A whopping 95 percent of consumers say that customer service is vital for brand loyalty.
Strongly tied to brand loyalty is stellar customer service, which can help you increase your revenue and build a more successful business in the long run. And hence, it becomes imperative that you choose the right tools to help your brand deliver delightful service to your customers.
To help you pick the right tool, we decided to compare the two leading ecommerce customer service software in the market, i.e., Gorgias & Richpanel. Read through the article to understand their strength and shortcomings and find the tool best suited for your needs.
Both Gorgias and Richpanel are explicitly built for ecommerce merchants. They rival in features, and both have thousands of customers worldwide using the tool to manage their customer service. If you’re choosing between them, you’re already on the right track.
We also understand that they are our competitors, and so we have taken the utmost care to provide our readers with an unbiased analysis while comparing the two tools.
Overview
Before we begin to break down the similarities and differences, let me share a brief overview of both the tools to set the context.
Gorgias is a customer service software designed for ecommerce stores. They’re primarily a Shopify app, but recently they’ve integrated with WooCommerce and BigCommerce. They deeply integrate with Shopify that helps support agents to deliver excellent customer support seamlessly.
Richpanel also helps ecommerce merchants manage their customer service. With Richpanel, you can easily track, manage & resolve queries in no time. You can manage all your support channels, viz., live chat, email, WhatsApp, Facebook & Instagram. This saves a lot of time & helps the support reps be more productive.
Looking for a Gorgias alternative that’s affordable & easy-to-use?
Top Differences Between Gorgias and Richpanel
Alright, let’s move on to specifics. I’ll walk you through the top areas where Gorgias & Richpanel differ in capabilities and functionality.
Supporting Platforms
Although Shopify is pretty much what everyone talks about when it comes to starting an ecommerce store, other platforms also cater to this market. The most popular ones are WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Squarespace & Magento.
Here’s a breakdown of the platforms that both tools integrate with, as of 10th January 2021.
As per the above table, Gorgias supports Shopify, Magento & BigCommerce but doesn’t support Magento & Squarespace.
On the other hand, Richpanel integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce & Magento but doesn’t support Squarespace. However, you can integrate their WhatsApp Business solution with BigCommerce.
Integrations
As you might already know, integration with other tools is super essential when it comes to managing your day-to-day business seamlessly. On that note, here’s what we found.
Gorgias integrates with a host of software that you might use to run your ecommerce business. Yotpo, Klaviyo, Postscript, Channel Reply, and pretty much any tool you can think of - Gorgias has got you covered.
Richpanel supports many app integrations like Klaviyo, Yotpo, Recharge, Smile, Aircall and over 30 others. However, the collection of apps that Gorgias integrates with is definitely larger at present.
Integrations: Gorgias ✅ | Richpanel ❌
Posts & Ad Comments
When you run ads or create posts on Facebook & Instagram, you will get comments. Some of them are support questions, while others might be queries about a product you sell. Either way, you need an easy way to respond to those comments and fast.
Richpanel doesn’t support responding to comments on Facebook or Instagram. However, Gorgias allows you to respond to comments from posts and ads in one place after you’ve integrated the brand accounts on Facebook & Instagram.
FB & Instagram Post/Ad Comment Reply: Gorgias ✅ | Richpanel ❌
Query Intent Detection
Any kind of hack to reduce your burden of responding to support tickets is a big help, especially as support agents get swamped with tickets every day from impatient customers.
Gorgias embraces this sentiment detection feature that uses machine learning to detect simple query intents like shipping, refund, exchange, etc. Furthermore, you can set up tags to direct the question to the right team or simply create automatic replies.
On Richpanel, you can create rule-based assignments using tags, but it doesn’t auto-detect the customer query’s intent.
ML-based Query Intent Auto-detection: Gorgias ✅ | Richpanel ❌
Support Channels
Customers might reach out to you from any channel they prefer, and you need to be ready for it.
With Gorgias, you can manage support on live chat, email, Facebook & Instagram. Richpanel also allows you to support your customers across those channels, but they got an additional one, i.e., WhatsApp.
Pricing
Gorgias comes with four plans; the lowest one starts at $60/month. You get 350 tickets/month. If you want to add more tickets, you need to pay $25 for 100 tickets. This rate goes down as the plan increases.
Richpanel’s lowest plan starts at $100/month, where you get 500 conversations/month. Their other two plans are priced at $350/month and $800/month respectively.
P.S.: Both tickets and conversations mean the same thing. Take a look at their definitions below.
Gorgias: “A ticket is a conversation, including multiple replies on the same thread, with a customer, regardless of channel. It can be on email, phone, chat, etc. Usage only includes tickets that contain a response sent from Gorgias.”
Richpanel: "A conversation consists of all messages related to the same customer question, no matter the medium. So one conversation can be a collection of emails, chat messages, and/or phone logs."
If you’re just starting a store and need basic support, you might not want to pay $100/month, to begin with. Hence, Gorgias, with a higher ticket limit as well, (starting at $60/month) would be the better plan.
Top Similarities Between Gorgias and Richpanel
Just knowing the differences isn’t enough to make an informed decision, is it? So, let’s look at some of the features that are common to both Gorgias & Richpanel.
Multi-store Connections
If you run more than one ecommerce business, it’s quite challenging to manage support for all of them. On top of that, if you have to log-in & log-out multiple times just to respond to a support query, it’s a clear inconvenience.
Whether you're using Gorgias or Richpanel, you can connect multiple stores to the same account and manage all the support channels for your stores from a single dashboard.
Multi-channel Support
Both Gorgias & Richpanel offer multi-channel support to help you respond to your customers across multiple channels. You can reply to your customers over email, live chat, Facebook, Instagram & WhatsApp (only on Richpanel).
ℹ️ Note: Richpanel supports one extra platform, i.e., WhatsApp.
Macros
More often than not, support reps end up answering the same questions every day. Questions like, “Where’s my order?” “What’s the delivery time?” are surprisingly common. Macros can help answer these recurring questions. Macros are pre-made responses you can create to resolve your customer queries faster.
Fortunately, both Gorgias & Richpanel support macros to help your customers save time and increase productivity. You can also insert a macro to a rule (say, if they ask to cancel an order); that helps you save time even more.
ℹ️ Note: On Gorgias, you’ll have to create the macro and the rule separately. But on Richpanel, you can make the macro and the rule at the same time.
Access Customer Info Easily
As a support rep, you know it’s super helpful to have the customer information handy while replying to a query.
Luckily, both Gorgias & Richpanel come equipped with this feature. You can see the customer’s name, email address, order id, and a bunch of other information right on the screen. You can simply refer to that information and reply with proper context.
ℹ️ Note: Richpanel also lets you see Product Interactions, i.e., products bought, products that are in the cart, and the ones they viewed.
Change Orders from the Dashboard
Suppose a customer asks to change the details of a particular order. In that case, you’d have to go to your Shopify (or whatever platform you’re using) dashboard, edit the order there, and then reply to the customer with the new order ID with a confirmation message. It’s hectic and inconvenient.
This is why you will like this feature from Gorgias & Richpanel. You can refund, place, edit or cancel an order right from the support dashboard—no need to hop around tabs trying to edit an order.
ℹ️ Note: Richpanel goes a bit further to provide you with an additional option, i.e., changing the address.
Adding Tags
Tagging a conversation helps you segregate and prfioritize tickets. You may want to respond to specific tickets promptly or assign a set to a particular team.
This feature is available on both Gorgias and Richpanel.
Snooze Tickets
Besides the open/close status on tickets, there’s generally an option to snooze a ticket too.
In a scenario where you need more information from another department to respond to a customer, you can temporarily snooze that conversation. In another case, you might be waiting for the customer to respond; you can snooze that ticket for a brief period of time.
ℹ️ Note: Richpanel adds another option to its Snooze feature, i.e., Till Customer Reply, which gives you peace of mind - you don’t need to remember to follow-up.
Customer Reviews
Real Customer Reviews: Gorgias
Company: Gent.One
Review: “We were looking for a chat that was able to expand to support multiple channels & brands, and we found that with GORGIAS!”
Company: Sash Bag
Review: “Gorgias customer service is above and beyond the standard tech experience, they are awesome to work with!”
Company: Simple Pledge
Review: “Great App, superb support team - quick response helped us set everything up. The App itself has cool features with Shopify. We are pleased with the system.”
Real Customer Reviews: Richpanel
Company: Frenchie Bulldog
Review: “We were using Zendesk before, and we want a simple yet effective multi-channel customer service platform. We also wanted an easy to understand dashboard and analytics. We were able to get all of that with Richpanel at a very affordable price. It was effortless to set up, and the power replies were great. Their support is very hands-on. Amit, Dorai, Ayush, and Manoj were awesome!”
Company: UMAi Dry
Review: “We are finding Richpanel has brought structure and sanity to our rapidly growing support team. We've been able to quickly graduate from canned responses and an anaemic Help Center to a truly robust means of supporting customers without losing our minds in the meantime.”
Company: ZUP Boards
Review: “Awesome app & amazing support team! This has made our customer interactions so much more efficient and organized by compiling our emails, Facebook messenger, and our chats all into one convenient place. Plus, you don't have to dig through Shopify to find order details, as they are all connected right inside your RichPanel inbox. Highly recommend!”
Common FAQs
1. If I just started my ecommerce store, should I go with Gorgias or Richpanel?
Both Gorgias & Richpanel is equipped with all the features to help you manage your store’s customer service. However, if the cost is a constraint, you can start with Gorgias as the Basic plan starts at $60/month, whereas Richpanel begins at $350/month.
But both the tools are targeted at enterprises, and their best features are reserved for the expensive plans. In that case, you can take advantage of DelightChat, an ecommerce helpdesk solution built for SME ecommerce & DTC brands.
2. I need a live chat for my site. Which one should I go for?
Although both Gorgias & Richpanel allows you to add a live chat, we recommend going with Richpanel because it’s live chat is quite well-known in the industry. The personalized, self-serve Help Center allows a customer to return items, reschedule the delivery, or cancel an order without the usual hassle.
3. Can I setup Gorgias or Richpanel by myself without any help?
Yes, both Gorgias & Richpanel are self-serve tools, and they got extensive documentation for the complicated stuff (if any). Plus, there are enough tutorials on YouTube that helps you set up either of the software for your ecommerce store.
Don’t like either of them?
Gorgias and Richpanel aren’t the only great support tools for your ecommerce store.
While Gorgias is excellent at supporting multiple ecommerce platforms & other useful features like replying to posts & ad comments & the vast array of integrations, it doesn’t support WooCommerce, which accounts for 32% of ecommerce stores on the internet.
Richpanel is pretty good at handling support queries automatically through their personalized help center feature but lacks necessary important integrations, replying to post/ad comments, etc.
Lastly, both have pricing plans that might be too expensive for some stores, especially ones smaller sized or earlier in their journey.
If those words resonate with you, perhaps you can take DelightChat for a spin.
Here are a few reasons why DelightChat stands out from the competition:
- It is super easy-to-use (like Gmail or Messenger, only more powerful).
- It comes equipped with all the powerful features an ecommerce brand can expect.
- It fairly cheap so that it doesn’t burn a hole in your wallet.
Our mission is to empower SME ecommerce & DTC brands with powerful software without breaking the bank. If you are such a brand, DelightChat might be the right customer support software for you. And in case you want to learn how DelightChat is different from Gorgias & Richpanel, you can refer to the comparison pages here & here.
Well, that's about it. We hope this helps you make an informed decision while choosing your customer support tool. If you have questions or suggestions, drop us a line here.
