In an ever-increasingly crowded marketplace, businesses need to make every effort to stand out to consumers. However, it’s hard to provide personalized services and a consistent customer experience when you lack detailed buyer insights and have to deal with fragmented client data.
One of the most effective ways to get around this issue is by providing a heightened customer experience – this is customer experience management (CEM) software is worth its weight in gold.
This is an amazing tool that allows you to gain unique insights into customer behavior, offers actionable customer data, and enables you to build an effective, customer-centric business approach.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the best CEM tools to help take your customer experience to the next level.
What Is the Best Customer Experience Management Software?
Several studies have backed the importance of customer experience management tools and how they can improve business performance. However, there are many things to consider when choosing a customer experience management tool.
Some of the more important factors include your primary objective for using this software, ease of use, access to data integration, and the analytic capabilities of the program.
Also, you should consider omnichannel support, customer feedback tools, user personalization and segmentation features, integration capabilities with existing systems, customer support, data security, and compliance and pricing.
So here’s a list of 7 of the best customer experience management software to catapult your business to the next level.
Zendesk
Overview
Zendesk is a popular customer experience management (CEM) software that provides a truly comprehensive suite of tools to help businesses deliver exceptional customer experiences. The service is available in over 60 languages and serves over 160,000 businesses worldwide.
Zendesk focuses on providing users with the necessary support, insights, and actionable data to enable them to streamline their customer interactions across several channels. Its analytics and reporting features provide valuable insights into customer behavior and satisfaction.
The platform offers an organized ticketing system that structures customer inquiries and facilitates efficient resolution. These automated services improve response times and provide a better customer experience. Zendesk also offers customer self-service options, such as knowledge bases and community forums, empowering customers to find answers independently.
Highlights
- Zendesk offers a robust ticketing system that centralizes customer inquiries and support requests, ensuring efficient and organized handling of customer interactions.
- The platform enables businesses to provide omnichannel support across various channels, including email, chat, phone, social media, and self-service portals.
- Zendesk’s automation capabilities help streamline support processes by automating repetitive tasks such as ticket routing tickets and sending automated responses.
- Zendesk also provides self-service tools, including knowledge bases, community forums, and FAQs, reducing support ticket volumes, and improving customer satisfaction.
- The software facilitates customer engagement through live chat, proactive messaging, and chatbots, enabling businesses to provide real-time assistance and personalized interactions.
- Zendesk’s analytics and reporting features provide actionable insights into customer behavior, support metrics, and customer satisfaction, allowing businesses to monitor performance, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions.
- Zendesk seamlessly integrates with various business systems, including CRM platforms, collaboration tools, and e-commerce platforms.
- The platform offers mobile apps for both agents and customers, allowing agents to provide support on the go and enabling customers to access self-service options and interact with support agents via mobile devices.
- Zendesk prioritizes data security and complies with industry-standard security protocols, ensuring the protection of customer data and adherence to data privacy regulations.
Pricing
Here are the pricing plans for the Zendesk platform:
- Suite Team: Starts from $59/month if billed monthly (or $49/month if billed annually).
- Suite Growth: Starts from $99/month if billed monthly (or $79/month if billed annually).
- Suite Professional: Starts from $125/month if billed monthly (or $99/month if billed annually).
- Suite Team: This plan is priced according to the specific requirements of the company.
All these services come with a 14-day free trial to allow you to try out the full extent of their services.
Bottom Line
Zendesk is a versatile platform that enables businesses to streamline customer support, engagement, and insights. With its ticketing system, multichannel support, automation, and customization options, Zendesk is a platform you should try out.
Adobe Experience Manager
Overview
Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is a CEM platform that also doubles as a content management system (CMS) and digital experience platform (DXP) that empowers businesses to create, manage, and deliver personalized digital experiences across various channels.
It provides robust capabilities for content authoring, asset management, workflow automation, and multi-channel delivery. AEM enables organizations to optimize customer experiences, enhance collaboration among teams, and drive digital transformation.
Highlights
- AEM offers a user-friendly interface for creating and managing content, allowing marketers and content creators to easily design and publish engaging experiences without technical expertise.
- AEM’s asset management capabilities enable businesses to organize, search, and distribute digital assets efficiently. It provides version control, metadata management, and integration with creative tools for seamless asset management.
- The platform allows businesses to deliver personalized experiences by leveraging customer data, targeting specific audience segments, and tailoring content based on user behavior and preferences.
- AEM enables content delivery across multiple channels, including websites, mobile apps, social media, email, and IoT devices. It ensures consistent brand experiences and optimized content presentation on various platforms.
- AEM streamlines content creation and approval processes with built-in workflow automation. It allows teams to collaborate effectively, manage content reviews, and ensure timely publishing.
- The platform is designed to handle large-scale enterprise deployments and integrates seamlessly with other Adobe products, such as Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target, as well as third-party systems, enabling organizations to leverage existing investments.
- The software provides robust analytics and reporting capabilities to measure and analyze customer interactions, content performance, and campaign effectiveness, allowing businesses to make data-driven decisions.
Pricing Plan
Here is how much the AEM service costs:
- Adobe Experience Manager offers custom pricing plans according to specific user requirements. This is influenced by several factors such as business size, contract length and renewal terms, user licenses, functionality and features, and so on. However, the platform does not offer a free trial.
Bottom Line
Adobe Experience Manager empowers businesses to create, manage, and deliver personalized digital experiences across channels. With its powerful content authoring, asset management, personalization, and workflow automation features, AEM enables organizations to optimize customer experiences, enhance collaboration, and drive digital transformation.
UserTesting
Overview
UserTesting is a leading user research and usability testing platform that helps businesses gain valuable insights into their digital products. By facilitating remote usability tests, surveys, and feedback sessions, UserTesting allows companies to gather user feedback and observe user behavior to improve their website, app, or prototype.
With a large panel of real users, robust testing tools, and powerful analytics, UserTesting offers an effective way to validate design decisions, uncover usability issues, and optimize the user experience.
Highlights
- UserTesting enables businesses to conduct usability tests remotely, allowing them to gather feedback from real users regardless of their location.
- The platform provides access to a diverse panel of real users who can provide valuable insights and feedback on digital products.
- UserTesting offers various testing methods, including moderated and unmoderated tests, surveys, and feedback sessions, catering to different research needs.
- The platform provides robust analytics and reporting features to help businesses analyze test results, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions.
- UserTesting offers rapid turnaround times for test results, allowing businesses to iterate and improve their designs quickly.
- Businesses can tailor their testing plans to match their specific research goals, target audience, and testing criteria.
- UserTesting facilitates collaboration among team members, enabling them to share test findings, observations, and insights easily.
- The platform supports testing on various devices, including desktops, mobile phones, and tablets, ensuring comprehensive user experience testing.
- UserTesting integrates with popular tools and platforms, such as Jira and Slack, making it easier to incorporate user feedback into existing workflows.
Pricing Plans
UserTesting does not offer fixed quotes for their plans but instead provides customizable plans depending on several factors such as the number of users, types, and features. However, there are three basic plans:
- Essentials: This offers a customizable dashboard with several metrics, various integrations, and a demographic filter with screener questions.
- Advanced: This offers additional features such as interactive path flows, unlimited workspaces, live conversation, and much more.
- Ultimate: The Ultimate plan offers onboarding services, smart tags, and secure prototype testing.
Contact the UserTesting support team for more information on the available plans.
Bottom Line
UserTesting offers a powerful platform for remote user research and usability testing. With its large panel of real users, flexible testing methods, and robust analytics, businesses can gain valuable insights to improve their digital products and enhance the user experience.
Zoho
Overview
Zoho is a CEM platform that offers a suite of cloud-based business applications designed to streamline and automate various aspects of business operations. It offers a wide range of solutions including CRM, project management, finance, human resources, collaboration, and more.
With a user-friendly interface and extensive integration capabilities, Zoho provides businesses of all sizes with the tools to enhance productivity, improve customer relationships, and drive growth.
It caters to diverse industries and offers flexible pricing options, making it an accessible choice for businesses seeking an all-in-one platform for their operational needs and a top contender for the title of the best CEM platform of 2024.
Highlights
- Zoho provides a comprehensive suite of applications covering various aspects of business operations, including CRM, project management, accounting, HR, and more.
- The platform offers extensive customization options, allowing businesses to tailor the software to their specific requirements and workflows.
- The service seamlessly integrates with other popular business tools and platforms, enabling data flow and collaboration across systems.
- The platform is designed to scale with businesses as they grow, accommodating increased users, data, and requirements.
- Zoho features an intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it easy for employees to navigate and utilize the platform effectively.
- Zoho provides mobile apps for iOS and Android devices, allowing users to access and manage their business applications on the go.
- Zoho includes collaboration features like document sharing, task management, and real-time collaboration, promoting teamwork and productivity.
- Zoho offers robust analytics and reporting capabilities, providing valuable insights into business performance and aiding data-driven decision-making.
- Zoho prioritizes data security and follows industry best practices to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of user data.
- Zoho offers flexible pricing plans to accommodate businesses of different sizes and budgets, making it an accessible choice for organizations.
Pricing Plans
Let’s explore how Zoho’s subscriptions are priced:
- Free Plan: This subscription package is free and offers basic CEM functions for a maximum of 20 customers and 1 user.
- Basic Plan: Starts from $59/month if billed monthly (or $49/month if billed annually). Serves up to 500 customers and 3 users.
- Standard Plan: Starts from $119/month if billed monthly (or $99/month if billed annually). Serves up to 2000 customers and 5 users.
- Professional Plan: Starts from $299/month if billed monthly (or $249/month if billed annually). Serves up to 5000 customers and 10 users.
- Enterprise Plan: This plan is priced according to the specific requirements of the company.
Bottom Line
Zoho is a versatile and user-friendly platform that provides businesses with a comprehensive suite of cloud-based applications. With its customization options, integration capabilities, and scalability, Zoho empowers businesses to streamline operations, enhance productivity, and drive growth. Take advantage of the free packages or the free trial offered by any of the other packages.
Freshdesk
Overview
Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer support software that helps businesses manage customer inquiries, provide efficient support, and enhance customer satisfaction. The CEM platform offers a range of features including ticket management, self-service portals, automation, and reporting.
With an intuitive interface and robust functionality, Freshdesk is suitable for businesses of all sizes looking to streamline their customer support operations and deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Highlights
- Efficiently manage customer inquiries and support tickets with features like ticket routing, prioritization, and collaboration tools.
- Freshdesk empowers customers to find answers and resolve issues independently through knowledge bases, FAQs, and community forums.
- The service engages with customers across various channels including email, chat, phone, social media, and mobile apps.
- It allows you to automate repetitive tasks, set up workflows, and define business rules to streamline support processes and improve response times.
- Freshdesk provides valuable insights into support metrics, customer satisfaction, and agent performance with comprehensive reporting and analytics tools.
- You can easily integrate Freshdesk with other business systems such as CRM, collaboration tools, and e-commerce platforms for seamless data flow.
- The platform allows you to leverage AI capabilities like chatbots and virtual assistants to enhance customer interactions and provide 24/7 support.
- Access Freshdesk on the go with mobile apps for both agents and customers, enabling support anytime, anywhere.
- You can tailor Freshdesk to match your branding, custom ticket fields, layouts, and workflows to align with your unique business needs.
- Freshdesk scales with your business growth, accommodating increased ticket volumes and expanding support operations.
Pricing Plans
Here are the plans offered by the Freshdesk service:
- Free Plan: This subscription package is free and offers basic CEM functions such as integrated ticketing across email and social media accounts ticket dispatch, and basic analytics.
- Growth Plan: Starts from $18/month if billed monthly (or $15/month if billed annually).
- Pro Plan: Starts from $59/month if billed monthly (or $49/month if billed annually).
- Enterprise Plan: Starts from $95/month if billed monthly (or $79/month if billed annually).
All these plans come with the offer of a free trial.
Bottom Line
Freshdesk is a comprehensive customer support software that offers efficient ticket management, self-service options, multichannel support, and powerful automation. Try out any of the above plans to access its robust features and scalability.
TrustMary
Overview
TrustMary is a customer feedback and reputation management platform designed to help businesses collect, manage, and leverage customer reviews. It enables companies to actively monitor their online reputation, gather valuable feedback, and build trust with their customers.
TrustMary provides a range of features, including review collection tools, sentiment analysis, customizable review widgets, and reputation monitoring. It also offers analytics and reporting capabilities to track performance and identify areas for improvement.
With its focus on customer feedback and reputation management, TrustMary aims to empower businesses to enhance their online presence and deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Highlights
- TrustMary allows businesses to gather customer reviews from popular review sites such as Google, Facebook, Yelp, and industry-specific platforms. It centralizes these reviews in one dashboard for easy management and analysis.
- The platform offers customizable review widgets that businesses can embed on their websites. These widgets display positive customer reviews, helping to build trust and credibility among website visitors.
- TrustMary’s sentiment analysis feature utilizes natural language processing to evaluate the sentiment expressed in customer reviews.
- TrustMary monitors online platforms and review sites, providing businesses with real-time alerts about new reviews and brand mentions.
- The service automates the process of collecting customer reviews by sending review requests to customers via email or SMS. This saves time and effort for businesses while ensuring a consistent and efficient feedback collection process.
- The platform integrates with major review sites and social media platforms, making it easy for businesses to manage and respond to reviews from a single platform.
- TrustMary provides comprehensive analytics and reporting capabilities, allowing businesses to measure key metrics such as review volume, sentiment analysis results, and overall review ratings.
- TrustMary offers customizable email templates for requesting reviews from customers. Businesses can personalize these templates to align with their brand voice and messaging, enhancing the customer experience.
- The service allows businesses to create custom review forms tailored to their specific needs. This enables businesses to gather specific feedback and insights from customers, helping to address specific areas of improvement or focus.
- TrustMary provides dedicated customer support to assist businesses with onboarding, technical support, and any questions or concerns they may have.
Pricing Plans
Here are how much the TrustMary plans cost:
- Solo Plan: This subscription package is free and offers basic CEM functions.
- Starter Plan: Starts from $19/month if billed monthly (or $16/month if billed annually).
- Business Plan: Starts from $59/month if billed monthly (or $49/month if billed annually).
- Scale Plan: Starts from $129/month if billed monthly (or $108/month if billed annually).
Bottom Line
TrustMary is a comprehensive platform for customer feedback and reputation management. With its range of features, businesses can effectively collect and manage customer reviews, build trust, and gain insights to improve their online reputation and customer experiences.
Medallia
Overview
Medallia is a customer experience management platform that helps businesses capture, analyze, and act upon customer feedback to enhance their customer experience strategies.
It provides a comprehensive suite of tools and features to collect feedback across various touchpoints, gain actionable insights, and drive improvements in customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Medallia’s platform is designed to help businesses understand and meet customer expectations, optimize customer journeys, and foster meaningful customer relationships.
Highlights
- Medallia enables businesses to gather feedback through various channels, including surveys, in-app feedback, social media, and more.
- The platform utilizes advanced text analytics and natural language processing to extract valuable insights from customer feedback, allowing businesses to identify trends, sentiments, and actionable areas for improvement.
- Medallia offers real-time alerts and notifications to promptly address customer issues and resolve them promptly.
- The platform provides tools for collaborative action planning, allowing businesses to assign and track tasks to ensure that customer feedback is acted upon effectively.
- Medallia allows businesses to visualize and analyze customer journeys, identify pain points, optimize touchpoints, and improve the overall customer experience.
- The service integrates with various systems and data sources, including CRM, helpdesk, and contact center software, to provide a unified view of the customer and enable seamless data flow.
- Medallia leverages artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to identify patterns and predict customer behavior, enabling proactive actions and personalized experiences.
- The platform offers customizable reporting and dashboards, providing stakeholders with real-time insights and performance metrics to track progress and measure the impact of customer experience initiatives.
Pricing Plans
Here is how the Medallia service is priced:
- Medallia offers custom pricing plans according to specific user requirements. They operate using a flexible pricing principle known as Experience Data Record which takes into account all data associated with a discrete interaction between an end-customer (or employee) and a company.
Bottom Line
Medallia is a robust customer experience management platform that empowers businesses to capture, analyze, and act upon customer feedback to improve their overall customer experience strategies. With its comprehensive set of tools, advanced analytics, and integration capabilities, Medallia enables businesses to drive meaningful improvements, enhance customer satisfaction, and build long-lasting customer relationships.
What Is Customer Experience Management Software?
Customer Experience Management (CEM) software is a platform that helps businesses manage and improve customer experiences. It typically includes features such as customer feedback collection, sentiment analysis, data analytics, customer journey mapping, and personalization capabilities. CEM software enables businesses to understand, measure, and enhance customer interactions to drive satisfaction and loyalty.
Summary
CEM software is crucial for businesses as it enables them to deliver exceptional customer experiences by gaining valuable insights into customer behavior, streamlining support processes, providing personalized interactions, and ensuring consistent brand experiences. It helps businesses improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately, their bottom line.