Compare customer experience management software tools for B2B teams. Learn what to consider to choose the best CX software for your operational needs.
Every customer interacts with your company differently, and their experiences can vary just as much. Select two customers at random, and one person’s favorite product feature might seem useless to the other. Customer experience management software offers a more efficient way to track sentiment and identify patterns. These platforms help you manage and understand the customer experience (CX) throughout the relationship.
Customer experience management (CXM) software is a broad category. Some platforms specialize in customer insights, while others focus on service and conversations. The right choice depends on which part of the experience you need to manage.
To kick off your search, compare five leading customer experience platforms. Find out how different platforms preserve customer context, which channels they support, how they enable cross-team collaboration, and their integrations and AI features.
Customer experience management software at a glance
Before comparing each platform individually, read a quick overview of their main functions and use cases.
5 of the best customer experience software platforms to consider
While one team may prioritize automation capabilities, another may care more about ease of setup. Explore how leading platforms can help you manage CX and key factors to consider before buying.
1. Front: Best for complex B2B operations
Front is the best choice when a company’s CX depends on coordination across teams and systems.
Front’s open customer operations platform lets service representatives, custom Autopilot agents, and external AI agents work together with shared context.
With Front, you can act on customer signals quickly. For example, the database company MongoDB had unmanageable email volumes, and multiple team members would respond to the same email simultaneously. The company started using Front to reduce duplicate work, lowering email volume by more than 60%.
2. Qualtrics XM: Best for enterprise experience management
Qualtrics XM can work well if you run an enterprise CX team and want to gain better customer insights from Voice of the Customer (VoC) surveys and similar feedback.
Qualtrics XM lets you collect feedback via a range of sources, from official customer surveys to signals from social media, calls, chats, and emails. Then, you can use AI agents to suggest resolutions to problems and act on them. And with XM Data & AI, you can simulate different CX strategies to predict the outcomes before implementing those strategies.
Qualtrics XM doesn’t publish its pricing, which makes it challenging to predict costs. Given that the platform is designed for enterprises, smaller companies may prefer a simpler and more affordable solution.
3. Zendesk: Best for support-led experience management
Zendesk is suitable for customer service teams with high volumes of requests and a need for structured ticket management with customizable workflows.\
Zendesk offers omnichannel support and ticketing, with a knowledge base builder and AI agents that can handle multi-step workflows. The platform is designed to manage growing volumes as a large company continues to scale.
Zendesk customers report that the platform has a steep learning curve and that configuration is time-consuming.
4. Fin: Best for AI-first customer service
Fin, formerly known as Intercom, is a strong option for SaaS companies looking to provide automated conversational support across the customer journey.
Fin supports CXM with AI-generated answers across channels like voice, email, and Slack. The agent handles routine inquiries automatically and escalates complex issues to a person with full context.
Fin is mainly an AI-powered help desk that automates customer interactions, so it’s not a traditional enterprise CX software suite. Also, some customers say that the agent struggles with complex queries and sometimes gives inaccurate responses.
5. Medallia: Best for enterprise customer feedback
Medallia is designed for large companies managing complex CX programs.
Medallia combines VoC data and other survey results with customer signals from a variety of sources, like chat logs and social reviews. It presents the results in customizable dashboards. You can also create customer profiles that provide a complete view of past interactions and highlight preferences.
Because Medallia is designed for enterprise companies, its features and cost may be excessive for smaller teams, and customers report that setup is time-consuming.
How to benefit from customer experience insights
Gathering feedback is useful, but you only improve CX by acting on that feedback. Complex B2B operations require a platform that allows team members to bounce issues back and forth without losing context.
Identify your main focus
Choose a platform that helps manage the specific part of the CX that you’re focused on. If you need to develop service insights from customer feedback surveys or manage the customer journey, that’s different from managing cross-functional customer support operations. Be clear about what you need and pick a platform that makes sense.
Ensure shared customer context
To foster a positive CX, give teams shared access to full customer context, including detailed conversation histories and account health data.
For long-term B2B relationships involving multiple stakeholders, you need a platform that keeps context visible to everyone involved. As customer work moves between support, account management, billing, and operations, the platform needs to give those teams access to that context. Ideally, the tool consolidates conversations across email, live chat, Slack, and other channels into a unified thread.
Maintain clear ownership
Although improving CX is the main focus, CX software also needs to help coordinate the work that customers never see. After the software flags a customer issue or opportunity, someone from your team needs to take ownership and transfer ownership if necessary until the issue is resolved.
Without smooth coordination, teams won’t be able to act on insights effectively. And most platforms don’t track this work; in Front’s Coordination Tax report, only 5% of B2B companies said they use tools that provide a complete picture of handoffs, coordination time, and duplicate work. Choose a platform that keeps all of the above visible.
Measure a range of outcomes
Decide on the CX metrics you want to measure, and select a platform that gives you those analytics. Prioritize measurements closely tied to your CX strategy and goals, and choose both operational and satisfaction metrics.
For example, response and resolution times are important operational CX metrics, and customer satisfaction score (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score show how that operational work translates to customer outcomes.
Choose software that meets your company’s needs
CXM requires more than collecting feedback and creating dashboards. You need a reliable way to turn what you know about the customer into the appropriate next action.
Different platforms solve different parts of that problem, and you can choose the right fit based on your operational needs. For B2B organizations with complex operations and high customer expectations, the best choice is a platform that preserves context and ownership throughout handoffs.
Front’s customer operations platform is designed specifically for B2B complexity. It gives teams a unified workspace to collaborate on each conversation, and it gives customers a consistent experience across every channel. Scratchpad, an AI workspace for sales teams, started using Front’s automation features and collaboration tools and saw a 100% CSAT rate.
Book a demo to explore how Front helps you improve CX with smoother coordination.
FAQ
How secure is customer experience management software?
Because they handle sensitive customer data, CX platforms typically come with strong encryption and role-based access and authentication. Check the security features of your chosen platform to make sure it meets your needs.
When should a company replace its customer experience management software?
Look for a replacement when the software no longer supports your CX strategy. Common pain points include poor integration with customer relationship management and other systems, escalating or unpredictable costs, limited reporting, and a lack of shared customer context.