Top 5 Tools for Customer Engagement Automation in 2024

The importance of effective customer engagement continues to rise¹ (Figure 1).

So, as customers demand more immediate and personalized engagement, companies should increase their efforts to meet their expectations. Implementing a customer engagement automation strategy is a way for companies to better attract, retain, and engage with their customers.

This article will 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 (CEA) is using artificial intelligence (AI) and automation tools to provide the best customer engagement, and foster customer relationships, through personalizing the experiences, delivering timely responses, and providing consistent engagements across the entire 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 tools

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

1. Chatbots: For handling customer inquiries on multiple channels, providing immediate responses, and engaging in customer conversations consistently
2. Email marketing tools: For automating email sending to customers, ranging from welcome emails to promotional messages and personalized recommendations. Examples include Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and Salesloft.
3. Social media tools: For streamlining and automating social media-related tasks, like posting content, tracking customer engagement, and responding to comments and messages. Examples include Hootsuite, SEMrush, and Zoho Social.
4. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems: Automating the process of collecting, managing, and analyzing customer data to help businesses understand customer behavior and preferences, in addition to anticipating their needs and engaging with them proactively. Examples include SAS Customer Intelligence, Zoho CRM, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Creatio.

Comprehensive platforms

5. Customer engagement software: A customer engagement platform offers all the tools for engagement automation in the customer journey, from automating customer interactions (via email, social media, chatbots, etc.) to tracking customer behavior and analyzing data.

In addition to vendors like Salesforce and HubSpot Sales Hub, some of the CRM tools we mentioned –like Zoho and Microsoft Sales– also fall in this category.

What are the benefits of customer engagement automation?

Customer engagement automation offers the following benefits to businesses:

1. Improved efficiency: Engagement automation eliminates repetitive manual tasks, like drafting messages, data entry and collection, content creation posting, and more. This frees up employees’ time to focus on more strategic and complex issues.
2. Enhanced customer experience: Automating customer engagement, either with individual tools or customer engagement software, helps provide a fast and consistent customer interaction across various channels 24/7. The effect is increased customer satisfaction and higher retention and conversion rates.
3. Personalization at scale: Automation and predictive analytics tools can leverage customer data to learn about customer behavior and preferences and create personalized experiences at scale. This is an improbable task if taken up manually.
4. Reduced costs: By delegating mundane tasks to bot, businesses can reduce labor costs. In addition, enhanced efficiency and higher productivity can lead to cost savings in the long run.
5. Improved sales and revenue: By providing a superior customer experience, personalizing interactions, and being available 24/7, businesses can boost their sales and revenue. Additionally, the insights gained through CEA can help businesses identify up-selling and cross-selling opportunities.

For more on chatbots and marketing

To learn more about how chatbots can improve your marketing campaigns, read:

• Omnichannel Messaging: What It Is, Benefits, & Deploying Guide
• Chatbot Lead Generation: Top 8 Benefits
• Chatbot Marketing in 2023: Boost Customer Interaction & Sales

And if you want to invest in conversational AI technology, visit our data-driven list of chatbot platforms.

You can reach out to us with any questions you might have:

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Sources

• 1. “State of the Connected Customer.” Salesforce. 2022. Retrieved on August 3, 2023.