What’s the difference between SaaS people and a 10-year-old on TikTok?
The kid knows how to get user engagement.
Sorry folks, but that’s the ugly truth: we don’t know how to engage with our users/customers, and it shows.
54% of customers say that companies need fundamental changes to how they engage with customers. That means one out of two of your customers don’t really like the way you engage with them.
It’s time we gave them what they wanted. Change.
And it’s going to get some good tools to support your transformation. So today, let’s talk about the six infinity stones on the customer engagement gauntlet that’ll bring balance to the SaaS world.
Let me introduce you to the six infinity stones of user engagement:
1- User/customer onboarding,
2- User/customer feedback,
3- In-app user communication,
4- Emailing,
5- Analytics, and to bring them all together,
6- Customer relationship management (CRM)
Once these six are together, it takes one snap to bring balance to your company’s customer satisfaction. How does that really work out, though?
Let’s take a closer look at each category.
User engagement tool categories
1- User/customer onboarding
A good customer journey equals customer loyalty.
All customer interactions from the moment they find out about your company to when they upgrade or even churn, it’s all customer journey.
And the best way to start it is a well-planned user/customer onboarding flow.
Not so coincidentally, good onboarding is also one of the most significant milestones in customer engagement. That’s precisely why there are super cool user/customer onboarding tools out there.
Take a look at our selection of user onboarding tools here, or scroll down for the top choice we picked for the gauntlet.
2- User/customer feedback
Good customer service is everything.
Especially in SaaS, if your customer service is bad, your business is as good as dead (that’s 82% of customers speaking)
And for efficient customer service, what one needs is simple: actionable insights.
I’m talking about customer feedback, of course. Sometimes, it might not be very pleasant on the customer side, but it is also a way of showing that we care.
And in SaaS, that’s something you can’t put a price on.
Here’s our list of 11 free & paid survey tools, but our top pick is down below.
3- In-app messaging
How often have you been annoyed by the in-app message or the live chat that keeps making a popping noise as a website visitor?
And how many times did you get lost and hope there was one of those on that one website?
Annoying or not, in-app communication and especially real-time support are the game changers of the decade. And the last thing you want to do is fall behind the competition in the race for the best customer engagement solutions.
Here’s our guide to in-app messaging and our list of live-chat tools. Wanna guess which one we put on the gauntlet?
4- Email marketing
The good ol’ emails are alive and well, and they aren’t going anywhere any time soon.
That’s right. We all thought in-app messages would replace emails for good at one point but guess what? We still need to reach out to people who are NOT on the website yet.
And obviously, there are more stable ways than social media.
Be it outreach, marketing, or announcements; emails can still work wonders. I shouldn’t be the one to try and prove it to you when I know you checked your emails not so long ago.
5- Analytics
After putting all that effort into creating the perfect customer base and the best customer experience ever, you won’t just sit and relax.
It’s on to analytics.
From customer behavior to website visits and even bounce rates, it is possible to take a good look at your customer experience and how well you are doing at customer engagement using a good analytics tool.
And to start doing that, checking our marketing analytics tools article could help. Stay for my favorite pick, though.
6- Customer relationship management (CRM)
Wanna bring all your customer engagement strategies together? Or maybe you want to have all of them in one place?
A CRM is what you need.
CRM tools are the headquarters of all customer engagement software. It is where all the work happens, your sales team and marketing team alike.
And that’s the best thing about a CRM tool: it ties it all up.
So if you want it all connected, you might wanna see our top CRM tools article.
Now let’s get to our favorite customer engagement software that just might transform your customer interactions.
The ONLY 6 customer engagement tools you need
Now that we all know each stone that makes a gauntlet of customer engagement, it is time to reveal each tool that is the best in its field.
Let’s get into it.
1- UserGuiding – improve engagement for user onboarding and beyond
No-code tool for an extensive customer journey with interactive content and a top-notch user experience? You are in the right place.
UserGuiding is a third-party user onboarding tool that offers not classic user onboarding features like:
- Interactive product tours,
- Onboarding checklists,
- Hotspots,
- Tooltips,
- In-app messages,
But also other cool user engagement-focused features like:
- Resource centers,
- NPS scoring,
- User segmentation & targetting,
- Customer feedback gathering
Why UserGuiding?
Beyond all its features, UserGuiding’s selling point is its ease of use. It’s no-code, after all.
Because UserGuiding requires no technical information during setup and use, it can be used by any team or employee. Here’s to saving your developers’ precious time for what matters most, your product itself.
“But there are other no-code tools for that, right?”
Right. If you want to pay a fortune for the most basic features and a mediocre user interface.
Good onboarding shouldn’t be a luxury. And UserGuiding’s ready to give that to you for the best price in the market.
👉 Give the free trial a try 👈
2- SurveyMonkey – check what’s on your customers’ minds with advanced surveys
SurveyMonkey is easily one of the most popular survey&feedback tools out there, with over 40 million users. But among its competitors, it’s also the best.
How come?
You don’t wanna judge this tool by its free tier (yes, it is not the most comprehensive one). If you have the budget to buy a paid plan, you’ll see how it makes a difference.
Depending on the plan you opt for, Survey
Monkey has some cool features like:
- Survey builder
- Templates & question types
- Multilingual surveys,
- Reporting & Analytics
- Keyword search
- Kiosk mode
- Mobile app
And many other unique features.
Why SurveyMonkey?
From an uninformed point of view, SurveyMonkey is just an expensive survey tool that you’d throw aside for a free survey in Google Forms. But the thing is, your point of view makes the whole difference.
You can either use a free tool to take customer feedback and eventually regret it since it barely helps with limited templates, question types, and clunky interface, or you can use a paid feedback option to get your users to give insightful feedback thanks to special templates and use cases as well as the analytics option SurveyMonkey provides.
Your call.
3- Intercom – talk to your customers live for effective support
Having been one of the leaders in its field, Intercom is your infinity stone for effective in-app support.
Now in-app customer messaging might seem annoying to some of us at first, but as I pointed out above, it is vital for SaaS businesses hoping to be the leaders of their industry this decade.
And you just might want to make a pit stop at Intercom on the race to SaaS leadership.
Among the many things you can do with Intercom customer messaging are:
- Real-time live chat
- Chatbots
- Self-serve options
- Chat segmentation
- Outbound messages
- Integrations with 300+ apps
If these feats weren’t enough, let me tell you the real deal.
Why Intercom?
Apart from being a great in-app messaging option, Intercom comes with a full-package experience.
You can use Intercom even for your email marketing or knowledge base, while other in-app messaging options on the market can barely focus on live chat.
You can even use Intercom chat to link to your knowledge base. Of course, you can always take a look at how UserGuiding does the exact same thing with a resource center 😎
Intercom is directed at companies on the mid-sized to enterprise part of the spectrum.
But if you want an in-app messaging tool that can also serve as your emailing solution and an omnichannel support hub, it may be the one for you.
4- Mailchimp – follow each email with ease
Another popular tool on our list that might come off as overrated is Mailchimp. But in reality, it is underrated.
Because Mailchimp is so much more than an email marketing tool thanks to its features like:
- Audience dashboard
- Segmentation & personalization
- Prebuilt automations
- Send time optimization
- Content studio & campaign templates
- Analytics
- Mobile app
Why Mailchimp?
The real question is, why NOT Mailchimp?
Most seasoned emailing tools out there like HubSpot or Sendinblue are focusing on different fields while Mailchimp stays a true jack-of-all-trades.
Now, it is true that there are some great new tools. But they still need some time to get into shape.
Meanwhile, Mailchimp is at your service – as a complete marketing CRM with a mobile app and seriously reasonable prices. Years of experience and a happy customer base are only seasoning on the main course.
5- Google Analytics – know your numbers for better website performance
There are analytics tools coming out every day, each for a different use case: user behavior, A/B testing, heatmapping, content marketing, and so on.
It’s almost as if you need something for every little thing.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s great that we have so many specified tools now. But hey, what if we needed one infinity stone to rule them all (double reference 😎)? Now that’s where Google Analytics comes into the picture.
This go-to analytics tool with an awesome freemium can do:
- Proactive insights
- User & conversion modeling
- Reports on behavior, conversion, acquisition, and more
- Segmentation & funnel analysis
- Google integrations and more
Why Google Analytics?
It is true that Google Analytics doesn’t have the most user-friendly interface, and it can be a little hard to operate at times.
But it all boils down to one simple question.
What tool can offer the most accurate data on a website people use Google to access?
Google Analytics.
And let’s be fair, Google analytics is easily the most comprehensive analytics tool on the market right now and integrating it with all the other Google apps is a breeze.
Convenience over complexity any day.
6- Zoho CRM – command your customer engagement experience
Well, customer engagement is not all about your website and how you market your product. All that effort goes into one decisive action: the sale.
And the best way you can optimize sales while keeping your marketing and customer support teams within the loop is to use a good CRM tool. My personal pick for you is Zoho CRM.
Omnichannel management of leads, processes, and performance is possible thanks to features like:
- Journey orchestration
- Analytics
- Marketing automation
- Predictive sales
- Team collaboration
- Customization
- Canvas design studio
- Mobile apps
Why Zoho CRM?
Just like in all the other categories above, the other tools are great too.
In fact, they are so good I had a hard time picking Zoho. But one highlight about Zoho CRM is how customizable it is and how each feature is designed to be in-depth.
While other CRM tools are trying to be comprehensive, aiming at small businesses, Zoho optimizes each feature one by one, making them better than they were just a while ago. And at the end, it becomes the actually comprehensive one, ready to steal the small businesses as they grow out of the other tools.
You go, Zoho!
Conclusion
Let’s be real folks, none of us have a gauntlet for our cool infinity stones. Heck, we don’t even have all the stones yet. Or maybe we have too many tiny stones that we don’t know how to make work.
But don’t forget one thing, customer engagement cannot be defined as a one-fits-all recipe.
My gauntlet may have six stones; yours can have just one (or 12). Once you figure out what brings balance to your industry, you should be good to go with your own custom gauntlet.
And, snap!
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a customer engagement tool?
A customer engagement tool is a platform or software that is dedicated to helping companies engage with their customers the right way. A customer engagement tool can be an onboarding tool, an email marketing tool, or a CRM tool; what matters is that it is used to engage with users/customers.
What are the employee engagement tools?
Employee engagement tools are software used to engage with employees and help them easily collaborate, give feedback, and communicate.
What are online engagement tools?
Online engagement tools or customer engagement tools are tools used to engage with customers online.
What is CRM customer engagement?
CRM, or customer relationship management, is a way of managing contacts and leads. CRM tools let marketing, sales, and support teams work together to achieve customer engagement.
