15 Customer Engagement Solutions for Strengthening Customer Relationships

15 Customer Engagement Solutions for Strengthening Customer Relationships cover

What are the best customer engagement solutions for SaaS teams?

Short answers: depends on your needs and use cases.

In this article, we present 15 excellent customer engagement platforms that will help you engage your customers effectively at all stages of the user journey and across different channels.

Let’s get right into them!

TL;DR

Try Userpilot and Take Your Customer Engagement to the Next Level

What is a customer engagement platform?

A customer engagement platform is a software tool that allows teams to track and analyze every user interaction with the product at all stages of the customer journey.

It’s not only about analysis but also managing these interactions.

Customer engagement platforms allow you to engage users across various touchpoints and channels, for example, in-app, through social media, or email.

Their aim is to support users, help them achieve their goals, and create positive experiences. This helps improve satisfaction and build deeper relationships with customers.

Must-have features in customer engagement software

In addition to the core functionality for your specific use cases, here are a few features to look out for when choosing customer engagement tools:

  • User segmentation – to personalize the user experience for customers with different use cases, needs, and pain points.
  • Analytics and reporting – to analyze customer interactions with your product, assess the effectiveness of your engagement strategy, and identify ways to improve it.
  • Automation – to reduce the number of tasks performed manually and reduce the pressure on your teams.
  • Integrations – to seamlessly embed the tool into your workflows.
  • Scalability and pricing – to ensure that the product can support your growing needs in the most cost-effective way.

15 best customer engagement software solutions worth trying

With all the basics out of the way, here’s our selection of the best customer engagement solutions available on the market.

1. Userpilot – all-in-one customer engagement solution

Userpilot is a comprehensive user engagement solution for product, marketing, and customer success teams seeking to optimize the in-app user experience, drive product adoption, and increase account expansion.

Let’s start with the engagement layer.

Userpilot offers 6 different UI patterns for flows: tooltips, modals, slideouts, driven actions, banners, and hotspots. These allow you to communicate with users, help them overcome friction, and prompt their engagement.

The patterns can be triggered individually or as a part of interactive walkthroughs. You can also create onboarding checklists to activate users.

Userpilot welcome screen
Userpilot welcome screen.

Moreover, Userpilot allows you to collect customer feedback via in-app surveys, which are easy to create thanks to the survey template library.

Userpilot survey templates
Userpilot survey templates.

In addition to the UI patterns, you can also provide users with support via the resource center. Thanks to this, users don’t have to contact the support team every time they come across an issue.

Userpilot resource center
Resource center in Userpilot.

Userpilot also offers powerful analytics features that enable granular analysis of user interactions with the product, and you can track all the key metrics from a dedicated engagement dashboard.

Userpilot engagement dashboard
Userpilot engagement dashboard.

The analytics also work with the onboarding flows so that you can evaluate the effectiveness of your engagement efforts. And to choose the most effective engagement methods, you can run A/B and multivariate tests.

A/B testing in Userpilot
A/B testing in Userpilot.

Userpilot pricing

Userpilot offers 3 pricing plans:

  • Starter – from $249/month
  • Growth – from $499/month
  • Enterprise – custom pricing
Userpilot pricing
Userpilot pricing.

2. Zendesk – recommended customer service platform

Zendesk is a customer service platform that provides SaaS businesses with a range of tools to manage customer support and engagement.

The tool offers solutions for ticketing, customer support, help desk, live chat, and knowledge base management, among others.

The purpose of Zendesk is to improve communication with customers across multiple channels including email, phone, chat, and social media, and streamline customer service operations.

Best customer engagement solutions: Zendesk
Best customer engagement solutions: Zendesk.

Zendesk pricing

Zendesk offers 4 plans:

  • Team – from $55/agent/month
  • Growth – from $89/agent/month
  • Professional – from $115/agent/month
  • Enterprise
Zendesk pricing
Zendesk pricing.

3. Typeform – preferred tool for collecting customer satisfaction feedback

Typeform is a web-based solution for building forms and online surveys.

The platform allows users to create various types of forms, including surveys, quizzes, registration forms, and more, using a wide range of question types, including multiple-choice, short-answer, and Likert scales.

Product, marketing, and customer success teams can use Typeform to conduct customer research and collect customer satisfaction feedback.

Best customer engagement solution: Typeform
Best customer engagement solution: Typeform.

Typeform pricing

Typeform has a 4-tier pricing structure:

  • Basic – from $25/month
  • Plus – from $50/month
  • Business – from $83/month
  • Enterprise – custom pricing
Typeform pricing
Typeform pricing

4. Mixpanel – recommended for analyzing customer behavior

Mixpanel is an advanced analytics platform that enables tracking user interactions with web and mobile applications.

It provides detailed insights into how users engage with an app, helping businesses understand user behavior, measure engagement, and make data-driven decisions to enhance their digital products.

Key Mixpanel reports include:

  • Flows – to analyze all user interactions leading up to or following an event.
  • Funnels – to track user progress and conversions at key stages in the user journey.
  • Retention – to understand when users drop off and why.
  • Cohorts/segments – to group users based on shared properties for more granular analysis.
  • Impact analysis – to compare data from before and after a new feature launch.
  • Signal – to identify correlations between data sets.
Best customer engagement solution: Mixpanel
Best customer engagement solutions: Mixpanel.

Mixpanel pricing

Mixpanel offers 3 pricing plans:

  • Free
  • Growth – from $20/month
  • Enterprise – from $833/month
Mixpanel pricing
Mixpanel pricing.

5. HubSpot – recommended customer relationship management tool

HubSpot is known for its powerful customer relationship management (CRM) platform, designed to help businesses manage and improve their interactions with customers and prospects.

Key features of HubSpot CRM include:

  • Contact, lead, and deal management.
  • Activity tracking – to automatically log customer interactions, including emails, calls, and social media engagements.
  • Email integration and tracking – for sending emails directly within the platform and tracking email opens and clicks.
  • Customizable reports and dashboards with real-time insights into all your customer data, sales activities, marketing performance, and customer service metrics.
  • Marketing and sales integration – the CRM enables seamless data flow between HubSpot’s Marketing Hub and Sales Hub and ensures there’s alignment between marketing and sales efforts.
Best customer engagement solution: Hubspot
Best customer engagement solutions: HubSpot.

HubSpot pricing

HubSpot offers 4 pricing plans, including a free one:

  • Free
  • Starter – from $20/month
  • Professional – from $1,600/month
  • Enterprise – from $5,000/month
Hubspot pricing
HubSpot pricing.

6. Appcues – suggested onboarding tool for mobile apps

Appcues, just like Userpilot, is a product adoption platform. It enables companies to build and implement in-app onboarding tours, feature announcements, user surveys, and personalized messages without needing deep technical knowledge or coding.

Overall, its functionality is a bit limited when compared to Userpilot, but it has one advantage: it supports mobile apps.

Best customer engagement solution: Appcues
Best customer engagement solutions: Appcues.

Appcues pricing

There are 3 Appcues plans:

  • Essentials – from $249 per month
  • Growth – from $879 per month
  • Enterprise – custom pricing
Appcues pricing
Appcues pricing.

7. Buffer – recommended for managing social media communication channels

Buffer is a leading social media management software that allows marketing teams to maintain a consistent social media presence and engage with current and prospective customers.

Its main features include:

  • Buffer AI Assistant – for content creation.
  • Post scheduling.
  • A dashboard for multiple social media account management.
  • Analytics and reporting – to gather insights into post-performance.
  • Content calendar – to easily view scheduled and published posts for better planning.
  • Team management and collaboration – to better coordinate social media campaigns.
  • Engagement tools – to monitor and respond to social media conversations, mentions, and messages.
Best customer engagement solution: Buffer
Best customer engagement solution: Buffer.

Buffer pricing

In addition to the Free plan, buffer offers 3 paid ones:

  • Essentials – $6/month for 1 channel
  • Team – $12/month for 1 channel
  • Agency – $120/month for 10 channels

You can save $60, $120, and $1,200 on the 3 plans respectively if you pay annually.

Buffer pricing
Buffer pricing.

8. ConvertKit – preferred email marketing tool

ConvertKit is a powerful email marketing automation tool designed for creators and digital marketers to simplify creating and executing email campaigns and publishing newsletters.

Its main features include:

  • Automated email sequences – to nurture leads and guide them through the customer journey.
  • Subscriber tagging and segmentation – based on their behavior, preferences, and engagement, to run targeted and personalized email campaigns.
  • Visual automation builder – with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface to easily design custom email workflows.
  • Analytics and reporting – with detailed insights into campaign performance.
Best customer engagement solution: ConvertKit
Best customer engagement solutions: ConvertKit.

ConvertKit pricing

There are 3 ConverKit plans:

  • Free
  • Creator – from $9/month
  • Creator Pro – from $25/month
ConvertKit pricing
ConvertKit pricing.

9. Hotjar – recommended for spotting friction areas in the customer journey

Hotjar is a powerful analytics tool designed for UX designers, product managers, marketers, and researchers. It provides them with tools to identify usability issues and optimize the user experience by removing friction from the user journey.

Hotjar’s flagship features are session recordings and heatmaps. They allow teams to capture granular data about user interactions with product UI.

Its other features include:

  • Custom dashboards.
  • Funnels attached to session recordings for detailed analysis of the drop-off points.
  • Automated interview scheduling and transcription.
  • A pool of 200,000+ research participants from various walks of life all over the world.
Best customer engagement solution: Hotjar
Best customer engagement solutions: Hotjar.

Hotjar pricing

There are 3 Hotjar plans:

  • Basic – free
  • Plus – $32/month
  • Business – $56/month
Hotjar pricing
Hotjar pricing.

10. Optimizely – recommended for conducting A/B tests

Optimizely is a leading digital experience platform designed to help marketers, product managers, and developers improve user experience and increase conversion rates through experimentation.

Its key strength is robust A/B and multivariate testing capabilities. In addition, it supports:

  • Personalization – you can customize experiences for different user segments based on their behavior, preferences, or demographics.
  • Feature flagging and rollouts – it allows you to dark launch new features to a subset of users or control the visibility of features without deploying new code.
  • Experimentation analytics – detailed insights and analytics helping teams understand the impact of changes and make informed decisions.
Best customer engagement solution: Optimizely
Best customer engagement solutions: Optimizely.

Optimizely pricing

Optimizely offers two packages, Web Experimentation and Feature Experimentation. The pricing for each is available on request.

Optimizely pricing
Optimizely pricing.

11. Loom – preferred tool for creating and sharing videos

Loom is a video messaging tool that enables users to create and share video recordings with ease, facilitating efficient and personalized communications.

The tool is particularly useful for marketing and customer success teams who want to increase customer engagement, onboard users, and assist users with support messages, product tutorials, and quick high-touch responses to customer requests.

Main Loom features include:

  • Easy video recording and sharing – via an automatically generated link.
  • Video editing tools.
  • AI-powered filler word and silence removal.
  • Viewer insights – to track who has viewed their videos.
  • Video transcriptions – to increase video accessibility and inclusivity.
Best customer engagement solution: Loom
Best customer engagement solutions: Loom.

Loom pricing

Loom comes with 3 plans:

  • Starter – free
  • Business – from $12.50/user/month
  • Enterprise – custom price
Loom pricing
Loom pricing.

12. Intercom – recommended live chat software

Intercom is a customer communication platform that enables businesses to manage customer interactions across the entire customer journey and foster strong relationships with customers via chat-based experiences.

Intercom’s main features include:

  • Live chat – for real-time support on websites and mobile apps.
  • AI chatbot – capable of qualifying leads, routing inquiries, and providing instant inquiries.
  • Automated messaging – for sending targeted, automated messages based on user behavior or predefined triggers.
  • Knowledge base – helping customers find answers to their questions through self-service, reducing the load on support teams.
Best customer engagement solution: Intercom
Best customer engagement solutions: Intercom.

Intercom pricing

Intercom users can choose from 3 plans:

  • Essential – from $39/seat/month
  • Advanced – from $99/seat/month
  • Expert – from $139/seat/month
Intercom pricing
Intercom pricing.

13. Discourse – recommended community management tool

Discourse is an open-source Internet forum and mailing list management software, designed to foster community discussions and engagement.

The platform provides a space for users to hold conversations in the form of posted messages, which you can then adapt for use as a discussion forum, a mailing list, or a chat room.

This makes it an ideal choice for building community forums and customer support hubs.

Its main features are:

  • Moderation tools – to help maintain a healthy, respectful discussion environment.
  • Plugins and themes – so that you can customize the platform to your specific needs and preferences.
  • Community management – with features like trust levels, badges, and likes, you can encourage positive participation and help manage community dynamics.
Best customer engagement solution: Discourse
Best customer engagement solution: Discourse.

Discourse pricing

There are 4 Discourse plans available:

  • Basic – $50/month
  • Standard – $100/month
  • Business – $300/month
  • Enterprise – available on request
Discourse pricing
Discourse pricing.

14. Gametize – suggested tool to gamify the customer experience

Gametize is a gamification platform that allows businesses to create their own gamified experiences for user onboarding, training, marketing, and customer engagement.

What gamification strategies does Gametize use?

  • Challenges – like quizzes, missions, and tasks, to engage their audience in a fun and interactive way.
  • Rewards and badges – to incentivize users.
  • Leaderboards – to foster a sense of competition among users.
  • Social sharing – for users to share their achievements and progress on social media, expanding the reach and impact of the gamified experience.
Best customer engagement solution: Gametize
Best customer engagement solutions: Gametize.

Gametize pricing

Gametize offers 5 pricing plans:

  • Light – from $100/month
  • Regular – from $200/month
  • Premium – from $500/month
  • Premium Plus – from $1,000/month
  • Enterprise – custom price
Gametize pricing
Gametize pricing.

15. Demio – recommended webinar software to engage customers

Demio is a webinar platform built with educators and marketers in mind, and its main purpose is to simplify the process of hosting live interactive events online.

The tools boasts a clean and intuitive UI and a range of features that can be used to effectively engage audiences.

These include:

  • High-quality live streaming – for hosting webinars, workshops, and presentations in real-time.
  • Interactive tools – like polls, surveys, and Q&A sessions to engage the audience, gather feedback, and facilitate interaction during the webinar.
  • Automated webinars – you can set up automated, pre-recorded webinars that run at scheduled times.
  • Customizable registration pages – to capture attendee information and tailor the registration process.
Best customer engagement solution: Demio
Best customer engagement solution: Demio.

Demio pricing

Companies can choose one of 3 plans:

  • Starter – from $42/month
  • Growth – from $75/month
  • Premium – from $184/month
demio-pricing-customer-engagement-solutions
Demio pricing.

Conclusion

Here you are! Our selection of 15 best-in-class customer engagement solutions for SaaS teams.

Are they suitable for your SaaS? Hopefully, but not necessarily!

To make an informed decision, sign up for free trials and test them out. For complex products, like analytics platforms, start with a demo so that you know where to start when you first log in on your own.

On that note, fancy getting the Userpilot demo?

Try Userpilot and Take Your Customer Engagement to the Next Level

previous post next post

Leave a comment