Best Customer Experience Management Software and System in 2023

What Is Customer Experience Management Software?

Customer experience management is a managerial approach to improving, managing, and auditing the firm's interaction with the customers via all touchpoints and channels. The customer experience management software offers tools and features to collect customer data, monitor interactions, analyze, personalize interactions, and manage all the channels under one dashboard.

The customer experience software is a communication optimization technology that can unify the communications throughout the channels, visualizes customer-contact points, and improves customer satisfaction. This software manages both the company's reaction to customer engagement and initiation of engagement. 

This process is possible by integrating web content management, A/B testing & personalizing features, tag management, product recommendation bots, data management, customer relationship management, UX testing, etc.

Why Is Customer Experience Management Important In Business?

According to Forbes, the brands that focused on customer experience management showed 5.7 times more ROI than their competitors who did not focus on this aspect. How does a customer experience platform help in the development of your brand?

1. Revenue

According to the Info Quest CRM study, a satisfied customer brings in 2.6 times more profit than a customer who is somewhat satisfied and 14 times more than a somewhat dissatisfied customer. If a brand could create consistency in delivering a high-quality experience, the revenue generated will increase without increasing the cost of acquiring a new potential customer. It is common knowledge that acquiring a new customer is quite expensive than retaining your loyal one. Thus, if you wish to improve your ROI, invest in a good customer experience management software.

2. Word-of-mouth Advertisement

There are several models of advertisements that a business could embark on depending on its primary customers. However, 84% of the customers do not believe in influencers, ambassadors, or flowery media advertisements. They believe in word-of-mouth from their social circle or any third-party review sites on the internet. Thus, investing in the right customer experience solutions is an advertisement investment for your brand.

3. Brand Uniqueness

How does customer experience management software create brand uniqueness? There are numerous companies with the same niche audience, similar products, and even similar business models as yours. How to get a competitive advantage in this cut-throat market? According to Dell's ex-CIO, Jerry Gregoire, the best competitive advantage is customer experience. The customers no longer come into a business for the products and prices alone. They expect unique and centric experiences. 

And a majority of the individuals read testimonials before making a purchase decision. Thus, it becomes imperative to use a customer experience management platform to manage customer feedback across channels.

4. Pricing Methodology

Are you not sure whether a brand like yours should invest in customer experience management solutions? An average American is willing to spend 17% more on a product if it comes from a brand with better customer service and experience.

5. Employee Satisfaction And Engagement

A company's dissatisfied customer always takes it up with the employees. This could decrease the employee's morale and lead to a lack of motivation, resistance to change, and more. However, the best customer experience management software and customer-centric business culture would allow the employees to satisfy the angered or confused customers. According to McKinsey's study, customer engagement was 20% higher (on average) in companies where customer experience betterment is a part of the work culture.

The above advantages showcase the importance of improving the customer experience. However, it is not possible to manually control all the touchpoints, digital, and face-to-face interactions. That is why your business needs customer experience management tools.

Key Features of Customer Experience Management Software

If you surf through the internet, you can find customer experience management software vendors offering solutions with varying tools and features. It is not a strategic move to choose the one with the most number of features. You ought to pick the one with the right features and those that are relevant to your business model, audience, and product. Here are the key features that you should look for in the software.

1. Analytic Tools

Your customer experience management software must contain customer analytic tools that can derive information from customer behavior and data like mobile apps, in-store customer actions, surveys, and more. It should generate an overview of the customer's response to the product and services, rather than just listing down the reviews. Customer experience solutions should have features to find at-risk customers, threshold points, and more, thereby altering your decision-making process.

2. Reporting Tools

Every small and simple CX management software has reporting features. However, you should understand the metrics involved in those reports. You need customizable reporting tools that provide performance per customer, over a specific timeframe, per campaign, and comparison factors. Good software packages offer both reports and pictorial representation for easy assessment.

3. Automation

Automation features in your customer experience management software need not be end-to-end RPA with zero human interaction. Software packages with machine learning modules can derive information and implement improvements based on market data, trends, and customer information. It can assess past interactions to offer recommendations, thereby improving the efficiency of the process.

4. Collaboration Tools

Customer experience systems are not relevant to the CRM department alone. The data come from several departments, and the reports generated by the system are applicable throughout the value chain. Thus, the dashboard should have collaboration tools to facilitate real-time collaboration, a delegation of work, and overall progress management. 

The customer experience management companies have different names for these features, and in some, these might be combined into one function. Thus, it is imperative to understand the scope of each feature offered by the software.

What Should You Consider When Selecting Customer Experience Solutions?

There are numerous customer experience management companies with varying solutions. Each vendor promises superior outcomes, and some even rank themselves the best in the market. How to choose the best fit for your business?

1. Features and Innovations

The customer experience management platform that you choose should be rich in features suitable for your business needs. It should have regulatory compliances and the ability to adapt to any new trend. The field of customer engagement is ever-evolving. For instance, in the past, customers used the social media platform for connecting with friends. 

Today, they use it as one of the major channels to showcase their bad purchase experiences and dissatisfaction. Thus, the customer experience management team should now include social media platforms for ORM, query management, etc. Soon, there will be new trends in this field, and your solution should offer better upgrades and features.

2. Integration

Can the customer experience management solutions integrate well with your entire value chain? It is not a stand-alone platform. It should interact with the social media sites, your e-commerce site, apps, other departments, and more. Thus, it should be easier to integrate with multiple platforms, legacy systems, and the process of data migration should not be a nightmare.

3. Personalization

What are the customer experience management tools offered by the vendor? What are the features that you can customize in those tools? Can you customize the reporting tools, choose metrics, impart more focus on a particular channel, or alter the data sources used for decision-making? 

This feature might not be of great importance for a small company. If you are a large enterprise or with a very niche product, it is best to choose a personalization solution. Some vendors offer digital customer experience software personalized for your requirements. However, the prices of such software packages would be high.

4. Security Factors

The best customer experience management software should have credible security features. The software derives information about your customers, inventory, marketing campaigns, strategies, and more. Any breach in the data would lead to a loss of revenue and goodwill.

It is not only about securing the data from external attacks. Can the software offer limited access features for employees? Simultaneously, the platform's data should be readily accessible to those with authentication from anywhere and anytime, without any delay.

The current customer experience management software packages are cloud-integrated. Thus, it is essential to choose vendors with better security protocols for the in-house servers and the cloud. It is best not to invest in open-source solutions and choose vendors with automatic upgrades, breach-resistant architecture, 24/7 monitoring, and a firewall.

5. Scalability and Budget

Each customer experience management system has a different price range. Some companies offer packages for varying needs. It is essential to choose a solution with scalability. Start with a smaller package if you are a small and growing business. With your growing business needs, you can upgrade the features. 

6. Maintenance and Troubleshooting

Even if you buy the best customer experience management system, it can have problems over time. It could be a technical issue or a manual error. How reliable is the vendor in after-sale service? Do you need a separate team for maintaining the system or hire a freelancer?

It is best to choose a solution that is easier to maintain and simple to find experts for troubleshooting. If your vendor offers maintenance services, it is an added advantage.

7. Reliable And Branded Vendor

There is no hard-and-fast rule to choose customer experience management software only from branded vendors. Some of the newcomers in this market have better solutions than the pioneers. However, it is best to choose a reliable one with a considerable amount of experience in the field. It is best to read through the reviews, understand the advantages and limitations of the software.

Finally, adaptability is a factor to consider. How easy is the CXM software to learn? Your team will be undergoing many changes in terms of business model, operational processes, metrics to consider, and so on. The software should not be too hard to understand. 

Choose software that comes with tutorials, video guides, and more. Some companies prefer choosing from customer experience software vendors who offer training and induction services.

Trends in Business of Customer Experience Management Software

Over the few decades since the rise of popularity of social media platforms and review sites, the need for CXM software increased, so does the expected capabilities of that software. The trends that people were eager about in 2016 are obsolete factors now. So, what should you be looking forward to today?

1. Advancement of AI

This is the era of IoT. Thus, just a chatbot is not enough. Therefore, people expect CXM software to add full-chat functionalities, customer identifications, sentimental prediction in voice and text, and more. According to a study, the volume of voice-based commerce sales will reach $40 billion in the USA by 2022. Thus, the need for customer experience management through voice feedback and queries is increasing.

The next part of AI is automation. The end-to-end automation in customer experience software is still in the storyboarding phase. However, the current trend is the use of chatbots for customer query handling, product recommendation, and even negotiation. Some vendors offer easy-to-build bots to create your bot that fits your requirements.

2. Personalization Based on Persona

The customer experience platform can identify customer expectations and alter the business processes to meet the same. However, there is a demand for hyper-personalization. The customer demands personalized newsletters, product recommendations, and interactions based on their buying habits and not comprehensive historical data. 

The customer experience software vendors have come up with personalization features where the user can create unique strategies based on the customer persona.

3. Employee Experience

An employee is your primary customer, and the future customer experience platform would incorporate the employee experience. It helps the management to deliver personalized messages to the employees, making delegation and motivation easier. General Mills has already created a private portal for understanding their employee experience.

4. Inter-department Solution

The customer experience platform is not just for your sales, marketing, and strategy team. Thanks to predictive analytics development, the platform can understand customer data, predict trends, and offer inventory management, production, and finance departments strategies.

Final Thought

Customer experience management is a tedious and continuous process. An enterprise has to assign a task force, offer resources, and even spend time and resources on choosing the best customer experience solutions for the team. However, the revenue generated and the goodwill earned by incorporating such a measure is significant.

According to a study by Qualtrics, a company earning $1 billion per year can increase its overall revenue by $700 million per year if it invests in a reliable customer experience software and implement a customer-centric operation for three years. 

Do you want such growth? It is time to pick the right customer experience management software for your business.

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