6 Best Support Ticket Plugins for WordPress We Love

Customer experience is incredibly important in today's competitive landscape. A Gartner survey reported that 89% of businesses now compete with one another mostly on the quality of customer experience they provide. A few years back, only 36% of companies used that as a differentiator.

No matter how independent you want your visitors to be when they use self-service support on your WordPress site, it's always a good idea to have clearly available methods by which they can directly contact you for help. Live chat is always a good choice. Contact forms are definitely a must.

But what about support tickets?

Part of ensuring that your website's customer experience remains solid is by providing spot-on customer support whenever and however your visitors need it.

A support ticket system is one more option by which your customers can reach out, and is often a more convenient and informative contact option for the both of you.

And guess what? There are WordPress plugins to help you create and integrate a support ticket system into your WordPress.

The Best Support Ticket Plugins for WordPress

One of the great things about a support ticket system is that it enables you to:

Handle a high quantity of inquiries simultaneously.

Create priorities and manage accordingly.

Respond within a specific timeframe, but not have to drop everything to manage it (that way you can also remain focused and productive).

Delegate based on the type of issue as well as your team members' expertise.

Offer consistent and on-brand responses, especially if you have canned messaging you can use when answering common questions and issues.

Support ticket systems are also good for your customers, especially millennials who prefer not to get stuck on hold waiting for a customer support representative to answer.

Now, what you really want to know is…

How do you set up this support system on your WordPress site? Well, there are of course plugins that will get the job done. Here are six of the best support ticket plugins currently available:

When it comes to providing ticketed support, your goal is to offer convenience to visitors and control to your operations. This Support System plugin from WPMU DEV does an amazing job at both. In addition to providing you with the means to build a support ticket system on your website, it also comes with a full FAQ, too. That way, visitors can browse around for answers to their questions first before submitting a ticket to your team for assistance.

Here are some other cool features:

It integrates with Pro Sites which makes this especially attractive for developers who want to offer this as a premium service.

You'll be able to manage it all—tickets and FAQs—from a new menu in WordPress called Support.

Users not only have the ability to submit tickets, but they can also track the status of them, too.

You can create specific categories based on the most common types of ticket requests. This'll make it easier to assign issue resolution to the right team member.

The ticketing system allows for more than just text messages. Users (both the customer as well as support representative) can communicate using uploaded files, screenshots, and even embedded videos.

This is a straight-forward support ticket plugin that will help you get a ticketing system set up on your site (no need to force visitors to go to a backend portal to request help). Perhaps the best part of using this plugin is its focus on automating as much of the support process as possible, which means less time you have to spend on unnecessary responses and more consistently delivered and quality experiences for your visitors.

Here are some other cool features:

Clean, intuitive interface for you and your users.

Customers can submit tickets through your website, but can also use email if they're already a registered user.

They can also respond to support team members through email once a ticket has been opened, saving them from having to visit your site every time.

Customers can re-open their support tickets if any issue arises again or they're unsatisfied with the resolution.

You can store pre-made responses within this dashboard that support staff can use when responding to common questions.

HTML email templates are provided by the developer so you can send the same message, layout, and designed email to every customer.

Auto-responders are included so that everyone receives acknowledgment that a ticket has been submitted.

The one thing to be aware of with this plugin is the disclaimer about email piping (i.e. being able to respond to tickets via email). According to the developer, your web host needs to support cPanel, sub-domain creation, and webmail in order for this feature to work.

This feature-rich plugin surprisingly offers all of the support system functionality a small business website would need right out of the box. While there are some awesome premium features available with this plugin, I don't think there'll be much of a need for them starting out what with how feature-packed the free version of the plugin is. That said, once you're ready to scale your support system, this plugin is ready to grow alongside your needs.

Here are some other cool features:

Your support representatives will receive email notifications for every stage of the ticket lifecycle.

Multiple support agents can be assigned the same ticket, so your team can collaborate if the issue crosses different departments/products/areas of interest.

You can enable file uploads if you want your support team and users to be able to communicate visually, which is oftentimes more effective than just a text description.

This plugin syncs with e-commerce tools like WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads so you can provide product-specific support.

If you require customers to consent to a Terms & Conditions before contacting you for support, this plugin will take care of that additional requirement.

Support reps can create tickets on behalf of customers if the requests come through other channels like email, social media, or phone.

You can track the original source of the support ticket request (if it didn't come through the form).

Time tracking is included.

Although this plugin is a great solution in general for providing ticketed support on a website, I'd argue that there are two specific users that will want this one: WordPress developers (specifically, those who design themes and plugins) and e-commerce business owners. With Envato Marketplace and WooCommerce integration, this plugin really does make the process of providing support to customers fast and easy.

Here are some other cool features:

There are no restrictions on how many tickets you can process or customers you can support.

You can customize ticket fields, color schemes, and auto-responder email messages.

Screenshots and uploads are supported.

Customer support reps can leave internal comments for a more comprehensive record of issue and resolution.

Plugin directly integrates with WooCommerce. This means that customers can select a specific order and product they want to inquire about and your agent will have all the details before even reaching out.

Plugin also integrates with Envato. So, if you sell themes or plugins there, you can verify that the customers who contacted you have actually purchased your product and are covered under the support period before responding.

It's also worth noting that the developer of this plugin is incredibly responsive when people leave comments or questions. New features and updates to this plugin are also encouraged by the developer and you'll see that they acknowledge receipt of those suggestions and will also announce when those features will be integrated into a future update.

When security is a concern for your customer support interactions, this is the plugin you'll want to use. The login system is encrypted, protected against brute force attacks, and requires users to complete a Captcha before getting in. Another great feature of this plugin is its focus on creating more organized management of your support system, which will save you a lot of time in unnecessary back-and-forth in the long run.

Here are some other cool features:

The advanced secure login.

The plugin comes with a knowledgebase tool, so your support ticket system will offer customers the option for self-support first if they want it.

Login through social media can be enabled or disabled.

Email templates are provided to automate the process of responding to clients.

You can create categories and sub-categories for better organization and assignment of tickets.

If customers mistakenly create duplicate or related tickets, your support agents can merge them and avoid the confusion later of trying to deal with the same issue.

Customers can provide a rating for each support ticket, letting you know how well you've done to resolve their problem.

You can monetize this support system by offering premium support plans to customers who want faster or more personal support.

Truth be told, there aren't too many free WordPress plugins that will get the job done when it comes to providing a high-end support ticket system. This one, however, is an exception. It's well-built, well-supported, and the free version comes with everything you'll need to get started with a fast Ajax-based support system.

Here are some other cool features:

This plugin comes with the ability to build a support ticket system as well as FAQ.

Ticketing system, FAQs, and support CTA are 100% responsive.

Unlimited tickets can be submitted by your customers (or your support representatives on behalf of them).

If you want to accept tickets from non-registered users, you can enable guest ticket submission and secure it with anti-spam to protect your site in the process.

Your support staff can log private notes within each ticket to be made available to the rest of the team.

Canned replies and email templates are available for more streamlined and consistent responses.

You can customize your system's ticket fields, categories, priorities, and statuses.

You can also edit the ticketing page with custom CSS if you aren't content with the pre-defined style or layout.

Built-in analytics are available for each support agent's performance.

If you want to upgrade to the premium version of this plugin, you'll receive features like email piping, ticket exportation to CSV, sync to Google calendar, as well as both WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads integration.

Wrapping Up

According to Zendesk, 82% of people will stop doing business with a brand if customer service is poorly executed. So, does that mean you should bail on providing options for direct service out of fear that you might deliver a bad customer experience?

No, absolutely not. What it means is that you should use a reliable support ticket system so you may provide reliable, consistent, and timely support to your customers.

Source: 6 Best Support Ticket Plugins for WordPress We Love