Top 10 Customer Engagement Solutions

When you see the term customer engagement solutions, what do you think of first? Do you think of strategies for using tech to engage your customers more? Or the online platforms you can use to interact with your clients more easily? Communication tools like live chat may have sprung to mind.

Whatever you imagined, you'd be right, as a customer engagement solution can involve all of these and more. It's a concentrated effort, typically employing specialized software, to connect with your customers. And it can make a huge impact on how customers perceive your organization or brand.

We've examined the benefits of these customer engagement measures and reviewed the top 10 customer engagement solutions available today.

What Is a Customer Engagement Solution?

You are probably familiar with the term customer engagement. It describes the cultivation of a relationship with your customer base. The steps you take to build that relationship are part of your customer relationship strategy, while customer engagement solutions help you put those strategies into practice.

A customer engagement solution can be an online platform, tool, or app used for interacting with your customers and building a stronger relationship with them.

But while this offers your customers a more positive experience with your brand, customer engagement is good for your business in other ways too.

Benefits of Customer Engagement Solutions

When you use the best customer engagement solutions, your business will enjoy the following benefits.

More Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

Using customer engagement solutions helps you keep your existing customer base, and expand it too. These tools increase customer satisfaction, which in turn increases loyalty to your brand. This is good for business, as satisfied and loyal customers may recommend you to their friends, family, and colleagues.

Increased Sales, Bigger Profits

You can look forward to a boost in sales, as this is another top benefit of using customer engagement solutions. By giving your customers a more positive experience, they are more likely to make repeat purchases and possibly buy products from the higher end of the range, in the future.

Sharper Customer Insights

Customer engagement solutions also help you in less tangible, but incredibly insightful ways. They give you a glimpse into the mind of the consumer. They help you to identify customers' wants, needs, frustrations, and challenges so you can address these pain points more effectively.

Streamlined Communication

Open and honest communication is the key to any successful relationship. This holds true for business relationships and interactions with customers, too. Customer engagement solutions make this type of communication not only possible but also convenient.

The 10 Best Customer Engagement Solutions in 2024

When examining the best customer engagement solutions, something becomes immediately apparent. What one industry, sector, or company considers an engagement solution will differ from another. Often, competitors for the same audience will take different routes to customer engagement.

And that's okay. What matters is that you find a product that ticks all the boxes for you. Here are the ten best customer engagement solutions, for all types of customer engagement approaches.

1. Helpmonks

Helpmonks is the top all-in-one customer engagement platform, combining CRM, email marketing, customer service, and email management. It offers all the essential features you'd expect from customer engagement solutions, like live chat, email sequences, email CRM, and knowledge base software.

Key Features

• Shared inboxes help customer service and support teams stay on track while sharing the workload. Assign specific emails to the team members best equipped to handle those customer service issues. This means customers get helped faster and receive better support.
• Email sequencing softwarehelps teams follow up on actions promptly to make customers feel valued and recognized. Use it for automated abandoned cart messages, welcome messages, and special discount offers. The options are endless.
• Build more effective email marketing campaigns. Helpmonks helps you send personalized emails that engage customers and build loyalty.
• An effective landing page is the key to a successful website. Create attractive landing pages with the free landing page builder. The templates work on every device and are customizable so you can make them fit your target audience and your brand. No coding skill is required.
• Effective customer engagement relies on good communication. Offer your customers real-time service with the live chat widget. Push notifications can also alert customers to promotions or special offers so they never miss an opportunity to interact more with your brand.
• Empower your customers with the intuitive knowledge base software. It will give customers extra support, inform them about your products and services, and educate them about your brand.

2. Zendesk

Zendesk offers software solutions with AI-powered tools for a wide range of industries and business sizes. The customer service solution, Zendesk for Service, lets users access messaging, AI automation, and Help Center features.

Key Features

• A messaging feature that can be used on your business's website, social media pages, or apps.
• Centralized location for customer conversations and their information.
• Customers are updated on the status of orders and deliveries with outbound WhatsApp and SMS notifications. Allows group messaging.
• Allows third-party integrations, so you can use live maps to allow customers to track deliveries.
• Zendesk bots handle common customer queries 24/7, so customers get the help they need even when an agent is not available.

3. HubSpot

HubSpot is an AI-powered customer service platform, with smaller platforms, hubs, tools, and products designed for customer service, marketing, sales, and content marketing. There are four paid plans and free tools for up to five users, on both the customer platform and the service hub.

Key Features

• A live chat widget to chat directly with customers, conversation routing, email, and in-app chat support.
• No more endless back-and-forth messaging to narrow down the best time for a meeting. Use the meeting links feature to send customers available dates and times for convenient meeting scheduling.
• Simple ticket automation that triggers messages to customers when tickets are open and closed, and to agents when ticket statuses change.
• HubSpot mobile app mobile inbox and Slack integration offer remote teams more convenience.
• On certain paid plans, customer survey feedback and analytics, or features of other hubs for marketing, content, operations, and sales, may be included.

4. Salesforce

With Salesforce, you get a complete CRM covering customer service, marketing, sales, and much more on an integrated platform called Einstein. It's a wise name choice, as SalesForce promises to help users across multiple industries work smarter while growing customer relationships.

Key Features

• A self-service experience is built directly into your CRM, so customers don't have to wait for an agent to find the answers they need. This may be charged as an add-on and depends on the plan you're on.
• Multilingual, multichannel bots that automate routine and common customer requests can take the pressure off smaller teams in peak times.
• The appointment assistant will help customers easily schedule in-person appointments with your sales team or consultants.
• The customer portal is a fun virtual space where customers can be a part of your brand's greater community.
• Get the optional contact center and digital engagement add-ons that offer customers more ways to communicate with you.

5. Intercom

The Intercom platform is run entirely by AI. This means that both you and your customer will get the answers they need from AI. Even team leaders can access AI insights. There are three products. One is for your customers, one is for your team of customer service agents, and the other is for team leaders.

Key Features

• An AI agent, named Fin, will resolve customer service issues 24/7, with answers based on your customer service content. This is designed to maintain customer support when your live agents are not available.
• Customize the AI Agent's responses with external data and rich media, to provide customers with a more valuable interaction. Thanks to AI language models, Fin talks to customers much like a real agent would.
• Multilingual, omnichannel support that routes conversations from your business email, message app, or phone to your Intercom inbox. This helps teams stay on top of all developing customer conversations
• A dedicated customer help center where you can upload content for your customers, on topics like how to navigate your platform or FAQ.
• Three paid plans for different team sizes, with a free 14-day trial available for each.

6. Kangaroo

Reward your customers' loyalty, and they may reward you with more purchases or referrals. That's the premise behind customer loyalty solutions like Kangaroo Rewards.

On Kangaroo, you can maximize customer relationships with a vibrant rewards system, interactive games, contests, and exciting content. There are four paid plans to choose from.

Key Features

• Reward customers for purchases with points they can use towards future purchases. This keeps them coming back for more and boosts engagement while increasing sales.
• Set spend thresholds and event triggers (like specific purchases) so customers can unlock even more points.
• Implement a referral program and get customer referrals on any of your sales channels. This is an excellent method of expanding your customer base with minimal effort.
• Incorporate contests on your customer loyalty platform to encourage their participation. With Kangaroo, you can schedule contests in advance, select winners randomly, and automate winner notifications.
• Not content to leave it to chance? Ensure the odds are in your favor, by controlling the winning criteria.

7. Typeform

Much of your customer feedback comes via the various forms they fill in on your website, social media pages, or other digital channels. But unless those forms are fun and engaging, most customers will eventually start to ignore them.

Typeform helps you get the feedback you need with appealing forms, surveys, and quizzes customers will want to fill in. Typeform offers form builder, survey maker, and quiz maker tools. Three paid plans and an Enterprise plan are available.

Key Features

• Get forms designed for newsletter or marketing email sign-ups, customer feedback and service ratings, and orders.
• Add your brand's logos, colors, and styles to forms to make them your own. Easily embed them in your website's landing pages and your marketing emails without coding.
• Personalize your more generic forms to generate more interest and start enjoying more engaging interactions.
• Access survey templates for your customer satisfaction, market research, and product rating surveys.
• Quizzes are not only fun, they help you with lead generation, too. Create quizzes to engage the customer while obtaining useful information about their interests and purchasing habits.

8. ConvertKit

Attracting and keeping customers often boils down to the visual appeal of your online content. ConvertKit lets users create more attractive website landing pages and marketing emails. It can also be used to automate marketing emails. Two paid plans and a free plan (max one user) are available.

Key Features

• Fully customizable landing page templates, formatted for viewing on different types of devices, that keep people interacting with your website. No coding knowledge is necessary.
• Landing page marketing opt-in forms so you can turn new visitors to your website into potential customers.
• Highly customizable email templates so you can create appealing marketing emails or newsletters in next to no time.
• Save your favorite and most effective templates to your library so they're ready for you whenever you need them.
• Embed your promotional videos, industry-related quotes, product photos, or even audio clips to maximize engagement and increase brand awareness.

9. Drift

Drift is an AI-powered sales-oriented platform, ideal for smaller businesses without the manpower that a full customer support division requires. It is designed to engage buyers and nurture them along their sales journey while helping teams resolve customer service issues. Three paid pans are available.

Key Features

• Drift leverages intent data that uses machine learning to understand your website visitors' behavior.
• A Site Concierge feature allows users to book meetings, access resources and initiate engaging conversations.
• Custom playbooks that guide visitors to what they are searching for are perfect for the more indecisive or hesitant site visitors.
• A customer service and support chatbot to provide customers in a hurry with immediate answers.
• It doesn't take long to close a deal when you say the right things. Use the response timers and templates to train new live agents to craft more compelling conversations in time.

10. Avaya

Avaya offers call center solutions for a variety of business needs across different industries, including a customer experience solution.

Key Features

• Avaya's solutions can be adapted to your work environment. The customer experience solution has a flexible deployment model for on-premises, cloud-based, or hybrid work models.
• Faster call handling improves the customer's experience. Calls are directed to the right operator, avoiding transfers and reducing waiting time.
• Over 100 Avaya and third-party technologies merge to give both call agents and customers a more cohesive call experience.
• APX Public Cloud feature that has support capabilities, giving customers the freedom to connect with your brand the way they want.
• Easy implementation. Integrate Avaya with your other digital channels without disrupting current services.

Choose the Right Customer Engagement Solution for Your Needs

Some of the above customer engagement solutions are very feature-rich, while others are more limited unless you purchase higher plans or add-ons. Each has unique benefits that may meet your needs. But first, you need to understand what exactly you are looking for in your customer engagement solution.

These three tips will help you to make your decision.

1. Identify Your Business Goals and Challenges

First, identify your business goals and challenges to know what you need from a customer engagement solution.

What are your biggest concerns? Perhaps you have been struggling to retain customers, or aren't seeing the repeat business figures you'd hoped for. Or maybe you aren't resolving customer service issues effectively. The right customer engagement tool can help.

2. Evaluate the Features, Integrations and Capabilities

Next, evaluate the features, capabilities, and integrations of the customer engagement tool you are considering, in light of the above points.

Do the features align with your goals? Could using them address your concerns? The right customer engagement tool will have features and capabilities that meet your needs, improve your customer experience, lighten your team's workload, and scale your business.

3. Consider User Experience and Learning Curve

Lastly, consider the user experience for your team and customers, as they will all have certain expectations of the platform or tool you choose.

A customer engagement solution should be exactly that — a solution to your customer engagement challenges. That's why the learning curve required for implementation should also be given due consideration. If your team finds the tool difficult to understand and use, it will impact customer service.

Conclusion

Customer engagement solutions are tools designed to improve your relationship with customers as well as their experience and perception of your business/brand. To get the most from your customer engagement tool, it should be affordable but still scalable, and user-friendly yet rich in innovative features.

We have the customer engagement solution you're looking for. Get the help you need, from Helpmonks. You'll get an all-in-one customer engagement platform, with features that enhance your email management, marketing, CRM, and customer service.

Register an account today to get started.