Gladly is a customer service portal that primarily aims to improve agent productivity and personalize customer interactions. It is built for eCommerce businesses that want to maintain consistency in customer service across different channels and scale their customer support without compromising quality. 

Gladly promises to turn customer service into a revenue engine by increasing profits and efficiency while driving down costs needed to maintain and scale the functions. It has an adaptable interface and many functionalities you would want in your customer service software. 

Gladly’s multiple features and seamless integrations would make a great choice for any customer support team if their execution met expectations. However, Gladly does have some glaring setbacks. Their agent-based pricing model limits growing businesses and becomes expensive as support teams scale. Much like every customer support software, they aim to simplify everyday tasks, but the complex UI and usability issues impede these very processes. These reasons are enough motivation to look for Glady alternatives.

Let’s take a closer look at the pros and cons of Gladly- 

Gladly: Customer Service Platform

Gladly claims to provide a personalized customer experience, quick turnaround, and increase in revenue. They have many sought-after features such as a centralized customer hub, deep integrations with multiple customer service tools, and an interactive self-service portal. 

Here are some of its key features- 

• Intelligent routing allows you to assign queries according to the department, agent’s expertise, and priority. 
• IVR allows you to provide 24*7 customer support, even when your agents are unavailable to take calls. 
• It has a chatbot and live chat feature that helps turn website visitors into customers by guiding them during their purchase and answering queries about the products they’re considering. 

These features aim to improve customer interactions. The same cannot be said about the agent experience, however. Many agents report several issues with the back-end. For one, when customers are allocated to an agent, the queries do not appear in chronological order.

They appear in the order in which they are assigned. Teamed with the fact that notifications are easy to miss, the software can be confusing to use and cause extended customer waiting periods. 

The queries aren't merged if customers contact you from different channels like the live chat on the website and a phone call. This results in two agents responding to the same customer. One of the agents reaching out loses the ticket. 

Another drawback that affects agent performance is that conversations cannot be “paused” to make time to take notes or collaborate with agents. Gladly marks the agents away in such instances, affecting their conversations with the customers. 

As a CX leader, you would prefer software that improves agent experience as much as it benefits your customers. Here are some Gladly alternatives you can consider:

Gladly Alternative in 2024: Best Help desk Software

Here are the most popular Gladly competitors to consider:

• Richpanel
• Kustomer
• Zendesk 
• Gorgias
• Re:Amaze

1. Richpanel:

Richpanel is a customer support software aiming to improve the agent and customer experience equally. It has a great live chat feature and an extensive knowledge base that improves the customer experience and an intuitive backend that helps the agents perform all their day-to-day functions without switching tabs. Here are some of the most notable Richpanel features: 

Knowledge Management:

Richpanel’s self-service portal is a robust example of a great knowledge management system. It gives customers power by allowing them to take order actions like edit or cancel an order and initiate a refund. It has a highly customizable portal that features articles answering FAQs. It not only improves the customer experience but reduces tickets up to 50-70%, reducing the workload on support teams.

Agent-Experience:

Richpanel’s backend combines a powerful omnichannel communication window with a comprehensive CRM solution to give full customer context when communicating with customers on various channels.

They can avoid switching between multiple tabs and find the intuitive interface extremely adaptable and easy-to-use. This significantly improves agent experience and boosts productivity. 

‍Revenue Reporting:

Richpanel provides a comprehensive dashboard containing necessary data and insights. It is customized to meet all the requirements of customer experience leaders who won't have to bother with tedious excel sheets to track agent performance.

The best part about this feature is that it allows you to analyze the impact of customer support on revenue and optimize for increased profits. 

‍Best Suited For:

It is scaling eCommerce businesses that want to increase revenue without increasing expenditure on customer support. 

‍Review: 5.0 ⭐ (97 Reviews on Shopify Store)

2. Kustomer:

Kustomer provides a centralized customer service platform and a CRM for eCommerce businesses. They have combined all CX operations and created a platform that makes a more robust support engine and provides a more personalized experience for the customers. Here are some of the key features that help achieve this-

‍Omni-Channel Support:

Kustomer acts as a centralized communication hub for customer service representatives. It provides a one-stop solution that allows you to access customer queries from different channels such as email, voice, SMS, and website chat in a single window. This increases the productivity of the customer service team and helps reduce the turnaround time. 

However, Kustomer does not support social listening like many Gladly alternatives on this list. Agents must manually comb social media comments for negative feedback and reply to them through a separate window. 

Kustomer IQ:

Kustomer IQ is an automatic chatbot feature to reduce the workload on the CX team and improve the turnaround time for queries. In turn, Kustomer can improve agent productivity. 

This feature can be a drawback for brands that value personalization and want to ensure that their tone remains consistent. Many customers find automated responses offputting and would prefer to talk to a representative even if it takes longer.

Performance Tracking:

Kustomer allows you to track agents’ performance based on their average response time and the number of unique customer conversations they have handled. Hence, Kustomer is an excellent tool for CX leaders who want to increase team productivity and provide directed feedback. 

These reports, however, are not very customizable, which is one of the downsides of Kustomer. Much like most of the features on the platform, this service management feature may take some time to get used to. Another of the reasons Kustomer’s service management fails to meet the mark is updated every 24 hours and a new report to view new data. 

Read Also: Kustomer Alternatives & Competitors

Best Suited For:

Kustomer is best suited for small businesses with a support team comprising of only a few members since its pricing model is based on several tickets. 

3. Zendesk:

Zendesk is one of the most popular cloud-based service desk software and had to make it on this list. It is a highly customizable platform that is built for different industries. It provides various features like live chat, service management, and omnichannel support. Here are some of the essential Zendesk Features:

‍Customizations:

From the performance reports to a comprehensive knowledge base, Zendesk is highly customizable and allows businesses to implement the features that will best help them improve their customer service engine. This is why companies from different industries gravitate towards Zendesk. 

These customizations do, however, burn a hole in your pocket. For one, Zendesk claims to be a one-stop solution, but you buy Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Chat, and other software from the family to avail all features.

The customizations themselves are tricky and time-consuming. Once they are set up, there’s a steep learning curve for the agents. This is why Zendesk doesn’t have the highest ROI regarding customer support software. 

Automation:

Zendesk allows you to automate some redundant tasks based on time-based business rules. You can automate several tasks such as updating tickets, notifying users of new queries, and organizing your work. This helps improve productivity and saves CX leaders and their team a lot of time.

The automation feature does have some limitations. For example, it does not allow you to use the AND, OR function in the same rule. Much like the other Zendesk features, automation can be slightly tricky to wrap your head around. 

Best Suited For:

Large-scale businesses that have a tech support team are willing to spend on different licenses for great features. 

Related Read: Zendesk Alternatives and Competitors in 2024

4. Gorgias:

Gorgias is another excellent ticketing system and cloud-based service desk software. Gorgias has a deep integration with Shopify and is a good option for eCommerce businesses that want to increase the support team’s productivity and maintain consistent customer support across all channels. Here are some of its features:

‍Sentiment Analysis:

Gorgias has an automated sentiment analysis feature that helps agents read between the lines and better understand the customers’ needs. This is a unique feature that aims to improve the customer experience and also help with social media monitoring. 

However, the feature fails to deliver accurate results and misinterprets the customer's moods, defeating the whole purpose of the feature. 

Self-Service:

Gorgias’s self-service helps customers solve common issues- cancellation, returns, and inquiries about damaged items. This helps reduce the ticket volume and allows the customers to take certain order actions without having to contact an agent. 

The self-service feature is limited to 3 situations and deflects only a small amount of queries instead of solving them. This is one of the reasons the self-service feature doesn't seem intuitive and doesn't serve its intended purpose. 

Best Suited For:

eCommerce businesses that want to maintain consistency in customer service across all channels. 

Related Read: Gorgias Alternatives to Consider in 2024

5. Re:Amaze:

Re:Amaze is a popular alternative to Gladly. It customer service platform and ticketing system that aims to increase productivity and drive revenue through customer service with features like automated workflows, a knowledge base, and chatbots. Here are some of its best features:

‍Live Chat:

Re:Amaze has a live chat feature with automated chatbots which trigger messages based on the customer’s activity on your site. It aims to improve the “in-store” experience on your website and convert visitors into buyers 

Some customers do value human interactions over speedy answers. This feature may not seem helpful for such an audience and makes the brand seem disingenuous. 

Omnichannel Support:

Re:Amaze integrates messages from different platforms such as email, SMS, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It also supports agent collaborations through notes, reminders, and assignments. 

However, the back-end for customer support is tricky. It has a confusing UI and takes time to understand. It takes too many steps to complete some simple tasks and can hamper the support team's productivity. 

Read Also: 5 Reasons Why you Need to Make The Switch from ReAmaze

Choose Your Gladly Alternative: The Right Customer Service Software for Ecommerce Store

If you’re looking for Gladly alternatives with a better user interface and all the features that agents require to provide excellent customer support, look no further. Gorgias, Zendesk, Re: Amaze, Kustomer, and Richpanel are some of the most popular customer service software with different strengths and weaknesses. 

Gorgias is great for SMBs operating on Shopify. It helps unify your customer conversations and is a great choice for businesses that primarily want helpdesk functionalities for their team. 

Zendesk does offer a broader range of features but struggles to be adaptable, much like Gladly. 

Re:Amaze and Kustomer are excellent choices for businesses that aim to improve their helpdesk support and primarily focus on resolving tickets. 

Richpanel has a more holistic approach to customer service and resolves issues faced by both customers and agents alike. It’s a great choice for businesses of all sizes, especially the ones with high ticket volume. If that sounds like you, you can book a demo with the Richpanel team with just a few clicks!

Signup for a Free Account Here.

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