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With so many different customer engagement software solutions available, finding the right one for your business is tough. You know you want software to help you manage your customer relationships efficiently so you can enhance their experience and address their needs more effectively, but you need to figure out which software is best. In this post, I'll help you make this choice easy by sharing my insights on the best customer engagement software to connect with your customers at scale and foster a positive brand experience.

What is Customer Engagement Software?

Customer engagement software are tools designed to manage interactions between customers and a business. They help to streamline communication, customer service, and support requests, enhancing the customer experience across the entire customer lifecycle. They achieve this through features like multi-channel communications tools (via email, chat, or social media), automated responses, feedback collection mechanisms, and personalization abilities. You can also connect them with other systems you may already be using, such as CRM systems, chatbots, email marketing platforms, and social media accounts to make your workflows more efficient.

Customer engagement software offers numerous benefits including better data-driven insights into customer behaviors and preferences, leading to increased sales and revenue, plus increased efficiency through automation. By increasing customer engagement you can expect improvements to your overall customer satisfaction and brand loyalty as well.

Overviews of the 20 Best Customer Engagement Software

Here’s a brief description of each customer engagement tool to showcase each platform’s best use case, some noteworthy features, and screenshots to give a snapshot of the user interface.

Best for creating code-free product tours

  • 14-day free trial
  • From $89/month (billed annually)
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Rating: 4.7/5

UserGuiding is a customer onboarding and engagement platform that helps you familiarize new users with your product. You can build no-code walkthroughs that get new users up and running quickly, and show existing users how to navigate key product features and functions.

The software also facilitates customer feedback collection via micro-surveys. There are tons of pre-built survey templates to choose from, or you can build your own. The survey builder is also code-free, and the analytics dashboard provides you with real-time insights from survey responses.

UserGuiding integrates with other tools including Mixpanel, Segment, Intercom, Slack, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Woopra, and HubSpot.

Paid plans start from $89 per month with annual billing, and a 14-day free trial is available.

Best for efficient omnichannel communications management

  • 7-day free trial
  • From $19/user/month (billed annually)
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Rating: 5/5

Front is a customer communications management platform that centralizes your email, live chat, and SMS conversations in a single inbox. It allows your team to manage customer conversations more efficiently and provide more personalized, contextual customer support and services. The software's automation capabilities and its built-in collaborative tools facilitate improved teamwork and streamlined processes.

You can alleviate your team's manual workload with the software's automations. For example, incoming requests can be automatically categorized and routed to the appropriate support agent, saving your team time and providing a quicker, more personalized experience to customers seeking assistance. You can also collect feedback from customers through the platform, providing your team with important insights about customer satisfaction, needs, questions, and more.

Secret direct messaging within customer communication threads allows team members to collaborate towards better resolutions without jumping back and forth from a separate messaging tool. Additionally, being able to set up an internal knowledge base makes it easy for team members to access crucial information for resolving customer issues swiftly.

The software has over 100 native integrations with other apps, including WhatsApp, Dialpad, Twilio, Intercom, Facebook, Instagram, Slack, Twitter, Asana, HubSpot, Jira, and Salesforce, among others. An API is also available to build custom integrations with.

Pricing for Front starts at $19 per user, per month when billed annually, and a 7 day free trial is available.

Best for collecting and tracking customer feedback via recurring surveys

  • 14-day free trial + free plan available
  • From $19/month
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Rating: 4.4/5

SurveySparrow is a customer engagement software that's designed to help businesses gather feedback and engage with their customers. It's all about making the process of collecting and analyzing customer feedback a whole lot easier. It's got a pretty neat interface that's easy to navigate, and it's packed with features that make it a solid choice for businesses of all sizes.

I included SurveySparrow because it can do more than just send out surveys and collect responses. Instead, it can help you engage with your customers more meaningfully so you can understand their needs and make informed decisions based on their feedback. By doing so, you'll be able to build stronger relationships with your customers and increase your brand loyalty.

One of the standout features of SurveySparrow is its conversational interface. Instead of presenting users with a long list of questions, it breaks down surveys into a chat-like conversation. This makes the survey-taking experience a lot more engaging and less tedious. Plus, it's got a variety of question types to choose from, so you can tailor your surveys to fit your needs.

Another feature that I really like is their recurring surveys. This allows you to send out surveys at regular intervals, which is great for tracking customer satisfaction over time. It's also got a robust reporting feature that lets you analyze your survey data in-depth. You can even segment your data based on different criteria, which is super useful for identifying trends and patterns.

Integrations are available with MailChimp, HubSpot, Intercom, Salesforce, Zapier, Google Sheets, Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, and many other systems.

They offer a Basic free plan with limited features to get you started, as well as a 14-day free trial. After that, their paid plans start at $19/month.

Best for secure customer collaboration

  • Free demo available
  • Pricing upon request
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Rating: 4.6/5

Velaris is a customer success platform that consolidates customer information from various systems into a single interface, offering a comprehensive view of customer accounts. It features AI-powered analytics, dynamic health scores, and real-time reporting to help teams stay proactive in maintaining their relationships with clients. 

The platform offers a customer portal for external collaboration, allowing businesses to streamline email communications, distribute and automate surveys, and manage customer projects. This collaborative feature facilitates more engagement between customer success teams and their customers, allowing for more direct feedback collection. The integration with various systems also ensures that all necessary data is accessible and secure, complying with GDPR and SOC standards.

Velaris also offers deep insights into customer behavior, measures the health of customer portfolios, and generates detailed reports. The sentiment analysis tool also provides real-time insights into customer feelings, enabling proactive engagement strategies.

Integrations include Slack, Microsoft Teams, Intercom, MailChimp, Outlook, Google Drive, HubSpot, Jira, and Salesforce.

Best customer engagement software for B2B organizations

  • Free plan available
  • From $34/month (billed annually)
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Rating: 4.7/5

JotForm Enterprise provides a comprehensive platform for B2B businesses to engage with customers in an efficient and effective manner.

It provides powerful tools to build forms, collect data from customers, create automated workflows, and analyze the data collected from customers. The platform also offers customizable options that allow businesses to tailor their customer engagement strategies according to the needs of their specific industry. Moreover, its drag-and-drop form builder allows businesses to create forms without any coding knowledge or technical expertise quickly.

They have a powerful reporting feature that provides insights into the performance of forms and helps users make better decisions about their customer engagement strategies. With this feature, businesses can track key metrics such as form completion rate, total submissions, and average submission time. Additionally, users can also track individual form fields, such as the most popular choice in a dropdown list or which type of questions are answered most frequently by users. This information helps businesses gain valuable insights into their customers’ preferences so that they can refine their strategies accordingly.

JotForm Enterprise integrates with other popular apps, such as Slack, Salesforce, OneDrive, Airtable, and Google Drive, so users can easily connect with other services while collecting customer data. This makes it easier for businesses to manage their data across multiple platforms without needing additional resources or staff members dedicated solely to this purpose. Furthermore, its built-in analytics engine allows businesses to stay up-to-date on their performance by providing detailed reports on various aspects, such as user activity and completion rates for each form field or form in general.

Plan out and test personalized customer journeys

  • Free demo available
  • Pricing upon request
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Rating: 4.5/5

Braze is a customer engagement platform that relies on automation and interactive content to help you create memorable customer experiences. Braze’s simple drag-and-drop interface enables you to produce omnichannel customer journeys with ease. 

The platform collects data from all your customer-facing channels and organizes it to help you understand customer behavior. This enables you to segment your audience and engage customers with the right message for each step of their purchasing journey. 

Braze also allows you to test different campaigns and messages, so you can run short A/B tests to discover the winning messaging strategy. 

Braze integrates with dozens of solutions, including Shopify, Segment, Heap, Foursquare, Facebook, and Amplitude. 

Braze offers custom pricing upon request. 

Use AI to improve your conversations

  • Free trial available.
  • From $20/user/month.
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Rating: 4.4/5

Dialpad is a sales engagement platform that uses AI to help your sales team become more effective. The solution integrates with all your communication channels, allowing you to monitor all your interactions from a single dashboard. 

This solution stands out from its competition thanks to its AI. The AI creates a knowledge base for your team and analyses their conversations to help them with scripts if the customers ask tough questions. 

The AI also creates accurate transcripts for every conversation and uses them to improve your knowledge base. Then, it uses that information to advise every sales rep on how to handle different situations, improving employee engagement. 

Dialpad integrates with multiple tools, including Salesforce, Hubspot, Microsoft Teams, Intercom, Integromat, and Zapier. 

Dialpad costs from $20/user/month and offers a free trial.

Keep your audience engaged with in-app communication

  • 14-day free trial + free plan available
  • Pricing upon request
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Rating: 4.4/5

Pendo is a product experience platform that can help your development team keep users engaged and responsive. The software makes it easy to communicate with your users via in-app messages, product guides, and walkthroughs. 

Pendo’s analytics tool helps you uncover which features your customers love and which they ignore. You can use surveys and polls as customer communication tools to collect feedback and improve your product. 

You customer support specialists can access Pendo’s database to perform market research and identify behavior trends. 

Pendo integrates with dozens of tools, including Jira, Hubspot, Calendly, Drift, Figma, Planhat, and Optimizely. 

Pendo offers custom pricing upon request. The tool is free to use for up to 1,000 monthly active users. You can also access a demo. 

Give your team the data it needs to keep customers engaged

  • Pricing upon request
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Rating: 4.4/5

Infobip is an omnichannel communication solution that helps businesses improve customer engagement and retention. The software offers a range of communication tools that help you build better relationships. 

This solution uses customer information to build detailed profiles that include behavior data, previous interactions, and shopping and payment history. The tool uses this data to offer insights. This can help your team identify sales opportunities and act on them. 

Infobip’s dashboard gives every customer success manager the data they need to offer clients the right solutions without switching tabs or navigating through multiple communication solutions. 

Once they start a conversation, your sales or support specialists can see a history of the client’s interactions with your brand, and they can also set up automated notifications and reminders to let other team members know what to do. 

Infobip integrates with a variety of apps, including ZohoCRM, VTEX, BIgCommerce, Hubspot, and Jira. 

Infobip offers custom pricing upon request.

Best for small businesses

  • 14-day free trial
  • From $249/user/month (billed annually)
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Rating: 4.2/5

Keap is a comprehensive CRM and automation software designed to help small businesses enhance their customer engagement and streamline their operations. By providing a centralized platform for managing customer interactions, marketing campaigns, and sales processes, Keap enables businesses to build stronger relationships with their customers through personalized and consistent communication.

One of Keap's standout features for customer engagement is its robust email marketing capabilities. Businesses can create and send targeted email campaigns using customizable templates, ensuring that messages are tailored to the specific interests and needs of their audience. Automation tools also allow for timely follow-ups, segmenting contacts based on behavior, and triggering personalized emails based on customer actions. 

Additionally, Keap's dynamic form creation and multi-channel communication features further enhance customer engagement. Businesses can design custom forms for lead capture, surveys, and feedback, integrating them seamlessly into their websites and emails. The multi-channel communication capabilities allow businesses to engage with customers through various platforms, including email, SMS, and social media.

Integrations include QuickBooks, Zapier, WordPress, Shopify, Gmail, Outlook, PayPal, Stripe, Leadpages, and ScheduleOnce. 

The Best Customer Engagement Software Solutions Summary

Tools Price
UserGuiding From $89/month (billed annually)
Front From $19/user/month (billed annually)
SurveySparrow From $19/month
Velaris Pricing upon request
Jotform From $34/month (billed annually)
Braze Pricing upon request
Dialpad From $20/user/month.
Pendo Pricing upon request
Infobip Pricing upon request
Keap From $249/user/month (billed annually)
Compare Software Specs Side by Side

Compare Software Specs Side by Side

Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.

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Comparison Criteria

What do I look for when I select the best customer engagement app? Here’s a summary of my evaluation criteria: 

  1. User Interface (UI): I look for solutions with clean interfaces, so you won’t waste your time searching for the right functionalities. 
  2. Usability: I look for tools that don’t require months of training to master. Your team should be able to learn how to use most of their features after a brief onboarding. 
  3. Integrations: I look for software that integrates with your other tools, so you won’t have to change your app ecosystem in order to use them. 
  4. Value for $: I look for solutions that enable you to track your interactions and create detailed reports on your efforts, so you can get the most out of your investment. 

Customer Engagement Software Key Features

  1. Tracking capabilities: The solution should be able to track your interactions with prospects and customers across multiple channels. The more channels it can track, the better. 
  2. Real-time insights: You should be able to determine the impact of your work without difficulty. Real-time insights enable to you see how well your team is performing. 
  3. Automation: Customer relationships are not always easy to manage. And managing hundreds or thousands of relationships is impossible without good automation features. 
  4. Personalized experiences: The software should enable you to personalize your engagement efforts. For example, people who have open support tickets should not receive marketing emails, those who just bought your most expensive package shouldn’t receive limited offers for less expensive options, and so on. 
  5. 360 customer views: The solution should organize all the data you collect - from marketing data to social media discussions, sales data, and customer service transcripts - and create detailed customer profiles so you can understand their needs and wants. 
  6. Analytics: You need data in order to create efficient workflows and boost customer satisfaction. The customer engagement platform should offer powerful analytics capabilities and allow you to slice and dice data however you choose.

Why is Customer Engagement Important?

Marketing specialists and salespeople disagree on many things, but there’s one point they agree on - it’s easier to foster relationships with your existing customers than to acquire new ones. 

Customer engagement is an ongoing process that helps companies build relationships with their customers and prospects in order to increase brand awareness and loyalty. 

Even though customer engagement is a hot topic in today’s business industry, setting up efficient customer engagement workflows is still difficult. But this is where customer engagement software comes in. 

Customer engagement software enables you to monitor your interactions with prospects and customers across multiple channels. These solutions also help you build automated or semi-automated workflows to move your customers and prospects through the customer journey, so they make it easier to nurture relationships.

Improve customer engagement with software

Building meaningful relationships is difficult. But building great relationships with thousands of people is almost impossible without dedicated software. 

If you want to build a loyal customer base, you need to offer a great shopping experience. As Emily Collins, senior analyst with Forrester Research, said

They [customers] come for the perks, but they stay for the experience.

You can learn more about creating a great shipping experience in our Best Customer Experience Management Software

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