Imagine the last time a brand not only met your expectations but exceeded them in ways that left a lasting impression. Perhaps they anticipated a need you hadn’t voiced or resolved an issue with such ease and empathy that it transformed a moment of frustration into one of gratitude.

These customer experiences don’t just shape our view of a brand, they forge a connection that inspires loyalty and advocacy. This isn’t just good customer service. It’s the essence of customer experience marketing. In a time when personal touch often gets lost in automation, the brands that stand out are those that prioritize the human element, seamlessly integrating it into every customer interaction.

But how can your business achieve this? The answer lies in leveraging the creativity and insight of your marketing team to design experiences that anticipate and exceed customer expectations at every turn.

In this guide, we’ll share five strategies so that you can provide a brag-worthy customer experience.

But first, let’s talk about customer experience for a minute.

What Is Customer Experience Marketing?

Customer experience marketing (CEM or CXM) is a strategic approach that focuses on creating positive, memorable experiences for customers throughout their entire journey with a brand.

Unlike traditional marketing, which often centers on promoting products or services, customer experience marketing goes deeper into the relationship between a brand and its customers, with the goal of achieving loyalty and customer advocacy.

Many marketing departments are only focused on acquiring new customers. This approach is counterproductive since acquisition costs continue to climb.

And it doesn’t take much for consumers to cut ties with a business after a bad customer service experience:

• 59% of people will walk away from a company after several bad experiences
• 17% will walk away after just one bad experience

And that’s just in the U.S. In Latin America, 49% of people say they’d walk away from a favorite brand after one bad experience.

At its core, CXM is about understanding and responding to the needs, desires and pain points of customers at every touchpoint. This involves not only the moments when they are considering a purchase or engaging with a product, but also the ongoing interactions they have with the brand, whether through customer service, online experiences, or personalized communications.

Remember, the ultimate goal of customer experience marketing is to build a strong, emotional connection with customers so that they feel valued and understood.

This approach recognizes that positive customer experiences are inherently more memorable and shareable than low prices and high-quality products alone. They lead to organic word-of-mouth promotion and higher levels of customer retention.

By prioritizing the customer’s experience, brands can differentiate themselves in a crowded market, reduce customer churn and, ultimately, drive growth through increased customer loyalty.

Companies can measure their customer experience using qualitative and quantitative analysis. Top metrics include Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Effort Score, and customer retention (churn).

Why marketing and customer service should work together

Your customers don’t view customer service as a department — they see your entire company through this one filter.

When treated well, happy customers are your strongest brand advocates. They spread word-of-mouth and leave positive reviews, which helps define your online reputation.

Not only that, but 81% of customers are willing to pay more for better customer service, and customer retention rates increase by 5% for every 1% increase in customer satisfaction.

So here are the top benefits for why you need marketing and customer service to work together:

• Improved Customer Insights and Feedback Loop: Because customer service teams are directly engaging with your customers, they have specific, first-hand knowledge of customer needs, preferences and pain points. This invaluable information allows marketing teams to refine their strategies, tailor messaging and develop products or services that better meet customer expectations.
• Consistent Brand Messaging and Experience: When marketing and customer service work together, you can be sure that the brand message is consistent across all channels. This means that the promotional materials, social media messages and the support customers receive are all aligned. Consistency helps reinforce brand values and promises, making customers more likely to stay loyal and recommend the brand to others.
• Enhanced Customer Retention and Loyalty: Marketing can use insights from customer service to create targeted campaigns aimed at addressing common issues or promoting loyalty programs, while customer service can leverage marketing materials to provide better support and upsell or cross-sell services in a way that feels natural and beneficial to the customer.
• Streamlined Response to Market Changes: A collaborative relationship between marketing and customer service can lead to more agile and responsive strategies. Customer service can provide real-time feedback on how market changes are affecting customer perceptions and behavior, allowing marketing to quickly adjust campaigns and messages to address these changes.

In a nutshell, your marketing and customer service teams on the front lines can solve profound issues in the customer lifecycle — before your competitors do.

Top Strategies to Reduce Customer Churn

So how can your brand leverage CX marketing? Let’s take a look at some simple but effective marketing strategies to deliver an exceptional customer experience.

#1: Create an Engaging Learning Center

Creating a learning center is the first way to elevate your customer experience.

A customer learning center is a dedicated resource hub created by businesses to educate their customers about their products, services and relevant industry topics.

The content in this learning center answers questions that prospects or existing customers have about your product. It’s often the first place customers visit to solve a problem on their own. This documentation also gives prospective customers a realistic glimpse of your support offerings.

To get started, ask your customer service team what pain points customers face. Assess the number of inquiries and impact on customer experience for each topic. Meet monthly to select new topics to add to the knowledge base.

Give your marketing team access to sales or support call recordings to get the most out of this CX strategy. That also includes access to support tickets and researching accounts in your CRM.

For this strategy to be fruitful, use the exact terminology that customers use in the content you create, from blog posts to landing pages to social media posts.

Publish content with an educational angle

A good customer experience is built around high confidence in using your product. The first place people seek help is a Google search (whether you like to admit it or not!). Instead of resisting it, capitalize on the organic traffic that’s already there.

Take this Nextiva example — they have a double ranking in search thanks to a well-maintained support site. The information about network jitter is relevant to current and prospective customers.

Remember, customers want to do more than just learn how to perform basic tasks with your product. Exceed customer expectations by showing them how to improve the way they live and work so they actually look forward to using your product or service.

Also, don’t let account set-up webinars fall by the wayside. Consider curating your webinars in order to welcome new customers. Canva does this exceptionally well with an educational video series that fast-tracks new users into their platform:

Share goal-driven tutorials and engaging case studies

Help articles should go beyond the basics. Step up your customer experience by elevating the purpose of support articles. Featuring specific outcomes or industries draws in more customers to consume the content.

Case studies can also compel your customers to do more with your product. Breaking down how your company helped other customers or clients can be an excellent way to encourage those who are still in research mode to take action.

#2: Build Customer Loyalty with Social Media

Social media has become one of the first channels that customers contact to get help. A study by Facebook cites that 64% of people prefer to message a business than other methods:

If you’ve ever wasted time trying to reach an actual customer service person because you’re required to press one for this issue or press two for that department, you’ll understand why customers prefer live chat, either on the brand’s website or on their social media channels.

So it stands to reason that you should use social media in your customer service efforts. Share your most popular support articles and case studies on social media. You’ll be surprised to find that future customers who are on the fence could be swayed to choose you with all these easy-to-access, preemptive help.

Just be sure to respond to questions and comments on your social platforms!

#3: Simplify the Onboarding Experience

Did you know that increasing customer retention rates by only 5% increases a company’s profits by 25-95%?

This mindset should start as soon as the customer is onboarded. How well you manage this makes the difference between repeat business and flushing money down the toilet. Guide the onboarding experience with behavioral targeting tools to trigger the right messages at the right time. This creates a more coherent experience for the customer.

Your goal at this point is to reduce friction. What’s friction? It’s anything that induces buyer’s remorse or runs counter to expectations set earlier. It also erases the customer lifetime value you’ve worked so hard to earn:

Add FAQs that answer common and relevant customer service issues or needs into your onboarding materials or landing pages. Addressing these concerns cuts down on the amount of live support you need to provide later.

If you already have a solid onboarding process, look for more learning opportunities. One idea is to collect feedback through short customer satisfaction surveys. Verbatim responses can help your marketing team develop stronger buyer personas.

According to growth advisor and our VP of Marketing Zach Grove, it’s a smart idea to automate this process:

“When a new user first signs up for your product, consider adding an automatic email with a direct question — and encourage them to hit reply. You can ask them why they decided to sign up or what goal they’re hoping to achieve with your product.

From there, you can start back-and-forth email conversations with customers that will inform your buyer personas more than any marketing tool could.”

Using these insights, you can create a tutorial to lead customers using your SaaS product. Help them get the most out of it to achieve the most common user goals. A welcome video can help them get excited about using your product or service.

Use onboarding to accomplish different goals

For instance, Holstee, which created the journaling app and website called Reflection, uses its onboarding process for two functions:

• First, it demonstrates the app in action.
• Second, it provides a great customer experience.

When users sign up for a free account, they receive a guided writing prompt every day for two weeks by email. Each prompt gets users comfortable with the app and demonstrates the value of journaling.

This customer experience strategy proves to customers the benefit of the product, which upholds the promises made by its marketing.

#4: Deliver a Clear, Consistent Message

Content marketing is one of the most significant areas to back your support team. You might find many questions along the entire customer journey revolve around product capabilities. Marketing answers these questions long before the person becomes a lead.

Design your marketing campaigns so they deliver clear, consistent messaging. Customers should know the desired outcome of your product or service. If you’re running a promotion, make it clear how the sale works. If you’re unveiling a new product, make sure you clearly outline the benefits. If you’re rolling out a loyalty program, your audience should easily understand how to join, earn and redeem rewards.

Addressing these gaps early on reduces customer service questions and disappointment later.

Here’s an example of a clear and an unclear marketing message for a campaign we’ll call “Streamline Your Day with TimeTracker: Every Minute Counts”

• Clear marketing message: “Unlock the power of every minute with TimeTracker, your go-to solution for maximizing productivity and efficiency, both at work and at home. Experience a seamless way to manage your time, tasks and projects with precision and ease.”
• Unclear marketing message: “Experience the essence of moments with TimeTracker, where the journey of your day finds its harmony in the mingling of productivity landscapes and the symphony of task orchestration.”

Use an omnichannel platform so customers get a consistent brand experience regardless of how they contact you. Audit your outbound email templates and support documentation at least annually. This effort keeps your message consistent across every touchpoint.

#5: Deepen Your Customer Insights

It’s essential to understand your customers in order to make the best business decisions. Even better, surveying customers regularly will uncover risks and address them earlier.

Look at the difference in experiences and attitudes between respondent groups over time. Analyze what causes this difference, and decide how to close the gap.

Once you have your customer data, make targeted improvements. An example includes revising content in your knowledge base if it drives complaints. Likewise, retailers can also address gaps in customer support processes or templates.

If you’re not savvy with conducting surveys, get up to speed with these survey best practices:

Use proactive customer service

Many businesses use reactive customer service. This approach means customers often start with a bad experience.

On the other hand, proactive customer service means reaching out to your customers to share improvements to your products and services or ask them how they’re enjoying your product or service.

Proactive messaging contributes to a positive experience because it shows your advocacy. It’s also strategic because it reminds customers of your innovation and growth.

Be bold about your commitment to customers

With stellar customer experience, you have newfound confidence to serve tomorrow’s customers. Don’t keep it a secret. Great customer service stands out in any industry. An outstanding customer experience gives you an edge against larger companies.

Pagely, an enterprise WordPress host, boasts real-time Net Promoter Score (NPS) and customer satisfaction scores on its site and social media. Satisfied clients consistently endorse them when pitted against rivals for their no-nonsense attitude and responsiveness.

Customer Experience Marketing Is a Success Story in the Making

When orchestrated well, marketing delivers a positive customer experience that rivals can’t duplicate.

Your customers will tell their friends and colleagues about their experience. Be it a great support call, a super relevant email, or a shoutout on social media. Give them a story to tell.

Customer experience management doesn’t have to be difficult. Anyone can uncover meaningful topics to cover on your website. The bottom line is these marketing initiatives lighten the load on your customer service team and attract new customers.

These marketing strategies don’t just apply to slick startups. All brands of any size can deliver a more unified customer experience strategy with Nextiva, thus raising the bar for their industry. Remember, there’s always more you can do to elevate your customer experience.

Ready to close the gap between your customer support and marketing teams? Nextiva’s customer service platform brings it all together in one view. 

Customer Experience Marketing FAQs

Have you ever had a customer experience that left you questioning the effectiveness of your company’s client interactions? In a large enterprise setting, where every touchpoint is critical, even one negative experience can damage your bottom line.

For mid-market and enterprise organizations, delivering a great customer experience is critical for differentiation and growth. The stats prove it’s profitable, with 86% of customers willing to pay premiums for great service experiences. 

Customer experience platforms are essential for larger businesses to understand complex customer journeys, align service across channels, and personalize experiences at scale. These solutions highlight pain points and drive customer loyalty and satisfaction to fuel sustained growth.

As Jason Lemkin, CEO of SaaStr, says:

“If you (as a SaaS provider) make your customers even somewhat successful, you’re going to get at least 112% revenue retention each year…so never stop investing in customer success. Ever.”

Enterprises can turn customer satisfaction into a competitive advantage by leveraging the right customer experience tools. But the big question is, which tools should you use? 

We discuss which CX tools to use here with actionable insights for choosing the right customer experience tech stack for your organization.

What Are Customer Experience Tools?

Customer experience tools are software platforms purpose-built to help businesses better understand interactions and overall experiences across the customer lifecycle. They’re able to:

• Gather the voice of customer feedback: These tools allow you to collect direct customer insights through intuitive feedback surveys, online reviews, social listening, and other contact methods. This “voice of customer” data is central to pinpointing areas for improvement.
• Analyze behavioral data and identify insights: By leveraging advanced analytics capabilities, often using machine learning algorithms, top-performing customer experience tools transform raw data into invaluable insights about customer behaviors, motivations and pain points and drivers of satisfaction or churn. Visual dashboards highlight key metrics.
• Enable proactive, personalized engagements: With a unified view of each customer’s needs and preferences, businesses can tailor experiences with personalized interactions, timely outreach, and predictive services, which nurtures customer relationship management.
• Streamline customer journeys: These tools help map out every step of the customer journey across physical and digital experience channels, which enables optimization of processes and handoffs for smoother experiences.
• Automate workflows and self-service: Intelligent automation and self-service portals powered by AI can handle routine queries and tasks, freeing agents to focus on more complex needs. This drives efficiency while providing convenience.
• Boost loyalty and advocacy: When customer needs are consistently met with accuracy and empathy, it fosters long-term loyalty and brand advocacy. Customer experience tools empower businesses to deliver on rising experience expectations.

Identifying the customer experience tools that will be most beneficial for your business depends on factors like your goals, customers, current pain points, processes, and tech stack. Understanding your unique needs will guide your evaluation of potential solutions.

Contact Center Platforms

Contact center platforms help businesses manage customer communications across multiple channels like phone, email, chat, and social media. Popular features include:

• Omnichannel routing and integration
• AI-powered automation and self-service
• Advanced analytics and reporting
• Workforce management tools

1. Nextiva

Nextiva offers an omnichannel contact center solution that combines all your essential customer service channels into a unified platform. It has powerful routing and automation capabilities, plus remote work-friendly features for on-the-go teams.

2. Five9

Five9 provides an intelligent cloud contact center with advanced routing, CRM integration, and workforce management tools to optimize agent productivity and customer experiences.

3. Genesys

Genesys is an enterprise-grade omnichannel platform with robust self-service options and deep analytics. It’s highly scalable and customizable for large contact center operations.

Customer Feedback & Analytics Tools

These tools allow you to collect customer feedback through surveys, reviews, and social listening. They also provide analytics to measure satisfaction, identify trends, follow up, and pinpoint areas for improvement.

1. Qualtrics

Qualtrics is an experience management platform with robust reporting, data visualization, and advanced analysis capabilities for customer, employee, brand, and product insights. These insights help organizations identify what people need and when they need it, facilitating customer interactions that engage and drive profitable action. 

2. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey offers a user-friendly interface for creating various types of surveys and customer feedback forms. It has many app integrations and good analytical capabilities, helping brands capture the voices and opinions of their target audiences.

3. Typeform

Typeform allows organizations to create visually engaging, interactive surveys with features like logic jumps and conditional questioning for personalized feedback collection and improved response rates.

Personalization & Engagement Solutions

These platforms leverage customer data and AI to deliver personalized experiences across channels and touchpoints through targeted content, segmentation, offers, and recommendations.

1. Adobe Experience Cloud

Adobe Experience Cloud, a content management system, comprises tools for personalizing customer journeys with tailored content and commerce experiences across websites, mobile apps, and other channels.

2. Salesforce Customer 360

Customer 360 merges customer data from multiple sources, including an organization’s marketing, sales, commerce, service, and IT departments, to provide a single view, enabling more personalized marketing and customer experiences.

3. Mixpanel

Mixpanel is a powerful product analytics platform that helps organizations understand user behaviors and leverage those insights to drive personalized engagement and experiences.

Conversational Customer Experience Software

Conversational tools use AI chatbots, live chat, and messaging apps to enable real-time interactions and support across digital channels.

1. Drift

Drift is a conversational marketing and sales platform that uses AI to connect buyers and sellers. Its services include lead generation, ABM campaigns, website personalization, and sales efficiency tools. 

2. Intercom

Intercom offers an integrated customer service solution featuring AI-enhanced tools, omnichannel messaging, and proactive support. This platform aims to improve customer satisfaction and team efficiency across various industries, including financial services, e-commerce, and education. 

3. Manychat

Manychat helps businesses automate conversations on Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and SMS. It focuses on driving sales and conversions through chat automation, allowing businesses to engage with customers 24/7, capture leads, and increase conversion rates. 

Helpdesk & Support Platforms

These customer service platforms provide tools like ticketing systems, knowledge bases, and self-service portals to streamline processes for support teams.

1. Zendesk

Zendesk offers organizations various services, including a ticketing system, messaging, live chat, help centers, reporting and analytics, AI, automation, a sales CRM, and a marketplace. They enhance customer experiences in several industries, from education to finance, healthcare, and retail.

2. Freshdesk

Freshdesk is a user-friendly helpdesk solution offering features like team huddles, shared ownership, event-triggered automation, email notifications, and feedback mechanisms. It stands out for its ease of use and diverse price plans, catering to various business needs.

3. Help Scout

Help Scout enhances customer service by providing a simple yet collaborative email-based customer support platform that integrates with live chat, phone systems, CRMs, and email marketing tools, making it versatile for various customer support needs.

Customer Journey Mapping & Engagement Solutions

Customer journey mapping tools help visualize and analyze the steps customers take when interacting with your business across multiple touchpoints. This customer experience management process is vital for understanding the customer journey.

1. Custellence

Custellence is an interactive SaaS platform that allows organizations to create multi-touchpoint journey maps to better understand and improve their customer experience. Its intuitive, drag-and-drop interface, combined with smart journey mapping, helps organizations visualize customer journeys and take profitable action.

2. Smaply

Smaply is a smart cloud-based tool for creating detailed user flowcharts, journey maps, and personas to optimize customer interactions. It has high data security, is GDPR compliant, and allows companies to create, collaborate on, and manage customer journey maps. 

3. Hotjar

While not a dedicated journey mapping tool, Hotjar provides heatmaps, recordings, and analytics that show how website visitors navigate and interact with a website. These tools show where users click, move, and scroll and capture users’ opinions about the site, enabling businesses to improve their experience.

Related: What Is Unified Customer Experience Management (CXM)?

How to Find the Right Customer Experience Tool for Your Business

With so many customer experience software options, it can be overwhelming to select the best solutions to improve your customer experience strategy. These tips can help you make the right investments.

1. Define your goals

Be specific about your customer experience goals and the challenges you want to tackle. Is it improving CSAT and NPS, reducing churn, and increasing customer lifetime value or boosting sales conversions? Defining your priority goals first will inform which customer experience capabilities you need most.

2. Know your customers

Who are your target customer personas — what are their needs, behaviors, expectations, and preferences? How do they want to interact with businesses in your industry? Choose customer experience tools that align with how your customers actually want to communicate and receive service.

3. Conduct a “needs” assessment

Make a comprehensive list of all the must-have features and capabilities required to achieve your customer experience goals. These needs could include omnichannel support, advanced data analytics, personalization engines, workflow automation, and robust reporting dashboards. Prioritize your needs to guide your search.

4. Keep scalability in mind

Don’t just consider your current business and technology requirements. Any customer experience platform you invest in should be able to scale and adapt seamlessly as your company grows. Look for solutions that integrate your existing tech stack and data sources.

5. Evaluate support quality

Working with new software often includes a learning curve and periodic optimization needs. The quality and availability of support from the vendor can make or break your long-term success and ROI. Evaluate their customer service, onboarding process, training resources, and online community.

6. Focus on user experience

Even the most powerful customer experience tool won’t drive adoption if it’s too complicated for your staff. Look for solutions with an intuitive, modern interface that will be easy for your customer service team members to navigate daily. Free trials can help you assess usability.

7. Understand implementation requirements

Different customer experience platforms may require varying levels of service, integrations, and customizations for proper implementation. Get realistic estimates of setup time, costs, and resources required for a smooth deployment based on your capabilities.

Once you’ve thoroughly assessed your business needs against available solutions, you can confidently choose the right customer experience tools to elevate your customer experience initiatives.

Transform Your Customer Experience With Nextiva

When it comes to best-in-class contact center capabilities as part of your customer experience tech stack, Nextiva stands head and shoulders above its competition.

Nextiva’s omnichannel platform seamlessly combines all your essential service channels, like phone, chat, email, SMS, video, and social media, into one unified solution. This enables effortless pivoting between channels during interactions.

The intelligent routing and automation functionalities ensure inquiries are routed to the right agent or bot swiftly based on factors like skillset, language, and customer history. For added convenience, automated self-service options powered by AI can resolve routine queries without agent involvement.

On the analytics side, Nextiva provides real-time and historical data visualizations of metrics such as handle times, resolutions, and satisfaction scores. Call recordings and customer journey maps reveal opportunities for process optimization.

The platform is extremely scalable to meet changing contact volumes, with the ability to quickly and easily add or adjust capacity and new communication channels as needed. And it’s remote-work friendly with mobile apps and cloud capabilities.

Nextiva also constantly expands functionality through partnerships, like its recent integration with Zapier, which allows you to sync it with over 5,000 other business apps. Its commitment to innovation, security, and reliability makes it the trusted customer experience partner of enterprises worldwide.

Investing in the right customer experience solutions, such as Nextiva, doesn’t incrementally improve customer experience — it transforms your ability to deliver exceptional service that stands out in your industry.

Check out Nextiva’s powerful customer journey solutions and see how easy it is to take your customer experience to new heights!

Noticing a decrease in performance? Lack of enthusiasm?

You need to do something to improve agent productivity. Your first step is identifying the factors causing this dip, which can include lack of training, motivation, or technology.

In this blog post, we’re going to dig into a few different reasons your agent productivity can drop and introduce five key tactics to remedy this problem.

Why Does Agent Productivity Drop?

Every call center and every agent have different circumstances. What’s on their mind, what their weekly task list requires them to do, and what tools they have at their disposal all play a part in productivity.

Here are the major contributing factors to low agent productivity.

1. Individual factors

Lack of knowledge or skills

When any of us tries to complete a task without prior experience or training, it’s like working in the dark. The first few times, we need to watch a tutorial, follow the instruction manual, or receive real-time feedback.

It’s no different for call center agents. If they lack appropriate training or understanding of company policies, products, or procedures, they’re going to struggle through customer interactions.

The situation is annoying for individual agents, and it also leads to longer call handling times, poor customer experience, and a potential drop in customer retention.

Motivation and engagement

When agents turn up to work each day, they want to feel valued and recognized for doing a good job.

If the opposite is true, repeating the cycle becomes demoralizing. The impact of motivation on productivity can’t be understated. 

This boils down to both workplace culture and working environment. Seventy-six percent of employees agree that workplace culture affects their productivity, citing factors including toxic team members, noisy offices, and poor management as reasons for their personal drop in motivation:

Peers and supervisors must be a support team to help agents rather than a jury to judge them.

Personal issues and stress

If you’re having a bad day, you’re having a bad day. Very few internal factors can impact a personal problem that exists outside the call center. However, most external issues will have a detrimental impact on agent productivity inside the call center. 

2. Process and workflow issues

Inefficient processes

Just because a process worked in the past, it doesn’t mean it will work today. If you created a manual process when you first started handling customer calls, it’s important to keep that process fresh so it doesn’t impact more modern requirements. Complex procedures, unclear communication of expectations, and a lack of automation can slow down support agents.

Inadequate technology

The use of outdated or unreliable technology can lead to technical difficulties and waste agents’ time. 

How many times do you spot agents waiting for something to load or getting help when a program has crashed?

Outdated or unreliable technology becomes even more of a contributing factor to poor productivity when agents know there’s a superior option. The smartphones in their pockets or purses are a prime example. If you’re still using technology and processes from 2010, your agents could be more productive on their personal devices.

Poor call routing

If you don’t optimize your call routing, you can’t expect agents to handle calls productively.

Improper routing of calls means customers connect to agents who lack the necessary expertise for specific customer queries. There’s a correlation between untreated call routing and long resolution times. The better your routing, the better the customer experience and the more productive the agent.

3. Work environment factors

High call volume

Some people thrive when working on a deadline. But no one enjoys being bombarded with unrelenting calls, especially if they’re about complaints and customer issues.

If agents don’t have adequate breaks and are constantly subjected to calls, this leads to burnout, fatigue, and decreased accuracy.

Distractions

Noisy offices don’t tend to be productive work environments. Likewise, constant interruptions (work-related or otherwise) from colleagues can hinder focus and concentration.

This is also true in a home-based or hybrid contact center. Even though agents aren’t physically surrounded by colleagues, there’s a virtual challenge for agents to please everybody who’s competing for their attention.

Instant messages, emails, and updates play a huge part in the interruption of what should be focused deep work.

4. External factors

Customer behavior

When was the last time someone phoned your call center to thank you or say how great your product is?

You must remember that working in a call center on the front line is a tough gig. If agents are besieged by calls from difficult customers, it will have an impact on motivation, job satisfaction, and productivity.

System outages or technical difficulties

Sometimes, things happen that are outside of your control, and you just have to grin and bear it.

Unfortunately, while your internet provider or electric company remedies your system outages or technical difficulties, there’s often little you can do. 

That doesn’t mean customers stop calling, though. Agent productivity takes a hit, even though the situation’s out of your hands.

How to Improve Agent Productivity

Improving agent productivity isn’t an overnight exercise. 

The following five recommendations are best used together, but you can make a start by implementing the ones that resonate the most with your call center.

Give them the best tools available

It should go without saying that the best tool set improves agent productivity. But there have been some barriers to adoption in the past.

The good news is that, thanks to cloud computing, call center technology is easy to implement and easy to use. And it doesn’t break the bank.

You can route calls to the most suitable agent, track agent performance through artificial intelligence-backed analytics, and dip into omnichannel routing, which allows customers to choose their preferred channel for contacting you, lessening the burden on call volumes.

Introducing self-service options including interactive voice response (IVR) systems and off-loading basic queries to digital channels means agents will have more time to spend on quality interactions. For example, you can combine the use of IVR and knowledge base software to give your customers easy access to information, freeing up agents. 

The next time someone calls to check on opening times, your IVR can read them out.

The next time someone calls to raise a support ticket, you can suggest they go to your portal or chatbots instead of waiting in a call queue.

Or they might take advantage of your web chat or email offering. 

When queries aren’t urgent, ease the pressure on agents by introducing non-real-time channels of communication.

All this functionality remains in a single interface for agents. So, there’s no need for constant app switching, and there’s very little to learn.

Optimize processes and workflows

When you have the right technology in place, it’s easier to streamline your processes and workflows. Start by developing standardized operating procedures to guide agents through common scenarios and ensure consistent service delivery.

The goal is to have a template for each type of interaction. So, other agents and supervisors can help out when something goes wrong, and everyone knows the expected outcome.

You can introduce customer service scripts as a framework for efficient communication. If everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet, they create a unified company voice.

💡Pro Tip: Always allow room for customization. No customer wants to feel like they’re talking to a robot. Check out these customer service phrases to get started.

Using your IVR to gatekeep your agents is a great way to protect their productivity while providing your customers with what they need without having to wait for an agent to become available.

Invest in training and development

When agents know your products and procedures, they’ll be more productive. But every time you make a change to a process or introduce a new product, you must provide the appropriate training. Otherwise, you’re back to square one.

Start with onboarding programs to equip new agents with the necessary knowledge and skills. 

Then, take it a step further. Offer ongoing training on product updates, service protocols, and effective communication techniques.

Achieve this through both peer-to-peer learning and formal customer support training programs.

Build a positive work environment

When you make work an enjoyable place to be, agent productivity will soar.

“Companies like Google have invested more in employee support and employee satisfaction has risen as a result. For Google, it rose by 37%.”

~Dr Daniel Sgroi, Department of Economics at the University of Warwick.

Think about introducing recognition schemes and incentives to reward outstanding performance. Judge whether gamification is right for your call center agents based on the personality types you have in your business.

Whenever it’s technically possible, offer flexible work arrangements to promote work-life balance. The simple act of starting a shift an hour later means working parents don’t have to rush the school run, for example.

A major contributing factor to poor agent productivity is their need to be constantly on the phone and at their desk. Where productivity is concerned, the opposite is true. 

If agents skip breaks, they:

• Lose focus throughout the day
• Lack psychological detachment from work
• Suffer from fatigue, which impacts important decisions
• Develop bad habits related to food, drink, and physical activity

Encourage breaks and provide a comfortable workspace to prevent burnout. 

It’s also important to qualify what a good break looks like. It’s not scrolling through social media while sitting at a desk. It’s not heading to the vending machine and rushing back.

A good break includes:

• Going outdoors
• Having face-to-face conversations
• Having a healthy snack
• Switching off from work (with music, meditation, a journal, etc.)

Measure and analyze performance

Getting a genuine measure of agent productivity can’t be a finger-in-the-air exercise.

Instead, embrace available technology and track KPIs and performance metrics like:

• Average handling time
• First call resolution (aka first contact resolution)
• Customer satisfaction

If an analysis of the changes you make shows that agents are now pleasing customers in a more efficient manner, you can consider that a major win for your productivity initiatives.

For real-time performance, you can analyze call recordings as part of your quality assurance process.

By either listening to calls manually or enabling sentiment analysis to automatically rank and flag rogue calls, you can find out where calls are going wrong and nip problematic calls in the bud.

When you have a batch of scored calls, you can create a benchmark and review poor calls with agents. Finding out what went wrong (and why) helps you understand gaps in training and external issues.

The most important aspect is to regularly review and refine processes and training based on data-driven insights. Without scores, reports, and analytics, you’re flying blind.

Use the contact center reporting tools at your disposal to get real-time and historical views of what’s really happening with your agents and customers.

Master Your Productivity With Call Center Software

The key to agent productivity lies in four main areas:

• Processes and workflows
• Training and development
• Performance measurement
• Access to the best technology

When one or more of these four areas aren’t optimized, there’s a break in the chain. It’s vital for agent productivity that you’re constantly refining processes, conducting necessary training, and tracking how well agents are performing.

But none of these comes together if your call center toolset doesn’t stack up. Best-in-class call center software empowers agents to do their best work and always remain productive while allowing you a holistic view of day-to-day behavior and interactions. 

Imagine trying to navigate a busy highway that’s down to one lane during rush hour for no apparent reason. Frustrating, right? That’s what it feels like for customers when they lack options to connect with your business for support.

Support needs to be convenient for customers, who may start their inquiry on social media, continue via email, and finish with a phone call — the context and information should flow seamlessly among touchpoints until they receive a resolution.

A five-lane highway — that’s omnichannel customer service. 

Today’s digital-savvy customers expect this connected, personalized experience, prompting McKinsey researchers to call it “a requirement for [business] survival.” Let’s explore what omnichannel customer service is, learn how it benefits your customers and your business, and review the best practices to implement this strategy.

Omnichannel vs. Multichannel Customer Service

First, let’s clear up a common misconception of multichannel vs. omnichannel contact centers. 

Multichannel customer service means offering support through multiple channels (phone, email, social media, etc.). However, multichannel support falls short when it comes to cohesion, context, and synchronization. These channels operate independently, like parallel roads that never intersect.

What Is Omnichannel Customer Service?

Omnichannel customer service creates a unified and integrated customer journey, where every interaction, regardless of the chosen device or communication channel, feels like a seamless continuation of the previous one. 

In an omnichannel environment, a support agent can access every in-person and digital interaction customers have with your business. In-store purchases sync with emails, WhatsApp messages, transcripts from prior phone calls, and more. This seamless integration across multiple channels is the cornerstone of omnichannel customer service. 

Seamless experience across multiple channels

Gone are the days of siloed support experiences where phone calls were on one track, emails were on another, and social media interactions felt like shouting into the void. Customers crave cohesive, seamless service that transcends individual channels and caters to their specific journeys.

Omnichannel customer service delivers on your customers’ expectations by unifying multichannel support experiences into a single, interconnected ecosystem.

Whether your customers reach you by phone at your call center, through email, or via an SMS or social media message, they’ll have a consistent support experience. They can also easily switch between service channels without starting over or losing context. 

Integrated data and context

Omnichannel tools track and connect customer data, giving agents a holistic view of each customer and their history. Having a complete picture of past inquiries and preferences means they can address customers where they are in their journey, avoid making customers repeat information, and fast-track resolutions.

Personalized service

Unified customer history empowers agents to provide personalized and context-aware support. 

With a complete, readily available picture of each customer, they can:

• Address customers by name to instantly build rapport
• Reference previous purchases and requests
• Tailor their support based on individual customer needs, preferences, and past interactions
• Offer relevant, personalized solutions
• Resolve issues more effectively 

Focus on customer journey

Building stronger, deeper connections with customers starts by understanding the customer journey. Omnichannel helps optimize support experiences at each touchpoint, viewing every interaction as part of the larger journey with your business.

It places the right support channels at the right touchpoints, ensuring customers can reach you where and how they need or prefer for smoother, more satisfying experiences. 

Benefits of Omnichannel for Your Customers

Your customers aren’t a collection of isolated help tickets — they’re your business’s lifeline. An omnichannel strategy empowers you to take better care of them, prove your customer-first commitment, and deliver the service they expect.

Convenience

Failing to meet customers where it’s most convenient for them will increase churn. 

Give them the flexibility to reach your support team on their preferred channel — whether it’s a quick text message, a detailed email, or an Instagram shoutout — to best suit their needs and situation. Make it easy to find these options, and you’ll start every inquiry on the right foot.

Efficiency

No one likes waiting on hold, getting the call-transfer runaround, or repeating the same information to different agents. 

Omnichannel streamlines all communication to eliminate these dreaded pitfalls of customer support. Since reps have access to all relevant user data, customers get the help they need faster and with less hassle. 

Issues are resolved quickly, accurately, and efficiently, saving customers valuable time and reducing frustration.

Personalization

Top organizations are ditching generic customer service and investing in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and advanced customer data analytics. Leveraging this tech helps teams better predict, anticipate, and meet consumer needs for personalized experiences.

In an omnichannel ecosystem, agents provide support tailored to each customer. They know everything from their past interactions and purchase history to their goals, interests, and sentiments.

Customers feel more valued, seen, heard, and understood when they feel brands care about helping them rather than resolving another ticket. 

Transparency

Nearly 85% of consumers are frustrated when agents don’t have the right information. In a multichannel system, a customer may make first contact via email and follow up with a call. But, if the second agent has no idea what transpired during the initial inquiry, the customer loses trust in the company’s ability to handle their concerns effectively.

Omnichannel rewrites the script here. It offers a fully transparent ecosystem where customer interactions are recorded and synced across different channels. Agents can track the progress of the resolution from start to finish, boosting customer confidence and trust.

Increased satisfaction

Convenient, efficient, transparent, personalized support helps customers feel understood, appreciated, and cared for. So it’s no wonder McKinsey researchers say the more digital the customer service journey, the higher the customer satisfaction scores:

Benefits of Omnichannel Customer Service for Your Business

It’s not just your customers who win with omnichannel. Implementing omnichannel customer service is an investment that positively impacts your business’s bottom line.

Improved customer loyalty

Aberdeen Group research shows that companies adopting an omnichannel strategy achieve a 91% increase in customer retention year over year. Omnichannel helps your customer service team:

• Cultivate positive experiences that turn one-time buyers into repeat customers
• Forge stronger customer relationships
• Boost customer engagement
• Foster loyal brand advocates
• Raise net promoter score (NPS) and customer referrals

Increased sales

Happy customers correlate with higher conversion rates, improved customer lifetime value scores, and more word-of-mouth referrals. According to the latest research:

• Two-thirds of consumers who believe a brand cares about their emotional state will likely become repeat customers.
• Three in four consumers will spend more with businesses that provide a good customer experience (CX).
• Companies focused on CX increase their revenue by 80%.
• Investing in a customer-first operation may yield 700% ROI over 12 years.

Greater agent productivity

McKinsey research highlights that organizations with omnichannel customer service strategies reduce call volumes and operating expenses by up to 30%.

When customer service agents have the right tools, unified customer data, and context at their fingertips, they resolve issues more quickly and efficiently, resulting in shorter response times, increased inquiry capacity, and skyrocketing agent productivity.

Plus, empowering support teams with all the intel they need to do their jobs effectively frees them up to resolve complex issues and improves their agent experience scores. 

Improved brand reputation

Over 70% of consumers will tell six or more people about a positive CX, and 60% of consumers have purchased from a brand based on the service they expect to receive, proving the value of a reputation built on stellar customer service experiences. 

Your team can leverage omnichannel customer service to solidify your brand’s reputation, elevate your brand image, boost your NPS, and demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction. 

👉 Check out these actionable strategies to deliver 5-star customer experiences

Data-driven insights

Omnichannel platforms connect the dots between interactions throughout the entire customer lifecycle. These platforms collect and provide valuable data and insights into your customer’s behavior, preferences, and sentiments.

Your business can leverage this intel to:

• Gain a deeper understanding of your customer base
• Identify customers most likely to churn
• Determine areas for improvement
• Personalize marketing efforts
• Tweak your customer service approach
• Make more informed, data-driven decisions

Best Practices for Adopting Omnichannel Customer Service

Follow these steps to ensure a smooth, successful transition to an omnichannel customer service strategy:

1. Understand your customer journey

Map out the different touchpoints your customers have with your brand, from awareness to purchase to post-sale support. 

More than half of customers engage with three to five channels. Try to visualize different journeys and anticipate where you can offer support to improve customer experience management. 

Identify which channels they prefer for different stages of their journey.

Analyze website, email, and mobile app analytics to see which inquiries drive traffic to your specific support channels. For an e-commerce brand, that might look like a self-service FAQ for shipping timeframes, a chatbot to answer sizing questions, etc. 

Analyze current pain points and frustrations in the user experience. 

Browsing history or shopping carts not syncing between mobile devices? Long call waiting times? Check customer service data and gather feedback via surveys and social media mentions to identify recurring issues and frustrations at each touchpoint.

2. Focus on consistency and context

Ensure clear and consistent brand messaging across all channels. 

Maintain your brand’s voice, language, tone, emoji usage, and design elements to foster brand recognition and trust across channels. You don’t want your customers to feel like they’re interacting with an outsourced contact center.

Train agents to access and leverage customer history, relevant details, and context across channels. 

Your agents should know how to access this intel in real time, regardless of the interaction point or channel.

Implement a centralized knowledge base accessible to both agents and customers. 

Create comprehensive and searchable self-service options — FAQs, tutorials, troubleshooting guides, etc. — for customers. Add workflows for agents to quickly reference during calls to maintain consistent CX.

3. Start small and prioritize 

Begin by offering customer service on two to three major channels based on usage and preference.

Don’t try to conquer every channel at once — you’ll wind up with a lack of focus, slow progress, and enormous expenses. Prioritize channels with the highest engagement and the ones typically used first.

Consider live chat or social media for quick inquiries, email for complex issues, and phone calls or texts for personalized support. 

Live chat and social media offer real-time interactions for quick questions and troubleshooting. Email allows for detailed communication and file attachments. Calls provide a personalized, human touch that is valuable for upselling and in-depth discussions.

Gradually expand channels based on success and feedback. 

Focus implementation and resource allocation on channels that demonstrate value early on. Encourage customers to leave feedback about their preferred channels after each interaction. Set up listening tools in your social media management platform to monitor new channels gaining traction. 

4. Explore new technology 

Explore affordable CX platforms for customer service that scale well with your business needs. 

Prioritize customer service software that integrates with your cloud-based contact center and CRM, uses automation and AI-powered intelligent routing, unifies and integrates customer data, gathers feedback and customer sentiments, offers easy-to-read reporting tools, and monitors for key issues before they escalate. Compare pricing structures and features relevant to your growth goals.

Implement an internal communication platform for seamless agent collaboration. 

Keep all your customer service agents on the same page, even as they work from home. Look for platforms that allow teams to thread customer conversations in a single view, add notes to contact profiles (with auto-transcription or AI-created summaries), and notify agents of important updates. These will enable reps to share intel, pool knowledge, ask questions, improve customer interactions, and support each other.

5. Emphasize employee training

Train agents to use various channels and tools effectively. 

Your agents are the heart of your customer service efforts. Train them on each new digital channel, tool, and communication strategy involved in your omnichannel approach. Coach them on each channel’s functionalities, best practices, etiquette, and troubleshooting techniques to guarantee they feel comfortable and confident. 

Equip them with cross-channel communication skills. 

Teach them the nuances of communicating via different channels so they can tailor their approach while maintaining a consistent brand voice. For example, they can use approved emojis via chat and write complete sentences (with spell check!) when responding to emails.

Encourage empathy, active listening, and personalized problem-solving. 

To leave customers feeling heard and appreciated, agents should build rapport, demonstrate genuine concern, listen quietly and attentively, summarize and repeat customer inquiries, and respond with compassion. When they understand the customer’s needs, they should deploy creative problem-solving skills to identify the root cause of the issue and collaborate with customers to explore various resolutions.

6. Measure and iterate

Track key metrics like customer satisfaction, average resolution time, and individual channel usage. 

Less than 40% of companies track KPIs related to CX on mobile channels, and only half do so for online interactions. But these provide actionable insights into the effectiveness of your agents and omnichannel strategy.

Analyze feedback from customers and agents to identify areas for improvement. 

Omnichannel CX is an ongoing journey, not a destination. Customer feedback reveals areas or channels falling short of your goals. Agent feedback highlights challenges they face and areas where additional training, tools, or resources are needed. The best CX software automates feedback collection via surveys, reviews, and ratings to simplify this task. 

Continually refine your omnichannel strategy based on data, feedback, and evolving customer needs. 

You may need to add or remove channels, implement new technologies, adjust agent training programs and resource allocation, and optimize workflows to serve your customers better.

So, Is Omnichannel Right for You?

Omnichannel customer support offers numerous benefits for your customers and business, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. The specific channels and features you offer will depend on your unique business and customer base.

Whether you’re a business with high call volume looking to integrate several channels under a single platform or you’re simply striving to elevate your customer service experiences, you can count on Nextiva’s solutions to deliver satisfying journeys for your customers, regardless of the road they choose to travel. 

What are customer engagement tools? These are software solutions that help businesses interact with customers, build relationships, and drive loyalty.

Nowadays, going the extra mile in customer service is standard practice. Customers expect a stellar customer experience (CX) whenever and wherever they interact with your brand. Users might disengage and lose sight of your business if your user experience isn’t intuitive, frictionless, and personalized.

Positive interactions can encourage customers to stick around longer, which increases retention and revenue. But it’s not always obvious which CX analytics will clue you into where you need improvement. The right customer engagement tools can measure and analyze customer data and help you turn it into actionable insights to retain more customers.

These are today’s nine best customer engagement tools to improve CX, boost retention, and increase revenue.

Customer Engagement Tool	Best For	Features	Starting Price
Nextiva	Most businesses	Omnichannel support, detailed reports, third-party integrations	$18.95 per user per month, billed annually
LiveChat	Live agent customer support	Customizable chat widget, omnichannel support	$20 per person per month, billed annually
Drift	Creating customer communication strategies	Playbook functions for out-of-the-box automations	$2,500 per month, billed annually
Intuit Mailchimp	Email marketing campaigns	Customer journey builder, A/B testing	Free
SurveyMonkey	Collecting and analyzing feedback	AI-powered surveys and targeting	$25 per month, billed annually
Hubspot Service Hub	Managing support tickets	Customer portal for all interactions at a glance	$90 per month per seat, billed annually
Hotjar	Tracking visitor movements	Audience heatmaps, visitor session recordings	Free
Keap	Personalized account management	Automation builders, lead dashboards	$159 per month, billed annually
Qualaroo	Creating custom surveys	Targeted survey questions, adaptable skip logic	Free

1. Nextiva

Best overall tool

Nextiva is an AI-driven platform that helps facilitate seamless, personalized customer interactions on every channel. It offers a full suite of business communication tools to boost customer engagement, from Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service to full CRM integration.

With data-driven insights from all your customer touchpoints, you can determine:

• Where your customers are engaging the least
• Which pages your customers read before buying
• What customers do when your proactive chat appears

Fostering engagement and building relationships is key to survival, no matter how big your business is. With engagement insights, you can see where you’re falling short on that mark and what you need to fix.

Features

Nextiva has first-class features to help you level up customer engagement, which include:

• Unified communications to streamline communications across multiple channels into one convenient dashboard
• Advanced customer analytics that gives you details into team performance and specifics on customer interactions
• Built-in video conferencing for seamless cross-team collaboration and file-sharing, ensuring everyone has the information they need

Plus, with Nextiva, you have the peace of mind that 24/7 customer support and data encryption can offer.

Pricing

Nextiva offers a wide range of pricing options depending on your desired features, how many seats you need, and your preferred payment terms.

• Essential: $18.95 per user per month, billed annually
• Professional: $22.95 per user per month, billed annually
• Enterprise: $32.95 per user per month, billed annually

The Professional and Enterprise plans also feature mobile SMS and MMS messaging, plus unlimited conference calls.

Pros	Cons
Detailed customer insights Third-party integrations Comprehensive reporting dashboards Unlimited voice and video calls and faxes	Live support limitations Not suitable for companies outside of the US

2. LiveChat

Best for live agent customer support

LiveChat is a live chat software solution with a chat widget that you can add to your website. It allows your users to interact with customer support agents or sales representatives.

Features

LiveChat helps manage your customer conversations with features such as:

• Customizable chat widget for a consistent, familiar experience on all devices
• Detailed reports and analytics to review customer satisfaction and chatbot performance, including missed and abandoned chats
• Omnichannel support across communication channels like SMS, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger

Notably, LiveChat’s starter package only keeps a 60-day chat history. If your customer tickets are ever open for that long or longer, you may lose access to valuable conversation context.

Pricing

LiveChat offers three main pricing tiers depending on how many monthly visitors you want to track:

• Starter: $20 per person per month, billed annually (limit to one seat) for tracking up to 100 monthly visitors
• Team: $41 per person per month, billed annually for tracking up to 400 monthly visitors
• Business: $59 per person per month, billed annually for tracking up to 1,000 monthly visitors

If you need greater tracking capabilities or prefer a dedicated account manager, you can also opt for LiveChat’s Enterprise package.

Pros	Cons
High-quality live chat support User-friendly interface Third-party integrations	Lack of notification options if the customer forgets the chat Limited number of live chat agents

3. Drift

Best for creating customer communication strategies

Drift is a customer engagement platform that focuses on improving marketing and sales through conversational artificial intelligence (AI). It offers a chatbot feature that you can use to engage with website visitors in real time, answer questions, qualify leads, and schedule appointments.

Features

Drift has some great features to help boost customer engagement, like:

• Playbook functions with out-of-the-box automations for inbound and outbound customer communications
• Machine learning that analyzes user behavior to develop high-converting communication strategies
• Trainable AI that can analyze your trusted knowledge sources for brand and messaging consistency

It also offers email automation and analytics tools to help you personalize your customer interactions.

Pricing

Drift has only one price package for small businesses:

• Premium: $2,500 per month, billed annually

If your business is larger or needs more complex insights and options like audience mapping or A/B testing, opt for Drift’s Advanced or Enterprise plans.

Pros	Cons
Automatic lead collection Comprehensive reporting dashboards Third-party integrations	More expensive than competitors Limited functions for teams outside the Enterprise plan

4. Intuit Mailchimp

Best for email marketing campaigns

Intuit Mailchimp is a marketing platform that can help manage your email campaigns, create automated workflows, and analyze campaign performance.

Features

Intuit Mailchimp has many features that contribute to its status as a leading email marketing platform:

• Customer journey builder to tailor communications based on preferences and behaviors
• Landing page builder to create custom pages and showcase products
• A/B testing to test out and analyze campaign performance

Intuit Mailchimp also has generative AI to help speed up your email campaign creation process.

Pricing

Intuit Mailchimp’s pricing for each of its four tiers changes based on how many contacts you have. 

• Free: $0 per month for one seat and audience; up to 500 contacts and 1,000 monthly email sends
• Essentials: $13 per month for three seats and audiences; up to 150,000 monthly email sends
• Standard: $20 per month for five seats and audiences; up to 6,000 monthly email sends
• Premium: $350 per month for unlimited seats and audiences; up to 150,000 monthly email sends

This pricing reflects each tier at a max of 500 contacts — and the Free tier is only available for up to 500 contacts. For an additional cost, the Essentials tier can accommodate up to 50,000 contacts, and the Standard tier has a limit of 100,000 contacts. The Premium tier doesn’t have a contact limit.

Pros	Cons
User-friendly interface Automatic lead collection Third-party integrations	Unsubscribed users count toward your contact limit Limitations on the Free plan

5. SurveyMonkey

Best for collecting and analyzing customer feedback

SurveyMonkey is a survey platform that helps you create surveys to gather feedback from respondents. It offers more than 250 survey templates, plus over 100 third-party integrations and the ability to distribute surveys across nearly every channel.

Features

SurveyMonkey offers several features to pique customer engagement, including:

• AI-powered guidance for faster survey questions and unique recommendations to avoid response bias
• Targeted questions triggered by the user’s time on the page, pages viewed, or visit frequency
• Skip logic to add or remove survey questions based on the responses given by the user

In addition to creating and distributing surveys, SurveyMonkey can help you analyze responses and generate reports summarizing them.

Pricing

If you’re a solopreneur or have a very small team with no need to share control of surveys and data, you might opt for an individual plan. But if you want to take advantage of survey sharing with different team members, SurveyMonkey offers two Team Plans that start at three users per plan:

• Team Advantage: $25 per month, billed annually
• Team Premier: $75 per month, billed annually

If your needs balloon in the future, SurveyMonkey also offers enterprise plans for large businesses. 

Pros	Cons
User-friendly interface Extensive survey templates Survey customization capabilities Third-party integrations	No free trial period Limited customer support

6. HubSpot Service Hub

Best for managing customer support tickets

Hubspot Service Hub is a customer engagement tool that can help you manage customer inquiries, tickets, and feedback. It organizes customer interactions and automates support to make communication more efficient; it can also help measure CX via metrics like customer satisfaction (CSAT). 

Features

Service Hub has several features to foster better customer engagement:

• Customer portal for tracking all customer interactions, including inbound calls and ticket conversations
• KnowledgeBase self-service integration so customers can tackle low-level inquiries on their own
• Live chat to route customers to the right destination automatically

It also integrates with HubSpot’s CRM platform, allowing you to manage customer relationships across sales, marketing, and support teams.

Pricing

You can choose from two Service Hub pricing tiers for your business:

• Professional: $90 per month per seat, billed annually; $1,500 one-time onboarding fee
• Enterprise: $130 per month per seat, billed annually; $3,500 one-time onboarding fee

Service Hub also offers a free plan to give the product a test run or individual plans if you’re a solopreneur or a very small business.

Pros	Cons
Fully-integrated CRM software Detailed customer insights Service-level agreements for transparency	Limited automations Costly onboarding fee

7. Hotjar

Best for tracking visitor movements

Hotjar is a visitor recording tool that allows businesses to see real-time customer movement across platforms. This helps spot areas where customers might commonly leave your site, indicating poor customer engagement.

Features

Hotjar has several features that help to map your customer engagement:

• Audience heatmaps to visualize how your customers interact with your brand
• Session recordings to track customer movements across channels in real time
• AI-powered surveys to hear firsthand customer opinions with little to no effort

Hotjar requires a bit of coding, so you should make sure someone on your team has developer experience.

Pricing

Hotjar separates its audience heat mapping and surveying functions into two packages: Hotjar Observe and Hotjar Ask. Each has a free tier plus three priced options:

Hotjar Observe

• Basic: $0 per month for up to 35 daily sessions
• Plus: $32 per month for up to 100 daily sessions, billed annually
• Business: $80 per month for up to 500 daily sessions, billed annually
• Scale: $171 per month for up to 500 daily sessions, billed annually

Hotjar Ask

• Basic: $0 monthly for up to 20 monthly responses on up to three surveys and feedback widgets
• Plus: $48 monthly for up to 250 monthly responses on unlimited surveys and feedback widgets, billed annually
• Business: $64 monthly for up to 500 monthly responses on unlimited surveys and feedback widgets, billed annually
• Scale: $128 monthly for up to 500 monthly responses on unlimited surveys and feedback widgets, billed annually

Hotjar also allows you to customize your package, combining selections from the Observe and Ask offerings. You can increase your daily session limits up to 270,000 and your monthly response limits for the Business (up to 100,000) and Scale (up to 1 million) tiers for additional costs.

Pros	Cons
Detailed customer insights Accurate heat mapping Real-time session recordings Third-party integrations	Difficult user interface Limited customer support

8. Keap

Best for personalizing account management

Keap is a CRM software that is particularly useful for contact management. It can help you keep an eye on your customer relationships and allow you to automate marketing campaigns and streamline your sales process.

Thanks to its useful CRM interface, Keap can create personalized email campaigns and track your leads as they move through the sales funnel.

Features

Keap’s features help you optimize account management:

• Automation builders to take over repetitive tasks and email follow-ups
• Lead dashboards so you can capture, organize, and close leads in one view
• Integrations with thousands of third-party apps for automated workflows

Keap also offers a business phone number that can send automated replies to missed calls.

Pricing

You can choose one of three paid tiers from Keap:

• Pro: $159 per month, billed annually for 1,500 contacts and two seats; $29 monthly per additional user
• Max: $229 per month, billed annually for 2,500 contacts and three seats; $29 monthly per additional user
• Ultimate: $229 per month, billed annually for 2,500 contacts and three seats; $29 monthly per additional user

Keap can continue scaling with your business, even when your contact list grows to more than 4 million strong.

Pros	Cons
Automatic lead collection Combined sales and marketing automations	Difficult user interface Costly fees with some integrations Pricing model increases with your contact list size No free trial period

9. Qualaroo

Best for creating customized surveys

Qualaroo from ProProfs is a customer feedback and survey tool that can help you gather insights from website visitors and customers.

Features

Qualaroo offers several different customer feedback features:

• Exit surveys to gain insight into failed user conversions, abandoned carts, and more
• Targeted questions triggered by the user’s time on page, pages viewed, or visit frequency
• Skip logic to add or remove survey questions based on the responses given by the user

Qualaroo also offers Net Promoter Score® (NPS) surveys that you can embed to collect feedback from different touchpoints.

Pricing

Qualaroo offers a free tier and a paid tier:

• Free Plan: $0 for up to 50 survey responses
• Business Plan: $19.99 monthly per 100 survey responses, billed annually

For the Business Plan, users can save 50% with annual billing options. “One hundred survey responses” also assumes 5,000 email sends and 100,000 pageviews.

Pros	Cons
Survey customization capabilities Third-party integrations	Limited starting survey templates Difficult user interface No live customer support

What Sets the Best Customer Engagement Software Apart?

Not all user engagement tools are alike. You need a tool that helps you understand your customers’ behaviors while allowing you to adapt strategies on the fly. A tool that helps manage CX in multiple ways will have long-term relevance, giving you forward-thinking insights and helping future-proof your CX strategy.

The best customer engagement management tools have:

• Seamless integrations to mesh with your existing business systems
• Professional onboarding to quickly adopt and leverage the tool’s full capabilities
• Omnichannel support for frictionless communication across channels like email, chat, and social media
• Personalization capabilities to adapt to customer behavior, preferences, and history
• Detailed data analytics and insights to make data-driven decisions that enhance engagement
• Automation and AI to streamline processes like personalized messaging and routing
• Scalability and flexibility to accommodate growing business needs and adapt to changing engagement trends

Together, these qualities help free up internal resources for more meaningful customer interactions. Think about it: If an intelligent virtual agent handles customer engagement at lower-priority touchpoints, your team has more bandwidth to address high-priority tasks and solve more complex problems.

Related: Intelligent Customer Experience (ICX): How to Deliver It

Level Up Your Customer Engagement with Nextiva

Improving customer retention is easy if you have the right customer engagement tools in place. These tools give you the know-how to see exactly where your CX strategy needs improvement. That could lead to redesigning your site, adding new channel capabilities, or leveling your AI-driven customer service automations.

There are dozens of tools to grab customers’ attention, but the best ones will help you build truly engaging experiences that lead to higher customer retention and lifetime value.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score, and NPS are registered trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

Customer Engagement Tools FAQs

For even more on customer engagement tools, review these frequently asked questions.

Forget long hold times. Delighting customers means resolving their issues quickly on the first call. First call resolution (FCR) tackles this head-on, reducing customer frustration and delivering the fast service they expect.

This article will show you how to boost your FCR, free up your team’s time, and create happier customers.

What Is First Call Resolution (FCR)?

First Call Resolution (FCR) is a metric used in call centers to measure how many customer interactions are resolved on the very first contact, eliminating the need for any follow-up calls or contacts. It’s essentially a way to gauge a call center’s efficiency in resolving customer issues.

FCR considers situations where a customer’s problem is resolved:

• Without requiring an escalation to a supervisor or specialist
• Without transferring the call to another department
• Without scheduling a callback for a later resolution
• Without needing to create a separate help desk ticket for further investigation

A high FCR rate indicates a well-functioning customer service team that can efficiently handle customer inquiries. Companies typically set FCR targets to track progress and identify areas for improvement.

Why Is FCR Important? (+Benefits)

A strong first-call resolution rate is a hallmark of excellent customer support. By tracking and improving FCR, contact centers can streamline operations and get several key advantages:

• Enhanced customer satisfaction: Customers appreciate having their issues resolved in a single interaction. A high FCR demonstrates that you prioritize customer needs and can solve problems efficiently. This shows respect for their valuable time.
• Improved customer journey: FCR directly correlates with quick resolution, minimal wait times, and single points of contact. Time after time, the numbers speak for themselves. Customers love FCR, and the results benefit a company’s bottom line.
• Reduced average handle time (AHT): When agents resolve issues quickly, it signifies a more efficient operation. They can address a higher volume of support requests without sacrificing quality service.
• Lower operational costs: FCR directly reduces costs associated with callbacks, transfers, and escalations. It minimizes the need for additional customer contacts, leading to lower operational expenses.
• Boosted agent morale: Support agents feel a sense of accomplishment when they independently resolve customer issues. This success contributes to higher job satisfaction and motivation.
• Valuable metrics and insights: FCR is a key performance indicator (KPI). It provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of your knowledge base, agent tools, and training programs.
• Improved customer retention: Frictionless service experiences foster customer loyalty. High FCR minimizes customer effort and strengthens customer satisfaction, leading to a more loyal customer base.
• Continuous improvement: FCR reporting helps identify areas for improvement. Analyzing these insights helps you optimize processes, refine agent training, and enhance the customer experience through ongoing improvement cycles.

A strong FCR strategy benefits both your customers and your business. It fosters positive customer experiences, increases efficiency, and empowers your call center agents.

How To Calculate First Call Resolution (FCR Formula)

The formula for calculating your FCR rate is:

Number of issues resolved on first contact / Total number of customer contacts x 100

This gives you a clear percentage of inquiries where the customer didn’t need to make further contact to have their issue addressed entirely.

Alternative calculation (with a caveat)

An alternative method is to divide the number of issues resolved on the first calls by the total number of first calls received. However, this approach doesn’t account for contacts made through other channels (chat, email) and might misrepresent the FCR rate.

There are important considerations when interpreting FCR data. For instance, some customer interactions may involve complex issues requiring escalation, which wouldn’t necessarily reflect poorly on the agent’s ability.

FCR should be viewed as one piece of the puzzle alongside other call center metrics like customer satisfaction and average handle time.

What’s a good FCR rate?

A good FCR target rate depends on your industry, but a range of 70-75% is the industry standard for strong call centers. This means approximately 3 in 4 issues should be handled in one contact.

That said, there’s no single “good” first contact resolution rate that applies universally, as the target can vary by company size, support channels, and the recency of the product/service.

Here are some general FCR rate benchmarks:

• World-class customer service: 80%+
• Strong performance: 70-79%  
• Average: 60-69%
• Needs improvement: Under 60%

The key is to compare your FCR rate to past performance, not industry averages. Focus on continuous improvement vs. chasing static targets.

Tips for Improving FCR

First contact resolution is a golden metric in customer service. Here are a few call resolution best practices and strategies to empower your support team, streamline processes, and achieve higher FCR rates.

1. Set customer-centric FCR benchmarks

Research what FCR rate is typical for your industry and consider how complicated your customer calls usually are.

Then use surveys and call recordings to see what a great resolution looks like from your customers’ perspective. This will help you set goals that are both ambitious and achievable, and that keep your customers happy.

Be prepared to adjust these goals if you get slammed with more calls than usual — having extra staff or a backup call center ready can help you maintain a high FCR even during peak times. Don’t forget to track your progress regularly and update your goals as things change.

2. Empower your agents

Give your agents all the knowledge they need with comprehensive guides, clear rules for making decisions, and access to experts for tricky situations.

Communication is key too, so invest in training and tutorials that help agents connect with customers, explain things clearly, and keep good records of what’s going on.

And because things can always get better, provide ongoing training to sharpen their problem-solving skills and keep their product knowledge up-to-date.

Role-playing exercises can be a great way to practice handling unexpected situations that come up. Finally, make sure your training is on point by encouraging agents to share their feedback and suggest improvements.

3. Streamline your processes for efficiency

Standardize how you handle common issues so everyone’s on the same page. Design workflows that free up agents to focus on solving problems, not wrestling with complex systems.

Use call data and info about your customers to find areas where you can improve training, processes, or even company policies. Don’t just focus on the contact center — look for root causes of repeat calls outside the center too, like maybe outdated documents or departments not talking to each other.

Be upfront with customers about what’s happening and how long things might take. Setting expectations from the start helps avoid frustration and clarifies what can be accomplished in a single call.

4. Leverage the right tools & technology

Use smart call center software to get customers to the right agent for the job, depending on their issue and the agent’s skills.

Automation and self-service options like chatbots or online knowledge bases can handle simple questions and free up agents for more complex problems.

Invest in user-friendly systems that put the information agents need at their fingertips. Use conversational intelligence like interactive voice response (IVR) for effective call routing so the calls don’t go to the wrong department and leave customers feeling frustrated.

5. Build a collaborative team

Encourage experienced agents to mentor new team members and create an environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing ideas. Develop a clear process for escalating complex issues to the right people to get resolved quickly.

Celebrate successes as a team — this motivates everyone and keeps the atmosphere positive.

Collaboration across departments is important too. By working together, you can address the root causes of customer issues and make sure everyone in the company focuses on keeping customers happy.

6. Continually improve

Keep an eye on your FCR trends to see if any recurring issues lead to repeat calls. Address these issues with more training or by fixing underlying problems. Continuously investing in your agents and your processes ensures your team always delivers exceptional customer service and keeps your FCR rate on top.

How To Track & Measure FCR Success

Businesses use different methods to measure first call resolution rates, each with its advantages and limitations:

• Customer surveys: Easy to implement through post-call surveys or emails, gathering customer feedback on whether the issue was resolved on the first contact. However, this method can be susceptible to sampling bias, as only a specific group of customers might respond.
• Call tracking: Use call center software to track how calls are handled and measure agent performance. This includes categorizing calls as closed/resolved on first contact, escalated, or needing follow-up. While effective, it relies on having clear call tagging protocols for accurate data.
• Quality assurance (QA) review: QA analysts listen to call recordings and assess if agents fully resolved customer inquiries during the first interaction. This provides in-depth insights but is a manual process requiring time and resources.
• Repeat call analysis: Analyzes call logs to identify the frequency of repeat calls concerning similar issues. This approach focuses on trends in call types rather than individual cases.
• Customer callbacks: Proactively contacting a sample of serviced customers within a few days to confirm if their issue remained resolved or required a follow-up call. This method offers a direct approach but can be labor-intensive.

The most effective approach to tracking FCR performance is combining metrics from call tracking tools, quality assurance tagging, and targeted customer surveys/callbacks to get a balanced perspective on true first call resolution rates.

When evaluating your FCR metrics, set a target benchmark but be prepared to adjust if call volumes spike. Tracking FCR over time helps identify causes of repeat contacts so you can improve knowledge bases, agent training, and products.

Win FCR But Don’t Lose Customers

High first call resolution is a win-win for both businesses and customers. A combination of the strategies outlined above and continuously monitoring progress help businesses improve their customer service experience.

Remember, FCR is a journey, not a destination. A commitment to ongoing training, process refinement, and technological advancements will ensure your customer service team is well-equipped to deliver exceptional first-call resolution.

First Call Resolution Made Simple With Nextiva

High first call resolution is the key to reducing customer churn and boosting satisfaction. And Nextiva can help you achieve FCR excellence with its suite of cloud call center solutions.

What does Nextiva have on the table?

• Effortless tracking: Built-in call analytics simplify FCR monitoring and improvement.
• Actionable insights: Voice analytics pinpoint problem areas for targeted fixes.
• Empowered agents: Real-time dashboards & reports optimize decision-making.
• Maximized efficiency: Intelligent routing lets you handle more calls with fewer agents.
• Unified support: Offer seamless service across phone, email, chat, and social media.
• Self-service options: A robust knowledge base and FAQs empowers agents.

Get a cloud contact center solution from Nextiva.

IVR, call recording, VoIP numbers, call routing, advanced reporting–integrated in ONE cloud platform.

Get started

First Call Resolution FAQs

It’s becoming increasingly convenient for customers to reach your brand. What’s not convenient for your employees is fielding customer requests across each digital platform. 

Your customer-facing teams can’t afford to miss a single interaction with customers. Missed connections can quickly balloon into bad customer experiences without your team members even getting the opportunity to dig into the customers’ initial reasons for seeking help.

Creating a more comprehensive, personalized customer service experience is important. And today, it’s critical that brands do so across all the digital channels that their customers most frequently use. 

While this can be a big undertaking, the good news is that choosing the right digital customer service platform for your business can uplevel your customer service efforts — and your customer retention rates. 

What Are Digital Customer Service Platforms?

Digital customer service platforms are tools that capture and organize all customer support requests and facilitate responses. Many of these tools may also come with analytics to help you understand common customer pain points or needs. 

Businesses today may use multiple tools, including social media management software, diverse communication platforms, and help desk support software, in a digital customer service tech stack. Ideally, finding a set of tools that can provide omnichannel support for multiple platforms will help you centralize and streamline processes. 

Why Brands Need Digital Customer Service Platforms

Digital customer service platforms offer multiple core benefits, both for your internal customer support teams and for your customers. 

Unify multiple channels 

Customer service platforms can provide a central hub to help you manage inquiries from multiple communication channels, including emails, chat messaging, phone calls, social media, and other online portals. 

As many businesses and call centers are using virtual phone numbers, the VoIP system itself can be managed alongside other digital platforms, potentially on one dashboard. And as you unify multiple channels, it’s easier to ensure no customers are slipping through the cracks, creating a stronger digital experience. 

Streamline workflows 

These platforms can be game-changing when it comes to streamlining workflows because they are capable of automating tasks, assigning tickets, tracking support progress, and managing agent workload. 

All this work would have required countless hours of tedious manual labor if call center automation weren’t available. Take some of the busy work off your customer service team members’ plates and allow them to work more efficiently by focusing on tasks that require real human beings to do them. 

Empower service agents 

Your service agents will have more resources at their fingertips than ever before, with complete knowledge bases, centralized customer data, and various communication tools available to help them resolve issues quickly and efficiently. 

Your customer service team wants to provide outstanding support to your clients. And this allows them to efficiently deliver personalized experiences that directly address specific customers’ needs. 

Improve overall customer experience 

Digital customer service platforms can improve the customer experience in both big and small ways. 

In many cases, customer experience software offers support for self-service help functionality. This may include online knowledge bases or troubleshooting guides that customers can use to solve their own problems. Self-service options are available 24/7 and offer people quick solutions to simple problems. 

And, as support agents are able to leverage automation, customer data, and other resources, they can deliver personalized, enthusiastic customer support faster and more reliably when they need to. 

Great customer experience should be centered around meeting the customer where they are and helping them how they want to be helped. If your employees focus on these things, they can strengthen the customer journey at all touchpoints, resulting in improved customer success and a high retention rate to match it.

How Do Customer-Facing Teams Use Digital Customer Service Platforms?

Depending on their specific needs and roles, customer-facing teams use digital customer service platforms in a variety of ways. 

Contact center agents

Contact center agents are often responsible for providing phone support, though they may also offer support through SMS messaging, emails, and video calls. They manage customer inquiries efficiently by accessing the business’s knowledge bases and unique customer data. 

Support agents may use customer service platforms to ask questions to better resolve customers’ issues. Or the agents might use the platforms to collaborate with other colleagues in ways that might include passing off customers to people who can better help them. 

Call center agents are often crucial for creating a positive customer experience.

Today, 54% of customers still prefer a phone call as a primary customer service channel:

And using the phone is the most common communication method when customers need to resolve important or serious concerns.

Help desk technicians

Help desk technicians are trained to quickly diagnose and resolve technical issues. 

For example, a healthcare help desk technician might assist clients who can’t log in to a patient portal. And a tech support agent may help customers resolve a glitch that prevents them from using the company’s software correctly. 

Help desk technicians also track ticket progress and prioritize tasks, determining which customer inquiries are the most urgent and acting accordingly. 

Web chat specialists

Web chat specialists (sometimes also known as “live chat agents”) engage in real-time conversations through chat that’s often available on the company’s website or mobile app.

They answer common questions, give customers basic help like providing them with tracking updates, and — when needed — escalate complex issues to higher-level agents. Chat specialists are often the first line of defense for your support team and play a vital role in the customer experience. 

Social media managers

Social media is an essential platform for building customer relationships and establishing loyalty. 

Social media managers may spend just as much time on customer service work as they do on marketing work. They monitor brand mentions, respond to customer queries, and handle social media or PR crises as they arise.

In many cases, these managers are responsible for multiple digital channels across social media. So, having a centralized platform with a single dashboard is crucial. 

Types of Digital Customer Service Platforms

There are many different types of digital customer service platforms. Some might offer multiple functionalities, while others specialize in providing tools for specific customer teams.

Let’s look at eight types of these cloud-based platforms and five of the most popular and well-rounded tools in each category. 

1. Contact center platforms 

Contact center platforms are one of the most important types of customer service platforms to consider, as they can quickly improve the contact center experience for your customers and employees. 

These platforms optimize call center operations by routing calls with great efficiency, automating tasks with interactive voice response, and allowing for improved agent productivity.

Ideally, they also provide call recording and transcription features, offer omnichannel support, and provide in-depth analytics to help you track customer satisfaction metrics and agent performance. 

Deploying these features can lead to reduced costs and improved customer service. That’s a win-win revenue-boosting scenario — especially once they start leveraging customer service automation. 

Here are the top five contact center platform providers:

1. Nextiva
2. Five9
3. Genesys
4. NICE CXone
5. Talkdesk 

2. Help desk software 

Help desk software can improve the customer experience in a number of ways. This software can provide self-service help options, including providing a knowledge base. It helps you manage, track, and prioritize customer support tickets and may provide your team with their own internal knowledge base. 

These features ensure that you don’t miss any customer concerns and that you’re able to resolve issues both faster and at a lower cost. 

The five top providers of help desk software in 2024 are:

1. Freshdesk
2. Zendesk
3. Zoho Desk
4. Jira Service Management
5. ServiceNow 

3. Live chat software

Live chat software offers real-time conversational support from live agents. 

The use of this software can lead to improved customer satisfaction and increased sales conversions — especially since agents might use it to answer questions that impact whether consumers make purchases. 

The top five live chat software providers are:

1. Intercom
2. Drift
3. Crisp Chat
4. LiveChat
5. Zendesk Chat 

4. Conversational support platforms 

Conversational support platforms and live chat software are two separate platforms that both offer online chat support. 

A conversational support platform leverages bots or AI to answer basic customer inquiries. It escalates more complex issues directly to live agents. Using it makes it easy to prioritize customer needs and facilitate customer experience management. 

This software can increase website engagement and quickly provide answers to common questions while ensuring that significant issues are efficiently escalated. Using a conversational support platform is a simple way to filter out more easily answered questions, freeing up your agents to focus on customers who most need their assistance. 

The top five conversational support platforms in 2024 are:

1. Ada 
2. Drift
3. Manychat
4. LivePerson
5. Amelia 

5. Social customer service platforms 

Social customer service platforms focus intensively on customer interactions, including both public comments and private messages, across multiple social media sites. 

These platforms can help you see all social media interactions on a single dashboard to improve response times and maintain a more consistent brand voice. Overall, this can result in enhanced brand advocacy thanks to fostered online communities and a greater ability to respond both privately and publicly to your customers’ needs. 

Social customer service platforms might include social listening features to help you proactively monitor online brand mentions. 

These tools are essential for managing social media crises promptly and effectively, which results in improved brand reputation and customer loyalty. 

Some platforms may offer customer service features. But other social media management tools focus primarily on post-scheduling and marketing analytics and completely lack customer service functionality. So, it’s important to choose a provider carefully. 

Here are the top five providers for social customer service platforms:

1. Nextiva
2. Sprout Social
3. Hootsuite
4. Buffer
5. Brandwatch 

6. Knowledge base software 

Knowledge base software empowers customers with self-service options by providing accessible, searchable, and up-to-date help articles specifically for the brand’s products and services.

Some help desk software may support knowledge base features. But in many cases, opting for specialized knowledge base software opens the door to more advanced features and functionality — and thus a better customer experience.

Knowledge base software can dramatically reduce the number of support tickets your team has to handle and can improve customer satisfaction.

The top five providers for knowledge base software in 2024 are:

1. Help Scout
2. KnowledgeOwl
3. Document360 
4. Confluence 
5. Bloomfire 

7. Customer feedback management software 

Customer feedback management software allows you to gather invaluable customer insights with surveys throughout the customer journey. This customer service platform helps you effectively analyze feedback to gain actionable insights you can use to improve products, services, and support. 

Collecting and implementing customer feedback is one of the best ways to improve the user experience, driving higher customer satisfaction rates and loyalty. 

The five best providers of customer feedback management software are:

1. Qualtrics
2. SurveyMonkey
3. InMoment
4. Medallia
5. Jotform 

8. Customer relationship management software 

Customer relationship management (CRM) software is often thought of as a sales and marketing tool. But it plays an important role in facilitating customer service interactions and shouldn’t be overlooked. 

It’s important to see your customer journey as a cross-functional program with teams that work together to make sure there are no holes or hiccups in your customer experience.

Your CRM system stores important customer information, including consumers’ names, purchase histories, and past customer support inquiries. Many customer service tools integrate with popular CRM software, so your contact center and support agents can access this data to better predict and accommodate customer needs across all digital channels. 

For example, Nextiva’s contact support platform integrates with popular CRM systems, so support agents can see each customer’s profile as they answer incoming calls. This is crucial for personalized support. 

The top five CRM providers are:

1. HubSpot
2. Salesforce 
3. Zoho CRM 
4. NetSuite
5. SugarCRM 

When to Adopt a Digital Customer Service Platform

Whether you’re missing a certain type of software in your tech stack or you’re starting from scratch, here are a few telltale signs it’s time to find new customer service solutions. 

Your customers…

• Are expressing frustration with slow service, lack of self-service, or channel silos.
• Are churning more often, potentially due to poor customer service experiences. 
• Are publicly voicing dissatisfaction online.

Pay close attention to your customer feedback surveys. And leverage social media software to keep an eye on what people are saying both to and about your business. 

Your team…

• Is bogged down by manual tasks and limited tools.
• Is frustrated with the platform and is having trouble handling complex queries.
• Is hampered by a lack of data insights for informed decisions.

In order to deliver outstanding customer service, your team needs the right resources, tools, and training. 

The right platform can help with all these issues by providing knowledge bases, automation tools, streamlined work processes, easy-to-use dashboards, and analytics that can identify skill gaps.

Your business…

• Is growing quickly and needs scalable solutions.
• Is planning to add new support channels.
• Is facing integration challenges with essential tools.

On the business side, you may realize you need customer service solutions when your company is facing growing pains. These often include adding more channels, managing an increased volume of customer support needs, or trying to integrate existing tools into an increasingly complicated tech stack.

Always consider the potential for business scalability when choosing customer support platforms. Look for software that offers robust functionality and integrates with tools that you’re already using and might need in the future. 

Nextiva: The Preferred Digital Customer Service Platform for Contact Centers

Finding the right customer service platform can be a game changer. It’s important to choose one that best aligns with your business and its customer service goals. 

Nextiva is the preferred digital customer service platform for contact centers — especially if your support team is fielding complex inquiries over the phone or you have a high volume of inbound calls. 

Nextiva offers customer support platforms for VoIP systems, including functionality for phone, video, and SMS messaging and detailed voice analytics. 

We also offer social media management software that allows you to schedule and publish content while managing customer interactions and implementing social listening. 

We’re designed to help businesses scale over time and improve their customer service with enhanced communication capabilities across all their teams. Our clients deliver stronger customer support for more personalized experiences, making it easier to implement optimization at every touchpoint along the customer journey. 

Automation has reshaped the way we work. When monotonous, time-consuming tasks can be done in an instant without employees needing to do more than push a button, the transformative effect of automation cannot be denied. 

It can significantly improve efficiency, employee satisfaction, and customer service, but organizations need to understand what tasks should be automated and how.

One of the most common and helpful uses for automation is improving the customer experience. Automation helps even the playing field, allowing small, agile support teams to provide the same level of customer service as larger organizations, so let’s look at what customer experience automation (CXA) is, the benefits it can bring, and some examples of CXA in action.

What Is Customer Experience Automation (CXA)?

CXA refers to the use of software solutions to automate personalized interactions between a business and its customers across various touchpoints. 

Think of CXA this way: You walk into a store where the salespeople know your name, remember your last purchase, and can predict what you need today — all without you saying a word. 

CXA enables businesses to deliver this kind of personalized service on a large scale through websites, apps, social media, and other channels. 

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Components of CXA

• Chatbots and virtual assistants. AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can handle a multitude of customer queries in real time, offering instant support and guidance without human intervention.
• Personalization engines. By leveraging AI and machine learning algorithms, these engines analyze customer data to deliver personalized content, recommendations, and offers to individual customers.
• Automated customer support. CXA tools automate ticketing processes, email responses, and support workflows, ensuring customers receive timely and relevant assistance.
• Predictive analytics. By forecasting future customer behaviors and preferences, businesses can proactively address needs and preferences, enhancing satisfaction and loyalty. 
• Customer journey mapping tools. These tools automate the tracking and analysis of customer behaviors and preferences across different stages of the customer journey, enabling businesses to tailor experiences accordingly.

Top 7 Examples of Customer Experience Automation

It’s easy to understand the concept of CXA, but the variety of ways automation can be applied means organizations should consider multiple tools and solutions.

We’ve collected seven excellent ways businesses can automate the customer experience and outlined the benefits automation provides: 

1. Interactive voice response

An interactive voice response (IVR) system is an automated telephone system that uses a combination of prerecorded messages and speech recognition to engage with callers, provide and gather information, and direct callers to an appropriate agent if necessary.

For instance, if you’re a Spanish-speaking customer calling for help with a product, the IVR system can guide you to a Spanish-speaking agent who’s equipped to help. 

IVR systems are typically implemented through your cloud contact center software. From there, you can customize the menu options and responses based on customer needs and common questions. 

There are many benefits to implementing IVR, including:

• Streamlined call routing
• Reduced wait times
• Efficient routing of customers to the right agent or department
• An improved ability to enable customers to carry out basic tasks

2. Chatbots and virtual assistants

Chatbots and virtual assistants go a step further than IVR systems by providing an interactive bot for customer interactions.

By using machine learning and natural language processing to understand written queries, AI chatbots provide customers with basic information and solutions to their issues, which enables customers to get help or find answers to their queries without needing to talk to a live agent. 

You can deploy AI-powered chatbots on your website, mobile app, or social media platform to allow customers to get the help they need when they need it.

Benefits of chatbots and virtual assistants include:

• 24/7 customer support without any wait times
• Efficient handling of routine inquiries
• The freeing up of human agents to focus on more complex issues

3. Automated call distribution

Automated call distribution (ACD) is a call center software feature that automatically routes incoming calls to the right agents. The system distributes calls using factors like caller ID, business hours, and support level. 

Businesses using IVR can also take advantage of ACD to identify caller needs. You can do this by setting up ACD in your cloud contact center platform and creating your predefined criteria for routing calls to ensure that your customers get the help they need. Criteria can include agent skills, customer priority, or agent availability.

Among the benefits of ACD are:

• Improved response times
• A better workload balance between agents
• Higher customer success and satisfaction rates
• Improved call handle time and first-call resolution rates

4. Customer self-service portals

Surveys have shown that customers want to troubleshoot issues without speaking to an agent, with 67% of customers preferring self-service. This is where customer self-service portals shine, as they provide a library of information and tools to guide customers through their queries at their own pace.

Setting up a self-service portal includes developing a web page with all the information and tools customers will need to handle common queries. These tools include FAQ pages, knowledge bases, troubleshooting articles, and interactive customer service software.

Self-service portals should also be integrated with the cloud contact center to provide real-time updates and track common concerns.

The benefits of self-service portals include:

• Empowering customers to find solutions on their own
• Reducing the number of basic queries agents need to handle
• Creating a centralized source of troubleshooting and knowledge

5. Email automation

Email is an essential channel for customer communication. However, anyone who’s worked in an email-heavy environment knows how quickly unread messages can pile up.

Email automation can assist with this by automatically sending replies. These can range from basic “we have received your email” messages to automated responses to common inquiries.

Email automation is also a powerful tool for email marketing campaigns. It can quickly send out pre-written messages for email campaigns to selected customers, making email automation an important part of any marketing strategy.

You can set up email automation via the email management tools in your cloud contact center software.

There are several benefits to email automation, including:

• Improved communication speed and customer engagement
• Consistent messaging
• Quick replies to basic queries
• Increased ability for agents to focus on more complex tasks

6. Analytics and reporting tools 

Understanding your contact center’s key metrics and performance can provide insights into agent efficiency, customer satisfaction, and the overall health of your organization. As such, it’s important to have analytics and reporting tools that can identify these metrics and the interactions behind them. 

Tools that automatically analyze performance and provide reports can guide decision-making, find new insights, and identify rising trends.

You can implement analytics software to track and analyze customer interactions across channels. These real-time insights can then be used to refine your automation strategies and improve agent performance, ensuring customers get the best service possible. 

7. Workforce management (WFM) automation

One of the most important ways to ensure contact center efficiency is to ensure your centers are properly staffed. Workforce management (WFM) tools help with this by using historical data sources and predictive analytics to automate scheduling, predict call volumes, and manage staffing requirements.

The benefits of WFM automation include:

• Optimized staffing
• Reduced labor costs
• Improved ability to match agent availability to customer demand

Benefits of Customer Experience Automation

Now that you understand what CXA is and have learned several ways to implement it, we need to look at its overall benefits. What can CXA provide to a business?

Improved efficiency

One of the biggest benefits of CXA is improved operational efficiency. Automation streamlines operations, provides customers with self-service options, and eliminates repetitive, time-consuming tasks.

These improvements allow agents to handle more complex cases, improving overall contact center efficiency.

Enhanced customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is a top priority for contact centers, and automating the customer experience can help improve it.

Faster response times, personalized experiences, and 24/7 support options (including self-service) can create a better overall experience, which improves customer retention and keeps customer satisfaction scores high.

Reduced operational costs

CXA is an investment that pays off quickly with the savings it creates. Automating routine tasks and optimizing resource allocation helps contact centers significantly reduce labor and operational costs, leading to lower costs for your business.

Data-driven insights

Good data is of the utmost importance to a contact center. Automated analytics and reporting can provide valuable insights into customer behavior and agent performance by visually representing agent performance and giving actionable insights to drive improvements. 

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Best Practices When Setting Up Customer Experience Automation

The next step is setting up CXA for your contact center. Here are some key best practices to keep in mind when getting started.

Balance automation and the human touch

While AI technology and automation are excellent tools, a human touch is still essential. You need to ensure that automated systems augment human interactions rather than replace them.

Maintaining the human touch will help ensure a personalized and empathetic customer experience, which is vital to customer satisfaction.

Design with the user in mind

Automation requires ease of use. Be sure to create intuitive, easy-to-use automated systems that can efficiently guide customers to the information or assistance they need.

Integrate systems seamlessly

Your contact center needs to be streamlined, and staff should be able to access all the tools needed to achieve optimal efficiency. Make sure that all automated tools are fully integrated with other business systems – this will create a unified experience and keep operations running smoothly.

Incorporate personalization

A personalized touch goes a long way in customer service. Customer data can be used to personalize even automated interactions, which will make customers feel recognized and valued.

Test and iterate

Nothing is perfect from the start, and setting up CXA can take some time. Testing and refining automation systems are essential, so be sure to incorporate feedback to enhance and fine-tune your system’s effectiveness.

Act on customer feedback data

Customers know what they like, or they can at least tell you what doesn’t work for them. Be sure to regularly seek customer feedback to incorporate into the design and refinement of automated systems – this will help you improve the experience as you go.

Train agents effectively

Agents need to know how to use the tools at their disposal. It’s recommended that comprehensive training be provided for agents so that they can get the most out of your automated systems.

Monitor performance

Customer experience data-based analytics give excellent insights into your contact center’s performance. Be sure to regularly monitor your automated interactions and service metrics to identify areas for improvement and ensure a consistently positive experience.

A good customer experience dashboard can provide insight into satisfaction levels to help you maintain customer loyalty and retention.

Plan carefully

Implementing automation solutions can be complex. Make sure you have a roadmap and allocate sufficient resources, including training, for a smooth rollout.

Prioritize privacy and security

Keeping personal and proprietary data secure is absolutely essential. When designing automated systems, you need to adhere strictly to data protection regulations and best practices.

This is not only a requirement but will also help maintain customer trust. 

Automation Made Simple with Nextiva

There’s no denying that CXA can have a major impact on a contact center. It can improve workflows, create a better customer experience, and reduce agent churn.

With the right technology and best practices, CXA can supercharge your contact center.

And if you need “the right technology,” Nextiva is one of the best. Nextiva’s contact center solution is feature-rich, easy to use, and affordable for businesses of all sizes. It comes complete with all the automation you need to provide an amazing customer experience.