Customer Engagement Tools: 9 Solutions for Higher Retention

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.















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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.















Related Article
10 Top Examples of Customer Service Emails & Tips to Write Them

















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.















Related Article
18 Customer Engagement Metrics Businesses Need To Benchmark

















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.









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.















Surprise and delight customers.

Have conversations with customers the way they prefer to communicate – in a single app.






See it in action



















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.



Why does customer engagement matter? Customer engagement matters because it can clue you in on how to boost your customer loyalty, revenue, and brand reputation. Loyal customers are more likely to be repeat buyers and brand advocates, leading to higher customer lifetime value and lower churn. And data backs up the assertion that you should engage customers. More than two-thirds of customers want you to proactively engage them rather than having to come to you. How is customer engagement different between small businesses and enterprises? Customer engagement strategies vary between small businesses and enterprises mostly due to differences in these businesses’ scale, resources, and customer base. Small businesses might know their customers better and be able to offer more personalized, hands-on support. On the other hand, enterprises have access to more resources to expand their customer engagement efforts. What are the common challenges with implementing website engagement tools? The most common challenges when implementing website engagement tools are: Integration complexity pairs the new analytics tools with your existing business systems Data management maintains your customer’s data privacy and security User adoption ensures that your employees are trained and motivated to use the new tools Scalability allows the software with your business without compromising performance Additionally, customer engagement apps can be expensive to implement and maintain. How can businesses measure their ROI on customer engagement strategies and tools? You can measure the ROI on customer engagement strategies by: Setting clear, measurable objectives Tracking key customer service metrics Analyzing customer data across channels A/B testing to compare different strategies You can also ask for customer feedback through surveys, interviews, and reviews to understand their perception of your engagement strategy and its impact on their experience.
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