To truly succeed at sales or customer service, your teams need support from the very best tools. With so much focus rightly on customer engagement and experience, customer engagement software should be at the top of your list. 

In this guide, we’ll take a look at the basics of customer engagement software. We’ll take you through how it helps with customer interactions, the main features of these tools, and some top customer engagement tools to explore. 

What Is Customer Engagement Software?

Customer engagement software can refer to any tool or platform that helps you manage customer interactions and communication. This omnichannel approach lets you deliver a better user experience, personalize your messaging, and never miss an opportunity to improve customer retention.

Many different tools fall under the banner of customer engagement software, including: 

• Helpdesk platforms

• Live chat and chatbots

• Mobile marketing tools

• Sales customer relationship management (CRM) systems

• Self-service knowledge bases 

• Social media listening tools

Customer engagement tools are typically offered as software as a service (SaaS). This means once you choose one and go through onboarding, you can be up and running in no time. This also makes it easy to try different tools, as you’re often not committed beyond a rolling monthly subscription. 

Main Features of Customer Engagement Software

Customer engagement solutions help you get closer to your customers, solve their needs in a more effective way, and improve the lines of communication. They’re all about being where your customer is, responding to them efficiently, and offering an amazing level of service. 

Here are some of the main features of customer engagement tools and how they support your overall customer success and experience efforts.

Centralized and Segmented Customer Data

Customer engagement platforms help to bring all your customer data together in one place — especially if you’re using an all-in-one tool that also features as a sales CRM. This means your sales or customer support team can easily see the customer journey from start to finish and analyze customer behavior to understand what actions to take next. 

Great tools in this category also help you segment your customer data. Instead of sending everyone a message about an upcoming discount, you can instead target those who have previously ordered or expressed an interest in that category. 

Easier Customer Engagement

A good customer engagement software platform lets you engage with your customers through different touchpoints and multichannel communication channels. This makes customer communication easier than ever — plus, they can reach you through the channels they’re comfortable with.

Helpdesk, CRM, and social listening tools in this category bring information and messages in from multiple locations — social media channels, email, web chat, and more. With everything in one place, you can quickly review, prioritize, and reply to conversations. 

Personalized Experiences

Software in this category makes personalizing your messages a breeze. Instead of sending generic messages or taking your customers through a standardized process, you can make intuitive suggestions and personalize their customer experience. 

With the right platform, you’ll have a full picture of that customer’s interactions with you. This means you can solve customer questions in a way that’s relevant to them based on their preferences, experience, and method of communication. This kind of personalization helps promote increased customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, as they feel they’re being cared for as individuals. 

Automated Processes for Better Engagement

Not every customer support or service request needs to reach a live agent. Sometimes, your customers can tackle their own challenges with the help of automated tools and systems. 

Chatbots, email automation sequences, and customer self-service knowledge bases are all great examples of engagement tools that enable and promote problem solving. Once set up, these automated workflows make it easier for your customers to get the information they need fast — without queueing up to speak to your sales or support team. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction, customer engagement, and reduced queue times.

Integrations With Other Software

Even the best customer engagement software won’t offer everything you need to run the sales or support side of your business perfectly. You’ll always need the help of other tools, and customer engagement platforms usually offer great integration with your existing software. 

Adding a customer engagement tool to your software stack gives you extra functionality and supports your sales team. With integrations with other softwares that handle email marketing, marketing automation, onboarding, subscriptions, and training, your team can easily interrogate data across systems and make smarter choices when it comes to customer engagement. 

5 Customer Engagement Software Tools to Explore

Customer engagement platforms can help you streamline and improve customer service and sales at scale. Here are some popular customer engagement software tools to try. 

1. Conversocial

Conversocial is a popular conversational customer engagement software tool. It helps teams support customers through private messaging channels at scale with a smart triage system. This makes it easier for sales agents and support teams to focus on the most important, relevant messages. The tool allows you to mix AI-driven bots and human interaction to automate simple areas of support and bring your team in when it’s most needed. 

Conversocial also features an alternative to push notifications that nudges customers about opportunities like abandoned carts, promotions, and limited availability through private and social media messengers.

Great for: Maximizing the effectiveness of private messaging channels for service and support

2. Freshchat

Freshdesk’s live chat software, Freshchat, is a messaging-first customer engagement platform. The tool helps you bring together conversations from social media, web, messengers, and mobile to deliver a more effective approach to sales and support with the help of chatbots and live web chat. 

When it comes to service and support, it often helps to be proactive. Freshchat lets you do just that with a pop-up chat window that can appear after a website visitor has taken a specific action or stayed on the page for a certain length of time. This gives you an opportunity to engage while visitors are interested, potentially turning a browse into a sale. 

Great for: Taking control of your messaging channels with a mix of live chat and chatbots

3. Podium

Podium is an interaction management platform that occupies an interesting place in the customer engagement space. This tool changes the way you interact with customers in multiple areas — including chat, feedback, SMS marketing, review management, and payment collection. 

This multichannel approach helps small businesses keep everything in one place and focus on what matters most — delivering great service and support through personalized customer experiences. 

Great for: Improving customer interactions in a small-business environment

4. ServiceBell

ServiceBell is an innovative alternative to live chat software that brings one-to-one video calls to website visitors without leaving your page. Customer service and support agents can chat with potential and existing customers in real-time through high-quality video calls. 

With many high-value transactions now happening online, ServiceBell gives you a way to recreate the VIP experience of an in-store personalized shopping experience or support appointment. Customers can “ring the bell” to request an agent, who can then hop on a call and talk them through their question, support them through their decision, or take them on a product tour.

Great for: Delivering an immersive VIP experience to your high-value customers 

5. Zendesk

Zendesk offers teams a platform that’s both a sales CRM and a support management suite. Both elements of the platform focus on delivering better customer service, so it’s a great fit for businesses that want to improve customer engagement. 

With Zendesk, you can set up a range of self-service options like a knowledge base or community forum. You can also run an effective support or service help desk with features like a unified agent workspace and automated routing and intelligence. The goal? Improve efficiency and impress customers at scale. 

Great for: Centralizing your customer support, sales, and engagement in one platform

Customer Engagement Software Made Simple

Customer engagement tools help your service and sales teams connect with customers where it matters most, then solve their problems efficiently, effectively, and in a personalized way. With the right tools, your team can consistently deliver amazing customer support at scale. 

If you’re ready to try a more immersive, customer-focused approach to customer engagement, try ServiceBell. Our live video chat software means your customers can enjoy a direct service or sales call with your team without navigating away from the website. Try our free plan to experience how ServiceBell can help you attract, engage, and retain customers.