With the right customer experience tools, brands can monitor every aspect of customer experience (CX), ensuring their clients have a memorable experience.

They can use the CX tools to understand where their customers are, examine key touchpoints, trace customer journeys, and ensure they’re exceeding their clients’ expectations.

This article covers the top 12 CX platforms and their functionalities that help deliver an outstanding customer experience. It also highlights the common mistakes to avoid when using CX tools.

TL;DR – Top 12 Customer Experience Tools

Here’s a quick list of the tools covered in this post:

1. Google Analytics
2. Mixpanel
3. Zendesk
4. HubSpot
5. Hotjar
6. Maze
7. Qualtrics
8. Tealeaf
9. Mention
10. Zonka Feedback
11. Birdeye
12. Medallia

Read on to learn more about these CX tools.

What is CX Software? 

Customer experience software are tools or applications that allow businesses to automate processes related to their CX strategy.

These processes can involve:

• Managing various aspects of the whole customer experience strategy, such as customer service and onboarding
• Maintaining consistent messaging across all platforms where customer engagements happen
• Mapping the customer journey to ensure a frictionless experience
• Collecting and analyzing data on customer behavior and insights
• Providing efficient real-time support

Types of Customer Experience Tools

Every insight shapes the customer experience, and the different types of CX tools help brands gain real-time insights into their CX.

Here are the top 6 CX tools categories:

1. Customer Experience Analytics Tools: Businesses can understand whether customers enjoy using their products or services, which funnels are converting, where leads come from, and the CX bottlenecks. For example, Google Analytics and Mixpanel.
2. Customer Experience Management Tools: These are all-in-one CRM tools that help businesses manage and improve customer interactions. For example, Zendesk and HubSpot.
3. Customer Experience Measurement Tools: These tools help understand what customers love about products or services and what the business needs to improve. For example, Hotjar and Maze.
4. Customer Experience Mapping Tools: These tools are crucial in understanding the customer journey. They help examine the paths customers take and gain insights into what nudges them forward, stalls them, or turns them away. For instance, Qualtrics and Tealeaf.
5. Customer Experience Survey Tools: These CX tools help brands listen in on customer discussions wherever they happen. Brands can also create surveys to collect customer feedback and gauge brand sentiment.
6. Omnichannel Customer Experience Tools: These CX tools help brands assess how effectively they deliver an omnichannel customer experience. For example, Mention and Zonka Feedback.

How to Choose the Best Customer Experience Tool

Here are some factors to consider before selecting the customer experience tool:

1. Assess the Business Needs: Some applications are more comprehensive than others. So, the brand should understand the CX capabilities and features it needs before settling for the right CX tool.
2. Look for Scalability: Choose a tool that aligns with the business model, is customizable, and can handle a higher volume of inputs. It will help avoid the hassle of migrating to a different tool as the business grows. 
3. Evaluate Its Ease of Use: The tool should be simple and easy to navigate. Team members should not need advanced knowledge to use it.
4. Check the Customer Support: Brands will likely need support along the way, so choose tools with excellent post-sales support.
5. Consider Pricing: The chosen platform should align with the budget and deliver a good return on investment.

The first step is to choose the right customer experience tool. The next step should be to partner with a brand messaging strategist to further enhance the customer experience with compelling messaging.

Together, we can help you design a messaging strategy that connects more meaningfully with your clients. We can craft strategic messaging that helps customers appreciate your brand value at every stage of the customer journey. 

Schedule a discovery call with me today.

List of Customer Experience Tools

Choosing the right customer experience tools helps brands get a holistic view of customer interactions across all channels.

Here are the top 10 tools across different categories:

1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics (GA4) provides comprehensive insights into customer behavior and website performance.

Here are some ways brands use GA4 to improve their digital customer experience:

• Map their users’ journey across devices and channels to understand how they convert.
• Analyze website performance, including page views, session duration, and content performance.
• Understand the audience demographics, location, and interests to help personalize content and offerings.

Pricing: Free

2. Mixpanel

Mixpanel analyzes in-app user behavior, especially for SaaS brands.

The CX software can help:

• Map the customer experience lifecycle and trace customer behavior to paid conversions.
• Store customer data in one hub.
• Convert data into insights to inform decision-making.
• Spot customer segments that are highly likely to churn, enabling the brand to make adjustments quickly.

Pricing: Free for personal projects (limited features, with access to basic analytics). More advanced features are available in the Enterprise package.

3. Zendesk

Zendesk is an all-in-one CX management suite that enables brands to analyze, manage, and optimize their customer experience.

It helps brands to:

• Automate workflow and manage their workforce.
• Integrate with hundreds of apps to consolidate data across all customer touchpoints and deliver a 360-degree customer view.
• Gain real-time CX reporting and analysis, including AI-powered CX data.

Pricing: Packages range from $25 to $219 per agent per month.

4. HubSpot

HubSpot is an impressive suite of products that enables businesses of all sizes to manage their CX.

This is how the CX tool helps brands:

• Allows integration of hundreds of apps into a single platform for a comprehensive customer experience.
• Gives a unified view of all the customer interactions.
• Enables automation of manual CX tasks, ensuring teams can meet customer needs promptly.

Pricing: Free and premium plans available. Paid packages start at $20 per seat monthly.

5. Hotjar

Hotjar is a tool that tracks, measures, and analyzes customer behavior on the business’s website or app.

Its features include:

• Gives the customer’s POV on an app or website, helping brands visualize and better understand the experience.
• Analyzes CX data to help teams understand its implications for the business and to identify opportunities to improve CX.
• Allows product users to share their thoughts directly with the brand.

Pricing: Basic plan (free) available. Paid plans range from $39 per month.

6. Maze

Maze is a user research platform that helps track the product user behavior, preferences, and needs. 

Brands can use this tool to:

• Gain usability metrics and other customer data while they develop new products or refine existing ones.
• Launch new products or iterate quickly with real-time user insights.
• Examine whether the go-to-market messaging or product messaging accurately captures the value of their offerings.

Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans begin at $99 per month.

7. Qualtrics

Qualtrics helps brands map the buyer journey to spot friction points and discover how to meet customer expectations at every touchpoint.

Key features of this tool include:

• Helps understand and optimize the customer experience map.
• Provides experience analytics to uncover issues in their digital journey.
• Uses contact center analytics to identify the causes of friction points and customer dissatisfaction.

Pricing: Available on request for various experience management products.

8. Tealeaf

Another tool for mapping out and refining the customer journey is Tealeaf, a customer experience analytics platform.

Here are ways brands use it:

• Conduct interaction analysis to understand the intent behind customer behavior.
• Analyze the digital customer journey to determine friction areas.
• Assess session replay to gain a customer’s POV of a product.
• Monitor brand alerts to see when customer concerns arise and help them prioritize issues to address.

Pricing: Pricing models available on request.

9. Mention

Mention is a social listening tool that helps brands track their audience comments.

Below are ways this tool helps brands:

• Scours the web for mentions of the brand and related keywords.
• Helps analyze the context behind brand mentions, provides actionable insights, and helps brands engage their community.
• Allows visualizations of the brand mentions using charts, maps, and key numbers.

Pricing: Plans range from $49 to $179. Customizable corporate offers available upon request.

10. Zonka Feedback

Zonka Feedback helps gather and transform unstructured feedback from surveys, chats, and customer tickets into insights.

With this tool, brands can:

• Build surveys in minutes, whether customer satisfaction surveys, employee experience surveys, Net Promoter Score surveys, or customer service surveys.
• Use its AI tools to conduct thematic analysis of customer feedback and get actionable insights.
• Capture feedback across multiple channels.

Pricing: Plans range from $49 to $199 per month.

11. Birdeye

Birdeye is a marketing platform that consolidates data, including ticketing, survey, and competitor insights in one place.

Some of its key features include:

• Tracks mentions of a brand across all channels and captures feedback using an omnichannel approach.
• Allows customers to engage with the brand on social media, email, and other platforms.

Pricing: Available on request.

12. Medallia

Medallia uses AI to capture customer data across all channels and analyzes it to deliver real-time insights.

This tool: 

• Gathers a 360-degree view of customers across social media, the web, and calls.
• Helps brands curate a customer experience strategy and tailor it according to what will drive the best results.

Pricing: Available on request.

Core Use Cases of a CX Tool Across Industries

Customer experience tools help brands optimize the buyer’s journey and create customer delight.

 Here are some use cases of CX tools across different industries:

• • E-commerce and Retail: CX tools like Hotjar and Qualtrics allow e-commerce business owners to see exactly where users get stuck in digital storefronts. By identifying these friction points, entrepreneurs can streamline the path to making purchases.
  • Healthcare: Brands can collect and analyze patients’ sentiment across multiple areas such as billing, drug preference, and patient care. They can use platforms such as Salesforce Health Cloud to analyze patient data and deliver personalized, strategic messaging, such as reminders for annual mammograms or flu shots, based on the patient’s history.
  • Consulting and Coaching: Coaches and consultants can use CX tools such as Zonka Feedback and HubSpot at specific stages of the customer lifecycle, for example, after onboarding and project completion. The surveys can assess perceived value and progress, helping address churn and deliver exceptional services.
  • FinTech: In the FinTech industry, trust is paramount. Businesses must therefore leverage tools like Birdeye. They can track the brand mentions online and uncover feedback that guides strategic innovation.
  • SaaS and Technology: With tools like Mixpanel, SaaS and tech businesses can get valuable data on how users interact with their software and develop a SaaS marketing strategy based on how users are adopting new features.

Benefits of Using a Customer Experience Tool

Customer experience tools optimize CX strategies and tactics, boosting the ROI. 

Here’s how:

• Churn Reduction: Investing in CX tools can help brands offer proactive customer support from the insights. With an optimized customer experience, clients are less likely to churn.
• Feedback Capture and Analysis: Automating social listening and customer feedback collection ensures a brand captures all brand mentions and accurately analyzes customer sentiment.
• Personalization at Scale: Brands can use CX tools to gather massive amounts of data and turn it into insights that help them personalize interactions with all customer segments.

Common Mistakes in Customer Experience Platform Selection

Mistakes when choosing a customer experience platform can lead to fragmented experiences.

These are the common mistakes and ways to avoid them:

Brands facing these growth-hindering challenges can consider working with a business growth consultant to develop tailored strategies to optimize their customer experience.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Here are the answers to some common questions about CX tools:

How Can Customer Experience Tools Help in Understanding Customer Feedback?

CX survey tools enable a brand to build and customize feedback forms and surveys to collect customer feedback directly.

These tools can also help businesses analyze feedback to adjust their strategies and meet their customers’ expectations.

How Do Customer Experience Tools Measure Customer Loyalty?

CX tools measure customer loyalty by tracking quantitative metrics (such as repeat purchase rate and Net Promoter Score) and qualitative insights (such as survey and feedback form responses).

Most tools can also generate real-time reports with customer intent and insights to help brands make informed decisions.

What Role Do Customer Experience Tools Play in Reducing Customer Churn?

The right CX tools can help optimize customer touchpoints, ensuring a positive overall journey. 

Customers are more likely to continue doing business with a brand when all touchpoints meet their expectations, reducing churn.

How Do AI and Machine Learning Enhance Customer Experience Tools?

AI enables automation, predictive analysis, and machine learning to analyze customer behavior and deliver data-backed CX forecasts. 

A brand can then use the insights to optimize the customer journey.

Conclusion

Customer experience tools ensure efficiency, productivity, and accuracy in the CX strategy, which results in stronger client relationships.

Before using tools, the first step in designing customer experiences is creating personalized messaging.

As a messaging strategist, I can help you create a compelling brand story to reinforce a positive CX. Let us work together to design a messaging strategy that elevates your customers’ experience. We’ll also create messaging that drives engagement, conversion, and retention across your digital channels.

Book a discovery call with me today to fine-tune your messaging and drive you towards your conversion goals.