Choosing a Customer Engagement Platform

Engaging with customers doesn’t start and end with a face-to-face interaction. Today, there are essentially unlimited opportunities to connect with your customers and build loyalty. To best manage those interactions, you’ll probably want to enlist the help of technology. Enter: customer engagement software. 

Keep reading to get our take on:

• What customer engagement software has to offer your small business
• The most prominent features you’ll find from different software providers
• A few questions you can ask yourself to guide your search
• Why you should consider Swell

What Is Customer Engagement Software for Small Business?

Every interaction a customer has with your business informs how they feel about your brand as a whole. 91% of respondents to a Salesforce survey said they were more likely to choose a business again after a great experience. Customer engagement software helps you create a better, streamlined experience for your customers across multiple channels of communication.

It’s a huge category with hundreds of companies vying to be selected as your tool of choice for interacting with customers. To make things even more complicated, it has blurry boundaries with a number of other categories, including customer experience software, conversational support software, reputation management software, and many more.

It can be a complex field of competitors to wade through — and that’s all the more true for a small business. At the end of the day, you’re hoping to choose tools that make your life easier while you’re providing excellent experiences for your customers.

Want to learn more about how to create great experiences that keep your customers coming back? Get the Free eBook: How Small Businesses Win the Customer Experience 

The Main Features of Customer Engagement Software

Multichannel communication is one of the most prominent features that customer engagement platforms offer. In a Hubspot survey, 44% of respondents said every company should offer multiple options for reaching customer service, from online chat, to email, social media, and phone calls. It’s worth investing in a single platform where you can manage multiple channels with ease.

Aside from communication tools like texting and webchat, some other common features include:

• Customer and sales data management
• Analytics about customer interactions and preferences
• Ticketing systems
• Customer self-service
• Social media management
• Reputation management tools like review sourcing

What to Look for When Evaluating a Customer Engagement Platform for Your Small Business

When you narrow down which features are most important to you, you’ll have no shortage of options to choose from. Even if adding a communication channel was what first sent you on your search, consider which other features could help you provide a better experience. Ask yourself:

• How do your customers like to communicate? 
• How many communication channels do you want to offer?
• Do you need a way to manage customer support tickets?
• What types of customer analytics are you hoping to measure?
• Do you need help building an online reputation that brings in new customers?

When you’ve created a list of your high-priority features and are ready to evaluate your options, you can continue your search on G2 or Capterra, where other software users leave reviews and you can see rankings, product videos, and feature lists.

Why You Should Consider Swell

Swell is a customer engagement platform built specifically for small businesses. It offers multichannel communication tools like webchat, texting, and a centralized inbox that syncs with social media. Every Swell customer gets unlimited message sends, contacts, and user seats, and all messaging is fully customizable.

Plus, we know how important reputation is for a small business, so we help you put your reviews on autopilot with automatic review request text messages. When you earn more reviews, you’ll be able to attract new prospects and grow your business.

‍Book a demo or check out this short video about messaging with Swell.