You’re at a restaurant where each server interacts with customers differently. One shouts orders across the room, another takes them tableside, and another does everything on a mobile app. Line cooks must constantly switch between communication channels to ensure that the dishes leaving the kitchen meet diners’ expectations.
Confusing and inefficient, right?
This chaotic system is what it feels like when businesses don’t use a customer engagement platform (CEP). Fragmented communication channels silo customer data and create inconsistent customer experiences (CX) that tank satisfaction scores.
So, let’s explore the features and benefits of bundling your customer communication into a single platform designed for engagement.
What Is a Customer Engagement Platform?
A customer engagement platform is a unified software solution that empowers businesses to enable, manage, personalize, and track customer interactions across communication channels.
This comprehensive tool acts like a command center for support, sales, and marketing teams. It integrates the capabilities of a customer relationship management (CRM) platform, help desk, contact center, and more to meet customer expectations.
Customer engagement software unifies customer interactions across touchpoints, providing seamless, personalized customer experiences that foster loyalty, streamline support, and drive business growth.
Today, consumers want to talk to brands on their channel of choice and at a time that suits them. Providing consistently engaging customer experiences across channels and touchpoints is the foundation of a unified customer experience.
Email marketing boasts a staggering 4,200% ROI — and when a company personalizes emails, this can increase open rates by 26% and revenue by up to 760%, according to Campaign Monitor:
CEPs equip your team to craft targeted, personalized email campaigns based on preferences in your CRM tools and customer behaviors across channels.
For example, a customer follows your e-commerce brand on social media. Using a CEP, you can email a promo code when an item they’ve “liked” goes on sale. In this way, you maximize engagement and drive conversions in one go.
Social media
Customers are on social media (a lot), and 90% of users follow at least one brand. A CEP facilitates social media listening, letting you engage directly with customers on their chosen platforms and provide real-time support from the same dashboard.
These perks help your team build an active, engaged community, foster brand loyalty, and breed brand advocacy.
SMS and messaging apps
In 2024, 79% of consumers opted to receive texts from businesses — an 11% surge from 2023. With 81% of consumers checking their SMS notifications within five minutes of receiving a text, this channel boasts the highest open rates.
A CEP allows your team to leverage SMS and messaging apps (WhatsApp, Twilio, etc.) for direct, immediate customer communications: think urgent updates, appointment reminders, delivery notifications, password reset requests, and more. Plus, you can manage and automate these conversations in one central location in the cloud.
Web chat and chatbots
Real-time assistance is mandatory for customer satisfaction, yet most brands can’t hire reps for 24/7 support. That’s why AI is estimated to drive 95% of customer interactions by 2025, per stats compiled by Gitnux.
These tools offer real-time customer support on your website, answering FAQs, directing customers to your self-service knowledge base, or deflecting simple inquiries to free up your human agents for complex issues.
Mobile apps
Mobile apps are a cornerstone of customer engagement. A CEP that integrates with yours can amplify the ROI of push notifications for personalized promotions, in-app messaging for targeted support, loyalty programs to drive customer engagement, and more.
Key Capabilities of a CEP
The best CEPs offer a comprehensive suite of functionalities and integrations. These equip your team to deliver exceptional customer experiences that elevate your entire customer engagement strategy.
Omnichannel support
In a multichannel ecosystem, your brand engages with customers and provides support through multiple channels (phone, email, social media, etc.). However, these channels operate independently, leaving your teams in the dark about what transpires in each silo.
Omnichannel customer service and support unify and integrate the customer journey so that every interaction, regardless of the chosen device or communication channel, feels like a seamless continuation of the previous one.
This means a support agent can access a customer’s help tickets, transcripts from prior phone calls, social media messages, purchase history, and more. They never have to ask customers to start over or repeat information.
This holistic data informs more empathic, engaging conversations and drives faster resolutions. More meaningful, personal customer interactions are gold for your business, considering that:
- Nearly 60% of consumers have higher customer expectations for service and support than they had a year ago.
- Almost two-thirds think the most important thing a company can do to provide a good customer experience is value their time.
- And 76% will stop doing business with a company if they have just one bad experience.
Customer data platform
Data is king. In unified customer experience management, the more first-party data your business collects from your CRM software and other channels, the more relevant and personalized your customer engagement strategies.
CEPs integrate customer data platforms to provide a centralized data source. Everything from your customers’ demographics and purchases to their website behaviors and chatbot transcripts creates a holistic customer profile.
This 360-degree view empowers your team to understand your customers on a deeper level, personalize customer communications, anticipate customer needs, target marketing campaigns more effectively, build lasting customer loyalty, and more.
Personalization
McKinsey research reveals that 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen:
That’s why Segment reports that 69% of businesses are increasing their personalization spending in 2024:
Leveraging a CEP gives your team a unified customer view to better understand each customer as an individual. You can send personalized push notifications for new product recommendations, discount codes via SMS on their birthday, etc.
Personal touches that land at the perfect time in the customer journey actually work:
- 49% of buyers have made impulse purchases after receiving a personalized experience.
- 76% of consumers say personalization makes them more likely to purchase and 78% say it makes them more likely to repurchase.
- 68% of companies say their personalization efforts have exceeded targets.
Automation and AI
Over 90% of companies now use AI to unlock deeper customer insights and craft individualized experiences. Forget the next wave; it’s a tsunami!
Automation and AI are no longer buzzwords — they’re the driving force of modern businesses. These tools enable humans to get more done and play to their strengths.
- Productivity: Repetitive tasks bog down your team’s productivity. AI and automation tools can take tasks like sending welcome emails, appointment reminders, abandoned cart notifications, review requests, etc., off your team’s plate.
- Customer support: Chatbots and automated responses are a lifesaver for customer support teams:
- Handle basic requests, freeing up your reps to build rapport with customers and focus on solving complex issues
- Intelligently route customers to the best agent for their needs to fast-track resolutions
- Automate follow-ups with customers
- Customer engagement: Marketing automation can engage customers based on where they are in their journeys using data collection/interpretation, real-time predictions, and suggested actions.
These automations help you turn website visitors into email subscribers or send automatic surveys after customer interactions to gauge sentiments. Your team will see responses directly in the continuous conversation, know how the customer feels, and respond based on intelligent feedback.
Customer journey mapping
You can’t craft an exceptional customer experience without understanding the path your buyers take — from initial brand awareness to purchase and beyond. A CEP empowers your team to visualize and analyze customer interactions across all touchpoints in this journey.
This high-level overview and newfound clarity give your team the ability to:
- Pinpoint roadblocks: Identify areas for improvement and friction points that hinder progress in the customer lifecycle.
- Discover engagement opportunities: Uncover moments within the journey where you can proactively engage with customers to foster loyalty and advocacy.
- Craft targeted communication: Tailor your communication strategy to meet specific customer needs at every stage. Develop targeted messaging templates based on common product/service use cases, equipping your team to deliver exceptional service consistently across channels.
Analytics and reporting
CEPs provide access to real-time customer engagement metrics. You can monitor customer behaviors, campaign performance, resolution times, and your team’s overall effectiveness.
Use these insights to improve weaknesses, get ahead of issues, and optimize your engagement strategy to grow revenue and customer retention.
What Benefits Does a CEP Offer Companies?
A CEP supercharges your customer engagement strategy, driving the following measurable results.
Enhanced customer satisfaction
Customers crave a sense of connection — they want to feel seen, appreciated, and respected. So, imagine being able to anticipate customer needs before they even arise, resolve issues efficiently with real-time support, and nurture stronger relationships through personalized interactions.
These perks lead to significantly improved customer satisfaction scores. That’s the power of a CEP in action!
Nextiva’s CX plug-in also clues your team into the moods of prospects and customers. Real-time alerts from conversations help you predict which customers require immediate attention, fostering a proactive approach to customer happiness.
Improved customer retention
An effective customer engagement solution enhances customer loyalty and reduces churn. Continuous personalized interactions and prompt issue resolutions build stronger customer relationships.
That may be why companies with strong omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain an average of 89% of their customers, compared to 33% for those with weak omnichannel strategies. While this data point is 10 years old, we can only speculate it’s even higher today.
George Deglin from OneSignal says that increasing customer retention by just 5% can boost profits by up to 95%. All this translates to significantly lower customer acquisition costs for your business, increased customer lifetime value, and a higher, more predictable revenue stream.
Increased revenue
CEPs are money-printing machines.
First, they help your team provide targeted content and automate follow-ups to nurture leads and skyrocket conversion rates. Second, personalized product recommendations, relevant offers, and promotions drive repeat business and increase sales. Third, your loyal customer base becomes brand advocates, sharing positive reviews to expand your reach.
Stats show that companies with the strongest customer engagement strategies enjoy:
- 10% year-over-year growth
- 10% higher average order value
- 25% increase in conversions
- Up to 60% boost in revenue
Operational efficiency
A CEP consolidates customer data into a single platform, eliminating the need to manage multiple systems and reducing administrative burdens.
It’s the ideal addition to your unified communications as a service solution, blending internet-based phone and messaging into a full-featured communications and engagement platform.
With AI-powered automations and workflows, your agents save time and resources while upgrading their productivity. They provide a higher quality of service and focus more on high-value interactions.
Your business also scores unmatched, budget-friendly scalability. Chatbots handle surges in customer inquiries, acting as a virtual extension of your support team, so you don’t need to increase headcount during peak hours.
Data-driven decisions
The right customer engagement tools unlock valuable insights hidden across your communication channels. A CEP becomes a central hub for analyzing and translating this data into actionable strategies. This centralized approach allows you to measure the ROI of your customer interactions over time.
You can see:
- Which channels resonate most with your audience
- Emerging customer behavior patterns and preferences
- Which marketing campaigns drive conversions
- How customer support impacts customer satisfaction scores
These insights equip your team to optimize strategies that maximize engagement with minimal risk.
Streamline Customer Engagement Channels With Nextiva
Customers expect seamless, personalized interactions across every touchpoint. A disjointed approach with isolated communication channels leads to frustration and missed opportunities.
CEPs unlock the highest levels of customer engagement and loyalty. This single, user-friendly dashboard connects your communication channels and provides a holistic view of your customers throughout their lifecycle.
Its benefits are not to be overlooked: increased agent productivity and stronger customer relationships that result in more revenue.
Stop settling for a fragmented customer experience. Tap into the full potential of your customer interactions with Nextiva.
