Today, consumers receive countless emails, phone calls, and text messages throughout the day. Featuring product promotion, discounts, and more, do they really build a connection with customers?
Bombarding your audience with marketing messages can only do so much. While your product may be top-of-the-line, the depth of your connection with your customers is more important than ever today. Engaging with your customer base draws them closer to your brand and increases loyalty, purchases, and customer ambassadorship.
Wondering how you can engage better with your customers?
This is where customer engagement software comes in. This is a crucial tool in your arsenal for building more meaningful connections with customers. Typically, such software will integrate personalization features, data analytics, messaging, and other real-time communication capabilities to enhance user experiences.
In this article, we will delve into what customer engagement tools are, how to choose the right one for your business, and some of the best customer engagement platforms on the market today.
Key Pointers
- Customer engagement tools are software designed to help businesses better connect with customers. These could be in the form of social media management platforms, CRM systems, customer feedback tools, email marketing software, chatbots, reporting and analytics software, and more.
- Customer engagement is an integral part of any business. In fact, about 80% of users claim that user experience is just as important to them as the quality of a product or service.
What is customer engagement software?
Customer engagement software helps businesses interact with customers through chat, email, social media, and more. It improves communication, boosts customer satisfaction, and strengthens relationships by providing personalized and timely responses.
These platforms can help your businesses build more profound and meaningful customer relationships. They are helpful tools for increasing customer retention, user experiences, customer loyalty, and an overall more positive outlook on your company.
There are multiple forms of customer engagement tools. Some of the most popular ones include:
- Email marketing tools: This software helps companies carry out email campaigns.
- Chatbots: Using artificial intelligence, these chatbots can handle simple conversations with customers and less urgent requests without needing support agents.
- Feedback and survey tools: Listening to and utilizing customer feedback makes it easy to enhance business-customer relationships. These platforms can request feedback, deliver surveys, and analyze the results.
- Social media management tools: These software programs regularly create, schedule, and post content. They can also reply to comments and messages on various platforms.
- Knowledge databases: These are great tools for helping customers access information independently. They are libraries of information that companies can publish.
- CRM: CRM systems are tools for tracking customer interactions, analyzing and managing customer data, and improving sales processes.
Top 12 customer engagement software tools of 2024
1. DevRev
DevRev is a unique AI-native software that helps companies improve customer engagement. It prioritizes user experiences while optimizing support teams’ workflows. DevRev has a generative AI chatbot powered by Turing AI that can answer customer queries accurately without human intervention.
AgentOS, DevRev’s AI-native tool, allows companies to automate responses by drawing from large data pools and knowledge graphs. DevRev also has Support360, a comprehensive analytics dashboard that businesses can use to visualize, filter, and understand support metrics. These key insights allow businesses to improve their support services and customer relationships based on comprehensive data. It also comes with session recording features, where companies can understand customer queries with better clarity and troubleshoot problems more efficiently.
DevRev’s Autonomous In-App Agents allow businesses to implement automated customer engagement, using technology to create personalized interactions and enhance customer relationships. This allows companies to clearly define their goals and objectives, better understand their user journeys, collect and analyze their user data, and implement automation workflows.
2. Salesforce
Salesforce is a leading CRM that helps multiple departments work together to deliver better customer experiences. It is an omnichannel customer engagement software that allows agents to provide excellent customer service through email, phone, social media, and more.
It also helps personalize customer experiences, enhancing the connections between businesses and users. The platform also comes with self-service options, a knowledge base, in-app support, options for live agents, and omnichannel customer engagement.
3. Drift
Drift is among the top customer experience platforms. It focuses on conversational sales, marketing, and support, which can be initiated through multiple channels. These include email, chat, video, and more. It also comes equipped with a knowledge database and self-service options.
The platform also allows for in-app meeting scheduling and reporting dashboards. One of its standout features is the “engagement score”, which can help indicate which leads are more likely to become conversions. This metric is updated every 30 minutes, allowing companies to budget their efforts according to the most likely conversions.
4. Hubspot
Hubspot is another leading CRM software that offers a suite of products. This CRM combines marketing, sales, services, and content on one platform, helping to streamline processes and improve customer interactions.
It allows companies to design and create email campaigns, manage sales leads, manage customer communications, track support tickets, and access a reporting dashboard, among other features. Depending on your company’s requirements, it has free and paid versions.
5. Intercom
Intercom is one of the most popular customer engagement platforms and comes with a suite of top engagement tools for businesses. Sales and marketing teams use the app to engage with prospective and existing customers through multiple channels, including email, in-app messaging, chats, and more. Companies can also use Intercom to deliver surveys and create knowledge bases.
Along with these features, it allows companies to create in-app tool tips and code-free product tours. This is especially useful for teams with fewer developers. Intercom will also enable companies to create custom chatbots that can converse with customers in several languages and automate issue resolution.
6. Zendesk
Zendesk is another well-known platform. Its customer support features allow for omnichannel support, help businesses manage customer inquiries, and allow companies to provide personalized interactions with customers. This customised approach improves customer satisfaction and enhances user experiences.
Some of its leading features include reporting and analytics, community forums, live chat options, a ticketing system, knowledge bases, and a lead generation and customer service platform. It also allows companies to provide customers with support in multiple languages.
7. Glassbox
Glassbox is an excellent tool for businesses looking to improve customer engagement. This analytics platform provides companies with real-time insights into their customer interactions. Businesses can analyze customer behavior, identify issues, and enhance their digital experiences for better customer satisfaction.
Its standout features include the Glassbox Insights Assistant, digital recordkeeping, mobile app analytics, product analysis, and session replay. The platform also provides customer journey analytics, interaction and heatmaps, struggle and error analysis, and more.
8. Kangaroo
Loyalty and rewards platforms are essential tools for improving customer engagement. Kangaroo helps companies improve customer acquisition and retention by offering rewards and loyalty points. These include coupons, referral programs, social eGift cards, raffles, and reward point redemption.
The platform also provides companies with reports, which they can use to analyze customer behavior better, understand it better, and optimize campaigns. Additionally, it allows for easy integration with several points of sale, streamlining the enrolling and rewards process.
9. ConvertKit
ConvertKit is a marketing automation platform. Its primary focus is email marketing, and it integrates with Unspalsh to provide users with a wide variety of free stock images to use for content. The platform also comes with a code-free text editor and email designer. The platform lets companies and individuals create templates and add CTAs that can be used on various devices.
It also has monetization features. Businesses can use ConvertKit to receive tips, create paid newsletters, sell ebooks and other products, and more.
10. Pendo
Pendo allows companies to utilize AI-driven customer engagement. Businesses can bring all communication channels onto one platform, create in-app guides for customer onboarding, measure user sentiment, deliver in-platform surveys, and more.
Pendo also comes with session replay software, allows companies to create AI-generated content and guides, and provides workflow suggestions. These features make customer engagement easier and more streamlined.
11. Freshdesk
Freshdesk is a popular customer engagement platform with a comprehensive suite of features. It provides companies with AI-powered live chats, a ticketing system, workflow automation tools, and more. This software also lets companies create conversational AI chatbots that can be used across various social media platforms, such as Instagram or TikTok.
Its standout features include the custom chatbot APIs that can connect to existing systems, the availability of messaging tools, customer segmentation features, and more.
12. Genesys Cloud
Genesys Cloud is another comprehensive customer engagement tool. It is an all-in-one contact point for companies and customers and facilitates interactions across email, social media, phone calls, and chat.
This contact centre’s standout features include work automation, task routing, omnichannel communication, analytics and reporting features, voice services, customer journey planning, workforce engagement management, and more.
How to choose the right customer engagement tool for your business
While countless customer engagement tools are available, not all of them will be the right fit for your business. Selecting the right one is crucial to ensuring your company’s requirements are met. Luckily, there are a few factors you can consider before making the right choice.
1. Budget
One of the first aspects to consider is your budget—how much do you spend on the right customer engagement platform? When determining a number, it is essential to consider the initial/upfront costs and any ongoing costs if the platform is subscription-based.
Additionally, costs will be involved in setting up the software, training support staff on how to use it efficiently, and maintenance. When choosing a platform, it is crucial to balance the cost of the software with its potential benefits and drawbacks.
2. Determine your requirements
Different customer engagement software focuses on different aspects. Before choosing one, it is essential to know your business’s needs. For example, do you want to connect with your customers over email, social media, live chat, or phone? Do you require analytics and reporting software?
By determining your company’s objectives, you can choose the best software to increase customer retention and loyalty.
3. Integration requirements
Customer engagement platforms must also be able to integrate with tour existing systems. Before committing to a specific software, checking if it integrates with your existing business systems, CRM, and other marketing tools is crucial.
4. Scalability
As your business expands, your customer engagement software should be able to grow with it and accommodate new users. When choosing the right platform, it is essential to check for scalability. Your software should allow for flexibility and handle large volumes of customers without disrupting your operations.
5. Utilize trials and demos
The majority of customer engagement platforms offer free demos and trials. These are excellent opportunities to determine if their features suit your requirements. It is essential to utilize free demos to gain first-hand experience and make a more informed decision about whether to invest in them.
Wrapping up
Customer engagement is one of the most important factors in determining the success, growth, and sustainability of a business’s expansion and growth. As displayed above, there are a variety of customer engagement software and tools that can help you on your journey to create meaningful connections with your audience.
Using the right customer engagement software, which offers a comprehensive suite of features like AI chatbots and knowledge bases, omnichannel support options, scalability, automation, and more, can help you quickly meet the growing customer demands.
DevRev is a leading software solution for companies wanting to enhance their customer relationships. Our cloud-based AI-native service platform has various features that help you meet your engagement goals. Powered by Turing AI and advanced LLM, this includes PLuG, the AI chatbot, self-service options, knowledge bases, and more. DevRev can also pinpoint gaps in a company’s database and use generative AI to help generate informative content to bridge these gaps.
DevRev streamlines operations by bringing together product development, engineering, and customer support teams on one platform. This means customers receive quicker, more efficient, and more accurate issue resolution thanks to better information flow between teams. Customer data can also be easily collected and incorporated.
To learn more about how the DevRev service platform can improve your customer engagement strategy, try DevRev today!
