22 Best Customer Experience Software For 2024
10 Best Customer Experience Software Shortlist
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 22 tools reviewed.
Our one-on-one guidance will help you find the perfect fit.
There are so many different customer experience software, so making a shortlist of the best ones can be tricky. You want to gather feedback, address customer pain points, and provide a stellar onboarding experience - and need to find the right tool for your business. In this article, I'll help make your decision process easier by sharing my insights on the best customer experience software that can help you improve customer satisfaction.
Why Trust Our Reviews
We’ve been testing and reviewing customer experience software since 2021. As CX professionals ourselves, we know how critical and difficult it is to make the right decision when selecting software.
We invest in deep research to help our audience make better software purchasing decisions. We’ve tested more than 2,000 tools for different customer experience use cases and written over 1,000 comprehensive software reviews. Learn how we stay transparent & our software review methodology.
The 10 Best Customer Experience Software: Quick Comparison Chart
This comparison chart summarizes basic details about each of my top customer experience software selections. You can view pricing details and the availability of free trials or demos side-by-side to help you find the best software for your budget and business needs.
| Tools | Price | |
|---|---|---|
| UserGuiding | From $89/month (billed annually) | Website |
| Sogolytics | From $25/month (billed annually) | Website |
| Salesforce Service Cloud | From $25/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
| Freshdesk | From $15/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
| Birdeye | From $299/month | Website |
| Zendesk | From $49/user/month. | Website |
| SurveySparrow | From $19/month | Website |
| Nextiva | From $20/user/month, (billed annually). | Website |
| Zoho CRM | From $14/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
| monday Service | From $26/seat/month (3 seat minimum) | 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 Experience Software
You'll want to ensure the best fit possible when choosing customer experience software for your team. Here are the questions you should be asking yourself before making a purchasing decision:
⬜ What are your goals for employing customer experience software?
⬜ Have you ever used CX software 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 customer experience software?
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.
Best CXM Software Reviews
To help you find the best customer management software for you, here are detailed descriptions of my top 10 CXM software solutions and an explanation for why I included them in this list.
Best for NPS surveys and microsurveys that collect customer's experiences
UserGuiding is a product walkthrough and user onboarding software designed to facilitate the creation of interactive product walkthroughs and user onboarding processes. It stands out for its code-free approach, allowing companies to design and implement onboarding experiences without the need for technical programming skills, which is a significant advantage for businesses looking to onboard users efficiently.
UserGuiding provides a comprehensive suite of features that facilitate the collection of user insights through NPS surveys, micro-surveys and in-app surveys. These can collect feedback from the customer and display the resulting data in real time within the tool. An analytics page will display the resulting information and you can dig deep to find specific customer behaviors with the user-specific activity feed. Additionally, you can leverage its Slack integration to receive in-app notifications with responses.
You can select the ready-to-use templates or create the survey you need from scratch in under 5 minutes. Once you have collected enough information, you can download the data to your computer so you can manipulate it in other software.
Integrations include Mixpanel, Segment, Intercom, Slack, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Woopra, and HubSpot.
Best for enhancing customer experience through insightful data analytics and personalization strategies
Sogolytics is a customer experience management software that's designed to help businesses understand their customers better. It's all about collecting and analyzing customer data to improve the overall customer experience.
Why I picked Sogolytics: The platform has a few features that really stand out. First off, there's the customer journey mapping feature that allows you to visualize the entire customer journey, from the first point of contact to the final purchase. It's a great way to identify potential pain points and areas for improvement. Then there's the sentiment analysis, which uses AI to gauge customer emotions based on their interactions with your business.
Sogolytics Standout Features and Integrations:
One standout feature for Sogolytics is their predictive analytics. This feature uses historical data to predict future customer behavior and is coupled with real-time alerts to notify you immediately whenever there's a significant change in customer behavior or sentiment.
Integrations include Delicious, Digg, Pinterest, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Tumblr.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Helpful step-by-step wizard
- Includes a large survey template bank
- Supports up to 40 languages
Cons:
- Single sign-on and API access are limited to the Enterprise plan
- Free plan has limited features
Salesforce Service Cloud is a customer experience management platform and helpdesk that supports companies in creating consistent customer service across multiple channels. It enables companies to efficiently manage customer interactions using automation and AI to enhance overall support quality.
Why I chose Salesforce Service Cloud: The software's AI can analyze customer interactions to provide proactive service recommendations, anticipate customer needs, and customize interactions at scale. Agents get a 360-degree view of customer interactions, allowing them to offer more personalized support and services.
Other AI features like chatbots and automatic triaging ensure that customer inquiries are quickly directed to the most qualified agents, improving response times and support quality. The platform also offers a user-friendly interface with a drag-and-drop editor for creating a self-service center, enabling customers to find solutions independently and reducing the burden on support teams.
Salesforce Service Cloud Standout Features & Integrations
Standout features include a robust knowledge base that helps agents to quickly find information and solutions to common issues, speeding up resolution times. The field service feature supports mobile workforce management, equipping field technicians with the necessary tools and information to deliver outstanding service.
Integrations include Freshdesk, CloudTalk, Twilio, Brandwatch, Paligo, Mailchimp, HubSpot CRM, Trello, TeamViewer, Smartsheet, Klaviyo, Aircall, Gainsight, and Conversocial.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Multiple pricing tiers to support various stages of growth
- Effectively simplifies support procedures
- Customizable and adaptable to user needs
Cons:
- Some usability features are locked to higher-tier plans
- Implementation can be time-consuming
Freshdesk is a customer service software that employs AI-powered support automation to deliver timely and consistent support across businesses of various sizes. It offers advanced ticketing, self-service options, and proactive AI-driven insights, positioning Freshdesk as a suitable choice for organizations looking to leverage generative AI for reducing redundancy, improving productivity, and providing accurate resolutions.
Freshdesk offers a comprehensive ticketing system that consolidates customer interactions from multiple channels into a unified view, enabling support agents to categorize, prioritize, and track customer issues efficiently. The platform includes a self-service knowledge base and community forums to help customers resolve common issues independently. It features AI-driven automation for sorting and assigning tickets, as well as scenario-based triggers for specific actions. Collaboration tools within Freshdesk allow agents to work together and consult experts across teams.
Freshdesk software offers a range of key features including ticketing, collaboration, automations, self service, reporting & analytics, customizations, and a secure helpdesk. These features are designed to enhance customer support and service management.
Freshdesk integrates with Freshchat for messaging, Freshservice for IT service management, and Freshmarketer for marketing automation. It also connects with Google Calendar, MailChimp, Segment, Zapier, Office 365, Google Apps, Slack, Facebook, LinkedIn, Jotform, Typeform, Calendly, Email Parser by Zapier, and ClickFunnels Classic to facilitate various business processes.
Birdeye offers a robust platform to manage your company’s online reputation and various aspects of the customer experience. It’s well-suited to the needs of local businesses seeking to monitor customer sentiments and provide a more consistent experience across customer touchpoints.
Why I Picked Birdeye: This software made it onto my list because of its focus on customer feedback and review management. Users can monitor customer reviews and messages across multiple channels and manage their brand’s social media presence through the platform. It’s highly useful for keeping control over word-of-mouth referrals and local brand reputation.
The software is compatible with over 150 different online review sites, so you’ll be able to track how your brand is reviewed in multiple places. You can also use the software to request feedback from your existing customers, and compare your brand against competitors on factors like NPS and specific customer service areas.
Birdeye Standout Features & Integrations
Standout features include the software’s topic tracking tool. This helps you monitor trending topics related to your business and jump into the conversation to drive brand awareness. You can also respond to relevant customer questions and spot relevant content you might not have otherwise.
Another great feature of this software is its survey building tool. Surveys let users capture real-time feedback from customers, which can then be used to inform customer success strategies, marketing tactics, and even product and service offerings.
Integrations include QuickBooks, Square, Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, Zoho Invoice, Pipedrive, Thryv, Keap, HubSpot, Lightspeed, and hundreds of other SaaS tools.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Automates surveys and reviews
- Customer feedback management tools included
- Tons of integrations available
Cons:
- No free plan or trial available
- Limited customer support available
Zendesk is a comprehensive, AI-powered customer experience management software that helps businesses deliver customer support. It offers many features, including ticket management, real-time chat, a knowledge base, and reporting tools, facilitating communication between customers and support agents through multiple channels.
Why I picked Zendesk: Its customizable interface allows businesses to tailor the software to their operational needs, ensuring a seamless experience for customers and support agents. You can track customer interactions and monitor metrics such as response time and customer satisfaction—giving your team insights to help them continuously improve their customer service.
Zendesk provides multichannel support covering email, phone, chat, and social media. Its unified inbox feature ensures that all customer requests from a single customer are automatically merged, streamlining the communication process and enhancing the customer experience.
Zendesk Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features for Zendesk are its ticketing system and self-service portal. The ticketing system enables businesses to effectively manage and resolve customer inquiries, complaints, and support requests. It allows for seamless tracking and follow-up on customer interactions, promoting timely responses and issue resolution. You can quickly categorize, tag, and assign tickets and add common messages and solutions to responses, improving efficiency and overall response times.
Zendesk's self-service portal allows companies to create a knowledge base consisting of FAQs, guides, and tutorials, enabling customers to find answers to the usual questions independently. Businesses can relieve their support team of trivial inquiries and instead focus on more complex issues.
Its analytics dashboards offer real-time insights into support performance, allowing companies to evaluate customer satisfaction rates, identify trends, and discover growth opportunities.
Integrations include Asana, Google Workspace, HubSpot, Jira, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, Shopify, Slack, Trello, Zoom, and over 1200 more options on the Zendesk Marketplace.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Advanced analytics dashboard
- Robust ticket management features
- Customizable templates to answer common questions
Cons:
- Slight learning curve for advanced features
- Limited free plan
Best for refining your customer experience based on customer survey feedback
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.
Why I picked SurveySparrow: I included SurveySparrow because their survey software covers a wide range of use cases for CX teams. You can embed their survey bots on your website to extend support or solve common queries, or set up surveys to measure key customer metrics, such as your customer effort score (CES), customer satisfaction score (CSAT), or your transactional or relational net promoter score (NPS). To help you reduce your churn rate, you can also use it to set up a customer exit survey that runs after each customer churn event.
SurveySparrow Standout Features and Integrations:
One standout feature for SurveySparrow is its omnichannel approach to collecting customer feedback. SurveySparrow lets you automate closing the feedback loop with personalized workflows to instantly value customers’ responses and pacify your detractors. The omnichannel approach helps you reach your audience through any medium, including via weblink, in-app embedding, email, SMS, or QR code.
SurveySparrow’s simple UI makes the customer survey creation process enjoyable. You can also combine their survey tool with SurveySparrow’s case management feature to create tickets and efficiently address your customers’ feedback. As a software provider, SurveySparrow is also well-known for providing excellent customer support, too.
Integrations are available with 180+ software solutions, including Salesforce, Freshdesk, HubSpot, Power BI, Zendesk, MailChimp, Intercom, Slack, Stripe, Zapier, and others. They also offer several APIs, as well as webhooks, to support additional custom integrations as well.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Offers mobile-first surveys purpose-built for mobile devices
- Over 180+ integrations
- Easy to automate recurring surveys
Cons:
- Overlap between their various products is confusing
- Costly to add extra users ($49/extra user/month) for larger teams
Nextiva is a customer experience management platform that provides a comprehensive suite of tools designed to enhance business communications and customer interactions. It offers solutions for voice, video, chat, social media, and email, integrating these channels into a single platform to facilitate customer engagement.
Why I chose Nextiva: I like Nextiva's AI-powered customer journey orchestration feature, which tracks and analyzes customer interactions across various touchpoints. This allows businesses to predict customer needs, personalize their interactions, and deliver a consistent experience. By using AI to automate workflows and optimize engagement strategies, Nextiva ensures that customers receive timely and relevant communication.
Additionally, Nextiva offers advanced voice analytics and real-time reporting tools. Utilizing machine learning algorithms, the voice analytics feature examines call data to provide deep insights into customer sentiment and agent performance. This enables businesses to detect patterns and identify areas needing improvement, to provide more consistent, high-quality service. Real-time reporting further enhances operational efficiency by allowing managers to track key performance indicators such as average response times and call resolution rates.
Nextiva Standout Features & Integrations
Standout features include intelligent virtual assistants that can handle routine inquiries and tasks and the call pop feature that provides agents with critical customer information before answering calls. Additionally, the customer feedback gathering feature helps businesses collect and analyze customer opinions to continuously improve their services.
Integrations include Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Teams, Zoho CRM, Zendesk, G Suite, Microsoft Outlook, Slack, ServiceNow, QuickBooks, SugarCRM, NetSuite, Oracle Sales Cloud, RingCentral, and Mailchimp.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- AI features to assist agents with routine tasks
- Supports team collaboration
- Comprehensive analytics and reporting features
Cons:
- Wide range of capabilities may be overwhelming for smaller operations
- Many integrations are only available on higher-tier plans
Zoho CRM is a robust customer relationship management platform used by over 250,000 businesses in 180 countries. It offers tools to help you effectively manage your sales pipeline, marketing automation, and customer support activities, covering all areas of your revenue operations. The software can facilitate customer conversations via phone, email, live chat, and social media.
Why I picked Zoho CRM: I included Zoho CRM in this list because of its ability to use artificial intelligence for better CX interactions. For example, the software uses AI to learn from customer interactions in order to provide useful suggestions like the best time to contact customers or predict business trends. Zoho CRM also has an analytics feature that uses data across your entire organization to provide you with an impact analysis of business decisions, helping you minimize risks and increase your potential for success.
Zoho CRM Standout Features and Integrations:
The biggest standout feature for Zoho CRM is its omnichannel engagement coverage. When a customer interaction is initiated through any of your connected channels, your CX team will be notified. The software also stores detailed communication data and customer records, ensuring your agents have all the context they need to effectively handle requests. Teams can also manage their calendars, files, and emails through the system. Workflow automations help you easily respond to simple requests without adding to your team's workload.
Integrations include Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, Zapier, Zendesk, and ServiceNow.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Helps analyze customer sentiments, trends, and engagement levels
- Feature-rich and affordable
- You can monitor social mentions in one inbox
Cons:
- Many features creates a steep learning curve
- AI features are limited to their highest paid plan
monday Service is a next-level platform designed to streamline various service-related workflows within organizations. It offers advanced solutions for ticket management, multi-channel support, AI-driven automation, and service catalogs, among other functionalities. The platform is highly customizable, allowing teams to tailor it to their specific needs, whether it's for IT support, customer service, or internal help desks.
With monday Service, users can manage tasks, timelines, and budgets with various views (like Kanban, Gantt, and calendar). Additionally, monday Service offers strong reporting and analytics, time tracking, and a highly intuitive interface, making it suitable for managing complex projects across diverse teams and industries.
Integrations include Slack, Google Drive, Microsoft Team, Zoom, and Outlook.
Other Customer Experience Management Software
Looking for more customer experience management tools to check out? Here are a few more that didn’t make it into my top 10 shortlist, but are still worth considering:
Related CX Management Software Reviews
If you still haven't found what you're looking for here, check out these related customer experience management tools that we've tested and evaluated.
- Customer Service Software
- Help Desk Software
- Call Center Software
- Customer Messaging Platform
- Digital Experience Platform
- Sentiment Analysis Tools
Selection Criteria for Customer Experience Management Software
Selecting the right customer experience management software hinges on functionality and alignment with specific use cases critical to enhancing customer service and feedback management. These platforms offer a suite of features designed to streamline customer interactions, analyze feedback, and optimize the customer journey. Through personal trials and extensive research, I've identified essential criteria for evaluating these solutions, ensuring they meet the nuanced needs of CX and customer service teams.
Core Customer Experience Management Software Functionality: 25% of total weighting score
Common features for customer experience management software typically include customer feedback management, data collection and management, omnichannel contact center, customer journey mapping, workflow automation, templates, data analytics and reporting, integration capabilities, AI and machine learning, and security and compliance. These functionalities form the foundation of any competent CX management platform, offering a holistic view of the customer experience across multiple touchpoints.
To be considered for inclusion on my list of the best customer experience management software, the solution had to support the ability to fulfill common use cases:
- Gathering and analyzing customer feedback across multiple channels.
- Mapping and analyzing the customer journey to identify key touchpoints.
- Automating workflows to streamline customer engagement processes.
- Integrating with existing CRM and marketing software for a unified customer view.
- Providing actionable insights through data analytics to improve customer satisfaction.
Additional Standout Features: 25% of total weighting score
- Innovative feedback collection methods beyond standard surveys, such as voice of customer (VoC) analytics.
- Advanced AI-driven insights for predicting customer behavior and personalizing interactions.
- Unique integration capabilities with emerging tech platforms for enhanced data utility.
- Superior customization options for dashboards and reports to cater to specific business needs.
- Exceptional security features ensuring data privacy and compliance beyond industry standards.
I explore and test for functionality that surpasses basic offerings, seeking solutions that introduce novel approaches to managing and enhancing customer experiences.
Usability: 10% of total weighting score
- Intuitive interface design, allowing for effortless navigation and task completion without extensive training.
- Customizable dashboards that provide quick access to the most relevant data and insights for the user.
- Responsive design ensuring seamless use across various devices, crucial for teams in dynamic environments.
Onboarding: 10% of total weighting score
- Comprehensive training resources, including videos, interactive product tours, and webinars, facilitating a smooth learning curve.
- Ready-to-use templates and chatbots that expedite deployment and immediate value realization.
- Dedicated customer success support to assist with data migration and system integration.
Customer Support: 10% of total weighting score
- Availability of 24/7 live support to address urgent issues and queries.
- A robust knowledge base for self-service troubleshooting and learning.
- Proactive customer success management to ensure continuous value from the platform.
Value For Money: 10% of total weighting score
- Competitive pricing structures that align with the feature set and scalability offered.
- Clear ROI indicators, demonstrating how the platform can reduce costs or increase revenue.
- Flexible pricing plans that accommodate the needs of businesses of different sizes and stages.
Customer Reviews: 10% of total weighting score
- High ratings for ease of use and customer support, indicating a positive user experience.
- Strong testimonials regarding the software’s impact on improving customer satisfaction and engagement.
- Feedback highlighting the software's ability to integrate seamlessly with existing business systems.
Evaluating customer experience management platforms through this lens ensures that selected solutions not only provide comprehensive functionality but also address specific challenges faced by CX and customer service teams. This criteria-driven approach aids in choosing a platform that excels in gathering feedback, tracking customer journeys, and ultimately enhancing the overall customer experience.
Trends in Customer Experience Management Software
In reviewing the product updates, press releases, and release logs for the most rapidly evolving and popular customer experience management tools, emerging trends highlight a future where AI and immersive technologies will continue to redefine how businesses engage with customers. Here are the most important insights:
- Balancing Automation with Empathy: We're moving towards a more seamless integration of human empathy and advanced technology. As AI chatbots increasingly handle basic inquiries, the focus will intensify on training CX teams in empathy and sophisticated problem-solving skills. This dual approach will not only elevate the quality of live customer support but will also lead to more nuanced and effective uses of artificial intelligence and machine learning in CX operations.
- Sentiment-Driven CX: There's an increased focus on leveraging customer emotions through sentiment analysis, utilizing natural language processing and machine learning to analyze emotional tones in customer feedback. This approach enables businesses to personalize responses and enhance customer experiences by addressing emotional needs, leading to more empathetic customer journeys.
- Immersive CX with AR and VR: Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies are being increasingly adopted to create engaging and interactive customer experiences. These technologies allow for applications like virtual try-ons, immersive property tours, and gamified experiences, enhancing customer engagement and providing memorable brand interactions.
- Personalized Experiences Remain Crucial: The demand for personalized customer experiences continues to grow, emphasizing the importance of leveraging customer data to offer personalized content, recommendations, and solutions.
- Data Security and Privacy: As data collection and analysis become more sophisticated, ensuring data security and privacy in compliance with regulations is increasingly important. This focus is not only about meeting legal obligations but also about earning and maintaining customer trust.
For CX specialists and customer service professionals, staying abreast of these trends is essential to leveraging the latest capabilities in customer experience management software to meet and exceed customer expectations.
What is Customer Experience Software?
Customer experience software is a tool that helps businesses manage and improve all interactions with their customers. It includes features like feedback collection, analytics, customer journey mapping, and personalized communication. By using this software, companies can gain insights into customer behaviors, address issues quickly, and enhance overall satisfaction. This leads to better customer retention and increased loyalty.
These features help organizations in collecting customer feedback through surveys, social media, emails, and other interaction points. This facilitates a more organized and efficient approach to customer experience management. By leveraging CEM software, you can incorporate the voice of the customer into all of these aspects of your business and transform customer feedback into actionable insights to enhance the quality of your service or product offerings.
Features of Customer Experience Management Software
Customer experience management software typically includes several key features to help organizations manage their customer experience initiatives. Here are some common CEM software features:
- Customer Feedback Management: Enables collection of insights across various channels. This feature is crucial as it allows teams to capture real-time feedback through surveys, social media, and emails, ensuring a holistic understanding of customer sentiment.
- Data Collection and Management: Streamlines the creation of cloud-based customer profiles. By facilitating easier communication and segmentation, such as for A/B testing, this feature helps tailor experiences to individual customer needs, enhancing personalization and engagement.
- Omnichannel Contact Center: Integrates customer queries from multiple platforms into one interface. Managing interactions across email, chat, social media, SMS, and calls from a single point ensures consistency and efficiency in customer service.
- Customer Journey Mapping: Offers visualization of the customer journey across various stages. This tool is essential for identifying critical touchpoints and optimizing interactions at each stage, leading to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Workflow Automation: Automates repetitive tasks and processes. By sending follow-up surveys or triggering alerts based on customer activities, this feature enhances operational efficiency and ensures timely responses to customer needs.
- Templates: Provides customizable templates for support tools. With templates for chatbots or knowledge base content, teams can quickly address common inquiries, allowing for faster and more effective customer support.
- Data Analytics and Reporting: Delivers insights into customer feedback and satisfaction metrics. Through analytics dashboards and reporting tools, teams can measure performance, uncover trends, and make informed decisions to boost customer satisfaction.
- Integration Capabilities: Ensures seamless connection with other business tools. This feature is vital for sharing data across systems, enabling a unified approach to customer experience management and eliminating silos.
- AI and Machine Learning: Enhances analysis and prediction of customer behavior. By leveraging AI, software can offer deeper insights into customer preferences and predict future trends, helping tailor strategies to meet evolving needs.
- Security and Compliance: Guarantees the protection of customer data. In an era where data breaches are common, robust security features and adherence to compliance standards are non-negotiable to maintain customer trust.
Benefits of Customer Experience Management Software
Customer Experience Management (CEM) software is a game-changer for businesses focused on improving customer interactions and loyalty. Here are five primary benefits of integrating such software:
- Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: CEM software provides tools to meticulously track and analyze customer feedback, enabling businesses to swiftly identify and address concerns. This responsiveness significantly boosts customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Increased Personalization: By leveraging customer data, CEM software allows for the creation of personalized experiences tailored to individual preferences and behaviors. This level of customization enhances the customer journey, making it more engaging and satisfying.
- Improved Customer Retention: With its ability to gather and analyze customer interactions, CEM software helps identify patterns that can lead to churn, enabling businesses to proactively implement strategies to retain customers. This preemptive approach ensures a higher customer retention rate.
- Streamlined Feedback Collection and Analysis: The software automates the process of collecting and analyzing customer feedback across multiple channels. This efficiency not only saves time but also provides valuable insights more rapidly, enabling quicker strategic decisions.
- Data-Driven Decision Making: CEM software offers comprehensive analytics tools that present actionable insights based on customer data. This empowers organizations to make informed decisions that directly contribute to enhancing the customer experience.
Adopting CEM Software is key to understanding and improving the customer journey, providing a competitive advantage and fostering growth.
Cost & Pricing for Customer Experience Management Software
When exploring customer experience management (CEM) software, it's essential to consider various plan options to find one that fits your business needs and budget. CEM software helps businesses gather and analyze customer feedback across multiple channels, enabling you to improve your customer service, enhance customer satisfaction, and foster loyalty.
| Plan Type | Average Price | Common Features |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Basic analytics, limited surveys, customer feedback collection |
| Starter | $10 - $50 per month | Enhanced analytics, more survey types, email support, integration with few platforms |
| Professional | $50 - $200 per month | Advanced analytics, unlimited surveys, multi-channel support, CRM integration |
| Enterprise | $200+ per month | Customizable features, dedicated support, advanced integration options, AI capabilities |
When selecting a CEM software plan, consider both your immediate needs and potential future requirements. Starting with a free or lower-tier plan can be a good way to test the software's capabilities, but ensure the plan you choose can scale with your business to avoid any disruptions in managing your customer experience.
New & Noteworthy Product Updates
Below, you’ll find my take on the latest and greatest product updates for customer experience management software. Discover what’s now possible through feature releases, improvements, and updates on web, desktop, and mobile apps. Learn what’s new, if it’s hot—or not, and why it matters for addressing customer pain points, and providing a stellar customer experience.
May 2024: Customer Experience Management Software Updates
Userguiding Update Notes
UserGuiding's latest feature, Custom Domain for Product Updates Pages, allows users to personalize their product update pages with custom URLs that reflect their brand. This update, easily set up within the UserGuiding panel, enhances brand consistency and provides a seamless experience for users by integrating the product update page into the company's existing web infrastructure.
This update piggybacks off the “ Product Updates” feature announced in April that is designed for agile product teams and customer success people in SaaS who want to create an exclusive hub for all their updates and foster a culture of two-way communication. This means teams can collect feedback directly within the app, group and tag announcements for easy navigation, and use a booster function to highlight important updates without disrupting the user experience.
Verdict: Hot! Custom domains for product updates pages significantly enhance user experience by integrating updates seamlessly with the company's existing web infrastructure.
Birdeye Update Notes
Birdeye introduced Command Central in May 2024, a comprehensive dashboard designed to provide actionable insights into client health, business performance, and critical alerts. Command Central includes features like at-a-glance summaries of adoption, performance, and alerts, error notifications to prevent potential issues, and configurable dashboards for tailored insights. Additionally, Agency Reports offer accurate, customizable reports on product deployment, adoption, setup status, and ROI, while Agency Directories enable quick access to accounts of direct and reseller businesses with customizable default columns.
This update allows users to save time and improve efficiency by eliminating the need for manual reporting and offering instant, configurable insights into their business performance. By providing early error alerts and comprehensive reports, businesses can proactively address potential issues and optimize their operations. The customizable dashboards and reports ensure that users can focus on the most relevant data, enhancing decision-making and overall business management.
Verdict: Hot! Command Central simplifies the monitoring and management of client bases, making it easier for businesses to maintain a high level of service and performance.
April 2024: Customer Experience Management Software Updates
Freshdesk Update Notes
Freshdesk introduced the ability to create custom metrics in its Analytics tool in April 2024. This update allows enterprise users to craft personalized metrics using both simple arithmetic operations and complex functions, tailored to their specific business needs. These custom metrics provide a more curated analytical experience, enabling users to focus on the data points most relevant to their operations, beyond the default metrics provided by Freshdesk.
This update empowers organizations to gain deeper insights into their helpdesk performance. By creating metrics that align closely with business objectives, users can track and measure specific aspects of their support processes more accurately. This flexibility enhances decision-making capabilities, allowing businesses to identify trends, pinpoint areas for improvement, and optimize their customer support strategies effectively.
Verdict: Hot! Custom metrics empowers businesses to tailor their analytics to specific needs, enabling precise tracking and more informed decision-making.
Customer Experience Management: FAQ
Here are answers to some common questions about managing the customer experience:
Why is customer experience important?
Martin Zwilling states that “companies with the highest customer experience typically grow more than double their competitors’ rate.” He also states that brands could easily lose their competitive advantage when they focus on the wrong things.
In the same article, Zwilling notes that CXM has become more vital as a result of the “advent of social media and real-time interactive feedback via the Internet [which] allows every customer to build and expect a relationship with your business, rather than just touchpoints”.
With products generally becoming the same, and the cost of switching brands becoming easier, CXM becomes the one way your brand can ensure its competitive edge, satisfying customers and reducing customer churn. Positive customer experiences will help build an ongoing relationship with your customers.
What is the difference between customer experience management and customer service?
It’s important not to confuse customer service with customer experience management. The former tends to be reactive, only kicking into action when a customer meets a challenge. The latter is proactive as it anticipates the challenges a customer will meet and ensures that such challenges are averted.
Are there other types of customer experience software?
Other than customer experience mangement software (this list!), other types of customer experience mangement include:
- Customer Success Software: Help you increase customer retention and satisfaction by proactively managing customer interactions and providing personalized support and guidance.
- Customer Onboarding Software: Help new customers learn your product or services; help old customers find new features or items they’ve missed.
- Customer Engagement Software: Build and maintain strong relationships with customers by providing tools for communicating, interacting, and engaging with them across various channels and touchpoints.
How do CX management tools handle data privacy and GDPR compliance?
CX management tools prioritize GDPR compliance by requiring explicit consent for data collection and ensuring transparency about data usage. Secure storage is a must to prevent unauthorized access, and some situations necessitate appointing a Data Protection Officer (DPO) to oversee compliance. Additionally, many of these tools mandate the reporting of data breaches within 72 hours and necessitate regular reviews of data practices to align with GDPR standards.
Is there any open source customer experience management software?
There are a few options for open-source customer experience management platforms out there, such as SuiteCRM and UVdesk.
What integration challenges commonly arise with CX management software?
Common integration issues often include compatibility with existing systems, data synchronization accuracy, and maintaining the integrity of customer data across platforms. Challenges may also arise in ensuring real-time data updates and integrating with a wide array of third-party applications, from CRM systems to analytics tools. Efficient integration requires a robust API and flexible software architecture to accommodate diverse business needs and technological environments.
Can you share some tips for managing customer experience?
Sure! Here are some helpful tips for you;
1. Seek Feedback: It would be impossible to manage customer experience without customer insights into what they are experiencing. Seek feedback actively by establishing channels such as support tickets and customer data collection through surveys, social media listening, and analytics tools. Then use this feedback to identify and resolve common challenges in the customer journey, enhancing their overall experience.
2. Connect with the Customer Emotionally: Build emotional connections with customers through empathy and understanding of their challenges, using social media and review sites as platforms for engagement. Brands that effectively address customer frustrations while maintaining an emotional bond will enhance customer approval and engagement.
3. Use Multiple Channels and Platforms: Customers have their preferred channels and platforms for interacting with brands. For example, some customers may prefer speaking to a team member over a chatbot, and still others might prefer social media interactions. Thus, you should use different channels and platforms for contacting and interacting with clients to ensure you meet their needs.
4. Personalize the Experience: Creating a personalized experience for individual customers is great for improving customer experience. For example, memes may appeal to younger people, but they may not make sense to another generation. Therefore, it is crucial to personalize customer experiences so you can meet their needs as well as possible.
5. Focus on Usability and Onboarding: If customers don’t know how to access or use your product or service, they will inevitably be frustrated. Invest in assisting your customers by providing in-depth customer onboarding, training, and resources to ease customer frustration. Have team members dedicated to answering customer inquiries and tickets.
To learn more, take a look at these other tips and best practices for creating a customer experience survey and how you can report on your findings like a pro.
What Do You Think?
Writing for CMSWire.com, a publication for digital professionals, Dom Nicastro says that "A strong customer experience management is only as good as the software behind it.” Nicastro notes that good software helps brands “collect, track, manage, organize, analyze, personalize, and execute relevant interactions with customers and prospects."
Subscribe to the CX Lead newsletter to stay up to date on the latest software and trends in the CX world. We’re also launching a CX Lead community forum — sign up for the waitlist here!