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10 Best Customer Engagement Platforms for Businesses [2023]

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Customer engagement is vital for business growth and success. With the rise of digital transformation, customers expect highly personalized and relevant experiences across every touchpoint. Brands that fail to engage customers meaningfully risk losing them to competitors.

According to research, companies with high customer engagement retain 2.5x more customers than ones with poor engagement. They also generate 2x more revenue through referrals and upsells.

To boost customer engagement, brands need robust platforms with features like omnichannel communication, automation, analytics, and personalization. The right customer engagement software can help you understand your customers deeply and engage them contextually across their journey.

This article reviews the top 10 customer engagement platforms every business should consider in 2023:

Platform Notable Features Link
Salesforce Build CRM-powered sites, portals, forums, apps for advanced experience. Explore
Twilio Personalized data-driven engagement across global channels. Explore
DialPad AI-powered customer engagement, real-time analytics, integrations support. Explore
Moengage Insights-based platform, AI-driven analytics, personalized experiences at scale. Explore
Sprinklr Frictionless customer service across 30+ channels, AI-driven insights. Explore
Zoho Omnichannel customer experience, territory management, real-time notifications. Explore
Intercom Direct channel engagement, multi-channel campaigns, advanced targeting. Explore
LiveAgent Multi-channel engagement, automation rules, CRM capabilities. Explore
FlowUp Industry-specific engagement, integration with communication channels, custom workflows. Explore
Segment AI-based platform, unified customer database, real-time engagement. Explore

Let‘s look at each of these top customer engagement platforms in detail.

What is Customer Engagement?

customer engagement review Top10SM

Customer engagement refers to the different interactions customers have with your brand across touchpoints. This includes communications via email, social media, web chat, phone calls, and more.

The more customers engage with your brand, the stronger their relationship becomes. This boosts loyalty, satisfaction, and lifetime value.

High customer engagement provides many benefits:

  • Improved brand experience
  • Increased customer loyalty
  • Valuable customer feedback and insights
  • Better customer satisfaction
  • Faster sales funnel velocity

Understanding the voice of the customer is key to delivering satisfaction. Today‘s customers expect highly personalized and contextual engagement across channels.

What is a Customer Engagement Platform?

A customer engagement platform is software that handles multi-channel customer communications including email, chat, social media, etc. It provides features like:

  • Omnichannel engagement
  • CRM capabilities
  • Automation rules
  • Analytics and reporting
  • Personalization
  • Customer self-service

The platform aims to provide positive customer experiences that build strong brand relationships.

Key benefits of customer engagement platforms:

  • Unified view of customer data from one system
  • Build meaningful long-term customer relationships
  • Enterprise-grade security, services and compliance
  • Understand and optimize customer interactions
  • Deliver unique experiences across digital touchpoints

Now let‘s explore the must-have capabilities in these platforms.

Key Features of Customer Engagement Platforms

The ideal customer engagement software should include:

  • Multi-channel engagement – Support communication across email, chat, social media, SMS etc.

  • Automation rules – Trigger workflows when conditions are met to engage users.

  • Gamification – Motivate agents with badges, leaderboards and rewards.

  • Analytics – Robust reporting to gain customer and campaign insights.

  • Centralized dashboard – Single pane of glass to manage communications.

  • Integrations – Connect with marketing, sales and service tools.

  • CRM capabilities – Manage customer data from contact details to order history.

With these features in mind, let‘s review the top customer engagement platforms available today.

1. Salesforce

Salesforce Customer Engagement Platform

Salesforce enables you to reinvent customer experiences with CRM-powered digital properties.

Key Features

  • Build sites, portals, communities with point-and-click tools

  • Recognize loyal users with badges and leaderboards

  • Connect data across systems to optimize engagement

  • Accelerate growth with vertical solutions

Salesforce makes it easy to create personalized portals, apps and messaging for advanced digital engagement. With a unified customer view, you can engage users contextually across any channel or device.

2. Twilio

Twilio is a leading customer engagement platform providing data-driven omnichannel experiences. It combines digital channels, customer data and flexible APIs.

Key Features

  • Unified customer profile for personalized engagement

  • Flexible APIs to optimize efficiency and deployments

  • Industry solutions for healthcare, ecommerce etc.

  • Global scale to engage users anywhere

Twilio allows you to engage customers in real-time with messages across the channels they prefer – SMS, WhatsApp, RCS and more. You can also build unique campaigns tailored to specific audiences.

3. DialPad

DialPad is an AI-powered engagement platform designed to deliver great experiences without complex setup.

Key Features

  • AI coaching and transcriptions for reps

  • Mobile app for calls, messages and meetings

  • Real-time analytics for visibility

  • Integrations with top business apps

  • Smart workspace for collaboration

DialPad provides actionable insights to optimize staff performance. With a unified platform and mobile capabilities, agents can engage customers in real-time across digital and voice channels.

4. Moengage

Moengage is an insights-led customer engagement platform built to transform engagements into measurable results.

Key Features

  • AI analytics for customer insights

  • Campaign optimization with Sherpa AI

  • Personalized web experiences

  • Omnichannel API for real-time alerts

  • Effective onboarding and promotions

Moengage leverages AI and data analytics to understand each customer. It helps you deliver hyper-personalized engagement across channels to improve retention and lifetime value.

5. Sprinklr

Sprinklr offers frictionless social customer service across 30+ channels.

Key Features

  • Unified platform for service and engagement

  • Omnichannel self-service and live support

  • Conversational AI to optimize handling time

  • Speech and text analytics

  • AI-powered intent detection

Sprinklr reduces silos by treating every channel interaction as part of one conversation. This empowers agents to support customers seamlessly via their preferred means.

6. Zoho

Zoho provides an omnichannel customer engagement platform with context for every interaction.

Key Features

  • Unified context for contacts, conversations etc.

  • Seamless territory management

  • Two-way sync between Zoho CRM and Desk

  • Support for email, social, chat, calls

  • Real-time notifications with SaleSignals

Zoho Customer Engagement Cloud gives a complete view of the customer lifecycle stage. This enables faster, tailored engagement across the optimal channels.

7. Intercom

Intercom builds direct in-product engagement channels for customized experiences.

Key Features

  • In-app messages and chat

  • Multi-channel campaign orchestration

  • Targeting based on user attributes and actions

  • Deep integrations with 350+ apps

  • No-code environment

Intercom aims to boost customer activation, retention and growth through meaningful engagement. With robust data capabilities, you can tailor interactions to each user.

8. LiveAgent

LiveAgent is an award-winning customer engagement platform for SMBs.

Key Features

  • Omnichannel support including social media

  • Workflow automation for personalized journeys

  • Gamification to motivate and reward agents

  • Powerful analytics for customer insights

  • Unified CRM to manage user data

LiveAgent makes it easy to engage users across their preferred channels. Robust automation and analytics help optimize the customer experience.

9. FlowUp

FlowUp is an industry-focused customer engagement platform designed for relationship building.

Key Features

  • Omnichannel communication via calls, SMS, chat etc.

  • CRM integrations to update systems in real-time

  • Auto-responders for instant replies

  • Custom voicemail and missed call features

  • Tailored workflows for each journey stage

FlowUp ensures you can respond accurately and instantly to customers while automating engagements across touchpoints.

10. Segment

Segment provides an enterprise AI customer engagement solution powered by Twilio.

Key Features

  • Unified customer data infrastructure

  • Predict, generate and optimize engagement

  • Campaign analytics for optimization

  • Automatic warehouse schema alignment

  • Real-time customer activation

Segment makes it easy to consolidate data and activate it across channels and touchpoints for personalized engagement.

Conclusion

Customer engagement is critical for business success today. The right platforms empower you to understand customers, engage them contextually, and build lasting relationships across touchpoints.

This article covered the top customer engagement software solutions to consider based on features, capabilities and use cases. Focus on omni-channel support, automation, analytics and personalization when evaluating options.

With these platforms, you can boost loyalty, satisfaction and lifetime value by engaging users meaningfully throughout their journey.

AlexisKestler

Written by Alexis Kestler

A female web designer and programmer - Now is a 36-year IT professional with over 15 years of experience living in NorCal. I enjoy keeping my feet wet in the world of technology through reading, working, and researching topics that pique my interest.