A customer experience management software (commonly abbreviated as CEM, CXM, or CX software) typically performs a range of functions, including helping you collect and analyze customer feedback to deliver exceptional experiences at every stage of the customer lifecycle.
CEM platforms today have different approaches to customer experience management, including A/B testing, content management, in-page web analytics, and ticket management. While these approaches represent different software categories and may not be comparable feature-wise, they all share a common goal of improving customer experience and ultimately, a company’s bottom line. In this article, we'll explore each of these CEM software types as well as provide product examples for each category.
A/B Testing
Also known as split testing, A/B testing software solutions help businesses drive conversion rates through detailed insights into what users like and dislike. They do this by splitting traffic among two versions of a web page to determine which one is outperforming the other, usually on the basis of conversion key performance indicators (KPIs) such as the number of new demo requests, trial signups, downloads, purchases etc.
A/B testing solutions essentially help businesses pinpoint what’s working and what isn’t in their quest to increase revenue and keep operational costs under control. Through them, businesses can find out if a certain design element or feature is worth developing before allocating the budget and human resources to have it created.
Some of the more advanced A/B testing solutions can also help you run targeted tests by displaying different versions of a page to different user segments based on demographics, device type, behavior patterns, or referral source - allowing you to personalize user experience even further.
Examples of A/B testing CEM solutions include Oracle Maxymiser, Evergage, Qubit, and Dynamic Yield.
In-page Web Analytics
Often packed with features such as session recording, click tracking and mouse tracking, CEM platforms with a focus on in-page web analytics help businesses analyze and get to the root cause of online customer behavior to improve conversion and customer retention rates.
Seeing how users are interacting with your web pages provides you with all the insights you need to create personalized marketing campaigns, guide your product and UX/UI design teams in prioritizing certain feature developments and updates as well as quickly diagnose and fix any problems that can cause negative user experiences such as technical glitches, design defects etc.
Some of the best in-page web analytics tools will also identify and alert you of any suspicious or potentially fraudulent online activities.
Examples of in-page analytics CEM solutions with in-page web analytics functionality include Acoustic Experience Analytics (formally known as IBM Tealeaf) and ClickTale.
Content Management
The quality of outbound communication has a tremendous impact on customer experience. This is why quite a few vendors have approached customer experience management from a content management angle.
Content management systems (CMS) commonly offer robust features for content creation, editing and publishing, along with ready-to-use templates, responsive themes, built-in SEO tools, tiered permissions, multilingual support and more. Some of the best ones also come with powerful analytics tools that provide you with real-time insights into the kind of content your customers like across all channels so you can continue delivering consistent and personalized experiences.
CMS solutions also integrate with several communication channels as well as 3rd party business solutions such as those for customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and e-commerce.
Examples of CEM solutions with a content management approach include Adobe Experience Manager, Magnolia V5+, and MindTouch.
Help Desk/Self-service
Another way for businesses to improve customer experience is by improving their customer support operations, which is something help desk solutions are brilliant at. With omnichannel support, help desks function as a contact center for your organization by integrating with all of your communication channels, including email, phone, live chat, and social media to collect customer questions and issue reports then pool them into a shared inbox to optimize customer engagement and ensure that you do not miss a single customer interaction or follow up.
Help desks usually pack some self-service options for customers to get the answers they need quicker. These options usually include a knowledge base, which serves as a repository for helpful articles, documents, and FAQs, as well as artificial intelligence-powered chatbots that are available 24/7 to chat with customers and suggest content that’s relevant to their issue or question.
Help desk systems also allow you to collect and analyze customer feedback, as well as provide you with insights into your team’s performance against your predefined service level agreements so you can continue observing them.
Examples of CEM solutions with a help desk/ticketing functionality include Zendesk, Genesys, and Oracle Service Cloud.
Survey and Form Building
Survey and form building tools are quite versatile; businesses have long used them for different purposes including lead generation, customer feedback collection, market research, or simply as a means of contact that new visitors can use to get in touch.
Some of the best CEM solutions available today come with a robust survey and form building functionality that allows you to customize and automate the sending of different kinds of surveys including Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Effort Score (CES), and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys to get useful customer insights that you can act on.
The majority of survey and form building CEM solutions tools also come with powerful analytics dashboards and are capable of integrating with other business solutions such as those for customer relationship management (CRM), digital marketing, e-commerce and more for effortless synchronization of data.
Popular examples for this software category include Qualtrics, Satmetrix, and SurveyMonkey CX.
Final Thoughts
There are several CEM solutions available today that help businesses deliver exceptional experiences, drive revenue growth and decrease operational costs. If you are in the market for one, check out our detailed review of the best customer experience management solutions available in 2020, both web-based (SaaS) and on-premise to make the right decision.
