts a complaint about a defect in your product on Twitter. If your company has a social media customer service tool, it immediately detects the negative sentiment associated with this tweet and alerts the support team about it.

8 Best Social Media Customer Service Software

Let’s take a look at the top 8 best social media customer service software, and analyze their features and pricing.

1. Hiver

Hiver is a multi-channel customer service software that works inside Gmail and Outlook. The best part about Hiver is that it’s super easy to setup and get started with. The interface is intuitive, and the features are very easy to grasp. 

One of Hiver’s core features is helping manage customer communication from social media channels, such as WhatsApp. Teams using Hiver can access and manage all customer interactions that happen on WhatsApp – right from their inbox.

Why use Hiver?

• Keep all your WhatsApp conversations organized within Gmail and Outlook. No need to switch between multiple tools.
• Allow multiple team members to manage a WhatsApp group collectively, making collaboration easy.
• Stay updated with real-time notifications for new WhatsApp messages, ensuring prompt responses.
• Maintain a clear record of every customer conversation for accountability purposes.

“For a small team like ours, Hiver was exactly the solution we needed: stay in Gmail and have access to shared inbox with the same logic: ticket status, notes, and analytics. Plus, connecting Chats, WhatsApp and email in one place for 39$ per user, not only a lot cheaper than the competitors but also way easier. Highlight to their 24-hour chat support, which was probably the most important thing.” – G2 Review

Pricing

Hiver offers four pricing options. 

• Free forever plan
• Lite: $19/user per month 
• Pro: $49/user per month 
• Elite: $79/user per month

2. SproutSocial

Sprout Social is a user-friendly and intuitive platform that helps teams manage customer service across different channels, including social media.

Sprout Social can be easily integrated with social media platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, and WhatsApp. Besides, it also supports multiple languages such as English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Why use Sprout Social?

• It helps provide relevant context to resolve support issues and nurture potential leads. For instance, when you link a Twitter profile, Sprout Social remembers past conversations, ensuring your team has easy access to this history within the platform. 

• The shared contact view in Sprout Social ensures that everyone on your team can access customer conversation history, contact info, and any internal notes.

• Whether it’s managing communities or assisting customers, Sprout provides AI automation for quicker responses and personalized interactions.

Limitations

• The cost of upgrading to premium analytics is quite high.
• Users encounter limitations with the API, and some find it frustrating that they frequently need to reconnect different social media accounts.
• Key features like in-depth social listening are only accessible through a paid subscription.

“We were under the impression that social listening and employee advocacy were going to be easily implemented and managed, but so far those two functions (which add a sizeable cost) are not quite as easy to use. They have told us that there are many changes on the horizon for those, but it feels a bit like the sales and product teams are not fully aligned.” – G2 Review 

Pricing

Sprout Social offers pricing options ranging from $249 to $499 per month for their Standard, Professional, and Advanced plans, with an Enterprise option available upon inquiry. Additional users cost between $199 and $349 per month, depending on the plan.

3. Sparkcentral by Hootsuite

Sparkcentral is a cloud-based customer service platform that helps you handle and optimize customer conversations. It uses AI to connect with platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Twitter, as well as your own company’s website and apps. 

This way, you can manage all customer communications in one place, irrespective of the channel.

Why use Sparkcentral?

• Bring customer information from chatbots, CRMs, and other tools under one roof. This helps gain context about customers faster and resolve their issues efficiently. 

• After every customer interaction on social, you can send out surveys and collect feedback. This gives clear insight on the quality of resolution.

• Use chatbots to have personalized conversations with customers on social media. Also, make use of smart automations to manage higher volumes of queries – without burdening your support team.

“Through Sparkcentral, we communicate with our guests (pre/post stay during stay). Sparkcentral has helped us grow, by offering a user-friendly platform, with many useful features. Flexibility on adding our own chatbot function was also a pro.” – G2 Review

Limitations

• It is sometimes complicated to set up automation workflows. 
• Reporting options are quite limited. 

Pricing

Not provided by the vendor.

4. LiveAgent

LiveAgent is a powerful ticketing software that’s also great for handling social media interactions. It works with a total of 11 social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can link your social media accounts with LiveAgent to manage all customer service messages in one place. 

Why use LiveAgent?

• All your private messages from social media are neatly organized in one inbox, making it easy to manage. 
• Use automation rules to speed up responses to customer inquiries and to handle repetitive tasks.
• Use canned responses (templates) to answer the most common customer queries on social media. Also, leverage internal notes to collaborate with team members on customer queries.

Limitations

• Ticket merging can make the merged ticket unsearchable.
• Limited option to customize the interface. 

“LiveAgent automatically assigns a random ticket code such as [XZJ-OHE] to each email which we didn’t want. If you’re going to send emails to many recipients within the same ticket and one of them replies, you can’t reply to that person because ALL recipients originally included in the ticket will receive that reply. You’ll either have to remove all email addresses or split the ticket.” – G2 Review

Pricing

LiveAgent provides pricing options that start at $9 per user per month and go up to $49 per month. Also, they offer a free plan.

5. ZohoDesk

Zoho Desk helps businesses manage customer support and communication across multiple channels. 

The platform allows businesses to monitor and respond to customer inquiries on various social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more. 

It also allows you to track mentions, comments, and messages related to the business on social media, helping companies stay engaged with their customers. 

Why use ZohoDesk?

• Manage multiple social media accounts using Zoho. You can like, comment, and post on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram – all from Zoho’s interface. Turn posts and comments into support tickets and reply directly from the help desk.

• Customize settings to convert only specific keyword-related posts or messages into tickets. This optimization saves time and lets agents focus on delivering quick responses.

• Monitor incoming tickets from social media with a custom view. Set unique response time goals and track them through the SLA dashboard for improved social customer service.

Limitations

• Limited customization options within the platform. 
• Steep learning curve owing to the complicated interface.

Pricing

ZohoDesk offers a range of pricing options from a Free plan to an Enterprise plan, with costs per user per month at $20 for Standard, $35 for Professional, and $50 for Enterprise. 

6. Sprinklr Social

Sprinklr Social is a customer experience management platform that focuses on driving social media engagement, marketing, and customer service. It allows businesses to manage their interactions and relationships with customers across various social media channels in a unified and streamlined manner. 

With Sprinklr Social, you can bring up to 23 social channels, 11 messaging apps, and many online forums and review sites into one easy-to-use platform.

Why use Sprinklr?

• Engage with customers across a wide range of social media platforms and messaging channels. This enables you to reach your customers at their convenience.

• Sprinklr’s social listening capabilities allow you to monitor and analyze conversations related to your brand, products, and industry across social media platforms. This helps you stay informed about customer sentiment, emerging trends, and potential issues, allowing you to address them proactively.
  
• You can set up automated workflows in Sprinklr to route customer inquiries to the appropriate team or agent based on predefined rules. This helps streamline the customer service process and ensures that inquiries are handled by the most qualified individuals.

“We work with over 8 different brands and 12 supported languages, and Sprinklr is quite well done to support that much load at once. Its scheduling/planning tool for multiple pages and medium is very well done, and it can support complex features such as posting Instagram stories and special posts with the help of the phone app.” – G2 Review

Limitations

• Relatively expensive for smaller businesses and startups.
• Learning the platform isn’t a breeze. It requires time and work to get the hang of it and set it up to suit your needs.

Pricing

Sprinklr Social provides two pricing tiers: an Advanced option available at $299 per seat per month for self-service users, and an Enterprise option for which pricing is provided upon request.

7. Zendesk

Zendesk is a well-known multi-channel customer service software. One of Zendesk’s core solutions is that it centralizes customer interactions from different social media platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) into a single, easy-to-use dashboard. 

Why use Zendesk?

• Each social media interaction is turned into a ticket within Zendesk. This enables agents to track the status of each inquiry, ensuring that no customer query goes unanswered or unresolved.

• Agents can switch from public conversations, like tweets, to private ones (DMs) with customers. This way, private information stays private. Everything happens in one place, making it easy for agents to give personalized help to customers.

• Zendesk allows you to set up automation rules based on specific keywords, hashtags, or other triggers. This can help you route the right social media queries to the right agents. 

Limitations

• While Zendesk does offer some social listening capabilities, it might not be as advanced as dedicated social media monitoring tools. 
• Zendesk’s interface and setup process is complex.
• The tool is also not very affordable for smaller businesses with limited budgets. 

Pricing

Zendesk offers pricing for businesses of all sizes. Plans range from $49 to $99 per agent per month for small to large-sized businesses. The enterprise plans start at $150 per agent per month, with more advanced plans beginning at $215 per agent per month. 

8. HubSpot

HubSpot’s social media management software is designed for business owners looking to manage customer interactions on social media. HubSpot lets you create content, schedule and monitor customer interactions all from one place. You can even set monitoring for specific keywords on social media and link all those interactions in your CRM. This will help you understand how your social media marketing is working out in terms of ROI.

Why use HubSpot?

• Reports within the dashboard will show insights into how different platforms and campaigns are performing, and the time when your audience is most active (based on engagement).

• Since these interactions are integrated into the CRM, you can clearly know how many leads and visitors (including conversions) social media is driving.

• You can even tag social media posts with marketing assets so that you can measure how social media marketing is helping overall marketing efforts.

Limitations

• HubSpot integrates with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram only. No other social platforms are available for integration.
• Limited monitoring for Facebook & LinkedIn. Both Facebook and LinkedIn are conservative in their data, hence you may not see in-depth monitoring.
• From a pricing standpoint, HubSpot is not suitable for everyone. The free plans may not be very helpful, and the paid plans may not be very feasible for most.

Pricing

HubSpot offers for plans:

• Free plan
• Marketing Hub Starter: $20/mo/seat
• Marketing Hub Professional: $890/mo/seat
• Marketing Hub Enterprise: $3600/mo/seat

Key Features of a Social Media Customer Service Software

Any social media customer service software offers a range of features, such as: 

• Unified inbox: Since all the customer queries are handled from one platform, there’s no chance of messages getting missed or overlooked. In the absence of social media software, support can become really challenging, as agents will have to switch between multiple platforms.

• Customer sentiment analysis: The software automatically evaluates the tone of customer interactions on social media. It helps you quickly identify negative feedback and areas needing improvement, allowing you to prioritize and address pressing issues efficiently.

• Real-time alerts for negative feedback: Get real-time alerts for negative feedback on your social media channels. This way, you can respond to customer complaints promptly, mitigate any potential issues, and showcase a commitment to excellent customer service.

• Analytics and reporting: An analytics dashboard helps keep track of key metrics – such as average response time, customer satisfaction scores, common customer issues, and more. Teams can make informed decisions and offer personalized support with the help of these metrics.

• Categorization and routing of requests: The software helps support agents tag and categorize important messages (such as order status tags, and delivery tags) – increasing the visibility of all customer interactions. It also uses built-in automation to route messages based on the agent’s skills or expertise, similar to how Hiver handles skill-based assignments.

Tips to Select the Right Social Media Customer Service Tool

Here are some things to consider when selecting the right social media customer service tool for your business:

• Know Your Audience: The first step is figuring out which social media channels your customers use the most. Is it Instagram, Facebook, or WhatsApp? Pick a tool that supports the platforms your customers are active on since not all tools integrate with every social media platform.

• Feature Checklist: Before comparing tools, make a list of the key features you need. Are you looking for advanced AI capabilities or just the basics, like a unified portal to keep track of customer comments?

• Team Collaboration:Collaborating on social media that makes teamwork easy, with features like ticket assignments and internal notes.
  
• User Interface: Look for something that’s intuitive and user-friendly, so that support staff who are using the software can make the most out of important features. Try out demos and free trials of at least 4-5 tools before deciding.

• Security: Make sure the tool has strong security measures to protect your customer data. For example, Hiver’s security is solid—it’s SOC 2 Type II Compliant, GDPR Compliant, HIPAA Compliant, and more.

• CRM and Helpdesk Integration: The tool should seamlessly integrate with your existing CRM and helpdesk systems to streamline operations and give a unified view of customer interactions.

• Support and Training: The tool should offer 24/7 support and be easy to learn. If you’re already using another software, you’ll have to pick one that allows for a smooth transition. For instance, teams can start using Hiver without any extensive training since it works inside your Gmail/Outlook inbox.

“Hiver is a very friendly tool. As it sits inside Gmail, it doesn’t give you an alien feel. Assigning and composing responses to customer queries is straightforward. And it does away with the complexities of a ticketing system. Everything about it is so simple.” – Christian Sibayan, Manager – Field Operations and Systems, Oxford Business Group

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Here are some frequently asked questions related to social media customer service software: 

1. Which teams benefit from a social media customer service tool?

This tool is incredibly useful for different teams, such as:

• Customer Support: They use it to engage with customers and respond to their comments.
• Marketing: It helps them monitor brand sentiment and gather feedback.
• Sales: They can interact with potential leads and answer questions.
• Product Development: They can gather user feedback to improve products.

Social media customer service software streamlines managing customer interactions by consolidating messages from platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram into one interface. This centralization makes it much easier and faster for businesses to reply to customers. It can even answer common questions by itself, saving time. Plus, it helps teams work together better and manage their tasks, leading to improved customer service.  

2. Can social media customer service software integrate with other business tools?

Yes, most social media customer service software can integrate with a wide range of business tools, including CRM systems, email marketing platforms, and e-commerce solutions. Such integrations enable businesses to ensure the same customer data is available across multiple systems. This is beneficial when interacting with customers on social – you’d have context on their purchase history, buying patterns, and so on.

3. What features should businesses look for in social media customer service software?

Key features to look for include multi-channel support, automated responses and chatbots, analytics and reporting, customer sentiment analysis, AI capabilities, team collaboration, and integration capabilities with other business systems.

4. How does a social media customer service software handle privacy and security?

Reputable social media customer service platforms adhere to strict data protection regulations and employ robust security measures to protect sensitive customer information. This includes data encryption, secure access controls, and compliance with policies such as GDPR.

Conclusion

Customers are increasingly using social media to interact with businesses, and businesses need to be prepared to provide timely and effective customer service across every social channel.

If you’re looking for a powerful and affordable social media customer service solution, Hiver is the perfect choice for you. With Hiver, you can provide excellent customer service on social media and build strong relationships with your customers.

Try Hiver free for 7 days!