We list the best customer experience (CX) tools, to make it simple and easy to collect customer feedback to help provide business insights to improve sales, support, and branding.
CX platforms are usually equipped with diverse feature options such as content management, contextual help, customer analytics and, of course, customer feedback. Of course, they are also an important part of content marketing in general as part of customer communications for actionable insights.
In recent years the number of tools available in the market has increased rapidly, so we’re here to help you spot which ones can work best for you.
Below we list what we think are the best CX tools currently available.
We’ve also featured the best online form builders.
Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
Best sales-based customer experience (CX) tool
Salesforce describes its service platform as a “time-saving, joy-boosting, relationship-building machine”. It’s not far off the mark – its CX platform is effective when it comes to giving agents the insights they need to understand customers and their cases. They can be resolved using a suite of powerful productivity tools that give agents a complete, shared view of every customer and interaction.
The platform also provides the ability to reach customers on any channel – whether that’s through mobile messaging, web chat, or social media. Salesforce’s AI-powered chatbots, which are native to its platform, help to reduce reliance on human intervention.
There are four packages to choose from: Essentials, Professional, Enterprise and Unlimited. There is also a free trial for each plan.
Read our full Salesforce Service Cloud review.
Best customer experience (CX) management platform
Boasting more than 1 million active users on its platform in a single month, Medallia is an AI-powered experience management platform that brings AI to the cloud. It detects patterns, anticipates needs and predicates behavior using multiple advanced techniques. They include text analytics, which helps agents understand the ‘why’ behind scores, helping to uncover themes, sentiment and underlying satisfaction drivers across unstructured data.
That’s complemented by Suggested Actions, which retrieve recommendations based on deep learning and automatic discovery of actionable suggestions that drive the most impact. Finally, its Risk Scoring technique identifies at-risk customers while helping to understand the drivers behind their behavior.
Read our full Medallia review.
Best general customer experience (CX) tool
Zendesk is one of the best and most popular CX tools available. It enables support for products-led customer conversations that flow seamlessly across all channels. You can choose to build your own CX solution with Zendesk Sunshine, the company’s open and flexible CRM software. Built on AWS, it lets you seamlessly connect and understand all of your customer data wherever it is stored.
Overall, Zendesk offers four products in one package: support, guide, chat and talk. Between them, they let you do everything from overseeing customer support to giving employees a smart self-service knowledge base. It also offers live chat, a sales CRM function, and analytics and reporting.
There are several plans available, starting with the Suite Team package which offers a single Help Center, up to 50 AI-powered automated answers, and standard file storage. If you want to increase the number of Help Centers , storage etc, you need to pay for the higher plans.
Read our full Zendesk review.
Best customer experience (CX) tool for communications
Hubspot knows that today’s customers have more control, more options, and higher expectations. That’s why the company has tailored its nifty Service Hub to give company agents all the tools they need to keep customers happy. The tools in the Hubspot Service Hub are designed to help you build a frictionless customer experience, starting with the Conversations Inbox.
It brings all communication channels – from email inboxes, live chat, forms, and Facebook messenger – together into one universal inbox. Each conversation is enriched by the HubSpot CRM, providing contextual information about the customer’s history with your company.
Read our full Hubspot Service Hub review.
Best customer experience (CX) tool for digital assets
Adobe Experience Manager combines digital asset management with the power of a content management system. Adobe Experience Manager Sites ensures that your content is consistent and personalized for each customer. What’s more, it lets you create and manage your digital experience across all channels with automated tools designed to make scaling effortless.
Added to this, Adobe’s Assets feature provides the automation and smart tools needed to rapidly source, adapt, and deliver assets across audiences and channels.
Read our full Adobe Experience Manager review.
Best customer experience (CX) tool for customer insights
Qualtrics XM is customer experience management software that delivers insights that can prompt (and lead to) action across an entire organization. It provides three distinct aims, the first being to hear and understand customers at every meaningful touchpoint. Conversations can be started with anything from email to SMS, web, mobile apps, wearables or IoT devices.
Once they’ve taken place, feedback is automatically analyzed by Qualtrics iQ to uncover trends, patterns and make powerful predictions about customer behavior. Tailored insights and recommended actions are automatically generated and delivered, allowing employees to focus on actions that will drive customer satisfaction, spend, and loyalty.
Read our full Qualtrics XM review.
Best customer experience (CX) contact center
Genesys Cloud is an all-in-one cloud contact center solution that connects phone, email, chat and social through one easy-to-use tool. By placing everything in one place, it empowers agents with a 360-degree view of customers. The software can be deployed in minutes while meeting compliance requirements and configured with redundancy for maximum reliability.
Its main features include Outbound Campaigns, which execute dial modes and campaign tactics that keep agents productive. Additionally, its workforce optimization capabilities include multi-channel recording, quality management workforce management, performance monitoring and more.
Read our full Genesys Cloud review.
Best customer experience (CX) tool for financial services
Are you a company working in the financial sector that’s looking to improve customer experience with real-time, contextualized interactions? If so, then SAS Customer Experience wants to chat.
It provides the ability to gain a holistic view of the customer experience and accelerate the value derived from AI and finch technologies to boost customer profitability, streamline operations and foster loyalty. It does so using analytical marking, customer journey optimization, and real-time customer experience techniques.
Best customer experience (CX) tool for personalization
GetFeedback by SurveyMonkey lets you capture actionable insights to grow your business. One of the best CX tools for turning customer insights into action in less time, it’s a turn-key NPS solution with powerful features that’s used to collect, understand and act on customer feedback.
Its features include the ability to trigger personalized surveys through multiple channels that reach customers when they are most receptive; and the platform makes it easy to identify improvement areas using advanced analytics – from key driver analysis to industry benchmarks. Finally, insights can be shared with team members quickly using custom reports, data exporting, or integration with your system of record.
Best customer experience (CX) tool for surveys
Delighted uses the Net Promoter System (NPS) to gather real feedback from your customers quick sharp, with no technical knowledge required. It works by inviting customers to take a single question survey.
They then rate your product or service and provide feedback in their own words, with feedback instantly appearing in your dashboard. You can choose how customers will take surveys, whether that’s by email, SMS or a web link – and you can also invite your website visitors to participate directly from your home page.
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Best customer experience (CX) tool FAQs
Which CX tool is best for you?
When deciding which CX tool to download and use, first consider what your actual needs are, as sometimes platforms that aim to do a lot of different things may not offer such an extensive range of tools as one that focuses on one particular area. For example, some sales and CRM software will include a customer feedback tool, but it may not offer as many advanced management options that a dedicated platform could do.
How we tested the best customer experience (CX) tool
To test for the best CX tools we first set up an account with the relevant software platform, whether as a download or as an online service. We then tested the service to see how the software could be used for different purposes and in different situations. The aim was to push each platform to see how useful its basic tools were and also how easy it was to get to grips with any more advanced tools for measuring and using customer feedback.
Read how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar.
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