8 best customer experience software solutions

The customer experience management landscape is evolving at an incredible pace. 

From phone calls and emails to personalized experience and multi-channel support, customer experience management has come a long way. 

At the center of this remarkable progress is the adoption of technology that makes customer experience management simpler and more seamless every day.  

Companies at the forefront of the changing dimensions of customer experience management are undoubtedly more successful today than those still struggling with the basics. 

The success mantra is simple: Adopt the best customer experience software tools for your teams to create a seamless journey for your audience. Surpass their expectations at every touchpoint. 

With the sprawl of various tools in the market, evaluating, comparing, and choosing the right ones can feel frustrating. 

In this blog, we've brought together the best customer experience management tools available in 2023 to help you make a practical decision.

Customer experience management (CXM) software is any platform geared toward helping a business track, organize, analyze, and optimize customer interactions across the entire buyer journey. 

Deploying the best CXM tool means you can: 

• Seamlessly listen to many customers at once

• Keep a close eye on customer behavior

• Understand customer emotion via sentiment analysis

• See how customers like to interact with your brand

This software provides a strong support system for better, more targeted customer service, leaving your customers delighted in every interaction.

Whether you are a new entrant in the market or a well-established organization, online customer experience software is a must-have. This investment goes a long way in helping you achieve your customer retention and profitability goals. 

Here are the top benefits you can glean by deploying customer experience management software:

Uncover customers' pain points and expectations

With CXM software, you can filter customer conversation by reason for contact, whether that's product support, pricing concerns, or any other issue. 

You'll also find it remarkably easy to track and organize tickets to investigate an issue. 

These insights can help you paint a clear picture of your customers' most urgent pain points and their general and nuanced expectations. The better you get at proactively addressing those issues, the lower your support costs become.

Optimize your website, product, or app

With a front-row view of user feedback, you'll always know whether your website or product is living up to its billing. If it's not, your retention scores will take a major hit. 

CXM software makes this predicament a thing of the past. It allows you to dig into customers' comments and concerns to know how and where to optimize your offering. 

Provide smooth customer support and assistance

A 2020 Zendesk report found that "69% of customers want to resolve as many issues as possible on their own, and 63% of customers always or almost always start with a search on a company's online resources when they have an issue."

Thanks to its built-in knowledge base builder, CXM software will allow you to create online resources that help customers find answers independently, relieving stress on your team. 

Beyond that, a good CXM solution helps you steer clear of the chaos and confusion that arise when managing multiple requests simultaneously. 

It provides a centralized space for all customer communication, regardless of the channels, and helps your agents keep track of every customer request. 

Improve engagement and conversions

Customer engagement is how a brand builds customer relationships to increase brand awareness and loyalty. CX management software provides feedback on the best customer support tools, content, and outreach tactics for fostering customer engagement. 

Engaged customers form strong and long-lasting relationships with your brand, which leads to increased loyalty and higher conversion rates. 

The most basic categorization of customer experience software depends on where the solution is built and hosted:

Cloud-based

A cloud-based customer experience software is a solution hosted on the internet and simply requires a laptop or a phone. Its low maintenance and high convenience makes it more preferable when compared to the other types of CXM software. 

On-premise

An on-premise customer experience software is hosted on your local server, requiring technical assistance for rolling out updates and maintenance. 

Open-source

An open-source customer experience software has its source code available for modification. It’s ideal for enterprise businesses with a team of technical specialists who can build specific, robust requirements. 

Bear in mind that customer support software is anything that enables you to track and manage your customer interactions better. So it's okay to categorize CXM software types based on the channels or modes of communication and engagement you use. 

Here are a few types of CXM solutions:

• Help desks and shared inbox software help customer-facing teams manage and track customer requests.

• Live chat products allow real-time chat with current and prospective customers. 

• Social media management software allows teams to create, schedule, and post content while responding to user comments across multiple social media platforms.

• In-app and web messaging platforms proactively connect teams with customers at key points in the customer journey.

• Chatbots can handle simple customer requests using artificial intelligence (AI) or pre-determined conversation paths.

• Knowledge bases are internal or external information banks that enable customers to solve their problems independently. 

• Feedback and survey apps deliver surveys, request customer feedback, and analyze the results to inform change.

• Email marketing software applications help teams create and manage email campaigns.

• Reporting and analytics software track and analyze user data to inform product strategy.

• A/B testing software lets you test multiple versions of a product or experience to determine what resonates best with users.

Some consider customer relationship management (CRM) systems a customer experience solution. While some CRMs have CX management features, not all of them do. 

CRMs that include multiple engagement tools fall into a different category of CXM software: The customer engagement platform.

Out of tons of features that customer experience management platforms offer, these should be on your priority list:

Multi-channel reach

Customers use multiple touchpoints and channels along their journey, so it makes to offer various mediums. It’s a great way to get a complete view of customers' expectations, issues, and preferences. 

When you’re looking for a CX management platform, pick one that lets you target customers across multiple channels.

Unified customer view

You want to ensure each customer has a dashboard or profile page to provide a bird's-eye view of your relationship, with the ability to drill down as needed.

Feedback collection

Look for a platform that can collect, analyze, and curate customer feedback. 

Some popular measurements seen in customer experience tools include customer satisfaction score (CSAT), customer effort score (CES), and net promoter score (NPS).

Analytics

The most important aspect of any customer experience system is the ability to analyze all its data. Your software choice should be able to create detailed dashboards that automatically turn data points into graphs and charts. 

It may also offer specialized metrics such as a customer health score: A numerical rating indicating how likely a customer is to churn based on engagement and feedback.

Audience segmentation

Select a CXM tool that can help keep customer communications personalized, relevant, and timely by segmenting your customer lists.

Ticketing software

Select a tool that makes it easy to track, prioritize, and respond to customer requests.

Integrations

Choose a platform that integrates with your current software (CRMs, e-commerce software, etc.). This will give you the most comprehensive, unobstructed view of your customers.

Automation capabilities

Many tools allow you to automate activities, such as sending out messaging at specific points in the customer journey or assigning tasks to CSMs when a customer is at risk of churning.

We've compiled a list of eight tools to help you find the CXM software that will best meet your business's needs. These can help you analyze and manage everything from support requests to journey mapping to behavior analysis.

HubSpot

If you want to save on costs by adopting one tool for all your customer experience management needs, HubSpot is the right choice.

What makes HubSpot one of the best CXM software today is its powerful tools that boost customer support, marketing, and sales efforts. 

It offers live chat, email marketing, a knowledge base, a help desk, and almost everything you need to take your customer experience to the next level.

HubSpot is easy to use, you can customize it to your specific needs, and it integrates with popular tools like Slack, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager.

Key features:

• Automated workflows for creating a repeatable process for customers at every stage

• A feedback survey feature to personalize and curate survey forms

• Live chat for 24/7 customer support

• An online knowledge base for customer self-service

• A shared inbox to manage conversations and resolve tickets

• VoIP calling to automatically log calls

Best as: A single tool for customer experience management, customer support, and lead generation

Pricing: Starts from $29.97 a month per user

Adobe Experience Manager

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is another all-inclusive CXM solution that helps you effectively communicate with your audience. 

You can use the built-in content management system (CMS) to align your content with your customers across all channels. This ensures a personalized journey that goes above and beyond.

In addition, AEM lets you create captivating and responsive forms that are effortless for customers to fill out. Leveraging fragment-based authoring helps you efficiently reuse content to expedite form building.

Key features:

• Strategize and enhance your self-service content

• Push out technical documentation from one do-it-all interface

• Manage content and commerce within one integrated system

• Connect seamlessly with Adobe Target and Adobe Analytics

• Use ready-made content templates optimized for marketing purposes

Best as: Assistance for growing companies providing curated content to customers

Pricing: Get in touch with the vendor for a custom quote

Tealeaf by Acoustic

If you’re tracking clients' interactions with mobile sites and apps, Tealeaf is a great choice. 

Formerly IBM Tealeaf, the platform allows you to understand the real reason behind abandonment and user struggles so you can quickly remedy glaring issues. 

Within the Tealeaf ecosystem, you'll find three tools that are particularly useful for CX: 

• cxVerify, which keeps permanent records of customer actions

• cxOverstat, a hub for visual analytics

• cxView, a proactive warning system focused on behavior

Key features:

• Use cxVerify to investigate any future customer disputes

• Leverage cxOverstat to optimize a website's page flow and find any sticking points

• Use cxView to uncover significant changes in crucial customer behavior

• Locate and fix issues leading to a poor customer experience using replay ability—a page-by-page, browser-level recording of the actual customer experience

Best as: A tool for analyzing user behavior and sentiment

Pricing: Get in touch with the vendor for a custom quote.

NICE Satmetrix

With Satmetrix, you can gather in-the-moment feedback across various channels, including requests, surveys, and support interactions. The tool uses voice and text analytics for this.

This customer experience management software can help you design automated workflows for support agents to resolve issues on the go. It can also surface trends and patterns worth paying attention to, giving you the information you need to avoid high churn.

Key features:

• Leverage AI to assess feedback and glean actionable insights

• Track and highlight high-risk interactions

• Capitalize on real-time, hyper-personalized surveys to stay on top of trends

• Unify customer experience and manage omnichannel feedback with holistic solutions

• Capture voice insights through call transcripts

Best as: A tool for an easy time conducting and managing customer surveys

Pricing: Get in touch with the vendor for a custom quote.

Zendesk

Zendesk is an omnichannel CXM platform best known for its customer support tools. Zendesk allows teams to manage service requests via all major channels (email, live chat, voice, SMS, and social media) through a unified workspace. 

In addition, Zendesk Suite plans also allow you to: 

• Create a customizable help center

• Host a community forum

• Access Answer Bot, the platform's chatbot feature

These solutions can provide customers with instant answers. In short, there's not a single platform that Zendesk doesn't support.

Key features: 

• Multi-channel support

• Integrated ticketing system

• Powerful reporting and analytics

• AI-powered automated answers

• Custom integrations and workflows

• Integrated self-service help center and community forum

Best as: A flexible and scalable customer support solution.

Pricing: Starts at $49 a month per agent

LiveAgent

If live chat is one of the preferred channels for your customers, you should try LiveAgent. 

LiveAgent is a powerful CXM tool, offering features like real-time typing view, chat invitations, and visitor tracking to streamline customer interactions with your business. Besides the classic web chat, it provides video and voice chat for higher customer engagement.

LiveAgent is the fastest live chat service on the market, so your page loading time isn’t affected. With its long list of native integrations, working it into your existing workflows becomes easier. 

Key features:

• Track visitors with Google Analytics

• Offer multilingual support to users

• Customize your chat window

• Utilize email templates to share quick replies, notifications, and more

• Access your chats anytime, anywhere with a mobile app

• Welcome visitors with automated messages

Best as: Proactive chat assistance to customers

Pricing: Starts at $29/month

Medallia

Intuitive and easy to use, Medallia helps you get a complete, unhampered view of your customers. As clients and prospects interact with your brand from diverse touchpoints, you can use ticketing systems, speech analytics, personalized reporting, and more to manage and supercharge their experiences. All in real-time and from a single interface.

Manually analyzing experience data is time-consuming and incredibly taxing. You can use Medallia's ultra-powerful ML engine to dissect raw data and understand customers' priorities and expectations. 

What's more, you can use that same data to predict their behavior so you're ready for anything.

Key features: 

• Robust APIs and out-of-the-box integrations

• Understand the 'why' behind NPS score 

• Uncover themes, sentiment, and underlying satisfaction drivers across unstructured data

• Identify at-risk customers using Risk Scoring technique

• Leverage Medallia's CX mobile apps to access customer information anywhere, anytime

Best as: A hub for mission-critical CX insights and actions

Pricing: Get in touch with the vendor for a custom quote

Dovetail

Thousands of businesses use Dovetail to improve the quality of their customer experience. 

Empower your team to put the customer first by crafting a home for insights: Store surveys, feedback, and customer insights in one place for every stakeholder to conveniently access.

This tool helps you automate tedious research tasks with AI features built for uncovering insights. Proactively meet business needs by analyzing heaps of data with speed, security, and compliance.

Key features:

• Bring your customers into every decision with custom tags and projects

• Make data-driven decisions based on qualitative data

• Capture and track NPS scores from a wide audience

• Take insights cross-platform with Slack, Atlassian, and Notion integrations, among others

• Get started with over 100 templates

Best as: A tool for aggregating qualitative research, identifying trends, and producing reports quickly without all that manual work

Pricing: Try for free, and if you love the product, start from $30/month (or $300/year)

Creating and managing digital experiences that delight customers and grow your business can be challenging, but it's not impossible.

With the right tools, a personalized approach, and a customer-centric mindset, your company can earn a place in your customers' hearts and at the top of their crowded inboxes.

Customer experience includes three main components:

• Technology: This is the product itself—how it works and the interactivity points

• Customer service: This includes customer support, customer success, and self-service support—the points where your customer interacts with your brand

• Design: This is the brand touchpoint—the marketing, the design, and the feelings your brand creates for your customer

While those three areas are quite distinct, there are no hard lines between them. All of the pieces combine and work together to make up the customer experience.

If your goal is to understand customer experience and you can only look at one thing, focus on what your customers tell you with their words and actions. 

Read customer feedback. Have regular conversations with your front line. Build customer focus groups. Absorb the sentiment of your social media.

However, if you really must choose a single metric, use Product Performance Metric (PPM). 

It combines three widely used metrics that you can easily benchmark:

• NPS (Net Promoter Score)

• PMF (product-market fit)

• S-SUS (single system usability scale)

Each focuses on a different aspect of customer experience and has equal weight in the calculation. Combining these metrics produces a single score from -100 to 100, providing a more nuanced understanding on a scale that stakeholders are already familiar with (NPS scale).

User experience (UX) encompasses all aspects of an end user's interaction with your company's products or services. 

Customer experience (CX) is the overall impression you've left on your customers across every touchpoint in the buyer's journey. CX doesn't solely focus on products or services.

In many ways, UX is a significant piece of the bigger CX jigsaw.