What is customer engagement software?

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a key component of modern businesses. As a contact center manager, your responsibility is to deliver authentic and efficient customer service across all channels. Today, consumers reach out to brands and businesses via social messaging (Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct Message), as well as traditional platforms such as phone and email.

To help streamline communications, companies are utilizing customer engagement software, improving both customer and workforce engagement. These systems are redefining the workplace, opening up opportunities for teams to work from anywhere in the world. Let's take a deeper look at what customer engagement software is and how it can empower your CRM.

Why is customer service engagement important?

Key performance indicators (KPIs) help businesses understand whether or not they're meeting their business goals. Considering that bad customer experiences cost businesses more than $75 billion a year, it's no wonder that customer engagement metrics are an important KPI.

What is customer software engagement?

The ability to integrate communication channels and collect customer engagement metrics is possible through customer engagement software. By tracking customer relationships, you're able to activate and reward repeat customers or understand the type of content you're sharing that resonates with your intended audience.

Previously, contact centers required physical hardware and a physical location to be able to handle customer interactions. Companies such as 8x8 have developed cloud contact center customer engagement software to assist with this process.

Because of the agility of these solutions, virtual private branch exchanges (PBX) can be accessed by team members from any device on which the software is installed. These systems allow not only for remote work but also for pre-screening customer requests. Instead of a message coming in and being sent to the wrong team member, requests arrive at a central location and can be sent to the appropriate department.

Improving the customer experience

By being able to easily disseminate requests and questions, you can help to alleviate poor customer experiences. Consumers expect easy and responsive communication channels with brands and businesses they support. While it's possible to manage each channel separately, it's difficult to work towards KPIs without omnichannel routing.

But customer engagement software isn't just for incoming customer communications for purchases, returns or complaints. Customer engagement software can manage interactions on social media, allowing you to automate certain tasks without sacrificing connection. In addition to pre-planning posts, these systems also allow you to automate certain elements of customer engagement. Through automated chatbots, for instance, you can quickly respond to customers with answers to commonly asked questions.

The amount of work required to complete a custom inquiry can vary, and the request may need to be forwarded to different departments or require multiple steps to complete. When all team members have access to these conversations, it can help to quickly resolve issues. However, without proper channels in place, it's easy to lose track of communication lines, resulting in delayed response times, incorrect orders and overall customer dissatisfaction.

At 8x8, we've created robust customer engagement software that allows you to engage with customers in an effective and impactful way. Our CRM software systems are cloud-based, allowing information to be easily accessed from anywhere there's a reliable internet connection. Contact our team of experts today to learn more about our lean yet powerful cloud contact center customer engagement systems.