Best Customer Experience Management Software
Updated: August 29,2022
Few among us haven’t had to contact customer support at some point. Of course, the most common reason for doing so is having an issue requiring prompt resolution - like resetting lost passwords, sorting out payment issues, etc.
Considering that your consumers have less than pleasant reasons for contacting a customer support agent, having software that improves customer experience can come in quite handy.
The best customer experience management software will help you collect customer feedback, get customer insights, and improve client interactions. It’s a powerful data-gathering tool that collects, organizes, analyses, and stores information based on customer feedback.
Customer engagement and satisfaction are crucial for good business practice - a fact recognized by smart software development companies that bring many choices for CX solutions to the table.
- Centralized support
- Integrations
- Powerful reporting and survey system
- Price
Zendesk is a brand associated with quality customer service solutions. The Zendesk Suite was released in 2018, compiling everything a professional support team might need. All part of the same bundle, Zendesk Support, Guide, Chat, and Talk deliver a compound solution that can take on all kinds of challenges and help you provide an exceptional customer experience for your clients.
The most important feature of any CX software is a comprehensive ticketing system, and Zendesk is jam-packed with features for increasing your support team’s productivity. Automation is one of them - it can be used for updating tickets, replying to common questions with stock responses, or expertise-level ticket routing.
Depending on your Zendesk subscription and package deals, you can reach out for help by email, chat, phone, social media portals, or in-app developed support, and have your requests routed through the ticketing system.
Tickets can have internally added notes that only agents can see. This is one of the most valuable features customer experience software can have. The agents use the notes to closely describe previous interactions with the customer, which is invaluable when multiple team members handle the same ticket.
Zendesk’s interface is straightforward: Your dashboard will display a clear general overview of tickets you’ve handled, and you can also use multiple views to quickly filter out tickets based on various factors like time, ticket status, topic, and others.
Anyone familiar with user support will be happy to know that Zendesk supports macros. When applied to tickets, these instruction sequences can be used to send automated answers to common questions, for instance.
Having macros built into the experience management software will help synchronize procedures across teams, create standardized replies, and save funds by removing the need for external software.
Zendesk’s team collaboration features enable communication platform integration (e.g., for Slack); this encourages teamwork and helps agents streamline their work better.
Zendesk’s good reputation is firmly established. Huge companies like Riot Games, Discord, Stanley Black & Decker, Siemens, and Vimeo are all using it as their customer experience management solution of choice. These and many more client stories attest to the quality of Zendesk Suite.
Zendesk provides everything expected from customer service platforms, the pricing is scalable, and you can choose between various packages.
The company also developed two CRM platforms: Zendesk Sunshine and Zendesk Duet. The latter combines sales and support sectors for the most demanding users, while both platforms integrate with Zendesk Suite and provide powerful tools that collect user data.
- Reporting system
- Analytics tools
- Good for large businesses
- Lack of transparency
NICE Satmetrix is a customer experience platform aimed at large businesses trying to get a pulse on customer sentiment and improve customer retention. Satmetrix is designed with users’ points of view in mind and uses that information to help develop products, brands, and other company aspects.
Since Satmetrix is not as transparent as Zendesk regarding service selection and pricing, so you’ll have to request a demo session with a representative to see firsthand what the platform can do.
Bear in mind that Satmetrix doesn’t offer a one-size-fits-all type of package, so make sure you have a general idea of what you need from customer experience management software before you make the appointment.
For example, NICE Satmetrix’s SaaS solution features a range of intelligent analytics tools to improve customer experience by analyzing both direct customer feedback and feedback extrapolated through AI tools. While you cannot always predict customer behavior, these tools do give you valuable insight into their feelings about your company and its products.
Satmetrix prides itself on powerful features, such as dynamic insights, employee engagement, workflow management, collaboration tools, configurable templates, self-service, and others. It will help you with customer communications and feedback management while providing advanced customer data analytics.
It also includes a wide range of different templates that allow you to configure your dashboard and have critical information presented in a clear format. The tools and templates can then be combined to generate reports for each member of the support team.
As with the best customer experience management platforms, Satmetrix’s tool excels in analyzing the customer journey, brand loyalty, and engagement. It will give you a clear picture of how a customer responds to your brand or product and help you improve customer satisfaction.
By applying machine learning, Satmetrix processes enormous amounts of data, which are then analyzed for new and inventive avenues of improving customer experience. Satmetrix offers fully customizable feedback templates you can tailor to your organization’s needs.
That said, this is a more enterprise-oriented solution backed by powerful business tools instead of a full-service customer support platform.
- Ease of use
- Data processing
- Surveying system
- Mobile Functionality
Most organizations start to thrive once they introduce customer feedback and experience solutions into their business plans, which is exactly what Qualtrics did with its CX program. With this kind of approach, your customers know they will be heard and appreciated. In turn, you’ll gain customer loyalty and most likely have them recommend your product to others.
It’s worth mentioning that, under the hood, you have a suite of analytics tools that’s up and running 24/7. This suite is a sophisticated AI solution that combines machine learning with natural language processing to generate real-time suggestions for every team member. The quantity of data processed by Qualtrics iQ is impressive, and the AI can help gather feedback and provide meaningful insight from textual, video, or audio content.
With Qualtrics’ customer service management software, you can quickly track and respond to customers’ queries. If you use the entire product selection offered by Qualtrics, you’ll get your hands on the most comprehensive data gathering and analysis tools available. The Qualtrics product range includes Customer Experience, Product Experience, Employee Experience, and Brand Experience.
Qualtrics is easy to use and can be customized to fit specific user needs. To illustrate a bit, you can adjust the ticketing system’s dashboard roles to grant or deny access to team members.
A centralized platform where all customer requests can be funneled is indispensable for any good digital customer experience software. Qualtrics Customer Experience proves that point, gathering feedback from relevant channels like email, social media, and review websites.
This company knows that clients will often use other vendors’ products as well. Instead of shying away from collaboration, Qualtrics seeks to excel in that area, as well.
You can easily integrate Qualtrics CX with Salesforce, Slack, Microsoft Dynamics, HubSpot, and many other programs. There’s also an application programming interface (API) available for any custom software integration you may need.
Many tools in this CX software will help you get a better sense of your customers’ expectations. Key features include ticketing, customer feedback surveys, customer satisfaction score (CSAT), net promoter score (NPS), automation, and advanced analysis tools.
Without a doubt, Qualtrics makes businesses of all sizes come back for more, with more than 13,000 brands using the platform’s services. Renowned companies like Microsoft, Samsung, Yamaha, and Volkswagen are some industry giants implementing Qualtrics’ customer-facing solutions.
- Chatbot
- Multi-channel communication
- Ease of use
- No mobile app
Any worthwhile customer experience management software should be able to seamlessly scale up as your organization grows.
This is achieved by expanding the scope of the tools and business processes that support teams use to improve customer journeys and measure customer satisfaction. Acquire’s software is an excellent long-term solution that can accommodate companies of all sizes and aspirations.
Acquire integrates sales, onboarding, and customer support in a single platform. Creating conditions for better teamwork and customer communication means more positive experiences and less negative feedback, which leads to more sales.
Acquire has all the features you would expect from a well-designed customer management software. You can communicate with your clients via live chat, phone, email, or video call. With so many communication lines open, virtually no issue will fall through the cracks and go unanswered.
Your team will appreciate the all-encompassing overview of client interactions and customer behavior analytics. With Acquire’s slick user interface and dashboard, tracking user tickets will be a walk in the park. All the tools are located in one place, and you can easily switch between communication channels if need be.
Thankfully, most customer experience management companies recognize the importance of implementing self-help and self-service solutions. These can significantly reduce employee workload and help those who manage customer expectations and collect feedback.
Acquire has several ways to make that happen, but our favorite is the chatbot function. This AI-powered virtual agent uses natural language processing technology to communicate with users and provide instant support around the clock.
Some customers prefer taking matters into their own hands rather than dealing with agents, virtual or otherwise. To ensure that part of your clientele remains satisfied with your services, make use of Acquire’s builder for a centralized database of potential issues, otherwise known as a knowledge base.
If you prefer a hands-on approach, Acquire has your back, too. Its online customer experience management feature called Cobrowse is quite handy and requires no software downloading for users.
With this two-way interaction tool, you can troubleshoot issues directly on your customers’ desktop or mobile screens. Of course, they will first have to give you permission to connect to their devices.
Acquire has an impressive list of clients, including large companies like Discover, Paysafe, Audi, and even the United States Air Force. In short, if you’re looking for a bulletproof customer experience platform, you can’t go wrong with Acquire’s CX software.
- Integration
- Good UI
- Mobile-friendly
- Complexity
There’s hardly a hardware or software enthusiast that hasn’t heard of Java and, therefore, Oracle. It was only a matter of time before Oracle brought its own solution to help companies enhance their customer experience and benefit from advanced customer analytics.
Its SaaS, called Oracle Cloud CX, is a cloud-based product for improving client relationships and is intended for businesses of all sizes.
With the Oracle customer experience suite, you’ll get the power of powerful predictive analytics, AI, and practical tools to help you throughout the customer journey. This data-first approach enables you to create a unique experience for each client using behavioral, demographic, transactional, and other valuable information.
The sales, support, commerce, and marketing sectors are symbiotic within Oracle CX. The software will gather information on user behavior across all channels and send it to the customer data platform, creating a single profile for each customer.
A comprehensive cross-department customer data platform is just the first step in helping you increase customer satisfaction, though. With its wealth of available customer experience tools and features, Oracle CX provides everything you need to gain and retain customers - better content management, integration, innovative tech application, advanced security, and analytics.
As we all know, knowledge is power. Nevertheless, it’s hard to use the gathered information in real-time (i.e., while interacting with a customer) if you haven’t sorted and analyzed it beforehand. That’s where automated tools and powerful AI-driven analytics come into play.
Machine learning has become indispensable for this sort of thing, further reinforced by Oracle’s supporting modules like Data Visualization, CX Audience, Unity, Adaptive Intelligent Apps, and other powerful additions.
Oracle's customer experience software is backed by the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) that fuses integrated security, service autonomy, and serverless computing. It also includes an API catalog for custom software integration.
Oracle’s software suite is used by famous establishments, such as Panasonic, Acer, Ricoh, Vodafone, and the University of Oxford. Of course, that doesn’t mean Oracle Cloud CX is exclusively enterprise-oriented. On the contrary, the platform is very adaptable to the needs of small businesses, too, and is a well-rounded solution overall.
Experience Management Software
- Zendesk
- NICE Satmetrix
- Qualtrics
- Acquire
- Oracle Cloud CX
Our Evaluation Process
If you are on the fence about whether this software will benefit your business, we are here to help. Below, we will go through what makes good customer support software and why it’s vital for client retention.
Besides helping you devote clients proper attention, customer experience management software (CEM) boosts brand reputation - if it employs the right tools, that is. We will discuss these in more detail, covering software aspects to which you should pay particular attention when deciding what platform and features to go with.
Not all businesses have the same goals or audience, of course. Small companies, for example, might not need a full-featured customer experience suite, while big enterprises will maybe even want to add third-party programs to the bunch. \
Always keep your company’s particular requirements in mind: That will help you decide on the best software for your needs. It could be the one offering survey analysis, or the one with a chatbot feature, for instance. Not to worry - we’ve covered it all, so let’s get down to business - your business.
Providing email support has become the standard for companies with an online presence. However, including more channels of communication can only help customer satisfaction. In addition to email, phone (including virtual phones), and live chat support, companies nowadays use mobile apps and social media platforms to attend to customer needs, as well.
Keeping communication lines open and managed through the same customer experience management platform makes it easier to collect user feedback while promptly responding to requests.
When used in conjunction with CX, CRM software’s fantastic characteristics come into the spotlight.
The advantages of CRM are databases and reports built based on customer experiences. Combining these two systems makes identifying issues your users are experiencing a breeze. CRM software keeps all your customer-relevant data in one place, providing all the needed context for CX to shine.
The foundations of all customer experience management tools lay in a comprehensive ticketing system. This helps track customer interactions, flag issues, and automate some of the processes.
Automation can be of great help when you’re dealing with high volumes of requests. Auto-responses to general queries, ticket routing, or automated reminders can free up your team’s resources and allocate them where a personal touch is needed.
A tagging system is the best way to sort tickets. The users submit a ticket through a web form with multiple commonly occurring issues to select from. Once the request is filled out, a tag determined by the chosen categories is assigned. The best customer experience tools have keyword-recognition tools that add these tags depending on the ticket’s content. The system is quite useful for speeding up identifying issues. Tags can be added manually as well, which further improves the categorization of the tickets.
Ticketing queues are one of the ways to streamline customer experience further. Assigning specialized support agents to ticket queues categorized by request type can increase your team’s overall productivity, giving them a chance to cater more efficiently to client needs.
Customer experience solutions often include knowledge base tools - after all, FAQs can solve most user issues. That said, some customers will still prefer contacting support, however minor the problem. That is where a good built-in ticket deflection system comes in handy. By redirecting users to self-help articles, this convenient tool can reduce the support team’s workload significantly.
On the other hand, many users prefer to read through an article to find an instant solution instead of waiting for a representative’s response. A well-written and regularly updated knowledge base will be just the thing that they’re looking for.
Customer experience management solutions can sort through the information and detect areas that require improvement by tracking user feedback.
Data analysis can help a company quickly adapt and cater to customer grievances. Furthermore, it will enhance your support team’s key performance indicators (KPIs) and make them more efficient.
Analyzing the emotional state of users can help prevent customer churn. By applying AI solutions to determine whether a request is communicated in a positive or negative tone, you can uncover the general sentiment in your users’ feedback and prepare accordingly.
Online customer experience management software will often include some kind of survey solution. Customer surveys will help you gather valuable feedback that can help you create personalized customer experiences.
These innovative tools tremendously enhance the customer experience across the board. It expands on the self-service capabilities and allows the customer support team to focus on more complicated tasks, making it instrumental for teams that don’t have a 24/7 presence.
Chatbots will also reduce costs and provide multilingual support, which is why including this feature in your customer experience suite is a great idea.
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQ
Customer experience (CX) software is usually a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution primarily used to collect, organize, and respond to customer queries and feedback. It helps keep track of customer trends and improve customer engagement.
“The customer is always right” is a saying that’s been around forever, and while it’s not always true, it’s still good to know what the customer has to say. Companies that invest in the best customer experience management software successfully create and increase brand awareness, enlarging their customer base along the way.
Naturally, that leads to client-centric businesses having significantly larger revenues than those that don’t focus on the needs of their clientele.
A good customer experience strategy inspires customer loyalty by providing personalized and efficient interactions. If your clients are appreciated, your company will be appreciated, and your products are more likely to be recommended and bought.
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