Customer Engagement Automation: Top 5 Tools & Benefits

Meeting customer expectations for fast, personalized interactions is more challenging than ever, with 80% of customers placing as much importance on experience as the product itself.¹

Customer engagement automation helps address this challenge by allowing businesses to deliver timely and personalized interactions through tools like chatbots, automated messaging, and AI-driven insights.

Explore what customer engagement automation is, the tools you’d need to implement it, and the benefits you can gain from using customer engagement tools.

What is customer engagement automation?

Customer engagement automation leverages AI and automation tools to deliver personalized, timely, and consistent experiences throughout the customer journey.

Customer engagement automation involves:

• Automating communications: Using AI-powered chatbots, or intelligent virtual assistants, companies can instantly answer inquiries, send targeted marketing messages via customer segmentation, and provide personalized recommendations
• Data management and analysis: Using data collection tools, companies can collect, manage, and analyze their customer data to better understand their needs, shopping habits, and purchasing behavior
• Omnichannel engagement: By storing all data in a central database or CRM, and feeding it into chatbots on multiple channels – websites, mobile apps, social media, and physical stores – companies can provide a consistent user engagement

What are the different types of customer engagement tools?

Companies can automate their customer engagement either by using a series of individual tools from different vendors or with an all-in-one customer engagement solution.

The decision of which to use depends on various factors, including your business’ size, needs, resources, and strategic goals. You should also consider the following factors:

• With individual tools, you have the flexibility to choose, pick, and spend money on what you need, but could have difficulty integrating them all together.
• With comprehensive customer engagement solutions, you’ll work within an integrated ecosystem, but could be be locked in it and end up paying for unneeded features.

Individual customer engagement automation tools

The individual tools that can help you automate specific aspects of customer engagement include:

Chatbots

Chatbots become essential for handling customer inquiries on multiple channels, providing immediate responses, and engaging in customer conversations consistently.

Chatbots can help:

• Reduce response times and operational costs.
• Free up human agents for more complex issues.
• Ensure 24/7 availability for customer support.

Real-life example:

Salesforce’s AI-powered customer service chatbots, known as Einstein Bots, are designed to enhance customer support by automating routine tasks and providing personalized, intelligent service.

Integrated directly into Salesforce’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, Einstein Bots help businesses to deliver consistent support across multiple channels such as in-app messaging, web chat, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Apple Messages for Business, Slack, and through the Einstein Bots API.

Einstein Bots provide tools to measure and track performance. Users can build reports and visualizations to fine-tune bot interactions and continuously improve performance.²

Email marketing tools

Email marketing tools allow automating the process of sending targeted emails to customers, from welcome messages and promotional offers to personalized recommendations. Here’s how email marketing can help:

• Increase open and click-through rates with targeted messaging.
• Save time and effort with pre-scheduled campaigns.
• Provide insights into customer behavior and campaign performance.

Real-life example:

Mailchimp collaborated with Ink & Dagger Tattoo Shop & Tattoo Smart to manage marketing for two distinct audiences: local clients and a global market of tattoo artists. The company utilized Mailchimp’s automation, personalization, and analytics tools, along with features like Timewarp, to schedule emails for optimal delivery times in recipients’ time zones to increase engagement.

Mailchimp created a six-email automated welcome series targeting new customers, first purchases, and abandoned carts. These efforts improved engagement, showcased product benefits, and supported the growth of both brands.

Social media tools

Social media tools can help save time by automating repetitive tasks,
maintain a consistent brand image on social platforms, and
provide actionable insights into audience preferences and behaviors.

Real-life example:

Croda, a company in life sciences and consumer care, partnered with Hootsuite to enhance its digital marketing strategy and amplify its sustainability message.

By integrating Hootsuite’s platform, Croda centralized its social media activities, enabled effective communication across LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Here are the results of the collaboration:

• Over 5,000 web conversions generated through employee advocacy leveraging Hootsuite Amplify.
• A 50% growth in website conversions attributed to social media efforts between Q2 2022 and Q2 2023.³

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems helps automating collecting, managing, and analyzing customer data to help businesses understand customer behavior and preferences. These tools can also anticipate customer needs and engage with them proactively.

Real-life example:

Urban Element, a digital marketing agency, improved project management and communication by adopting Zoho One with Zoho CRM and Zoho PageSense. The integration supported operations by providing customized task views, better insights into customer interactions, personalized engagement.

Zoho PageSense provides insights into customer behavior on web pages and allowed Urban Element to create personalized messages tailored to user activity. This process supported customer engagement and ultimately improved ROI.

To enhance collaboration, the agency also used Zoho Cliq for dedicated communication channels and Zoho Campaigns for automated email campaigns that reduced email bounce rates.⁴

Comprehensive platforms for customer engagement automation

Customer engagement software

A customer engagement platform offers all the tools for engagement automation in the customer journey. These customer service tools can automate customer interactions (via email, social media, chatbots, etc.), track customer behavior and analyze data.

Real-life example:

HubSpot’s Customer Platform is designed to integrate marketing, sales, and customer service operations using AI and centralized data. It aims to manage business processes and improve customer engagement.

One core component is the Smart CRM, which consolidates customer data and utilizes AI to provide a comprehensive view of interactions. This centralized data helps businesses analyze customer behavior and make informed decisions.

The platform also includes an ecosystem of tools and resources, such as an app marketplace, educational materials, and a community network. These components allow businesses to customize their workflows, expand functionality, and enhance collaboration across teams.⁵

What are the benefits of customer engagement automation?

By automating customer interactions and managing customer data, businesses can deliver personalized experiences across the entire customer journey. Below are the key advantages of implementing customer engagement automation:

Improved efficiency

Automation helps eliminate repetitive tasks like drafting messages, managing data, and tracking interactions. Customer engagement automation tools free up time and resources, allowing employees to focus on strategic goals such as data analysis or campaign refinement.

Enhanced customer experience

Automating customer engagement enables fast and consistent interactions across multiple channels, including email, social media, mobile apps, and in-app messaging. With 24/7 availability and a unified customer profile, businesses can address customer demands promptly therefore increasing customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention.

Automated platforms can also incorporate self-service support to allow users to resolve issues independently.

Personalization

Predictive analytics and marketing platforms enable businesses to analyze customer data, identify patterns, and segment audiences.

This facilitates tailored communication and campaigns, therefore strengthening customer relationships and loyalty in ways that manual efforts cannot match.

Reduced costs

Automating customer engagement minimizes the need for extensive human intervention in repetitive tasks which would result in significant cost savings.

Businesses can invest in customer engagement tools and platforms or email marketing automation solutions, to optimize marketing efforts while reducing labor costs.

Improved sales and revenue

Automation allows better customer interactions, personalized experiences, and timely engagement across the entire customer lifecycle. These factors can contribute to improved customer retention, higher conversion rates, and better campaign performance.

Insights gathered from tracking user interactions and customer feedback can also reveal opportunities for upgraded products, ultimately boosting sales and revenue.

External Links

• 1. https://www.salesforce.com/service/digital-customer-engagement-platform/what-is-customer-engagement/
• 2. https://www.salesforce.com/eu/service/customer-service-chatbot/
• 3. https://www.hootsuite.com/resources/croda
• 4. https://www.zoho.com/crm/customers/urban-element.html
• 5. https://www.hubspot.com/products/customer-platform