Customer experience software

CX teams today are under pressure to deliver more value to customers faster while keeping costs low. To achieve this, they need customer experience (CX) software that helps them keep up. CX software enables businesses to effectively manage and enhance the customer experience.

Whether you're new to CX software or looking to upgrade your existing system, this guide will cover the basics and identify some of the current options on the market. Get ready to instill a customer-oriented culture within your organization that sets it apart from the competition.

More in this guide:

• What is customer experience software?
• Customer experience management software comparison chart
• The 13 best customer experience management software
• Features of customer experience solutions
• Benefits of customer experience management systems
• How to choose the right CX software
• Customer experience management software FAQs
• Try customer experience management software for free

Customer experience (CX) software is designed to help organizations build better customer relationships. It integrates functionalities like customer data management, personalization, omnichannel support, and AI-driven automation to enable CX teams to provide fast, personalized, and seamless customer experiences throughout the entire customer journey.

Check out this table for a quick overview of CX software options.

Here’s a collection of some customer experience management (CXM) systems to help you find the right solution.

1. Zendesk

Zendesk provides the complete customer experience solution for the AI era, offering everything you need to deliver fast and personalized experiences at scale. Unlike other solutions, Zendesk AI is purpose-built for CX and modeled on the world’s largest CX-specific dataset, so it understands what your customers are thinking and feeling from day one. Best of all, it's simple to set up—no technical expertise or lengthy lead times required. Our AI agents are the most autonomous bots in the industry, enabling you to automate customer experiences to save time and money. They can handle your customer’s entire request from start to finish, no matter the complexity. Meanwhile, our agent copilot guides agents to a faster resolution by anticipating the next steps, making suggestions, and even taking action behind the scenes.

Our unified omnichannel agent workspace also comes with AI-powered agent assistance tools built-in, arming your support team with intelligence at every stage of the customer journey. What’s more, it’s intuitively designed so agents can support your customers across any channel without toggling between different systems. And because our software is flexible, you can integrate it with your entire CX ecosystem to build a 360-degree customer view.

Furthermore, Zendesk workforce engagement management solutions help you ensure optimal staffing levels, monitor service quality to minimize customer churn, and gain valuable insights into agent performance. For example, Zendesk QA uses AI to score 100 percent of your customer interactions across your human agents—and AI agents—to spotlight where you can improve. Coupled with real-time reporting and enterprise-grade security, Zendesk not only safeguards your data but also ensures you can immediately respond to evolving customer needs.

This suite of tools—all within a single system—offers a low total cost of ownership, simplicity in setup for rapid value realization, and ease of use, allowing you to focus on building customer relationships rather than configuring complex software.

Features:

• AI purpose-built for CX
• Ticketing system with omnichannel support
• Workflow automation
• Real-time and historical reports
• Self-service and knowledge management tools
• 1,500+ apps and integrations
• Security
• Collaboration tools
• 360-degree customer view
• Workforce management
• Quality assurance

Pricing: Plans start at $55 per agent/month. A 14-day free trial is available.

Explore more Zendesk pricing plans.

2. Podium

The Podium platform helps businesses handle customer communication. It includes text marketing, payment processing, online review collection, live website chat, and an agent inbox. Podium’s native integrations pull customer relationship management (CRM) data into its interface.

The entry-level plan, Core, lets businesses manage a customer database with unlimited contacts and basic reporting. The Pro plan has surveys, widget branding, and automatic lead routing. The custom plan, Signature, provides access to more reporting features, usage discounts, and custom automations.

Features:

• Omnichannel support
• Workflow automation
• Self-service
• Lead routing
• Personalized onboarding

Pricing: Plans start at $399 per month.

3. HubSpot Service Hub

HubSpot’s Service Hub is a customer experience platform that combines a ticketing system, customer service analytics, and knowledge base publishing tools. Service Hub connects to HubSpot’s native CRM platform to provide access to customer data. Some free tools are available to get started, including a shared inbox and email tracking.

The Starter plan includes live chat, conversation routing, and simple ticket automation. The Professional plan provides a customer portal, feedback surveys, analytics, and playbooks. The Enterprise plan adds single sign-on (SSO), field-level permissions, and notification management, among others. New customers can opt for the Starter CRM Suite, which provides access to HubSpot’s other platforms.

Features:

• Workflow automation
• Self-service
• Security
• Customer feedback surveys
• Customer portal

Pricing: Plans start at $15 per seat/month, billed annually. A free plan is available.

Recommended reading: Learn about the HubSpot integration for Zendesk and how Zendesk vs. HubSpot compare.

4. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is a customer data platform. It can use predictive analytics to anticipate future customer actions. Teams can craft targeted campaigns based on customer segments and behavior, while sales teams receive real-time insights to personalize pitches and close deals faster.

Users can create customer segments, automatically score leads, and measure pipeline success in pre-built dashboards. Dynamic 365 Customer Insights includes access to other Microsoft products and pulls customer data from various sources.

Features:

• Omnichannel support
• Workflow automation
• Real-time and historical reports
• Self-service
• Security
• Customer segments
• Predictive analytics

Pricing: Plans start at $1,700 per tenant/month. A 30-day free trial is available.

Recommended reading: Learn about the Dynamics 365 integration for Zendesk.

5. Birdeye

Birdeye is a customer experience review management software solution. It combines automation, integrations, and other tools in a centralized space. Agents can convert survey responses and customer reviews into support tickets. Agents can also receive automatic alerts when new tickets are assigned or when the status changes.

Birdeye offers competitive benchmarking so users know how their performance compares to other industries. The software features automated surveys that users can send through email, text, or messaging apps. Birdeye also offers live chat so businesses can stay in touch with website visitors and includes an option for auto-responding to questions.

Features:

• Omnichannel support
• Workflow automation
• Real-time and historical reports
• Self-service
• 1,500+ apps and integrations
• Security
• Ticket management

Pricing: Contact Birdeye for pricing.

6. Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk provides customer experience management solutions for customer service operations. It gives businesses a help center with email templates, tabs, and form fields. Zoho Desk also supports instant messaging over apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, and WeChat.

The Standard plan is the cheapest and includes essential ticket management features, such as merging tickets, suggesting articles, and adding pre-written responses. The Professional plan lets businesses assign tickets and provides ticket sharing and collision detection features so agents don’t unknowingly work on the same ticket. The top-tier plan, Enterprise, adds live chat and guided conversations.

Features:

• Workflow automation
• Self-service
• Security
• Ticket management
• Live chat

Pricing: Plans start at $7 per user/month, billed annually. A 15-day free trial and a free plan with limited features are available.

Recommended reading: Learn how Zoho integrates with Zendesk and how Zendesk vs. Zoho compare.

7. Intercom

Intercom customer service software offers various features for the customer experience. It lets businesses build multilingual help centers to allow different customer segments to self-serve.

Intercom provides tools for workload management and agent assignment so issues get routed to available agents. The top-tier Intercom plan allows you to integrate with SSO and identity management systems, ensuring secure access to customer and company data.

Features:

• Omnichannel support
• Workflow automation
• Real-time and historical reports
• Self-service
• Security
• Workload management

Pricing: Plans start at $39 per seat/month. A 14-day free trial is available.

Recommended reading: Learn how Intercom integrates with Zendesk.

8. Qualtrics XM

Qualtrics XM is a customer experience management tool designed to help businesses understand the buyer journey through a data-driven approach. It integrates various communication channels and data sources into a single platform, providing a comprehensive view of customer interactions and insights.

The software uses conversational analytics to track sentiments from social media posts and comments. With omnichannel access, agents gain a holistic view of the customer to personalize interactions. Qualtrics' predictive intelligence engine, iQ, also provides prescriptive insights into customer trends and patterns.

Features:

• Omnichannel support
• Workflow automation
• Real-time and historical reports
• Security
• Customer surveys
• Social media listening

Pricing: Contact Qualtrics XM for pricing.

Recommended reading: Learn how Qualtrics XM integrates with Zendesk.

9. Tealeaf

Tealeaf is CX software by Acoustic that delivers tools to help businesses capture and analyze data. It can identify pain points within the customer journey and recreate moments of struggle. Businesses can also test their CX before and after implementing Tealeaf to compare success.

Additionally, Tealeaf can provide real-time alerts so businesses know when customers encounter problems. It can generate customer reports to help businesses evaluate how these negative experiences might impact their operations. Tealeaf also lets users prioritize issues, ensuring urgent problems get addressed first.

Features:

• Omnichannel support
• Real-time and historical reports
• Security
• Session replays
• Visitor heatmaps

Pricing: Contact Tealeaf

10. GetFeedback

GetFeedback by Momentive is a customer experience platform that enables businesses to fuse customer feedback with customer data, which helps them gain a deeper understanding of their CX. It offers various features, including in-app surveys, email feedback requests, and social media monitoring.

GetFeedback also integrates with platforms like Zendesk and Slack, allowing team members to coordinate their actions. Businesses can collect feedback through their website, email, or SMS using survey templates. Businesses can also add customer branding and manage automations.

Features:

• Omnichannel support
• Workflow automation
• Security
• Real-time alerts
• Customer surveys

Pricing: Contact GetFeedback

Recommended reading: Learn how GetFeedback integrates with Zendesk.

11. Medallia

Medallia is a customer experience management platform that helps businesses collect customer data and gain insights into the customer experience. It can track touchpoints along the customer journey so a business can engage with customers via various channels. It can also compile data to create customer profiles.

Businesses can build dashboards that give real-time analytics to agents and managers regarding customer actions and sentiments. Users can personalize employee reports to account for individual roles.

Features:

• Omnichannel support
• Workflow automation
• Real-time and historical reports
• Security
• Customer profiles

Pricing: Contact Medallia

12. Gainsight

Gainsight offers customer service software aimed at managing customer interactions and retention. Its real-time customer insights allow businesses to track customer behavior and sentiment. The customer health scorecards consolidate numerous customer data points into a single score. This score can offer a quick view of a customer's potential churn risk.

Gainsight incorporates survey functionality to gather customer feedback directly. Finally, Gainsight provides several security features to safeguard information, like data encryption, access controls, and HIPAA compliance.

Features:

• Omnichannel support
• Workflow automation
• Real-time and historical reports
• Self-service
• Security
• Customer health scorecards

Pricing: Contact Gainsight for pricing. A free trial of the Product Experience plan is available.

Recommended reading: Learn how Gainsight integrates with Zendesk.

13. Adobe Experience Manager

Adobe Experience Manager is part of the Adobe Experience Cloud and focuses on customer experience solutions. It combines a content management system with digital asset management tools. Users can adapt their content based on behavior patterns and regional preferences.

Businesses can test the effectiveness of different content variations and leverage the insights for future iterations. Adobe Experience Manager provides detailed data, revealing which aspects of your content have the most significant impact.

Features:

• Omnichannel support
• Workflow automation
• Self-service
• Security
• Multi-site management
• User monitoring

Pricing: Contact Adobe for pricing. A 30-day free trial is available.

If you want to get the most out of your CX software and reap as many benefits as possible, look for these features.

AI

AI features are revolutionizing CX software by enabling CX teams to deliver faster service and more personalized experiences at scale. AI agents, also known as advanced chatbots, can converse with customers 24/7, deflecting simple and complex inquiries while learning to improve their responses over time. AI can also assist your human agents by providing insights into how to best resolve each customer issue.

However, only AI trained on billions of customer interactions can instantly determine how best to serve consumers. Be sure to consider how your AI solution is trained—otherwise, you may get stuck with a system that isn’t accurate or requires expensive developer resources to implement. Luckily, Zendesk AI is trained on the highest-quality CX dataset, so it knows exactly what your customers need from day one.

Omnichannel support

Omnichannel support means agents can serve customers across channels without losing the conversation thread. This approach allows customers to reach your team through their preferred method of communication. And if a conversation needs to move from one channel to another, agents can do it seamlessly.

Omnichannel CX solutions also enable CX teams to personalize customer interactions more easily. Traditional methods might require teams to access multiple platforms to get customer information. Software with omnichannel support consolidates all customer data and context in a single place.

Integrations

Part of what makes omnichannel support possible is the software’s ability to integrate with the other systems you use. Without an open and flexible CX solution, your employees may experience barriers to exceptional performance. CX software that supports many integrations reduces the chances of data silos forming within your company.

For example, global consumer goods company Thrasio uses Zendesk integrations to gather valuable customer data from other systems, like Amazon, to form elaborate customer profiles. With insights gathered from across the entire customer experience, agents can provide relevant recommendations and tailored offers, increasing upselling and cross-selling opportunities.

Real-time and historical reports

Tracking real-time and historical reports can give your business a holistic understanding of department performance and customer behavior. Real-time data highlights immediate issues like customers at risk of churn or long wait times, allowing for swift fixes. Historical reports provide context, revealing trends and patterns that help teams identify areas for long-term improvement, such as optimizing staffing levels based on customer traffic patterns.

For example, the Element Electronics CX team uses Zendesk to manage its support operations and categorize customer conversations based on the reason a customer contacted customer service. Our software then creates targeted reports to identify pressing issues. Engineering teams use this information to improve products and enhance the overall CX.

Workflow automation

Workflow automation can significantly enhance the customer experience by streamlining repetitive tasks and expediting resolutions. For instance, intelligent routing ensures support tickets reach the most qualified agent based on language and what the customer is thinking or feeling. Meanwhile, automated triggers can send order confirmations, shipping updates, and even personalized post-purchase recommendations.

Most companies today already recognize the value of investing in the customer experience and understand how it improves other areas of their operations. Here are five common benefits you stand to gain by using CXM software:

• Improve agent efficiency and engagement: The right CX software includes tools like AI, an omnichannel agent workspace, workforce management, and more to increase agent productivity. For example, when you can deflect mundane tasks to AI agents, your human agents can focus on more engaging work, which boosts morale.
• Provide fast and personalized support: Omnichannel capabilities further enable agents to handle customer inquiries more quickly and accurately, pulling customer context into each interaction to provide a personalized experience. For example, when RapidG switched to Zendesk, the benefits of a unified agent workspace allowed the team to reduce its response time by 90 percent and its call-waiting time by 14 percent.
• Remove data silos: Integrating data (such as customer interactions, purchase history, and preferences) from various sources into a unified database helps to create a complete picture of the customer.
• Identify pain points and improve your business: CX software gathers and analyzes data from different touchpoints along the customer journey, including interactions, transactions, and feedback channels. By leveraging advanced analytics and real-time data, businesses can identify areas where customers face challenges, frustrations, or dissatisfaction.
• Increase revenue: By understanding customer preferences, behavior, and history, businesses can proactively address customer needs and concerns—enhancing customer retention and long-term value. The efficiency gains provided by CX software can also reduce operational costs, keeping teams smaller without compromising effectiveness.

With so many options, choosing the right customer experience software for your business can feel overwhelming. Consider these factors when shopping for your solution to maximize the potential of your customer experience strategy.

• Prioritize security: Safeguard sensitive customer data from breaches and ensure a trustworthy environment for positive customer interactions by choosing a tool that provides single sign-on, advanced encryption, and data redaction, among other security standards.
• Ensure it’s scalable: Your software should be able to adapt to growing customers, teams, and organizational needs. This results in a consistently smooth experience, preventing growing pains and maintaining a positive customer journey.
• Make sure it’s easy to use and sets up fast: Maximize the time to value for you and your customers by adopting software that doesn’t require months of development and training before it’s usable.
• Look for a proven return on investment and a low total cost of ownership (TCO): A company with third-party studies and published customer stories helps verify that its product can live up to its claims. Additionally, a low TCO minimizes ongoing expenses like maintenance, amplifying the software's cost-effectiveness.
• Seek out CX expertise with a quality support team: Selecting a software provider specializing in CX can help you understand the intricacies of crafting an effective CX strategy and provide tools best suited to those ends. High-quality support ensures you have access to knowledgeable assistance whenever you encounter challenges.

The best CX software goes beyond simply offering the most features or the lowest licensing costs; it provides long-term value by equipping you with the tools needed to deliver consistently exceptional experiences at scale.