Satisfied customers are the key to any successful business. If you’re seeing high churn, low customer satisfaction, or dwindling customer engagement, chances are there’s a disconnect between their expectations and what your brand is delivering.
A lot goes into managing customer interactions. From the marketing campaigns that first catch their attention to supporting tickets that resolve their issues, you have several opportunities to make a great impression. Managing every customer touchpoint manually can be time-consuming. But with the help of a customer experience platform, you can deliver on your promises and create loyal customers in a manageable way.
Learn what a customer experience platform is and how it improves the entire customer journey. Plus, learn how to choose a mix of customer experience software to fit your goals, your team, and, most importantly, your customers.
What is a customer experience platform?
A customer experience (CX) platform is software that helps you track, analyze, and manage every interaction you have with customers.
Managing your customer experience often requires mixing, matching, and integrating several customer experience tools to build a holistic ecosystem covering your entire customer journey.
You might choose a platform to help you manage earlier parts of your customer experience, like developing a strategy for your marketing campaigns. Then you use another platform to analyze and streamline the experience further down the sales funnel, like the checkout experience.
Finding customer experience platforms that work for your business can help you make continuous improvements. These platforms can help you organize customer communications, uncover actionable insights, and create seamless customer experiences that reduce friction on the path to purchase.
Types of customer experience platforms
- Customer feedback platforms
- Customer data platforms (CDPs)
- Customer relationship management (CRM) systems
- Contact center platforms
- Digital experience platforms (DXPs)
- Customer success management (CSM) systems
When you’re looking to improve customer experience, knowing your tools can make all the difference. Not every platform does the same job—some help you connect, others help you listen, and a few help you predict what works best based on customer behavior.
Here are the most common types of customer experience management platforms and what they do.
Customer feedback platforms
The first step to creating a better customer experience is hearing straight from your customers. Customer feedback platforms help you gather feedback, analyze sentiment, and act on insights via tools like surveys, reviews, and questionnaires. Answers can surface customer pain points, such as confusing product category pages. They can help you make informed decisions, like updating your messaging to resonate more. The ultimate goal is to improve customer satisfaction and deliver great customer service.
Example: Hotjar
Hotjar offers tools to gather customer feedback, including surveys, feedback buttons, and one-on-one customer conversations. It also offers user testing to check your website user experience (UX) is working as intended.
Customer data platforms (CDPs)
Customer data platforms (CDPs) automatically collect and consolidate relevant data from key customer touchpoints like websites, apps, email campaigns, and support channels to build a complete view of customer behavior. This information can help you segment customers, create customer profiles, and build an experience catering to their needs.
Example: Shopify Segmentation
Shopify can help you gather data to segment your audience, improve marketing campaigns, and personalize the shopping experience. It also automatically updates segments as more customer information comes in, so you can keep up with purchasing patterns that impact your customer experience.
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems
CRM systems track and manage customer communications, purchases, service history, and outreach. They help you centralize where you store all your data on customers, streamline communications, and add personalization to your customer touchpoints.
Example: Salesforce
Salesforce offers CRM capabilities that can provide insights on everything from sales performance to managing marketing campaigns.
Contact center platforms
Contact center platforms can help streamline conversations with customers through chat, phone, SMS, or email. They can also build out knowledge bases to expedite customer support, like FAQs or how-to videos answering common customer inquiries. A contact center platform can help your team handle high-volume phone calls, whether that’s outgoing sales calls or incoming calls for your support team.
Example: Talkdesk
Talkdesk uses AI to support self-service tools like FAQs, chats with customers, and call center integration (if your business has one).
Digital experience platforms (DXPs)
Digital experience platforms (DXP) can help you optimize the content across your website and social media for a great customer experience. Like a content management system (CMS), it manages content across various touchpoints, but also analyses data. For example, a DXP can help you change an image on your website and also track to see if it leads to more sales.
A DXP can help ensure you’re delivering a consistent experience across various channels. For example, a customer browsing a product on your website might receive a personalized email with a reminder about the product.
Example: Adobe Experience Manager
Part of the Adobe Experience Platform, Adobe Experience Manager blends content management with analytics, personalization, and campaign creation.
Customer success management (CSM) systems
A customer success management system (CSM) can help you gather key metrics to improve your customer experience. This includes which features your customers use most, how often they engage with your product, and how satisfied they are based on feedback or support interactions.
Example: Zendesk
Zendesk includes features to help track customer health, monitor onboarding progress, and manage success milestones. By combining support interactions with behavioral data, Zendesk can reveal at-risk accounts, automate proactive check-ins, and build more long-lasting customer relationships.
How to choose the right customer experience platform suite
- Determine your CX goals
- Look ahead to scale
- Prioritize security
- Plan for integrations
- Make sure it’s intuitive
While there’s no one-size-fits-all customer experience management software, it doesn’t take a ton of software to accomplish your goals and meet customer expectations. Here are some questions that can help you determine what combination of tools works for you:
1. Determine your CX goals
Understanding what you want to achieve helps narrow your search. Want to increase customer satisfaction levels? Prioritize platforms with analytics and customer insights on sentiment. Need feedback fast? Look for easy-to-launch survey tools.
You’ll want quick, easy visibility into where things are working and where they’re not. The right CX platforms will highlight metrics like cart abandonment, resolution times, and survey feedback. These real-time insights help you optimize touchpoints and spot drop-offs before they become churn.
2. Look ahead to scale
Your CX platform should grow with you. If you double your customer base or launch new digital channels, the platform should adapt. Look for flexible plans, with pricing and features that can grow as your business grows. For example, a platform that can scale from sending 500 emails a month to 10,000.
Automation can also help you save time. Look for tools that can send onboarding emails, triggering abandoned cart messages, routing tickets, and organizing customer data. Automation can ensure timely responses and reduce errors, like duplicate outreach or missed follow-ups.
3. Prioritize security
Today’s customers expect brands to know them. Platforms with personalization capabilities, often driven by AI, let you tailor content, emails, and offers based on preferences, behaviors, or purchase history. For example, showing vegan options to a plant-based shopper creates a personalized customer experience.
By the same token, great customer experiences also protect customer data. Look for platforms with strong security features like encryption and role-based access controls.
Consider platforms with compliance certifications such as:
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SOC 2: US data handling standards
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GDPR: required for serving EU customers
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CCPA: California consumer privacy law
These frameworks help ensure customer information is handled responsibly to build trust while keeping your business protected.
4. Plan for integrations
Most CX platforms can be optimized when connected to the rest of your marketing tools. Combining the power of all your marketing tools can help you see the full picture of your customer experience. Integrations connect platforms like your CRM, marketing automation software, ecommerce store, and support desk to create a unified view of the customer journey.
Your CX platform should work seamlessly with the tools you already use, so you’re not stuck jumping between systems or manually moving data. For example, if you’re using a CX platform, you can integrate it with Shopify to sync ecommerce data like purchase history and abandoned carts. This allows you to trigger personalized follow-up emails, segment customers based on buying behavior, and give support teams instant context—all from one central hub.
5. Make sure it’s intuitive
You shouldn’t need a developer to update your CX workflows. Look for platforms with a user-friendly interface, drag-and-drop tools, prebuilt templates, and solid documentation of customer data. This allows teams to make changes quickly and stay agile. A good platform should offer clear dashboards and visual reporting tools to let you quickly spot customer insights or issues.
Customer experience platform FAQ
What is a CXM platform?
A customer experience management (CXM) platform is software that helps businesses track, analyze, and improve every interaction across the customer journey. By unifying customer data and feedback, a CXM platform enables brands to deliver personalized, seamless, and satisfying customer experiences across digital and physical channels.
What is CX vs. CRM?
Customer experience (CX) focuses on the entire customer journey—how customers feel about every interaction with your brand. Customer relationship management (CRM) is about managing customer data and interactions to support sales and marketing. A CX platform aims to improve satisfaction and loyalty across all touchpoints, while a CRM system helps organize contact details, communication history, and lead tracking.
Is Salesforce a customer experience platform?
Yes, Salesforce is considered a customer experience platform because it offers tools for CRM, customer service, marketing automation, and personalized customer journeys. It also has real-time data analytics, automation, and customer feedback tools.
