Did you know 81% of customers will switch brands due to poor customer experiences? How you serve customers directly impacts sales, revenues and even enterprise value.
- 85% of companies now compete mostly on CX.
- Good CX drives 1.6x more revenue than competitors.
- Customer-centric companies have 60% higher stock valuations.
via SuperOffice
That‘s why managing the customer journey consistently across touchpoints is mission-critical today. This is enabled precisely by customer experience (CX) management software.
CX management platforms track customer interactions, identify weak spots, and help teams collaborate to optimize engagements. The right tools provide invaluable visibility that makes customers feel valued at every step.
This guide will cover:
- Core capabilities in CX software
- Leading platforms for different needs
- Tips for customer-focused processes
- Steps to select ideal CX solution
Arm yourself with all the knowledge needed to make customers smile ear to ear!
Why is Customer Experience Management Software Vital?
Before exploring specific solutions, let‘s get clear on why CX technology is indispensable:
1. Increased Customer Retention
Understanding pain points through CX tools allows you to improve customer satisfaction and retention rates substantially. More happy customers stick longer and drive sustainable growth.
71% of CX leaders see stronger customer retention – Forrester
2. Better Brand Sentiment + Loyalty
CX software captures rich customer feedback to address issues before they snowball into PR nightmares. Managing experiences ultimately translates into positive brand affinity.
76% agree CX improvements strengthen brand loyalty – Aspect
3. Higher Lifetime Value
Customers with the best experiences spend 140% more compared to those with poor experiences. CX technology surfaces insights to tailor engagements that delight.
Good CX can increase customer lifetime value by 25-100% – SuperOffice
The bottom line? Investing in CX is directly tied to higher revenue, market share gains and enterprise value.
With the business case clear, let‘s explore how CX software actually achieves this through core capabilities.
Key Capabilities of CX Management Platforms
Customer experience platforms consolidate tools for feedback, analytics, automation and more to surface actionable insights. Here are the pivotal CX software capabilities:
1. Customer Data Consolidation
CX tools aggregate behavioral data from websites, mobile apps, stores and other channels to create unified customer profiles in a single view. This connects identities and interactions happening across silos.
2. Voice of Customer Analysis
Customers share feedback everywhere – calls, chats, surveys, social media etc. CX systems consolidate this input then analyze with AI to categorize themes around satisfaction, effort, sentiment and priorities.
3. Journey Mapping
Understanding customer paths to purchase is invaluable. CX software visually maps journeys end-to-end to spotlight pain points and opportunities enterprises-wide.
4. Predictive Modeling
Spot trends before they start negatively impacting customers. CX analytics models customer behavior to predict metrics like lifetime value or churn risk so you can course correct early.
5. Real-Time Alerting
CX metrics like NPS and CSAT fluctuate constantly. Get notified through CX systems when scores dip or negative chatter arises so you can handle issues promptly.
6. Collaboration
Insights are only useful if actually actioned upon. CX tools ideally have shared inboxes, task assignment and workflows so staff across functions can work together to build the best experiences.
Let‘s compare how these capabilities stack up across all-in-one and specialized software options.
| CX Capability | All-in-one Software | Specialized Software |
|---|---|---|
| Cross-channel data | ✅ | ⛔ Limited, focused on specific channels |
| Voice of customer analytics | ✅ | ✅ |
| Journey mapping | ✅ | ✅ |
| Predictive intelligence | ✅ | ✅ |
| Real-time alerting | ✅ | ✅ |
| Collaboration tools | ✅ | ⛔ workflows focused just on insights/analytics users |
This shows specialized tools go deeper in analysis while all-in-one platforms provide broader coordination across capabilities. Choose based on your use case!
Now let‘s explore top software picks across these 2 categories.
Top 10 Customer Experience Management Software
1. Zoho
Omnichannel CX platform
Zoho Desk ties together customer service, sales, marketing and IT workflows for unified CX. Key features:
- Visual customer journey mapping
- AI-powered bots for automation
- Tools to track satisfaction across channels
- Context switching to assist customers gracefully
- Mobile apps so staff assist on-the-go
"Zoho is beneficial for pulling all our customer interactions into a single pane of glass." – Pedro, Recruiting Manager
Best for: Mid-market companies needing end-to-end CX visibility and coordination.
2. Freshdesk
Intuitive helpdesk ticketing platform
Used by 50,000+ global companies, Freshdesk streamlines request routing and resolution. Capabilities include:
- Multi-channel ticketing via email, chat, calls and social media
- CX analytics with custom satisfaction metrics
- Conversational bots to manage routine inquiries
- Agent collaboration tools like shared inboxes
Best for: High-growth companies that need scalable solutions to track CX between support and sales teams.
3. HubSpot
All-in-one CX powerhouse
HubSpot ties marketing, sales and service data together for complete customer insights. Standout features:
- Free CRM with starter CX monitoring tools
- Email productivity platform for agent workflows
- Integrated calling and live chat with tracking
- Conversation intelligence routes inquiries correctly using AI
- Surveys and feedback management
Best for: SMBs wanting easy-to-use CX software that plays nice with existing marketing and sales tools.
4. Zendesk
Industry leader used by 150,000 organizations
Zendesk is renowned help desk software now unifying customer data into complete profiles. Capabilities include:
- Omnichannel support across email, calls, chat etc.
- Advanced analytics to improve CX over time
- Customer data platform (CDP) builds unified profiles
- Custom objects track data unique to your business
- Flexible workflows to streamline CX processes
Best for: Large enterprises that can benefit from customizable, scalable solutions purpose-built around their needs.
5. Adobe Experience Manager
CX platform focused on journey orchestration
Part of Adobe Experience Cloud, this offering focuses connecting CX data to coordinate cross-channel engagements. Key features:
- Maps customer journeys enterprise-wide
- Integrates Adobe analytics for deeper insights
- Manages all marketing and advertising content
- Leverages data science for content recommendations
- Industry-leading security standards
Best for: Enterprise brands using Adobe tools who need to unify CX management across high-value creative assets and workflows.
6. Qualtrics
Heavy-duty CX analytics loved by data scientists
Qualtrics focuses on complex analysis of experience data at enormous scale. It provides:
- Statistical analysis like NPS benchmarks
- AI for natural language processing and sentiment analysis
- Tools to examine employee experience too
- Over 300 integrations with other enterprise software
- Dashboarding capabilities for relentless performance optimization
Best for: Large, heavily regulated enterprises needing quantitative rigor and scale to manage CX analytics.
7. Medallia
Pioneer in both customer and employee experience
Medallia offers unified CX covering customers, employees, products and more. Key strengths:
- Maps journeys by integrating feedback enterprise-wide
- Analytics focused on both Customer and Employee Experience
- Voice of Employee further enriches insights
- Text analytics for open-ended feedback at scale
- Ideal for B2C brands with many segments
Best for: Large consumer enterprises needing holistic CX across customers, employees, partners – entire value chain.
8. Contentsquare
Specialist for granular analysis of digital experiences
Contentsquare zeros in on microscopic details of website, mobile and web app interactions using visual analytics.
- Session replays to view exact user journeys
- Analyze FORM fields visited vs skipped
- Identifies UX obstacles leading to abandoned carts
- Integrates with Google Analytics for greater context
- Helps compare site performance across geo markets
Best for: Ecommerce brands who want to deeply understand digital CX beyond surveys to continuously improve.
9. Usabilla
Real-time CX via embedded microsurveys
Usabilla captures customer sentiment in-the-moment using lightweight feedback options across digital properties.
- Embed surveys on high-value web pages
- Gather instant reactions to campaigns
- Aggregate feedback to uncover trends
- Custom branding and languages
- Segment responses by visitor attributes
- Zapier integration
Best for: Digital teams wanting targeted, agile insights to optimize pages and apps in real-time.
10. Clarabridge
Uses AI to classify unstructured CX data
Clarabridge digs into open-ended customer conversations across channels then structures insights using NLP. Benefits:
- Categorizes inbound messages at scale using AI
- Multichannel analytics across messaging, email, social
- Root cause analysis to fix systemic issues
- Helps customer support teams resolve tickets faster
Best for: Support teams that receive high ticket volumes and need help prioritizing and diagnosing issues faster.
As you can see, CX management platforms offer tremendous analytical capabilities through different specializations. Whether you need holistic coordination or specific visibilitiy – there‘s an ideal fit waiting!
Now let‘s switch gears to optimizing processes. Even the best technology needs company-wide alignment to sustain CX excellence.
12 Tips for Customer Experience Success
While software provides invaluable visibility, genuine culture change is still paramount to align employees around the customer.
Here are 12 tips to ace CX every single time:
1. Set Service Standards
Establish clear guidelines for acceptable resolution times based on inquiry type – and hold representatives accountable. Customers resent delayed responses.
2. Enable Self-Service
Not every customer may need high-touch managed service. Build FAQs, forums etc. so users with basic requests solve issues independently without waiting on support lines.
3. Monitor Social Media Closely
Keep close tabs on brand mentions on social networks and review sites. Any negative comments left unchecked can spiral quickly.
4. Build Around Customer Journeys
Map cross-channel customer journeys to spotlight pain points, then structure workflows around resolving these systemic gaps.
5. Listen to Frontline Employees
Agents encountering customers daily have invaluable insights. Solicit their input on improving processes regularly.
6. Personalize Multi-Channel Experiences
Track past interactions and profile data to tailor messaging across email, web, mobile and other touchpoints.
7. Fix Internal Communication Silos
Liaise with IT, marketing, sales etc. to share customer insights and priorities across silos. Misalignment internally equals poor experiences externally.
8. Invest in Ongoing Employee Training
Conduct regular soft skills training focusing specifically on situational judgement, empathy and communication to align staff around desired tonality and behaviors.
9. Recognize CX Achievements
Highlight teams and individuals delivering exceptional experiences through rewards, calls outs and other public recognition.
10. Continuously Evolve Service Offerings
Regularly solicit customer feedback at multiple touchpoints – not just during cancellations – to keep enhancing services.
11. Make Issues Resolution Easy
Minimize steps and paperwork customers must complete for service requests or claims processing. The easier you make it, the happier they‘ll be.
12. Have a CX Vision Straight From the Top
Executives must be genuinely passionate about customer experience for it to cascade across the entire company credibly. Walk the talk.
With strategy and tools now covered – how do you pick the right CX software? Let‘s explore that.
10 Steps to Select Customer Experience Management Software
Choosing CX technology is an involved process given the range of solutions and implications across teams. Here is a 10-step methodology to identify well-fitting software:
1. Define CX Objectives
Start by outlining precise experience and business outcomes you want to achieve – higher NPS? Increased retention by X%? These guide all selection decisions.
2. Calculate ROI
Estimate the financial value acquiring customers has. Then determine potential lift gaining loyal, higher-value customers could have to size the CX opportunity.
3. Map Current CX Processes
Document existing systems, workflows and metrics used across marketing, sales and service to support customers currently.
4. Identify Functional + Technical Gaps
With CX ambitions framed, pinpoint platform capabilities lacking today to fulfill your vision and address those needs.
5. Create CX Software Checklist
Compile must-have features, configurations and integrations needed to address gaps across teams. This becomes your buying criteria.
6. Get Executive Buy-In
CX impacts the enterprise so get leadership backing early for org-wide coordination and investment approvals later.
7. Shortlist 2-3 Solutions
Use the requirements checklist to narrow down top contender options that fit functional needs and technical environments.
8. Demo Shortlisted Options
Schedule demos to experience firsthand how platforms manage insights, automations, analytics and more. Assess UI/UX also.
9. Reference Check Vendors
Speak with current users at organizations like yours to validate satisfaction across capabilities, support, customizations etc.
10. Negotiate Deal
Hash out technical details, service terms and pricing packages that provide overall value for your anticipated growth trajectory.
Following a rigorous selection process pays dividends identifying CX software that ticks all the boxes unique to your technical and organizational needs.
Key Takeaways
Managing customer experience holistically has become the #1 competitive differentiator for leading brands today. CX management software consumes multi-channel data then helps teams collaborate to transform insights into positive engagements.
Key capabilities like customer analytics, journey mapping and predictive modeling make CX visibility possible. Leading platforms like Zoho, Zendesk and Medallia help configure workflows tailored to your environment.
Beyond software, genuine culture change committing employees across functions to understand and serve customers is vital. Instill customer-centric values through service standards, ongoing training and public recognition of achievements.
Follow a methodical evaluation process considering functional needs, technical compatibilities and growth outlook when selecting CX technology. Ultimatley the goal is sustaining experiences that consistently delight customers and turn them into enthusiastic brand promoters!
What CX software does your company use? Share your favorites!
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