10 Best Customer Engagement Tools and Software [2024]

There are a myriad of factors that have changed the world of customer engagement—from emerging technologies to changing customer expectations. The age-old strategy of simply providing a good product or service just isn’t enough in today’s world.

Now, customers expect a personalized, engaging experience, and the brands that provide it are the ones that get more business. With more than half of customers (56%) expecting personalized offers from today’s brands, it’s no surprise organizations are refocusing their efforts on improving customer engagement.

Yet, there’s still some ambiguity around exactly what customer engagement is. In addition to reviewing the definition of customer engagement, we’ll also examine its importance and benefits. We’ll also take a look at the top ten customer engagement tools and software of 2024 and what they can do for your business.

Understanding Customer Engagement

Customer engagement is the various interactions or experiences between your customers and your brand across your various business channels. The approach is all about how you connect, communicate, and build relationships with customers.

The purpose of customer engagement is to boost satisfaction, loyalty, and long-term commitment to your product or service. Good customer engagement involves creating experiences that are meaningful and personalized to the needs of your customers. A strong customer engagement strategy encourages customers to actively participate and engage with your brand.

The Importance of Customer Engagement Tools

Customer engagement tools facilitate and enhance interactions between your customers and your brand. Also known as user engagement tools, these platforms manage, track, and analyze your customer interactions across various touchpoints. This process helps you to provide more personalized and timely responses, gather valuable insights, and build stronger relationships.

With these tools, you get an in-depth look into customer behavior, preferences, feedback, and more. All of this allows you to improve decision-making and create personalized marketing strategies. With that level of customization, not only are you able to enhance the customer experience but you can also increase customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Additionally, most engagement tools help you to improve or even automate communication across your channels. For example, automated responses or AI-powered chatbots can help you manage large volumes of customer inquiries faster and more efficiently. These tools help you reduce response times, improve your service quality, and better engage with customers. And a seamless, cohesive experience helps you build trust and credibility, helping you stand out in an increasingly competitive market.

5 Benefits of Using Customer Engagement Tools

One of the biggest benefits of using a client engagement tool is it allows you to break through the noise of the market and attract more customers. This tool helps you gain more revenue opportunities and can increase your customer retention rates. Here are some of the other benefits that come from website engagement tools:

Improves Customer Relationships

Customer engagement tools allow you to track and analyze customer interactions across all of your channels, including your website, social media, web chat, etc. This insight allows you to better understand your customers’ preferences, behaviors, needs, and feedback so you can create more personalized, meaningful conversations. This ultimately results in more positive and long-lasting customer relationships.

Boosts Loyalty and Customer Retention

Using customer engagement tools the right way can help you improve loyalty and retention through timely interactions and relevant interactions. For example, engagement tools can help you identify at-risk customers and take proactive measures to address their concerns and keep them from going to a competitor. You can also use these tools for more effective onboarding, ensuring customers have everything they need for a successful start with your brand.

Uncovers Up-sell Opportunities

With deep insights into customer behavior and preferences, you can easily identify promising up-sell opportunities. Looking at factors like purchase history or browsing patterns allows you to recommend complementary products or upgrades that align perfectly with a customer’s interests.

Streamlines Purchase Cycles

Most customer engagement solutions include tools that automate workflows, create personalized product recommendations, or offer real-time customer support. Each of these tools ensures your customers receive the information and assistance they need promptly. By reducing those friction points, you create a seamless purchasing experience or customer journey that keeps people coming back for more.

Increases Users

User engagement tools are designed to create more valuable and personalized content. Using them enables your business to create a strong online presence that fosters more user engagement. Plus, by consistently delivering value and keeping your lines of communication open, you can convert prospects into active users and loyal customers more quickly.

What are the 4 P’s of customer engagement?

To help you create a strong customer engagement strategy, it’s important to understand the 4 P’s of marketing:

• Product: This is what you’re actually offering to your customers in the form of a product or a service. It fills a need in the marketplace and improves a certain quality in the lives of your customers.
• Price: This is how much you’re charging for your product or service. Because price can have a significant impact on the success of your product, you’ll want to ensure it’s offered within a range that best meets the needs of your customers.
• Place: This includes both where you’re selling your products and the channels you’re using to get them into the hands of your customers. Keep customer needs in mind when selecting where to sell your products. For example, an online marketplace might be suitable if you have a niche customer base.
• Promotion: This is about how you advertise your products. Promotion is all about getting the word out about your product in a way that resonates with your audience.

5 Types of Customer Engagement Tools

As you consider various customer engagement tools, it’s important to understand the different options available to you. Doing so will help you implement a solution that helps you engage effectively with your customers and meet your specific business goals. Some of the common engagement management tools include:

Communication Tools

These are tools designed to improve and streamline communication between you and website visitors. Live chat software, chatbots, email marketing platforms, social media management tools, video conferencing tools, and messaging apps—like Twilio—are all examples of communication tools.

Feedback and Survey Tools

To help you better understand the needs and desires of your customers, consider using feedback and survey tools. The purpose of these tools is to help you collect and analyze customer feedback and make needed improvements. Examples include online survey platforms (like SurveyMonkey, Typeform, or Podium), customer feedback tools, review management tools, and in-app feedback tools.

Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRM)

To help you manage gathered customer data and interactions more effectively, there’s CRM systems. With these platforms, you get access to actionable insights on how to improve key processes such as customer support, sales, marketing, or pipeline management. Hubspot is an example of a CRM system.

Personalization Tools

Personalization tools help you create the tailored experience today’s customers expect. Each is designed to gather customer data from various sources, including websites, emails, social media, text messages, etc., and to provide personalized content or recommendations based on that data. A good example of a tool you might use is a behavioral analytics tool that analyzes customer behaviors to personalize interactions.

Loyalty Programs and Gamification Tools

Loyalty programs and gamification tools help keep you engage with customers and keep them coming back for more. For example, point and incentive tools reward customers for making purchases and offer discounts or incentives for their next purchase after reaching a certain threshold. Appcues is a great example of this type of platform.

10 Best Customer Engagement Tools of 2024

Here are the top 10 customer engagement tools of 2024.

Pushwoosh

Pushwoosh specializes in push notifications, in-app messaging, and automated campaigns across your business channels to engage customers. It allows you to send personalized, targeted messages to your customers based on their behavior, preferences, and even location. These notifications are critical for re-engaging with your customers and can help to increase your conversions. With Pushwoosh, you can deliver timely, relevant messages that resonate with your customers and ultimately improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Segment.io

Now known as Segment, the customer data platform (CDP) helps you collect and centralize all your customer data onto a single platform. This CDP gives you a comprehensive view of each customer across their entire journey. You can then better segment and target your customers and deliver personalized marketing campaigns and experiences.

Bloomreach

Powered by AI, Bloomreach focuses on personalized search, content discovery, and commerce solutions. It helps you deliver relevant and personalized customer journeys and experiences across your business channels. Using machine learning, Bloomreach is able to optimize search results and product recommendations based on real-time user behavior and trends. This functionality helps you put more relevant content in front of your customers, increasing engagement and conversion rates.

Storyly

Storyly is a a mobile-focused engagement tool. The platform is designed to help you build and manage stories on your business’ mobile apps. Additionally, Storyly improves customer engagement by providing you with a robust platform on which you can showcase your products, announcements, or updates through rich media content. These features boost user interaction with apps, encourage longer session times, and strengthen brand awareness.

Braze

Using customer data from across your business sources, Braze helps you create targeted messaging across your mobile applications, email, and push notifications. With Braze, you can more effectively orchestrate cross-channel marketing campaigns, track customer behavior in real-time, and optimize engagement through A/B testing and analytics.

Clevertap

Clevertap is both a customer engagement tool and an analytics platform that analyzes customer behavior, segments audiences, and engages with individuals via personalized messaging. You get in-depth insights into user interactions with mobile apps and websites, allowing you to create and deliver contextually relevant messages at exactly the right time.

MoEngage

To help you personalize customer interactions across your communication channels, including email, SMS, push notifications, and app messaging, there’s MoEngage. The platform uses AI and machine learning to analyze customer behavior and assist you in creating personalized messaging and campaigns. You can also use the platform to automate marketing workflows, segment audiences based on their lifecycle stage, and optimize customer engagement through real-time analytics.

HubSpot

A leading CRM platform, HubSpot includes a number of tools for marketing, sales, customer service, and more. It provides tools to attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers using inbound marketing strategies. Together, these tools allow you to enhance customer engagement by creating a seamless experience from initial contact to post-sale support.

Zendesk

To better manage your customer support, interactions, and relationships, there’s Zendesk. It’s a customer service and engagement platform complete with a suite of robust tools. Zendesk includes features like ticketing systems, live chat support, and knowledge base management to let you deliver efficient and personalized customer service. Plus, Zendesk allows you to resolve inquiries more quickly and measure customer satisfaction through feedback and analytics tools.

Intercom

Intercom is a messaging platform designed to create more personalized communications via live chat, email, and in-app messaging. It gives you tools to engage customers in real time, provide personalized support, send targeted messages based on their behavior and preferences, and more. Intercom also integrates directly with your CRM, providing a comprehensive view of customer interactions, so you can see exactly where improvements need to be made.

Enhance the Power of Customer Engagement Tools with Podium

As you’re looking for ways to thrive in today’s competitive market, customer engagement tools are critical. They give you insight to better understand the needs of your customers and how you can more effectively target them. By leveraging these tools, you create stronger connections with your audience, increase customer satisfaction, boost loyalty, and unlock greater revenue opportunities.

With Podium, you can further enhance your customer engagement strategies with AI-powered tools. Customer engagement automation tools, like our AI Employee, allow you to streamline manual, time-consuming processes and focus on more important tasks—like closing sales. Plus, with all customer communications from across your channels in a single inbox, you ensure no lead goes unanswered.