40 Customer Service Tools You’ve Never Heard Of (But Should Be Using in Your Business)

Most businesses are already familiar with the industry giants like Zendesk and Intercom.

But what about the niche customer service tools that solve real problems for support teams, yet don’t have the marketing budgets or brand recognition to get their fair share of the limelight?

That’s why we dug deeper to find lesser-known customer service tools recommended by Reddit, Product Hunt, and real communities of customer service specialists who know better than marketing speak.

The tools in our list provide fresh approaches to common challenges that plague support teams, or specialized functionality.

Ready to discover the little-known customer service tools that have the potential to reinvent how you serve your customers?

There’s something for every support team in this list.

(Want to jump ahead? Click here to dive straight into the recommendations.)

The importance of selecting the right tools for customer service

The right customer service tools can transform your entire support operation, boosting satisfaction for customers, employees and investors.

For your customers: 72% of customers say they’ll only stay loyal to companies providing the fastest service. Faster issues resolutions, more personalized interactions, and 24/7 support options.

For your support team: Customer service tools can eliminate repetitive tasks, streamline workflows, and increase retention by decreasing burnout and boosting job satisfaction.

For your bottom line: Organizations that implement the right toolset report increased customer retention rates, with just a 5% boost in retention potentially increasing revenue by up to 95%.

How we created this list of customer service software tools

Finding customer tools that have true utility requires going beyond the typical listicles, directories and software review sites.

To create this list, we took a much more hands-on approach to research.

Our methodology included:

• Analyzing dozens of Reddit threads from communities like r/CustomerSuccess, r/SaaS, and r/sysadmin
• Investigating customer service tools that launched on Product Hunt in the past two years (including these)
• Signing up for free trials and testing out the various tools
• Excluding outdated or now obsolete tools (many mentioned are now out of business)
• Reading customer testimonials in detail
• Prioritizing solutions that solve specific pain points or had repeated mentions across platforms and niche communities

We excluded the usual suspects from our list because business owners are already fully aware of them. Some of these lesser-known tools provide more specialized functionality at a fraction of the cost, plus offer more responsive support and greater flexibility to accommodate your specific needs.

What resulted was this list of tools, each with a unique approach to support or a niche set of features.

Let’s explore category by category.

40 customer service tools at a glance

• Customer Communication Tools: Keeping (Gmail-native help desk), OpenPhone, Clerk, Chatwith, Letterbird, Boei, Warmly
• AI-Powered Support Tools: Siit, Command AI, ResolveAI, GPTBots.ai, My AskAI, DocsBot AI, Help.center, Zowie
• Support Team Collaboration Tools: ThriveDesk, ClearFeed, Brevy Beta
• Knowledge Management Tools: HelpKit, Document360, Stonly, Guidde, Helpjuice
• Customer Feedback & Insights Tools: Feedspace, FeedBear, Olvy, Viable, ProductMix
• Automation Specialists: Typedesk, OneSchema, WotNot, Landbot.io, Botisfy
• Industry-Specific Solutions: AppFollow, Ioni, LegalNow, Ditto Insurance
• Self-Service Champions: Supporthero, Chatwoot, osTicket

The best customer service communication tools

These lesser known customer care tools have the potential to transform different areas of your business by allowing your support team to provide seamless communication regardless of the customer’s preferred channel.

1. Keeping – A help desk built right on top of Gmail

Our tool Keeping transforms your Gmail inbox into a powerful help desk.

No new software or tab switching needed. Your team gets access to a complete set of robust collaboration features right within the familiar interface you already know and love. Shared notes, collision detection, assignments, prioritization, automation – it’s all there.

Your support team can use the built-in features to track emails, reuse saved replies, set up custom rules, and streamline other ongoing processes so your business can run more efficiently.

Training and adoption time for agents is virtually non-existent.

Keeping can help your business run like a much larger operation (but without the added headcount).

Ideal for: Teams who want sophisticated help desk functionality right within the Google ecosystem

2. OpenPhone – A shared phone system for customer service

OpenPhone is a phone system that puts all your business phone number’s calls, texts and contacts together in one easy-to-manage app interface that works across all devices.

Inside, your team members can collaborate in a number of ways by adding comments, transferring calls between team members internally, and helping streamline the entire phone support process.

Ideal for: Growing remote teams needing a professional business phone presence

3. Clerk – A text messaging integration with Slack

Clerk connects your team’s SMS inbox with Slack.

Throughout the day, agents can then respond to clients directly via the platform they’re already using for team communication. It’s a brand new channel in Slack, clearly organized by phone number.

They even offer AI agents that can help confirm appointments, send review requests, and send quick support responses via templates.

Ideal for: Teams on Slack aiming to streamline or add SMS processes

4. Chatwith – An AI chatbot trained on your content

Your team can use Chatwith to train AI support agents on your content, processes, knowledge bases and backend data in minutes. This can help automate a number of sales and support processes, reducing the number of inquiries that land in your team’s inbox.

The more info you feed it, the more detailed the responses tend to be. Your agent can answer specific questions about inventory, generate documents, explain product details, help sell your product, and more – all while keeping things personalized.

Ideal for: Complex products or service companies wanting to automate first-line support

5. Letterbird – A free, simplified contact form solution

Letterbird is a free web-based contact form that eliminates the need for a company email address. The beauty of the tool is in its simplicity – it does this one thing and focuses on doing it right. Plus it does a great job at eliminating the annoying spam messages that tend to find their way into your inbox.

Ideal for: Freelancers, solopreneurs and growing businesses wanting a simple but professional contact system

6. Boei – A cross-channel contact widget

Boei’s a fully customizable widget that brings together all your customer’s communication channels, plus adds features that help you capture more leads.

Customize it to meet your team’s needs, embed a few lines of code anywhere on your site, then start seeing improvements in terms of customer interactions almost immediately.

Email, chat, phone, and social media – it integrates everything seamlessly.

Ideal for: Businesses looking to serve more customers and capture more leads via their website

7. Warmly – An automated, personalized engagement tool

Warmly is a tool that helps you identify warm leads who visit your website, then create personalized follow-up workflows across their preferred channels.

While not strictly a tool for customer support, it can be used to help serve and convert customers who have buying questions.

Ideal for: Sales and marketing teams looking to conduct personalized warm outreach

The best AI-powered customer service tools

Artificial intelligence has changed the game when it comes to automation, instant customer assistance, and personalization.

Next up are the best niche tools that use AI to automate customer service.

8. Siit – An AI assistant for knowledge management

Siit is an AI assistant that gives employees and customers personalized answers to their questions. You feed it your internal knowledge bases, documentation, swipe files and other resources, and it does its thing.

Integrate it directly with Slack and Microsoft Teams, then give your team access to instant knowledge without leaving the platforms.

While other tools sound overly robotic, we find Siit especially good at giving human-like responses. Plus it continuously learns from conversations and improves itself with each new interaction.

Ideal for: Distributed teams looking to reduce their number of support tickets or improve internal knowledge sharing

9. Command AI – An AI user assistance platform

Command AI is a user assistance platform that lives inside your product, helping users navigate your software with contextual guidance and support. It understands user needs and can take actions to help them accomplish tasks more efficiently.

The platform combines intelligent search, guided workflows, and autonomous actions to provide a seamless self-service experience. It analyzes user behavior to identify common pain points and proactively offer assistance before frustration leads to support tickets.

Ideal for: SaaS companies wanting to improve user adoption and decrease support volume

10. ResolveAI – A completely autonomous support agent solution

ResolveAI is an AI platform that automatically resolves customer support tickets by taking action on behalf of customers. Unlike basic chatbots, it can understand complex queries and access your backend systems to implement solutions.

The platform handles repetitive support tasks like password resets, subscription changes, and order status updates without human intervention. It integrates with your existing CRM and help desk tools to augment your current workflow rather than replace it.

Ideal for: Customer service teams with high volumes of support requests

11. GPTBots.ai – An enterprise AI agent platform

GPTBots.ai delivers end-to-end AI solutions for enterprises. Whether you need customer service, knowledge search, or data analysis assistance, there’s a solution in the form of an AI agent.

It learns from your best support agents, improving itself with every interaction.

It handles all strict security requirements, and can be tweaked to sound authentically human.

Ideal for: Enterprise organizations in regulated industries who need AI agent support

12. My AskAI – An AI support assistant for SaaS companies

My AskAI is built specifically for SaaS businesses. It understands software terminology and common support scenarios that generic AI tools miss.

It does more than just answer questions. Instead, it actually learns from every conversation to spot patterns in support requests, pinpoint recurring issues and suggest fixes.

This creates a direct pipeline between customer complaints and product improvements. Your support team becomes a goldmine of product insights rather than just a cost center.

Ideal for: SaaS companies looking to reduce support volume and gain valuable analytics

13. DocsBot AI – A custom ChatGPT for businesses

DocsBot AI turns your existing documentation into a smart assistant that actually knows your products. It reads what you’ve already written and builds a brain that answers like your best support agent.

No constant baby-sitting or retraining needed. Just drop it into your website, app, or internal tools through simple widgets, and you’re up and running. It can be implemented even by non-technical users in an afternoon.

Ideal for: Companies with complex products requiring an AI solution to answer technical product questions

14. Help.center – An AI-first customer self-service solution

Help.center turns your knowledge base into an instant answer machine powered by ChatGPT. It creates a branded yourcompany.help.center domain that feels like a natural extension of your website.

It gets smarter with every customer interaction, learning which answers work and which don’t. The system even tracks when it can’t answer something confidently, showing you exactly where your documentation needs improvement.

Ideal for: Companies wanting to reduce support tickets through high quality AI-powered self-service

15. Zowie – An AI-powered conversational automation tool

Zowie handles up to 70% of customer questions automatically across all your channels. It’s constantly learning about your products and common support issues, getting better with each interaction.

The system transforms your internal documents into a self-service knowledge base without any manual work. Its multilingual capabilities mean you can support customers worldwide without hiring teams of translators.

Ideal for: Growing companies with international customers

The best support team collaboration software tools

These collaboration tools can help your support team work together seamlessly to respond to customers faster and more effectively. Whether it’s breaking down information silos, preventing duplicate responses, or quality assurance across your support team, you’ll find something here that can help get your support operation to the next level.

16. ThriveDesk – A simple help desk for startups

ThriveDesk strips away all the enterprise bloat to deliver just what small teams actually need. No complicated features you’ll never use – just clean, intuitive support tools that work.

The interface feels immediately familiar, which means your team can start using it right away. It plugs into tools you already use like Slack and Shopify without forcing you to change how you work.

Ideal for: Small businesses and startups needing help desk functionality

17. ClearFeed – A Slack channel inbox

ClearFeed turns your Slack into a proper help desk without forcing you to adopt yet another platform. It’s support infrastructure built on what you already use.

It organizes incoming requests into a manageable queue, tracks response times, and maintains support history – all within Slack. No more jumping between tabs or losing context when handling customer issues.

Ideal for: Slack teams wanting to streamline their support processes without adding new platforms

18. Brevy Beta – A visual website feedback layer

Brevy adds a Google Docs-style commenting system directly to your live website. Instead of confusing email threads about “the button on the pricing page,” team members can just point and comment.

It automatically syncs with Slack and Jira, creating trackable tasks from visual feedback without any manual copying and pasting. This slashes the time it takes to document and fix website issues that frustrate customers.

Ideal for: Teams needing to quickly identify and resolve customer-reported website issues

The best knowledge management tools for customer service

The following tools can make it easier for your customer service team to organize, store, and share the critical info that helps serve customers effectively.

19. HelpKit – A Notion-powered knowledge base documentation platform

HelpKit turns your existing Notion docs into a professional help center in minutes. No migration headaches or learning a new system – just leverage what you’ve already built.

It creates both embeddable widgets and full documentation sites directly from your Notion content. Your team can update help articles in real-time without needing developer assistance or complex publishing workflows.

Ideal for: Teams already using Notion creating customer-facing documentation

20. Document360 – A comprehensive knowledge base software

Document360 gives you industrial-strength documentation tools that grow alongside your business. It’s built for complex products and multiple contributors without creating chaos.

The version control system keeps everything organized even with dozens of writers. Its analytics show exactly which articles are performing well, which search terms are coming up empty, and where you’re losing readers.

Ideal for: Growing companies needing sophisticated documentation management

21. Stonly – An interactive guide platform for customers and support agents

Stonly creates help content that adapts as users navigate through it. Instead of static walls of text, it builds interactive guides that respond to what the customer actually needs.

It delivers assistance exactly when and where people get stuck – embedded in your app, on your website, or in your knowledge base. Several companies report that customers actually prefer using these guides to contacting support.

Ideal for: Companies looking to reduce support tickets by creating engaging self-service options

22. Guidde – An AI video documentation tool

Guidde turns screen recordings into professional tutorials in seconds. The AI automatically adds annotations, step indicators, and searchable transcripts without you touching video editing software.

Support teams can respond to “how do I” questions with custom video walkthroughs faster than they could type out instructions. Anyone on your team can create professional-looking help videos without special skills.

Ideal for: Visual-oriented support teams

23. Helpjuice – A data-driven knowledge base platform

Helpjuice doesn’t just host your help articles – it tells you exactly how to improve them. The analytics show which content works, which search terms come up empty, and where customers give up.

It builds beautiful, SEO-friendly knowledge bases that customers actually want to use. Virgin Mobile saw their self-service click-through rate jump from 5% to 45% after implementation – a 9x improvement.

Ideal for: Companies seeking to increase self-service usage

The best tools for customer feedback & insights

The following set of tools can help you continually improve your service and offering by giving insights into customers’ real needs and feedback.

Collect actionable data, identify areas for improvement, then measure the impact of your changes.

24. Feedspace – An organic growth and video testimonial tool

Feedspace captures the emotion behind customer feedback through video and audio testimonials. Text surveys can’t convey the enthusiasm or frustration in a customer’s voice.

It automatically builds a “Wall of Love” from your best feedback that works both as an internal insights tool and a marketing asset. This makes collecting feedback actually enjoyable for customers rather than a chore.

Ideal for: Businesses wanting to build authentic social proof

25. FeedBear – A customer feedback management platform

FeedBear pulls back the curtain on your development process. Customers see when you’ve added their suggestions to the roadmap and get automatic notifications when features they requested go live.

This transparency transforms the feedback process into a powerful retention tool. Customers stick around when they see you’re actually listening and implementing their ideas.

Ideal for: Product teams wanting to build customer loyalty by creating engaging feedback processes

26. Olvy – An automated user feedback loop

Olvy finds the signal in your feedback noise. It spots patterns across seemingly unrelated customer comments and connects those insights directly to development priorities.

Its collaboration tools ensure feedback doesn’t get lost in the handoff between support and product teams. Several SaaS companies discovered critical improvement opportunities through Olvy that weren’t obvious from looking at individual tickets.

Ideal for: Cross-functional teams coordinating customer feedback collection and product development

27. Viable – An AI-powered feedback analysis platform

Viable reads all your customer feedback so you don’t have to. Its AI analyzes support tickets, NPS responses, reviews, and chat logs without requiring manual tagging or categorization.

Instead of just showing data, it delivers specific, actionable recommendations based on what it finds. The system connects dots across different feedback channels that human analysts might miss.

Ideal for: Data-driven companies wanting to collect actionable insights from customers

28. ProductMix – A data-driven product decision tool

ProductMix eliminates the “loudest voice in the room” problem from product planning. It turns scattered customer feedback into a structured roadmap based on actual data.

The platform creates a direct pipeline from customer needs to implemented solutions. Its AI analysis tools spot hidden patterns and opportunities that stakeholders might otherwise miss or dismiss.

Ideal for: Product teams seeking to eliminate subjective decision-making

The best automation tools for customer service

These tools can help your support teams eliminate repetitive tasks, create automated processes, and open up more bandwidth to scale. Your support agents can evolve from doing tedious manual work, to higher level issues requiring human judgment and empathy.

29. Typedesk – An AI text expander for boosted productivity

Typedesk inserts entire paragraphs anywhere you type with just a few keystrokes. Support agents can create a library of product explanations, troubleshooting steps, and common responses they can use across any app.

The AI suggests improvements and personalizes standard responses based on context. Reddit users report saving several hours each week on repetitive typing while maintaining personalized interactions.

Ideal for: Support teams handling high volumes of repetitive inquiries

30. OneSchema – A CSV data import solution

OneSchema ends the nightmare of helping customers with broken spreadsheet imports. It provides a clean interface for fixing formatting issues before they crash your systems.

Support teams can cut data import time by up to 90% while eliminating the frustrating back-and-forth when customer uploads inevitably contain errors. Several product managers credit it with significantly reducing data-related support tickets.

Ideal for: Companies who help customers migrate data or upload information wanting to eliminate technical formatting bottlenecks

31. WotNot – A no-code AI agent builder

WotNot lets anyone on your team build sophisticated AI chatbots without writing code. The drag-and-drop interface makes automation accessible even to non-technical support staff.

You build it once and deploy it everywhere – website, WhatsApp, SMS, and other channels – with a single configuration. The system tracks performance and shows exactly where human agents still need to step in.

Ideal for: Support teams without development resources wanting to automate repetitive inquiries

32. Landbot.io – A conversational experience builder

Landbot.io creates guided conversations that feel natural while collecting information or solving problems. The visual builder makes it easy to design complex conversation flows without coding skills.

It plugs directly into your CRM, help desk, and payment systems to handle complete customer journeys automatically. The result is fewer routine questions reaching your human agents.

Ideal for: Companies wanting to automate initial customer interactions using conversational flows

33. Botisfy – A multi-channel chat automation tool

Botisfy builds chatbots for all your customer touchpoints without requiring any technical skills. Deploy across your website, Facebook, and messaging apps from a single interface.

The system handles initial customer interactions, gathers information, and either solves simple issues or routes complex ones to the right department. It’s particularly affordable for small businesses just starting with automation.

Ideal for: Small businesses looking to automate initial customer interactions while keeping things personalized

The best industry-specific solutions for customer service

This final list of specialized customer service tools help check off boxes for companies with unique support requirements across different niches and sectors.

34. AppFollow – A mobile app support platform

AppFollow turns scattered app store reviews into actionable support tickets. Instead of manually checking multiple platforms, you get all feedback in one organized dashboard.

It bridges the gap between customer complaints and development priorities. Mobile app teams use it to quickly identify critical issues affecting ratings before they damage your app’s reputation.

Ideal for: Mobile app developers and companies needing to manage their app store presence

35. Ioni – A regulatory compliance assistant

Ioni makes complex regulations manageable for support teams in heavily regulated industries. Its AI automates compliance tasks like gap analysis, research, and policy drafting.

The knowledge base continuously updates with changing regulations, so your agents always have access to the latest compliance information. This reduces legal risks in customer communications while maintaining accurate responses.

Ideal for: Organizations that need to provide compliant customer support in heavily regulated sectors

36. LegalNow – An AI legal assistant

LegalNow makes legal processes accessible without a law degree. Support teams can answer contract questions and generate customized agreements without escalating to legal departments.

It translates complex legal concepts into terms that customers can actually understand. Non-specialists can confidently handle legal aspects of customer support while maintaining professional standards.

Ideal for: Businesses that regularly handle contracts and legal documents

37. Ditto Insurance – An insurance support platform

Ditto Insurance translates insurance jargon into human language. It helps agents explain complex policies and options in terms customers actually understand.

Support staff can quickly access policy details, coverage explanations, and comparison tools during customer interactions. The platform combines technical accuracy with plain-English communication about normally confusing insurance topics.

Ideal for: Insurance providers needing to streamline complex policies and option explanations to customers

The best self-service customer support tools

Self-service tools empower customers to find answers and solve problems without contacting support. These solutions are essential because they satisfy the 67% of customers who prefer self-service over speaking with an agent, while significantly reducing support costs and allowing teams to focus on complex issues that truly require human assistance.

38. Supporthero – An in-app knowledge base

Supporthero shows help content based on exactly what screen the user is looking at. It’s like having a support agent peek over the customer’s shoulder and point to the answer.

The system can cut support tickets by up to 50% by making relevant documentation appear at the exact moment of confusion. This contextual approach feels much more intuitive than sending customers to a separate help center.

Ideal for: SaaS companies looking to reduce support requests with context-aware help functionality directly within their interface

39. Chatwoot – An open-source live chat solution

Chatwoot gives you enterprise-grade chat features without the enterprise price tag or limitations. The open-source platform gives you complete control over your data and infrastructure.

It includes capabilities normally found only in premium tools – automation, saved responses, and extensive integrations. Technical teams can modify any aspect of the system to fit their exact requirements.

Ideal for: Technical teams wanting complete control over messaging

40. osTicket – An open-source ticketing system

osTicket eliminates per-agent pricing with a self-hosted ticketing system you can run for just the cost of your server. It handles core help desk functionality without ongoing license fees.

The platform includes ticket routing, automation rules, and knowledge base integration. Since it’s open source, technical teams can modify any aspect of the system to match your unique support workflows.

Ideal for: Budget-conscious organizations with technical resources who need a customizable ticketing system without recurring per-agent costs.

Real-world customer support tool success stories

Marketing-speak can only tell you so much about how a tool works.

Here are three examples of companies that have utilized niche tools for customer support to improve specific outcomes for their businesses.

Goal Grass ↔ Keeping (Scaled customer support)

Goal Grass is a small product company that was juggling Google Groups and Gmail labels to respond to 40 to 50 customer inquiries each day.

They switched to Keeping to streamline their support workflows within Gmail, their preferred platform.

Outcomes:

• ✔️ Reduced response times for tickets
• ✔️ Boosted overall efficiency while handling increasing support volume
• ✔️ Simplified team collaboration by bringing in staff from other departments when needed
• ✔️ Eliminated duplicate responses through new features (collision detection, assignment)

Beerwulf ↔ Zowie (Automated AI chatbot)

Beerwulf doubled their ROI on customer service by using Zowie’s AI chatbot functionality to engage customers browsing their website.

Zowie enabled the Beerwulf team to support customers across ten different European markets without needing to expand their support team.

Outcomes:

• ✔️ Doubled ROI on customer service investment
• ✔️ Added multilingual support across different markets
• ✔️ Maintained service quality despite reduced human agent input

Virgin Mobile ↔ Helpjuice (Boosted self-service)

Virgin Mobile set out to reduce their number of customer support inquiries by offering self-service options.

They implemented a knowledge base via Helpjuice to create a data-driven, SEO-friendly solution that made it easy for customers to solve their own problems.

Outcomes:

• ✔️ 40% increase in overall self-service adoption
• ✔️ 9x improvement in self-service click-through rate (from 5% to 45%)
• ✔️ Reduced ticket volume and support costs overall
• ✔️ Improved customer satisfaction and faster ticket resolution times

How to choose the right customer service tools for your business

Selecting the right customer service tools from the countless options available can be overwhelming. Here’s a practical framework to guide your decision-making process:

Key factors to consider when making your selection

Essential questions to ask

• What are our biggest pain points when it comes to current support processes?
• Which time-consuming tasks could we automate with software tools?
• What features would make the biggest impact on our daily workflows?
• How complex would integration be?

Potential red flags

See any of these red flags pop up as you’re evaluating options? It might be worth considering a simpler solution.

Keep an eye out for:

• ⚠️ Highly complex interfaces
• ⚠️ Excessive features your team will never use
• ⚠️ Hidden costs or enterprise-level prices (especially for non-necessary features)
• ⚠️ Multiple overlapping solutions all addressing the same problems
• ⚠️ The need for ongoing training
• ⚠️ Excessive management time requirements
• ⚠️ Envisioned resistance from team members or other friction

The best choice of tool is the one that solves your team’s current problems without creating new ones or adding new layers of complexity.

Frequently asked questions about customer service tools

Designing your unique support ecosystem

Reddit and Product Hunt are great resources for finding hidden gem solutions for customer support and other elements of our businesses.

Our research showed that bloated all-in-one platforms are being recommended less by growing companies. Instead, customer service specialists are increasingly recommending innovative niche tools that handle one aspect of support exceptionally well. These specialized solutions tackle specific pain points the industry giants haven’t addressed yet.

The takeaway? There’s no need to brute force your workflows to fit a single platform’s vision.

The ideal support setup is a customized ecosystem of tools that work together to fill gaps, solve problems, and ease your team’s manual input.