It’s no longer surprising that consumers want to message businesses. Chat and messaging are already common features of many websites and apps, whether it’s for live support or peer-to-peer conversations. Simply put, the face of conversations is changing. Conversations are important—they’re the building blocks of relationships. Relationships with our families, friends, colleagues, even our mortal enemies are mediated through conversations—or a lack of them.

We’re putting a spotlight on our brand new cast of app integrations. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

In 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype for $8.5 billion and turned it into a terrific program for voice and video communication and a winning investment. In 2018, Slack signed a contract with AWS to spend at least $250 million a year for five years to enrich the Slack platform and take the ‘business collaboration software market’ by storm.

Ride-hailing business Bolt has a unique view of customer support: instead of focusing on delighting customers, its primary goal is to resolve issues at lightning speed. “We’re not in the business of delighting our customers when they reach out for support. We understand they want a solution and they want it yesterday,” said Toby Humphrey, product manager at Bolt.

Many businesses boast about having a focus on customer satisfaction, but in many cases, it’s actually an afterthought. Businesses must adopt a strong customer-first strategy if they are going to truly meet customer needs and create amazing experiences. Let’s take a look at ways to build this strategy.

You get a support call escalated to you one minute, your boss tells you to call a different customer the next, and a few minutes later three new tickets hit your inbox, all with totally different issues. How do you and your team stay organized with your tickets when they’re flying in from everywhere?! If all customer problems came in through a single channel, such as email, it would make organizing and keeping track of your tickets so much easier.

If you have been on the lookout for a helpdesk solution to help you track incoming support emails, you have probably already come across several options. This post discusses the types of solutions available in the market, without getting deep into individual features. Hopefully this will provide a decision framework that will help you determine the type of solutions you need, so that afterwards you can go on and evaluate only those that fall into the category you need.