18 Best Customer Engagement Platforms Reviewed for 2024
10 Best Customer Engagement Platform List
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 18 tools reviewed.
Our one-on-one guidance will help you find the perfect fit.
With so many different customer engagement platforms out there, finding the right fit for your needs is tough. You know you want a platform to help you engage with your customers meaningfully so you can enhance their experience with your brand, but you need to figure out which option is best. In this article, I'll help you make this choice easier by sharing my insights on the best customer engagement platforms to strengthen your customer relationships and optimize your customer interactions, based on my personal experience in customer service.
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The Best Customer Engagement Platform Summary Table
| Tools | Price | |
|---|---|---|
| UserGuiding | From $89/month (billed annually) | Website |
| Sprout Social | From $199/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
| Front | From $19/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
| SurveySparrow | From $19/month | Website |
| Braze | Pricing upon request | Website |
| Pendo | Pricing upon request | Website |
| Qualtrics Customer Experience | Pricing upon request | Website |
| twik | From $80/month for up to 10K targeted sessions | Website |
| Delighted | From $224/month (billed yearly) | Website |
| Zingle | From $179/month | Website |
Compare Software Specs Side by Side
Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.
Compare SoftwareHow to Choose Customer Engagement Platforms
You'll want to ensure the best fit possible when choosing a customer engagement platform for your company. Here are the questions you should be asking yourself before making a purchasing decision:
⬜ What are your goals for employing a customer engagement tool?
⬜ Have you ever used a customer engagement platform before?
⬜ How many users will need access to the tool? And how often?
⬜ What are 3 key software features you can't live without?
⬜ What unique or niche needs does your company have?
⬜ What channels does it need to connect to? Website, app, other?
⬜ What's your budget for a customer engagement platform?
It could be helpful to write down the answers to these questions before you start reading the reviews below. That way, you can measure each tool against the features, functionality, and flexibility you actually need.
Overviews of the 10 Best Customer Engagement Platforms
Here’s a brief description of each customer engagement software to showcase each tool’s best use case, some noteworthy features, and screenshots to give a preview of the interface.
UserGuiding is a no-code platform that enables businesses to create interactive product tours, onboarding flows, and contextual help for users within web applications. Overall, the platform is designed to be easy-to-use, enabling non-technical staff to implement and update onboarding materials as needed, with the goal of improving user adoption.
UserGuiding assists customer engagement platforms by providing tools that enhance the user experience through interactive onboarding guides, in-app messages, and user feedback collection. These features are designed to help businesses communicate effectively with their customers within the application, guiding them through features and functionalities, and gathering insights to improve the product.
The platform's no-code solution allows for easy customization of onboarding flows, while its analytics capabilities enable businesses to measure the impact of their engagement strategies. By improving the onboarding process and offering support throughout the user journey, UserGuiding aims to increase user retention and satisfaction for customer engagement platforms.
UserGuiding integrates with Intercom, Segment, Slack, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Woopra, Mixpanel, and HubSpot.
Pricing starts from $89/month (billed annually). A 14-day free trial is also available.
Sprout Social is a social media management and intelligence platform designed for businesses and agencies of all sizes. It allows users to manage multiple social media accounts from a centralized location, offering features such as a smart inbox for viewing and replying to messages, content planning and publishing, reviews management, and advanced analytics.
As a customer engagement platform, Sprout Social offers automated workflows with the ability to set up chatbots for conversational experiences using an intuitive bot builder. It also provides shared customer records, conversation history, and customizable views across networks and shows real-time indicators when a teammate is viewing or responding to a message.
Additionally, the message spike alert feature notifies users when inbox messages spike or there's a surge of @mentions, which could be a potential indicator of a brand crisis that needs to be addressed to retain loyalty.
Sprout Social integrates with Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Threads, TikTok, YouTube, Salesforce, Tableau, HubSpot, Zendesk, Marketo, Glassdoor, Shopify, and more.
Pricing starts from $199/user/month with a free trial available.
Front is a customer communication platform that consolidates emails, social media, phone calls, and chat messages into a single collaborative interface, enabling teams to manage and respond to all customer interactions from one place. The tool is designed to help businesses maintain organized customer interactions, improve response times, and personalize customer service without increasing headcount.
Front serves as a customer engagement platform by centralizing communication from various channels into one shared inbox, allowing teams to manage and respond to customer interactions in a unified manner. It also facilitates collaboration among team members, who can comment, discuss, and assign conversations within the platform, ensuring that customer queries are addressed efficiently.
Additionally, the tool's automation capabilities help in routing messages to the appropriate team members, while analytics provide insights into customer engagement and team performance.
Front integrates with Jira, Trello, Workato, Salesforce, Slack, Intercom, HubSpot, Zoho CRM, Dialpad, and ClickUp.
Front costs from $19/user/month (billed annually). It comes with a 7-day free trial.
SurveySparrow is an omnichannel customer experience management software with customizable surveys, customer journey maps, rich customer data insights, and conversational forms.
You can leverage SurveySparrow to improve customer engagement in a few ways: 1) use net promoter score (NPS) surveys to gauge customer satisfaction, 2) build a live chatbot for your website to address basic customer queries automatically, and 3) and use their case management system to raise, organize, prioritize, and resolve tickets. These are just a few of the ways you can ensure customers are leaving satisfied.
SurveySparrow also has an integrated reputation management platform that alerts you to new reviews of your brand popping up online. This can help you turn satisfied customers into active promoters and address any negative comments before they catch fire.
SurveySparrow's customer engagement surveys are maybe the most impressive part of the software. They can include custom themes, video answers, conditional logic, mobile-optimized formats, and conversational inputs. They offer survey templates for measuring things like website feedback, customer effort score (CES), customer satisfaction (CSAT), product feedback, relational/transactional NPS, event feedback, and user experience.
SurveySparrow costs from $99/month and offers a 14-day free trial.
Braze is a customer engagement platform centered around personalized communication between brands and consumers. It’s used by the likes of Etsy, HBO, Dominos, and The Guardian for CX engagement initiatives. Noteworthy features include detailed customer analytics dashboards, marketing workflow automations, cross-channel campaign management, predictive tools, and A/B testing.
Braze is the best for you if you want to use gamification as a customer engagement strategy because Braze can help you craft unique engagement models for your business. You can reward customers with vouchers or discount codes when they reach a specific goal.
You can also send congratulatory messages or push notifications for reaching milestones, anniversaries, streaks of daily visits to your site, or for leaving reviews.
Braze pricing is available upon request.
Pendo is a customer engagement platform you can use to provide customers with the best digital experience when using your website or ecommerce store. You can use Pendo to collect and assess customer feedback, so you’ll know which areas to improve on.
You can also use Pendo to identify features or parts of your website that cause confusion or are challenging to use for customers, so you can tweak them, making them easier to use. If you’re looking for a customer engagement solution that streamlines your employee’s workload so they can engage with customers, then Pendo is the best match for you.
With Pendo’s help, identify roadblocks that prevent employees from delivering optimum performance and schedule pieces of training to help employees improve. You can also use Pendo to create in-app guides to assist customers better, ensuring customer satisfaction and fostering brand loyalty.
Pendo integrates with sales and productivity apps, including Salesforce, Slack, Zendesk, Hubspot CRM, Slack, and others.
Pendo pricing is available upon request.
Qualtrics is a customer experience management platform that can help you listen to customers, receive recommendations, and automatically implement action plans to improve customer experience.
Qualtrics provides you with a centralized platform to capture and assess customer feedback from multiple social media platforms, including Facebook, Foursquare, and Thumbtack. It also has a predictive intelligence engine to uncover key drivers of customer loyalty, allowing you to focus on areas with the most impact on customers.
Surveying customers is a direct way of gaining actionable product insights and if you want an effective surveying tool, then Qualtrics CustomerXM is the best for you. Qualtrics makes it easy to create different surveys, including brand awareness surveys, logo testing surveys, and ad testing surveys.
Qualtrics also has a survey QA functionality to assess the effectiveness of your survey form and implement changes for better results.
Qualtrics CustomerXM pricing starts at $1500/account/year, and they offer two free projects as customer trials.
Twik is an automated web-personalization engine you can use to define user profile groups for easier targeting during marketing activities.
It has embedded user experience enhancers you can activate to improve customer journeys, including a pop-up generator, currency converter, and sticky header. It also has a visual editor feature useful in editing your ecommerce website without affecting your site code.
Twik is best for you to keep your customers engaged using a chatbot because they make building a no-code chatbot easy. With Twik, you can customize your chatbot’s responses, ensuring that your customers receive contextual and timely answers to any real-time questions or concerns. Twik’s chatbot can help you welcome new visitors to your ecommerce site and increase the chances of conversion.
Twik pricing starts at $80/month for up to 10K targeted sessions and offers a 30-day free trial.
Delighted is a self-serve experience management platform you can use to collect data using NPS surveys and other feedback solicitation. You can use Delighted to create and customize survey forms to obtain specific pieces of information from customers.
Delighted is a multi-channel tool so you can create surveys for your website, social media, email, or SMS.
Delighted is best for you if you want a customer engagement platform with excellent analytics and reporting capabilities. You can use Delighted to segment survey responses to know how different customer segments feel about your brand and what you can do better to promote loyalty.
It also has a dashboard filtering system to segregate and view responses depending on chosen tags.
Delighted pricing starts at $220/account/month, and they offer a 7-day free trial.
Zingle is a customer engagement tool you can use to engage with customers in real-time using different messaging channels. It has AI that can handle multiple conversations at once so your staff can be more efficient and have enough time to take care of other activities.
Zingle also lets you increase revenue and drive loyalty through targeted promotions for different customer segments.Zingle is best for your business if you need a customer engagement platform with a workflow automation feature.
Zingle can help you automate simple tasks allowing you to focus on crucial and complicated business aspects. Use Zingle to automate sending welcome emails and thank you notes, ensuring customers feel valued for bringing their business to you. Automation can also save you time to personally attend to more complicated customer concerns and foster brand loyalty through timely intervention.
Zingle pricing starts at $179/month and offers a 3-day free trial.
Other Options
Here’s a few more that didn’t make the top list.
Related CX Software Lists
If you still haven’t found what you’re looking for here, check out these related customer experience management tools that I’ve tested and evaluated.
Customer Engagement Platforms Selection Criteria
When selecting Customer Engagement Platforms (CEPs), it's essential to evaluate functionality and specific use cases that align with your business needs. Having personally tried and researched these tools, I can provide criteria that matter most for effective customer engagement. These criteria relate directly to software buyer needs, addressing pain points and ensuring the software is used effectively.
Core Functionality (25% of total weighting score):
Key use cases for CEPs include:
- Omnichannel communication
- Personalized messaging
- Customer journey mapping
- Analytics and reporting
- Integration with existing systems
Additional Standout Features (25% of total weighting score):
Identifying unique features and functionality not offered by the competition:
- Advanced AI Capabilities: Tools that leverage AI for predictive analytics and customer insights, such as sentiment analysis.
- Real-Time Interaction: Platforms that offer live chat and real-time notifications.
- Seamless Integrations: Extensive integrations with CRM, ERP, and marketing automation tools.
- Customization Options: Highly customizable workflows and dashboards.
- Innovative Engagement Tools: Unique features like gamification or augmented reality interactions.
Usability (10% of total weighting score):
Evaluating power and complexity vs ease of use:
- Intuitive Interface: Clean and easy-to-navigate UI.
- Drag-and-Drop Functionality: For creating customer journeys and campaigns.
- Role-Based Access: Easy configuration for different user roles.
- Mobile Accessibility: Full functionality available on mobile devices.
Onboarding (10% of total weighting score):
Evaluating quick, simple, and easy onboarding:
- Training Resources: Availability of training videos, templates, and interactive product tours.
- User Assistance: Chatbots and webinars for ongoing support.
- Migration Tools: Ease of migrating data from previous systems.
Customer Support (10% of total weighting score):
Evaluating customer support against the competition:
- 24/7 Support: Round-the-clock assistance availability.
- Multichannel Support: Access to support via phone, email, and live chat.
- Knowledge Base: Comprehensive self-help resources.
- Dedicated Account Managers: Personalized support for enterprise clients.
Value For Money (10% of total weighting score):
Evaluating pricing against the competition:
- Transparent Pricing: Clear and straightforward pricing models.
- Scalability: Flexible plans that grow with your business.
- Cost-Benefit Analysis: Assessing the features offered relative to cost.
- Discounts and Offers: Availability of discounts for long-term commitments or bundled services.
Customer Reviews (10% of total weighting score):
Evaluating customer reviews against the competition:
- Overall Satisfaction: High average ratings from users.
- Feature-Specific Feedback: Positive feedback on specific features relevant to your needs.
- Support and Usability: High marks for customer support and ease of use.
- Case Studies and Testimonials: Success stories from businesses similar to yours.
Trends for Customer Engagement Platforms in 2024
Customer engagement platforms are evolving to meet the dynamic needs of businesses and their customers. Here are some key trends to watch in 2024.
AI-Powered Personalization
AI-driven personalization is enhancing customer experiences by delivering tailored content. This trend is important as it increases customer satisfaction and loyalty. Businesses leveraging AI see higher engagement and conversion rates.
Omnichannel Integration
Omnichannel integration allows seamless communication across various channels. This trend ensures consistent messaging and interaction, regardless of the platform. It is crucial for maintaining a unified customer experience.
Real-Time Customer Insights
Platforms are increasingly providing real-time analytics and insights. This trend helps businesses make immediate, data-driven decisions. It is essential for staying competitive in fast-paced markets.
Enhanced Data Privacy
There is a growing focus on data privacy and security within CEPs. This trend addresses customer concerns and regulatory requirements. Ensuring data protection builds trust and compliance.
Gamification in Engagement
Gamification elements are being integrated into customer interactions. This trend makes engagement more interactive and enjoyable. It drives higher participation and fosters a deeper connection with the brand.
What are Customer Engagement Platforms?
Customer Engagement Platforms (CEPs) are software solutions designed to help businesses interact with their customers across multiple channels, such as email, social media, and websites. These platforms aim to enhance customer experience, foster loyalty, and drive sales by providing tools for personalized communication, behavior tracking, and analytics.
Key features often include customer data integration, automated messaging, and real-time interaction capabilities. By leveraging CEPs, businesses can deliver consistent and meaningful customer experiences, improve customer satisfaction, and boost overall engagement.
Key Features of Customer Engagement Platforms
I’ve worked with many customer engagement platforms and identified the features that truly make a difference. These platforms offer a range of tools designed to enhance customer interactions and streamline business processes. Here are the key features to look for:
- Engagement analytics: Allows users to analyze and understand customer data to create action plans that can improve customer satisfaction.
- Automation: Automates simple tasks such as responding to emails or web chat queries, so customers receive immediate responses.
- Surveys: Enable users to create surveys and understand results to determine areas where customers are dissatisfied and require improvement.
- Customer journey orchestration: Ensures that customers receive assistance throughout the entire customer lifecycle to help foster brand loyalty.
- Omnichannel Communication: Connect with customers across multiple channels seamlessly.
- Personalized Messaging: Deliver customized content to individual users based on their preferences and behavior.
- Customer Journey Mapping: Visualize and plan the customer’s path from initial contact to conversion.
- Real-Time Analytics: Access up-to-date data and insights to inform decisions quickly.
- Automated Workflows: Streamline tasks and processes through automation.
- Integration Capabilities: Connect with existing systems and tools for a cohesive workflow.
- AI-Powered Insights: Use artificial intelligence to gain deeper understanding and predict customer behavior.
- Segmentation: Group customers based on various criteria for targeted marketing.
- Feedback Management: Collect and analyze customer feedback to improve services.
- Security and Privacy: Ensure customer data is protected and compliant with regulations.
- These features are essential for any business looking to engage effectively with its customers and improve overall satisfaction.
Benefits of Customer Engagement Platforms
Customer engagement platforms offer significant advantages for businesses looking to improve their interactions with customers. Here are the primary benefits that potential buyers should consider:
- Enhanced Customer Experience: Provides personalized and consistent communication across all channels, improving overall customer satisfaction.
- Increased Efficiency: Automates repetitive tasks and workflows, allowing your team to focus on strategic activities.
- Data-Driven Decisions: Delivers real-time analytics and insights, enabling informed decision-making and strategy adjustments.
- Improved Customer Retention: Builds stronger relationships through targeted engagement, leading to higher customer loyalty and retention rates.
- Scalability: Adapts to your growing business needs, ensuring continuous support and engagement as your customer base expands.
Using a customer engagement platform can transform how you interact with your customers, making your business more efficient and customer-focused. These benefits highlight the value and impact of implementing such a platform.
Costs And Pricing Of Customer Engagement Platforms
Customer engagement platforms typically offer a range of pricing plans to accommodate businesses of various sizes and needs. Understanding these plans and their costs can help you make an informed decision. Here are the common plan options and their pricing details.
| Plan Type | Average Price | Common Features |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Basic engagement tools, limited channels, minimal analytics |
| Basic | $50/month | Core features, omnichannel communication, basic automation |
| Standard | $150/month | Advanced automation, customer journey mapping, integrations |
| Professional | $300/month | Real-time analytics, AI-powered insights, segmentation |
| Enterprise | Custom Pricing | Full feature set, dedicated support, advanced security |
Each plan offers a different level of functionality and support. When choosing a plan, consider your business size, needs, and budget to find the best fit.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Does Customer Engagement Mean?
Customer engagement is an emotional connection between customers and the company/brand. When customers get engaged with a brand, they think of it as more than just a service or product provider but a vital aspect of their lives.
Netflix is an excellent example of a company that engages customers by providing services that exceed customer expectations. Netflix uses algorithms to personalize the experience of customers ensuring that they remain loyal customers.
Related Read: What Is Customer Onboarding? Tips And Best Practices
Why is Customer Engagement Important?
Keeping your customers happy is one of the easiest ways to foster brand loyalty and a customer engagement platform (CEP) can help you. According to Forbes, recruiting new customers costs 5x more than retaining existing customers, giving you even more incentive to keep current customers engaged and coming back.
This article will give you crucial information about the best customer engagement platforms you can use to foster loyalty to your brand.
Related Read: NPS + CES: Harness The Power Of Your Customers
Other Customer Engagement Software
Here are some related lists of tools CX professionals might need:
The Takeaway
Loyal customers ensure that your business will have reliable sources of sales for years to come, and keeping them engaged is the best way to keep them loyal to your products and your company. With the help of the customer engagement platforms above, you can craft optimized user engagement programs that can immediately turn even new customers into loyal ones.
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