9 types of customer service you should know

Customer service is like a Swiss Army knife: the more tools you have, the more useful it is. Particularly in an age where quality customer service is often the differentiating factor in a person’s decision to buy, having the right tools is essential to your success.

That’s why we’ve listed the top types of customer service so you can decide which is best suited for your target audience. Consider the pros and cons of each approach as you create the ideal customer service strategy for your business.

9 essential types of customer service

1. AI-powered support

Of all the customer service channels available today, AI-powered support is quickly becoming a favorite. In fact, a recent survey showed that 63% of retail organizations currently use generative AI to improve customer service. AI-powered support typically offers features such as:

• AI chatbots
• Generative AI
• Knowledge bases
• Ticket management

Pros: AI can reduce the burden on your agents by tackling simple customer service requests. By training AI-powered chatbots using your business’s data, you can quickly resolve customer queries and answer frequently asked questions while your agents focus their talents on more complex issues that require a human touch.

Cons: Your agents may resist the use of AI, seeing a chatbot as a replacement rather than an assistant. Ineffectively trained AI can also come across as robotic and lead to poor customer reactions.

Best for: Businesses looking to increase their efficiency

2. Omnichannel support

Modern technology allows customers to interact with your business through a variety of customer service channels. The challenge with this newfound availability is maintaining consistency across channels, which is why omnichannel support tools are so valuable. They offer features such as:

• Data consolidation
• Centralized customer interactions
• Omnichannel analytics
• Full system integration

Pros: Omnichannel tools allow your agents to create personalized, consistent customer interactions across all channels. Using centralized data, your team can easily pivot from channel to channel without having to start each interaction from scratch — improving your customer service experience.

Cons: Managing a large amount of customer data across multiple channels can become complicated. Increased data availability is beneficial, but requires more time from your team to sift through relevant customer information.

Best for: Businesses with a wide range of customer service channels

3. In-person point-of-purchase support

Although remote support is vital, having onsite representatives is essential for resolving customer issues quickly at your point of sale. In-person support offers something that the rest of these solutions do not: face-to-face interaction. Onsite agents can provide assistance in the following areas:

• Issue resolution
• Shopping assistance
• Returns processing
• Product knowledge and recommendations

Pros: Some shoppers simply want to interact with another human being — especially in retail. In-person support enhances the customer experience and creates more upselling or cross-selling opportunities.

Cons: Maintaining an in-person customer service presence can be more costly than remote options and is often limited in scope. In-person agents can only help a single customer at a time, which can lead to bottlenecks.

Best for: Brick-and-mortar businesses

4. Phone support

Possibly the oldest remote form of customer support, phone service is a key tool in any business’s customer service approach. Phone support allows customers to speak with trained human agents to resolve complex issues. This system offers features such as:

• Skill-based routing
• Live agent support
• Issue scalability
• Empathy and patience

Pros: Properly trained agents can resolve more complex issues over the phone than some automated solutions. This allows customers to quickly get the answers they need without struggling on their own through self-service solutions.

Cons: Maintaining an effective phone customer service team can be expensive, especially with the additional challenges of agent training and burnout. Agents must be capable of dealing with upset customers and resolving complex issues to be successful. Phone support can also have long wait times, leading to further customer frustration.

Best for: Businesses with the budget for a call center or an abundance of complex issues

5. Email support

Email offers the same beneficial solutions of phone support with the convenience of messaging. Customers can share long explanations for complex issues without waiting on the phone for hours. This solution includes features such as:

• Defined response times according to service level agreements (SLAs)
• Team collaboration through notes and CCing
• Organized email assignment and tagging
• Email templates

Pros: Email is versatile and offers multiple ways to enhance the customer service experience. You can use email support to resolve issues, track packages, and collect customer feedback. This communication is organized in smart inboxes — elevating your efficiency.

Cons: With a vast number of emails coming in, it can be difficult to stay on top of communication. Without proper training and organization, emails may get lost or cause confusion when a customer sends in multiple requests for the same issue.

Best for: Businesses looking for a detail-oriented digital support solution

6. Social media support

Ninety percent of social media users communicate with brands directly through social media platforms. In the digital era, offering a social media support option is essential to the success of your business. This approach lets you reach customers with features such as:

• Direct messaging
• Social listening
• Proactive brand management
• Social data analysis

Pros: Your customers are already spending time on social media, allowing you to communicate with them on a platform they already feel comfortable with. You can also leverage social listening and adjust your strategy to better meet a customer’s needs.

Cons: Social media requires quick responses and the management of multiple platforms simultaneously. Also, certain issues may be too complex to resolve on social media, which could lead to frustration from customers who are uninterested in switching channels.

Best for: Businesses with a young target audience

7. Messaging and live chat support

Live chat and SMS messaging are popular options among today’s consumers, offering the most convenience for customers who want fast support without getting stuck on the phone or waiting on an email response. This channel is popular due to its rapid-fire nature, using features like:

• Real-time answers
• Improved accessibility
• Automated workflows
• Website support widgets

Pros: Messaging and live chat offer the best combination of real-time service and convenience, making them a preferred channel among customers. These solutions also allow you to reduce customer service costs through automation.

Cons: Live chat can be somewhat limited in its capabilities. More complex issues are unlikely to be resolved using this channel, which means you’ll also need another customer support option on standby.

Best for: Businesses that want to offer real-time, flexible support solutions for busy customers

8. Chatbot customer service

Chatbots take the real-time effectiveness of live chat to the next level by removing agents from the equation altogether. Customers can interact with bots to answer quick questions while browsing on your digital platforms with features like:

• AI interactions
• Access to knowledge base answers
• Multi-lingual capabilities
• Omnichannel support

Pros: Chatbots are a significant cost saver, allowing agents to focus on more meaningful tasks. They also provide small businesses with an easy way to offer online, real-time service without investing in a full-time customer support team.

Cons: Similar to live chat support, chatbots are limited in their scope of complexity. They offer solutions available through internal knowledge bases and data without the capability of solving more hands-on issues.

Best for: Businesses with a high volume of simple customer interactions or small businesses looking for an online, real-time solution

9. Self-service support

Some customers prefer to tackle issues independently. In fact, 67% of customers would rather use a self-service solution than speak with a customer service agent. Offering a self-service portal allows your customers to handle simple issues using features such as:

• Frequently asked questions
• Knowledge bases
• Tracking tools
• Community forums

Pros: Self-service empowers your customers while redirecting simple requests away from agents. It also creates an enjoyable support experience for more independent customers.

Cons: Self-service solutions are limited to simple issues and may be ineffective if not designed and organized properly. Customers who cannot resolve their issues using self-service may be more unhappy once they pivot to an agent for support.

Best for: Businesses looking to empower customers to resolve simple issues

Ways to implement customer service with Jotform

While the type of customer service approach you choose may depend on your unique business needs, solutions like Jotform allow you to expand your capabilities and streamline your customer service management.

Jotform can elevate your business’s customer service experience by helping you with tasks such as registering new patients, giving customers discounts, and collecting user feedback. There are also multiple forms to help you better connect with your customers. For example, you can collect important data via Jotform’s easy-to-use Net Promoter Score® (NPS®) survey builder and get responses from any device.

You can also easily create feedback forms to find out what your customers think about your products or services. This data can be filtered automatically through conditional logic triggered by specific actions, allowing you to automate workflows and optimize your customer service experience. You can even set up custom email notifications for specific customer tickets, such as complaints or service requests.

Jotform can also help organize and analyze customer feedback data. Using the Jotform Report Builder, your team can generate reports from submitted forms to identify service issues, elevate service quality, and monitor SLAs. You can even integrate your Jotform data with your customer relationship management (CRM) software to increase accessibility.

Using solutions like Jotform in your customer service strategy elevates your business and improves the overall customer experience. By combining the right tools with the best approach for your business, you can create a one-of-a-kind customer experience that will set you apart from the competition.

Net Promoter^®, NPS^®, NPS Prism^®, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., NICE Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld. Net Promoter Score^SM and Net Promoter System^SM are service marks of Bain & Company, Inc., NICE Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko