Summary
Customer experience software and its growing demand clearly indicate why brands are focusing on delivering the best customer experience (CX). The global customer experience management market is set to hit US $20.4 billion by 2028. In an era of customer service automation, technologies, especially AI, are stirring up how businesses serve and attend to their esteemed patrons. These advancements help companies avoid churn, achieve high CSAT scores, retain customers, build brand loyalty, engage in social listening, and much more. Customer experience software lets CX teams give greater value to consumers faster while keeping costs down.
This guide will explain the connotations, advantages, and key features of customer experience software. We will highlight the top 15 platforms in 2024’s market, providing insights on how these tools can help businesses meet their CX termini. By understanding the emerging trends and critical factors for choosing the right software, you, as a key decision-maker, can select the most suitable customer experience platform that aligns with your goals, needs, budget, and industry, ensuring superior service delivery, customer satisfaction and exceeding customer expectations.
Related must-reads:
- 10 key customer experience (CX) trends [2024]
- 10 Essential customer experience KPIs & metrics [2024]
- Customer experience in banking: Importance, examples, and trends for 2024
- Customer experience in retail: Strategies and the future of CX
What is customer experience management software?
Customer experience management software is meant to help organizations build and retain healthy customer relationships by streamlining every customer journey touchpoint. It integrates functionalities such as customer data management, personalization, omnichannel support, and AI-driven automation. This enables CX teams to provide fast, tailored, and seamless experiences across all channels, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. This software extends a 360-degree overview of the customer journey to the businesses.
Customer experience software solutions facilitate the planning and delivery of exceptional customer-centric experiences. Apart from managing interactions across all customer-facing platforms, it also helps organize, automate, and synchronize them to provide comprehensive service. With an integrated system that gathers and analyzes consumer data, firms may acquire insights and take prescient steps to improve customer experience. It is pertinent to mention here that CX isn’t simply a trend—81% of marketers expect customer experience to be the main competitor.
Going to the fundamental question: What is customer experience? The term CX refers to the sum of a customer’s impressions of a company based on their contacts with the business throughout their journey, from initial discovery to post-purchase conversations. It sees a customer’s journey as formed by each touchpoint.
Often, customer experience management (CEM or CXM) is often mistaken for customer relationship management (CRM). However, CEM is a holistic strategy that nurtures customer relationships, focusing on people, processes, and systems to deliver a desired customer experience. It optimizes the customer journey from purchase to support calls and social media interactions. Build brand loyalty by making passive engagements positive and active.
Features like ticketing and notification systems alert relevant personnel to problems or questions, ensuring prompt resolution. By closing the feedback loop and contacting customers directly, businesses can address concerns and improve overall CSAT. This proactive engagement helps make customer experience management software a critical tool for modern enterprises.
11 Key features of customer experience platform
When investing in customer experience management software, it is crucial to look for suitable features. These features should enhance data collection, streamline communication, and provide actionable insights. These capabilities ensure a holistic and effective approach to managing and improving customer interactions across various channels. Here is a list of 11 such vital features:
1. Customer feedback management
This feature captures real-time feedback through surveys, social media, and emails, providing a comprehensive understanding of customer sentiment and areas for improvement.
2. Omnichannel presence
Alway look for a seamless omnichannel customer experience. This feature integrates customer queries from multiple platforms into one interface. A single point of contact for email, chat, social media, SMS, and call interaction improves response times and customer satisfaction. Customer retention is 89% for CX-focused organizations using advanced omnichannel tactics.
3. Customer journey mapping
This tool visualizes the customer journey mapping and locates key touchpoints to enhance interactions. Ensuring a cohesive experience boosts customer satisfaction and loyalty.
4. Artificial intelligence and machine learning
AI and ML enhance the analysis and prediction of customer behavior by providing deeper insights into customer preferences. This feature helps predict future trends, allowing businesses to tailor strategies to meet evolving needs. AI also aids in automating the regular and tedious tasks which don’t need human agents’ intervention. By 2025, AI will handle 95% of interactions with customers in customer service.
5. Personalization tools
These tools enable businesses to create tailored experiences for customers. By leveraging data and AI, personalization tools deliver relevant content, product recommendations, and services, enhancing the overall customer experience.
6. Data collection and management
It simplifies creating cloud-based client profiles, making communication and segmentation easier. Using this software you can collect customer data and agents’ performance insights from omnichannel interactions. It also enables your business to enhance engagement through tools like A/B testing.
7. Templates
Customer experience platforms offer customizable templates for support tools. These templates, used for chatbots or knowledge base content, allow teams to quickly address common inquiries, ensuring faster and more effective customer support.
8. Analytics and reporting
Analytics dashboards and reporting tools reveal consumer feedback and satisfaction data. It helps teams track performance, identify patterns, and make prudent decisions to improve customer satisfaction and efficiency.
9. Workflow automation
It upgrades operational efficiency by automating repetitive tasks and processes. Based on customer activities, it can send follow-up surveys or trigger alerts, ensuring timely responses and freeing resources for more complex tasks.
10. Integration abilities
Customer experience management must ensure a seamless connection with other business tools for sharing data across systems. It enables a unified approach to customer experience management, breaking down silos and improving overall coordination.
11. Security and compliance
Guaranteeing the protection of customer data, robust security features, and adherence to compliance standards are essential. In an era where data breaches are common, these measures maintain customer trust and ensure legal compliance.
9 Benefits of customer experience management platforms
The benefits of using customer experience management are numerous. Businesses aspiring to be leaders in effective customer service automation, driving higher customer satisfaction with unrivaled CX, must invest in such a platform. Customer experience management software companies provide robust solutions that help businesses optimize their customer interactions, leading to higher brand allegiance and operational efficiency. Let’s consider nine such advantages.
1. Augments customer loyalty
Customer experience management software allows businesses to fine-tune interactions based on customer feedback, reducing churn and increasing loyalty. Companies can improve their customer service and foster long-term customer loyalty by understanding customer effort, emotion, and intent.
2. Optimize contact center
This software collects omnichannel feedback, furnishing valuable data to optimize contact center operations. It reduces the need for customer outreach by ensuring they receive all necessary information for a great experience, improving performance and service quality.
3. Promotes brand advocacy
Positive customer experiences significantly increase the likelihood of recommendations and trust. Customer experience platforms help businesses to ensure every customer interaction is positive, enhancing overall brand advocacy.
4. Enhances customer experience
The ultimate goal of customer experience management software is to eliminate pain points and friction in customer journeys. By optimizing every step in delivering exceptional customer experiences, businesses can vastly outperform competitors.
5. Includes the voice of the customer
CEM software integrates customer feedback into all business aspects, transforming insights into actionable improvements. This approach guarantees customer voices directly influence service and product quality, driving continuous improvement.
6. Boosts customer satisfaction
By meticulously tracking and analyzing feedback, customer experience management software enables swift identification and resolution of issues. This responsiveness boosts customer satisfaction and fosters a lasting customer relationship.
7. Data-driven decision making
Comprehensive analytics tools in CEM software present actionable insights from customer data. Such a wealth of insights empowers organizations to make informed decisions that enhance customer experience and business strategies.
8. Improved customer engagement
CEM software leverages customer data to create personalized experiences tailored to individual preferences and behaviors. This customization makes customer journeys more engaging and gratifying, leading to better customer retention.
9. Operational efficiency
Customer experience management software automates repetitive tasks, streamlines processes, and reduces manual workload. This automation improves operational efficiency, allowing businesses to focus on strategic initiatives and customer-centric improvements.
Top 15 customer experience management platforms
Today, businesses across industries have plenty of options when choosing a customer experience platform. Nevertheless, the task might feel a tad overwhelming. Here is a list of the 15 best customer experience management software available in 2024.
Top 15 customer experience software platforms
- Yellow.ai
- Zendesk Suite
- Zoho Desk
- Salesforce Service Cloud
- Freshdesk
- HubSpot Service Hub
- Birdeye
- Qualtrics CustomerXM
- Tealeaf by Acoustic
- Medallia
- Podium
- LiveAgent
- Adobe Experience Manager
- Snoball
- SurveySparrow
Yellow.ai
Yellow.ai is a generative AI-powered full-stack customer service automation platform that offers the best customer experience compared to any other solution across channels. As a leading AI-first customer service automation solution, it is designed to delight customers from the very first interaction. Scalable and secure, Yellow.ai automates more than 90% of customer queries and reduces operational costs by 60%. It integrates seamlessly with your tech stack and thus helps you unify customer data across channels and engage via personalized conversations. Yellow.ai stands out from the competition because of its user-friendly interface, quick and accurate results, adaptability, and omnichannel compatibility.
Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite can be your comprehensive AI-based customer experience solution designed to deliver fast and personalized CX at scale. It is easy to set up and requires no technical expertise. The AI agents are the most autonomous bots in the industry, automating customer experiences and saving time and money. The unified omnichannel agent workspace includes AI-powered assistance tools, allowing support teams to support customers across any channel. The flexible software integrates with the entire CX ecosystem to build a 360-degree customer view. Zendesk workforce engagement management solutions ensure optimal staffing levels, monitor service quality, and gain insights into agent performance. The suite of tools offers low total cost of ownership, simplicity in setup, and ease of use.
Key features:
- AI purpose-built for CX
- Ticketing system with omnichannel support
- Self-service and knowledge management tools
- 1,500+ apps and integrations
- Collaboration tools
- 360-degree customer view
- Quality assurance
Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk is a comprehensive customer experience management software designed to streamline customer service operations. It provides businesses a robust help center, including email templates, tabs, and customizable form fields. Zoho Desk supports instant messaging via apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, and WeChat, enabling seamless communication. The most affordable Standard package includes merging tickets, recommending articles, and adding pre-written comments. With ticket sharing and collision detection, the Professional plan allows firms to allocate tickets and prevent agents from working on the same ticket. The enterprise plan includes live chat and guided chats.
Key features:
- Workflow automation
- Self-service
- Security
- Ticket management
- Live chat
Salesforce Service Cloud
Salesforce is a renowned customer satisfaction and experience management solution provider with over 10 products. Typically used as a CRM solution, it allows users to input customer data manually and automatically, logging detailed journeys. With numerous integrations, Salesforce connects all departments under one software roof, including marketing, sales, and customer support. Exporting data into other formats is easy, making it flexible and scalable. Salesforce’s analytics are unmatched in the industry. However, it is expensive compared to competitors, making it preferred by larger companies and corporations. Medium businesses can still benefit from Salesforce’s features, but may need to settle for less features.
Key features:
- Extensive CRM capabilities
- Integration with numerous platforms
- Automated feedback and review management
- Advanced analytics and reporting
- Seamless data export and scalability
Freshdesk
Freshdesk is a customer service software that uses AI-powered support automation to provide timely and consistent support across businesses. It offers advanced ticketing, self-service options, and proactive AI-driven insights. Freshdesk consolidates customer interactions into a unified view, allowing support agents to efficiently categorize, prioritize, and track issues. It includes a self-service knowledge base and community forums for customer problem-solving. The platform also features AI-driven automation, scenario-based triggers, and collaboration tools. It integrates with Freshchat for messaging, Freshservice for IT service management, and Freshmarketer for marketing automation.
Key features:
- Advanced ticketing system
- AI-driven automation
- Self-service options
- Collaboration tools
- Integration capabilities
HubSpot Service Hub
HubSpot Service Hub is an exhaustive customer experience platform that integrates seamlessly with HubSpot’s CRM platform. It combines a ticketing system, customer service analytics, and knowledge-based publishing tools to enhance customer support. Service Hub provides customer data using HubSpot’s native CRM. You may start with a free shared mailbox and email tracker. The Starter package includes live chat, discussion routing, and ticket automation. The Professional plan includes customer portals, feedback surveys, analytics, and playbooks. The Enterprise plan includes SSO, field-level permissions, and notification management. Its multi-tiered plans cater to different business needs, ensuring scalability and customization.
Key features:
- Workflow automation
- Self-service
- Security
- Customer feedback surveys
- Customer portal
Birdeye
Birdeye is a robust customer experience review management software designed to enhance customer service. It combines automation, integrations, and various tools into a centralized platform. This enables agents to convert survey responses and customer reviews into support tickets, ensuring timely and effective issue resolution. New tickets and status changes can also be automatically alerted to agents. By offering features such as competitive benchmarking, automated surveys, and live chat, Birdeye helps enterprises deliver superior customer experiences and stay connected with their audience.
Key features:
- Omnichannel support
- Real-time and historical reports
- Self-service
- 1,500+ apps and integrations
- Ticket management
Qualtrics CustomerXM
Qualtrics CustomerXM is an impactful customer experience management software designed to help enterprises comprehensively understand the customer journey through data-driven insights. By integrating various communication channels and data sources into a single platform, Qualtrics provides a holistic view of customer interactions. The software gathers sentiment from social media postings and comments using conversational analytics. Agents may better tailor their interactions with customers by gaining a comprehensive perspective of them through omnichannel access. Qualtrics’ iQ predictive intelligence engine predicts customer trends and patterns.
Key features:
- Omnichannel support
- Workflow automation
- Real-time and historical reports
- Customer surveys
- Social media listening
Tealeaf by Acoustic
Tealeaf by Acoustic is a sophisticated customer experience software designed to help enterprises capture and analyze customer data. This platform identifies pain points within the customer journey, allowing businesses to recreate and understand moments of struggle. It integrates several communication channels to provide a unified view of customer interactions. By providing real-time alerts and comprehensive customer reports, Tealeaf enables businesses to address issues promptly and improve overall customer experience.
Key features:
- Omnichannel support
- Real-time and historical reports
- Security
- Session replays
- Visitor heatmaps
Medallia
Medallia is a cutting-edge customer experience software designed for customer-centric brands. It helps enterprises collect and analyze customer data across various touchpoints to gain deep insights into the customer journey. Medallia allows businesses to prioritize critical issues, roll out solutions quickly, and engage with customers via multiple channels, ensuring a comprehensive and personalized customer experience. Businesses may create dashboards that provide agents and management real-time information about consumer behaviors and sentiments. Employee reports can be customized to reflect specific roles.
Key features
- Solid security
- Omnichannel support
- Workflow automation
- Real-time and historical reports
- Customer profiles
Podium
Podium is a customer experience platform with customer relationship management functionality. It integrates text marketing, payment processing, online review collection, live website chat, and an agent inbox, providing a comprehensive business solution. Podium’s native integrations allow seamless CRM data integration. This platform helps enterprises improve customer engagement, automate responses, and manage interactions effectively. Podium’s AI-employee tool that answers calls and sets meetings is popular. The Core package enables organizations to handle limitless contacts and basic reporting for a client database. In Pro, surveys, widget branding, and automated lead routing are included. Signature offers bespoke automation, usage savings, and additional reporting.
Key features:
- Omnichannel support
- Lead routing
- Personalized onboarding
- Conversational AI
- Self-service
LiveAgent
LiveAgent is a robust cloud-based customer experience management software that enhances customer service and engagement. It supports over 200 integrations, allowing your customer service team to manage all interactions from a single shared inbox. By integrating social media channels and offering unlimited ticket history, call recordings, and advanced analytics tools, LiveAgent helps enterprises provide superior customer experiences. Trusted by companies like BMW, Yamaha, and Huawei, LiveAgent is used by businesses across various sectors, including eCommerce, Insurance, SaaS, and Startups.
Key features:
- Customizable fields, forms, and templates
- Feedback management
- Real-time notifications
- Reporting and analytics
- Survey and poll management
Adobe Experience Manager
Customer experience solutions are the primary emphasis of Adobe Experience Manager, a component of Adobe Experience Cloud. It integrates content management and digital asset management tools within the Adobe Experience Cloud. This platform empowers enterprises to adapt content based on user behavior and regional preferences, ensuring personalized and engaging customer experiences. By providing detailed analytics and testing capabilities, Adobe Experience Manager helps businesses optimize their content strategy and improve customer engagement.
Key features:
- Omnichannel support
- Role-based user permissions
- User monitoring
- Multi-site management
- Robust security
Snoball
Snoball is a customer experience management software designed to enhance word-of-mouth marketing through strategic incentives. By encouraging customers to submit product reviews and referrals, Snoball fosters a robust ecosystem of organic engagement. This platform blends reputation marketing with proactive engagement strategies, enabling teams to craft customized experiences that build brand loyalty and community involvement. Snoball’s targeted campaigns and automated interactions ensure your brand stays top-of-mind, while its sophisticated analytics platform provides deep insights into engagement metrics to refine customer strategies further.
Key features:
- Automated referrals integration with CRM
- Transforming customer reviews into marketing assets
- Capturing and sharing video testimonials
- Data-driven engagement analytics
- Proactive engagement campaigns
SurveySparrow
SurveySparrow helps you keep consumers coming back by providing the finest CX! If a poor internet connection hinders your feedback collection, get it done faster using its offline survey app! It has expert-engineered templates to get you started and 24/7 free support for any issue. Customer surveys may be taken anywhere, anytime, and the platform autosaves replies. A detailed dashboard will help you draw insights and ideas from survey replies. SurveySparrow’s NPS software enables you to track loyal customers. Offer one-on-one surveys using SurveySparrow’s chat-like experience that lets participants forget it’s a survey. Social media, online links, email, and website surveys are all channel-ready!
Key features
- Omnichannel feedback collection
- Automated workflow for closing the feedback loop
- Customizable surveys for key customer metrics
- Case management integration
- 180+ software integrations and APIs
How to choose the right customer experience platform?
Once you grasp the required features of CXM software, it becomes easy to pick the suitable one that aligns with your business needs. Nevertheless, you must consider a few factors to choose the right customer experience platform to deliver outstanding customer service.
1. Easy to use and speedy set-up
Choose software that maximizes time and value by being quick and easy to implement. Avoid tools requiring extensive development and training, ensuring your team can benefit from the software immediately.
2. Prioritize data safety
The customer experience management software must safeguard sensitive customer data from breaches. To create a trustworthy environment, look for features like single sign-on, advanced encryption, and data redaction.
3. Scalability
Growing client bases, teams, and organizational demands require software adaptation. Scalability prevents rising pains and gives customers an outstanding experience as your firm grows.
4. Consider ROI and a low TCO
Select a platform with proven ROI through third-party studies and customer stories. A low total cost of ownership (TCO) minimizes ongoing expenses like maintenance, making the software more cost-effective and ensuring long-term financial benefits.
5. Find CX experts with quality support
Choose CX-focused customer experience management software with excellent support. This guarantees you have expert help and CX strategy tools.
6. Align with business goals
Ensure the software aligns with your business objective and goals. It should support your strategic initiatives and help achieve desired outcomes, enhancing overall business performance and customer satisfaction.
7. Pay attention to cost
Evaluate the software’s cost, including initial investment and ongoing expenses. Choose a solution that offers the best value for your budget while delivering comprehensive features and capabilities necessary for optimal CX.
Trends driving customer experience management software market
The World Economic Forum’s Digital Transformation Initiative estimates that platform-driven interactions will make up 2/3 of the USD 100 trillion digitalization economy by 2025. The continuing integration of AI and ML into CXM systems could boost industry growth and help companies of all sizes comprehend customer behavior.
North America will dominate customer experience management and is predicted to grow at 14.6% CAGR from 2024 to 2030.. Companies across this region are spending heavily on cutting-edge technology, data analytics, and tailored engagement techniques to improve customer experience and boost loyalty and competitiveness.
Image credit: Grand View Research
Improve your customer experience with Yellow.ai
As you have captured the nuances of customer experience management from your business perspective, you might have reached the stage of picking the most suitable option in the market. Nevertheless, once again ask these 7 following questions:
- Does the software capture and analyze vast client data?
- Are your customer data systems and platforms compatible with the software?
- Does it have features to monitor and evaluate customer satisfaction and loyalty?
- Does the software have customer journey mapping and visualization tools?
- Can software organize and customize customer experience?
- Does the tool allow real-time consumer surveys and feedback?
- Does the software support omnichannel experiences?
Responding with a ‘Yes’ to all these questions, emerges Yellow.ai, your one-stop-solution to improve your CX. Its cutting-edge customer experience management tools help organizations provide an outstanding customer experience at every touchpoint. Yellow.ai, as a Gen-AI-powered service automation platform, can:
- Enhance customers experience
- Boost customer satisfaction
- Bolster your omnichannel presence
- Equip you with AI-based technologies
- Expand your global reach with regional linguistic commands, and
- Accelerate your customer service delivery by automating various tasks.
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Customer experience software: Key takeaways
You have explored the meaning, benefits, and deciding factors of customer experience software. Thanks to their traits like omnichannel support, AI-driven insights, and workflow automation. We also highlighted the best CXM platforms for enterprises that provide outstanding customer experiences, such as Zendesk Suite, Yellow.ai, Medallia, Adobe Experience Manager, Freshdesk, and others. These solutions use innovative technology, automation and management tools to help enterprises provide exceptional customer service.
Looking ahead, the future of customer experience software is brimming with possibilities, with emerging trends poised to transform the industry. The balance between automation and empathy is becoming crucial. AI with human-like empathy will be on the rise. Harnessing natural language processing and machine learning to assess emotional tones, sentiment-driven CX will continue to let organizations personalize answers that reflect customer emotions. AR and VR persist in creating enhanced interactive experiences. Secure and protected data will occupy the center stage for regulatory compliance and consumer confidence.
As customer experience management software companies innovate, businesses can anticipate more efficient, integrated, and robust solutions to drive customer loyalty and operational excellence. Enterprises can use these advances to provide unrivaled customer experiences in an ever-shifting marketplace.
Customer experience platform – FAQs
What features are essential in a CXM platform?
Businesses must consider 11 essential features of customer experience management or CXM software before selecting one. The list of essential features includes customer feedback management to capture real-time responses through surveys, social media, and emails, omnichannel presence, customer journey mapping, artificial intelligence and machine learning, personalization tools, data collection and management customizable templates for support tools, analytics dashboard and reporting to get insight about customers, workflow automation to automate repetitive jobs and processes, integration abilities to ensure a seamless connection with other business, robust security and compliance.
Can a CXM platform help me personalize the customer journey?
A CXM platform can help you personalize customer journeys. CEM software uses customer data to generate personalized experiences based on their individual tastes and behaviors. Businesses use data and AI customization technologies to create tailored consumer interactions, offer pertinent details, product recommendations, and services, and improve the overall customer experience.
How does a CXM platform improve customer satisfaction?
The right CXM platform helps businesses drastically improve customer satisfaction. It gives qualitative insights, unifying interactions and relationship data across the complete customer lifecycle. It always prioritizes customer experiences. It aids businesses to drive profits by focusing on active customer engagement. Instead of a reactive approach, it anticipates and takes a proactive style to respond faster to customer needs and uses AI data for real-time impact on customer experience.
Can I use a CXM platform to automate repetitive customer service tasks?
Yes, you can use a CXM platform to automate several repetitive and routine customer service tasks and free your human agents for more complex issue resolutions. One effective feature of CXM is the integration of AI, which helps immensely in customer service automation, improves operational efficiency, and makes customer support available 24/7.
How can I use a CXM platform to gather customer feedback?
You can leverage several tools and techniques to gather customer feedback using a Customer Experience Management (CXM) platform. Embed surveys and feedback forms on your website, social media, or email campaigns to collect customer opinions and suggestions. Monitor social media for customer mentions, hashtags, and keywords to track sentiment and gather real-time feedback. Use Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer reviews and ratings, customer journey mapping, automated feedback, customer analytics, and employee feedback to gather valuable insights and enhance customer experiences.
Does a CXM platform offer any reporting or analytics features?
Most of the leading CXM platforms offer detailed reporting and analytics features. A few of the examples include Zendesk Suite, LiveAgent, Podium, HubSpot’s Service Hub, Qualtrics XM, Medallia, Microsoft Dynamics 365 etc. Businesses benefit from such reporting and analytics features of CXM.
What are some best practices for using a CXM platform to improve customer experience?
Some best practices for using a CXM platform to improve customer experience include:
1. Gather data: Understand your customers across touchpoints.
2. Personalize experiences: Tailor interactions based on customer needs.
3. Automate tasks: free up agents for complex issues with AI-powered workflows.
4. Track & Analyze: Monitor key metrics to identify areas for improvement.
5. Close the feedback loop: Respond to customer feedback and show you care.
By adhering to these steps, businesses can turn their CXM platform into a powerful tool to transform customer journeys.
Why is customer experience important?
Best customer experience (CX) is important for any business to run, survive and thrive. The positive CX drives higher customer loyalty and brand advocacy, resulting in repeat business and positive word-of-mouth promotion that attracts new customers. Businesses win on all fronts by prioritizing a seamless and favorable experience throughout the customer journey.
