What is a customer engagement platform? How is it different from a CRM? Why should you have one?
These are the main questions that this article answers. We also introduce 12 customer engagement platforms that your SaaS organization should consider.
Let’s get to it, shall we?
TL;DR
A Customer Engagement Platform (CEP) is a tool designed to help SaaS companies build deep customer relationships by enabling personalized messaging across multiple communication channels. Unlike CRM tools, which streamline support, marketing, and sales processes, customer engagement solutions focus primarily on facilitating meaningful customer interactions.
CEPs offer robust analytics capabilities, allowing businesses to understand customer behavior within their products, segment customers based on needs and preferences, and target them with tailored communications. By personalizing engagement strategies, teams can enhance customer satisfaction and retention.
Here are some notable customer engagement platforms to consider:
- Twilio: Integrates various communication channels through APIs for personalized and scalable customer interactions.
- Salesforce: Provides a cloud-based CRM with comprehensive tools for sales, marketing, customer service, and analytics to create personalized customer experiences.
- HubSpot: An all-in-one platform featuring inbound marketing, sales, customer service, content management, email marketing, and CRM capabilities.
- UserGuiding: A no-code platform for creating interactive guides and onboarding materials.
- Appcues: Enhances product adoption and user experience through personalized onboarding flows, product tours, and in-app messages.
- Zendesk: Offers customer service tools, including a ticketing system, live chat, and knowledge bases to streamline support processes.
- Drip: An e-commerce CRM with advanced email and SMS marketing automation tailored to online stores.
- ActiveCampaign: A customizable customer engagement solution that combines an email marketing platform and CRM.
- Intercom: A conversational relationship platform with live chat, email, social media communication, chatbots, and basic onboarding features.
- Help Scout: A cloud-based help desk with features like a shared inbox, knowledge base, and live chat.
- Hotjar: A behavior analytics and user feedback tool designed to optimize user experience on digital platforms.
- Userpilot: A product growth platform with an intuitive UI and excellent analytics features. Book a demo to learn more!
What is a customer engagement platform?
A customer engagement platform (CEP) is a tool designed to help businesses manage and enhance interactions with their customers across various touchpoints.
These platforms aim to create a positive customer experience and foster strong relationships between a brand and its customers.
What is the difference between CRM and a customer engagement platform?
Although CRM and customer engagement tools share some capabilities, they differ in their primary focus and functionalities.
CRM systems are mainly designed to manage a company’s interactions with current and potential customers, aiming to improve business relationships, streamline processes, and increase sales.
Customer engagement platforms, in contrast, are built to actively engage customers. Their purpose is to cultivate deeper relationships with customers through personalized and meaningful interactions.
CRMs focus on sales, marketing, and customer support functions. This includes managing contact information, tracking sales leads, conducting sales forecasting, and providing customer service.
CEPs, however, provide tools for communication across multiple channels, such as email and in-app messaging.
What are the benefits of using customer engagement tools?
Customer engagement platforms offer several benefits that SaaS companies cannot afford to overlook.
Granular understanding of customer interactions
Equipped with robust analytics features, CEPs enable you to gain a deeper understanding of user interactions with your product. This allows you to analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of your engagement strategy. For example, you can track user engagement with your onboarding flows and optimize them for better user activation and product adoption.
It gets even better.
Some platforms allow you to track and analyze all customer behavior within the product. This means you can identify the most valuable features, pinpoint friction points in the user journey, and discover the paths that lead to the most value.
The insights are not limited to quantitative data, as these tools also enable you to collect customer feedback through surveys. This makes it easier to assess customer expectations and needs.
Greater customer satisfaction and customer loyalty
Engaging users with personalized experiences tailored to their past interactions increases the likelihood that they will use your product effectively to achieve their goals.
By helping them realize the value of the product, you enhance their satisfaction, which is closely tied to customer retention and loyalty.
Stronger differentiation from competitors
Although the benefits of CEPs are evident, not all companies leverage them to improve the user experience.
Therefore, implementing a customer engagement platform can help your product stand out and give you a competitive edge. This is especially crucial in saturated markets with fierce competition.
Top features to look out for in modern customer engagement platforms
Here are some key features your customer engagement platform should support:
- Omnichannel Communication: In-app messaging, email, SMS, social media, and web chat.
- Personalization and Segmentation: Customize messaging based on user behavior.
- Automation and Workflow Management
- AI and Machine Learning: Powering predictive analytics, user sentiment analysis, localization, writing assistants, and chatbots.
- Real-time Analytics and Reporting: For data-driven decision-making.
- Integrations: With CRM, social media management, CDP software, etc.
- Feedback Functionality
- Data Integration: Access all your customer data from one place.
12 best customer engagement software in 2024
With the theory aside, let’s explore some of the top customer engagement platforms for SaaS companies in 2024.
1. Userpilot
Userpilot is a product growth platform that offers personalized onboarding experiences to reduce time to value for users. Its engagement features include UI patterns like tooltips, banners, modals, and interactive walkthroughs.
2. Twilio
Twilio is a cloud communications platform facilitating personalized, real-time interactions with customers across multiple channels such as SMS, email, phone calls, and WhatsApp through a robust API.
3. Salesforce
Salesforce offers a comprehensive suite of tools for customer relationship management, including sales management, marketing automation, customer service, and analytics, all within a cloud-based platform.
4. HubSpot
HubSpot is an all-in-one inbound marketing, sales, and service software that provides tools for content management, email marketing, social media, and workflow automation, integrated with its free CRM.
5. UserGuiding
Similar to Userpilot, UserGuiding is a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) that simplifies creating interactive guides and onboarding materials without coding, enhancing user experience and engagement.
6. Appcues
Appcues focuses on improving product adoption and reducing churn by creating personalized user onboarding flows, product tours, and in-app messages, all without code.
7. Zendesk
Zendesk offers a suite of customer service tools including ticketing systems, live chat, knowledge bases, and customizable support centers, streamlining support processes and centralizing customer interactions.
8. Drip
Drip is an e-commerce CRM platform with advanced email and SMS marketing automation, designed to capture and leverage customer data for targeted marketing messages.
9. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign specializes in customer experience automation, combining email marketing, automation, CRM, and machine learning to deliver highly personalized messages at scale.
10. Intercom
Intercom provides a conversational relationship platform for communicating with customers through live chat, email, and social media, offering real-time communication capabilities and chatbots for automation.
11. Help Scout
Help Scout is a cloud-based help desk software known for its simplicity and intuitive UI, offering features like shared inboxes, knowledge bases, and live chat for efficient customer support services.
12. Hotjar
Hotjar is a user experience analytics platform offering features like heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys to understand user interactions and behavior, helping businesses make data-driven decisions to optimize their digital platforms.
Conclusion
Customer engagement platforms empower customer success, support, and marketing teams to analyze user interactions with the brand and leverage insights to craft tailored engagement strategies.
This results in elevated customer satisfaction and loyalty, ultimately driving business objectives forward.