Let’s be real for a second. There are a lot of CX tools out there, but it’s not easy to pick one. Comparing features, pricing plans, and figuring out which trial is worth your time can be a lot to handle. This can make you want to stick to the first tool you try. 

Trust me, I know. I’ve tested way too many CX tools over the last few years. Some have been total game-changers. Others… let’s just say they had “potential.” 

I want to help you save the time and sanity, so I’ve put together my guide to picking the best CX software. I’ll walk you through my must-have features, give you the lowdown on top platforms, and share tips for choosing the one that fits your business and your budget. 

By the end, you’ll know exactly where to focus your energy and your dollars. Let’s dive in.

My must-have features for CX software

When you’ve got a lot of options, you need to focus on what matters most. Here are some features I can’t live without: 

1. Omnichannel support

I’ve had customers reach out through multiple channels like email, chat, and social media. Sometimes on the same day. Switching between these platforms can be a complete waste of time and disrupt my flow, so if my CX tool isn’t pulling all these conversations into one place, I don’t want it. 

2. Analytics and insights

If you’re not measuring your CX, you’re guessing. The best tools provide real-time data on what’s working and what isn’t. Look for platforms with predictive analytics so you’re not just responding to issues, but staying ahead of them.

3. AI-powered personalization

Generative AI goes beyond the standard support bot experience and asking ChatGPT how to respond to a message. Customers expect interactions to feel personal, even if you’re dealing with a million tickets already. While they can be a hit or miss, AI tools like Siena lighten this load by analyzing your customers’ history and doing these things for you.

4. Scalability and flexibility

If your business is growing, your software should too. The best tools can support a range of needs, from small teams managing a handful of interactions to global brands operating across industries.

5. Integration capabilities

Your CX software should never work alone. Tools that integrate seamlessly with your CRMs, help desks, or e-commerce platforms will save your team so much time by keeping everything in one place.

6. Sentiment analysis

Some tools use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to identify customer sentiment in real-time. This has helped my team to quickly understand how customers feel and identify how to approach them without a lot of the guesswork.

7. CX Automation and self-service Tools

Who wants to individually respond to hundreds of tickets a day? Not me. Automation and self-service tools are a huge gamechanger to making support faster and more efficient. When I’m not responding to the same message over and over again, I get to focus on solving more complex issues.

Now that we’ve covered what to look for, let’s dive into the top CX software options and see how they stack up.

Comparing the Best CX Software Platforms

When you’re choosing CX software, it’s important to match your needs with the platform’s capabilities. Here’s how the top platforms perform across my essential features:

1. Zendesk

• Omnichannel Support: Excellent. Zendesk integrates with email, live chat, social media, and phone, so your team can respond to customers no matter how they reach out.
• Personalization: Strong. With access to rich customer data, Zendesk helps tailor interactions based on customer profiles.
• Analytics and Insights: Comprehensive. Real-time reporting and performance tracking make it easy to stay on top of your service metrics.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Very scalable. Ideal for teams ranging from small startups to large enterprises.
• Integration Capabilities: Wide-ranging. Zendesk integrates with tons of other apps, including CRMs and project management tools.
• Generative AI Integration: Currently, Zendesk is integrating more AI tools to enhance automation and personalize communication.
• Sentiment Analysis through NLP: Zendesk is moving in this direction, helping your team understand customer emotions better.
• CX Automation & Self-Service Tools: Offers automated workflows, self-service portals, and AI-powered support features to streamline customer service.
• Pricing: Zendesk offers a variety of pricing plans depending on the features you need, which can be a bit on the higher side for smaller businesses.

2. Contentsquare

• Omnichannel Support: Focused on digital experiences. While it excels in web and mobile app interactions, it doesn’t provide the same breadth of channels as others.
• Personalization: Great. Contentsquare provides deep user behavior insights that help you personalize the digital journey.
• Analytics and Insights: Top-notch. Its data-driven approach helps businesses optimize their websites and apps based on user engagement.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Suitable for growing businesses and large enterprises, particularly in retail, e-commerce, and digital-first industries.
• Integration Capabilities: Integrates with marketing tools, CMSs, and analytics platforms, though more limited compared to some CRMs.
• Generative AI Integration: Emerging. It’s using AI to identify trends and behaviors in customer actions, helping drive strategy.
• Sentiment Analysis through NLP: Uses sentiment analysis to understand user intent and behaviors on websites and apps.
• CX Automation & Self-Service Tools: Strong analytics tools support automation to some extent, but focus remains on optimizing the user experience across digital channels.
• Pricing: Customized based on usage, with a focus on enterprise clients in need of deep insights into their digital customer experiences.

3. HubSpot Service Hub

• Omnichannel Support: Very strong. Integrates email, live chat, forms, and messaging channels to provide seamless communication with customers.
• Personalization: Great. HubSpot taps into its CRM to ensure all communications are relevant and tailored to each individual customer’s needs.
• Analytics and Insights: Excellent. HubSpot’s dashboards track KPIs, customer satisfaction scores, and more in real-time.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Perfect for growing businesses. HubSpot has everything from basic tools for small businesses to more complex capabilities for larger organizations.
• Integration Capabilities: One of the best. It integrates across HubSpot’s own CRM suite, as well as a long list of third-party apps.
• Generative AI Integration: HubSpot leverages some basic AI features, particularly for chatbots and generating responses.
• Sentiment Analysis through NLP: Uses its AI to track sentiment and predict customer outcomes based on past interactions.
• CX Automation & Self-Service Tools: Includes chatbots, automated workflows, and self-service knowledge bases to enhance efficiency.
• Pricing: HubSpot has a free version that includes basic support tools, with paid tiers that unlock additional functionality as your business grows.

4. Medallia

• Omnichannel Support: Highly effective in collecting feedback across a broad range of channels, including in-store and mobile apps.
• Personalization: Focuses on personalized customer feedback, helping you identify pain points and opportunities in customer experiences.
• Analytics and Insights: Provides in-depth sentiment analysis and insights drawn from customer feedback.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Medallia is designed for both medium-sized businesses and large global enterprises.
• Integration Capabilities: Integrates with enterprise systems to provide seamless data flow.
• Generative AI Integration: Yes, it uses AI to interpret feedback and make actionable recommendations.
• Sentiment Analysis through NLP: Excellent at sentiment analysis. It helps businesses measure customer emotions and act on insights.
• CX Automation & Self-Service Tools: Some automation, but it is primarily focused on gathering and interpreting feedback rather than handling queries.
• Pricing: Medallia offers custom pricing based on your company’s size and needs, which typically caters to mid-sized and large enterprises.

5. Qualtrics

• Omnichannel Support: Gathers feedback across multiple touchpoints, including email, social media, and website.
• Personalization: Very strong. You can personalize surveys, feedback requests, and interactions based on data collected from customers.
• Analytics and Insights: Excellent. Uses both quantitative and qualitative data to analyze customer experiences in depth.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Perfect for enterprise-level organizations but flexible enough to serve smaller businesses with advanced needs.
• Integration Capabilities: Great. Integrates with a wide array of business systems to centralize and enhance CX data.
• Generative AI Integration: Incorporates AI to recommend actions based on feedback analysis.
• Sentiment Analysis through NLP: Strong sentiment analysis features to assess customer emotions and behavior.
• CX Automation & Self-Service Tools: Uses automation to send surveys at optimal moments and trigger follow-ups based on responses.
• Pricing: Offers tiered pricing depending on the features you need; usually positioned as an enterprise solution.

6. Freshdesk

• Omnichannel Support: Provides good coverage for email, chat, social media, and phone support, giving you full flexibility in communication.
• Personalization: Personalization is decent, though not as advanced as platforms like Zendesk or HubSpot.
• Analytics and Insights: Basic but effective. You can track response times, team performance, and customer satisfaction.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Excellent for SMBs, but also scales well with growing teams.
• Integration Capabilities: Integrates well with many other software systems, especially if you’re using Freshworks’ own suite of products.
• Generative AI Integration: Some chatbot capabilities, but it’s still catching up in terms of broader generative AI features.
• Sentiment Analysis through NLP: It offers basic sentiment analysis tools, but nothing as sophisticated as some of the other platforms here.
• CX Automation & Self-Service Tools: Good. You get automated workflows and a knowledge base to provide self-service options.
• Pricing: Affordable, with free and tiered paid plans to fit different needs and company sizes.

7. Salesforce Service Cloud

• Omnichannel Support: Exceptional. Salesforce Service Cloud integrates all customer service channels (phone, email, chat, social, and more) into one unified platform, giving your team a 360-degree view of the customer.
• Personalization: Excellent. Salesforce’s robust CRM capabilities allow you to tailor each customer interaction based on their full service history, purchases, and interactions.
• Analytics and Insights: Extensive. The platform offers real-time reporting and advanced AI-driven analytics (via Salesforce Einstein), enabling deep insights into customer data and service performance.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Ideal for enterprises. It’s built to handle the complex needs of large businesses but also flexible enough for smaller organizations through its various pricing plans and feature tiers.
• Integration Capabilities: Unmatched. Salesforce Service Cloud is a powerhouse for integrations, connecting easily with Salesforce’s other products, plus a vast array of third-party applications.
• Generative AI Integration: Strong, via Salesforce Einstein. It uses AI for automation, case routing, sentiment analysis, and even predicts the next best action.
• Sentiment Analysis through NLP: Top-notch. Salesforce Service Cloud leverages NLP to analyze and interpret customer sentiments across channels to better serve them.
• CX Automation & Self-Service Tools: Powerful automation tools (e.g., chatbots, case automation, knowledge base) and an effective self-service portal to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction.
• Pricing: Tiered pricing can be costly, especially for small businesses, but it’s great for enterprises that need advanced features and customization.

8. Kustomer by Meta

• Omnichannel Support: Strong. Kustomer excels at providing support for customer interactions across multiple channels, including social media (particularly Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram), email, and chat.
• Personalization: Very good. Kustomer uses its data-driven approach to personalize responses based on individual customer behavior and needs.
• Analytics and Insights: Strong. You get rich, customizable reports that give detailed insights into support performance and customer interactions.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Ideal for companies looking to scale. It’s suitable for medium to large businesses, and it handles fast-growing organizations well.
• Integration Capabilities: Excellent. Kustomer integrates with a variety of third-party tools, including CRMs, social media platforms, and e-commerce systems.
• Generative AI Integration: Integrates AI-powered chatbots to assist customers, particularly useful for automating responses and creating personalized interactions at scale.
• Sentiment Analysis through NLP: While Kustomer doesn’t rely on traditional NLP, it does provide sentiment tools for measuring customer satisfaction through feedback.
• CX Automation & Self-Service Tools: Offers automated workflows, AI-powered agents, and a strong self-service knowledge base to empower customers.
• Pricing: On the higher side, suitable for mid-sized and enterprise-level organizations needing advanced capabilities and heavy integration.

9. Genesys Cloud CX

• Omnichannel Support: Very comprehensive. Genesys Cloud CX covers nearly every channel, including voice, chat, email, social media, and SMS. It ensures no touchpoint is missed, creating a seamless experience.
• Personalization: Good. The platform personalizes customer journeys based on interaction history, preferences, and behavioral data, though it doesn’t go as deep as some of the more specialized platforms.
• Analytics and Insights: Excellent. It provides rich, actionable insights into customer and agent performance with advanced reporting and dashboards.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Very scalable. Built for businesses of all sizes, from small startups to large global enterprises.
• Integration Capabilities: Strong. Genesys Cloud integrates well with multiple enterprise systems, CRMs, and third-party applications to provide a central source of customer data.
• Generative AI Integration: Uses AI-powered chatbots to assist with customer interactions and provides automated tools to route and manage tickets.
• Sentiment Analysis through NLP: Features sentiment analysis to help gauge customer satisfaction during and after interactions, helping your team improve service.
• CX Automation & Self-Service Tools: Strong automation tools, chatbots, IVR (interactive voice response) systems, and self-service options make it efficient for both customers and agents.
• Pricing: Generally cost-effective, particularly for large organizations with complex needs, though its complexity may result in higher overall costs for SMBs.

10. OneFlow CX Platform

• Omnichannel Support: Strong. OneFlow handles omnichannel interactions, mainly focused on digital engagement, through web chat, email, and social platforms.
• Personalization: Great for custom workflows. OneFlow provides a tailored experience through behavior-based data analysis, ensuring interactions feel personalized.
• Analytics and Insights: Decent. It provides insights but is slightly behind the more advanced tools in terms of complex reporting and analytics.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Perfect for SMBs looking for an easy-to-use tool. It may not be as feature-packed as enterprise solutions but scales well within its target demographic.
• Integration Capabilities: Limited compared to larger platforms, though it offers essential integrations with CRM and marketing tools.
• Generative AI Integration: Basic chatbot functionality, using AI to automate initial customer support interactions.
• Sentiment Analysis through NLP: Not a standout feature. OneFlow lacks deep NLP sentiment analysis, but it’s effective for tracking basic satisfaction levels.
• CX Automation & Self-Service Tools: Basic automation tools, including self-service FAQs and initial contact form responses.
• Pricing: Affordable for smaller teams and organizations, making it a good choice for SMBs looking to add CX functionality without the price tag of enterprise tools.

11. Gorgias

• Omnichannel Support: Excellent. Gorgias is built for e-commerce, and it manages support through email, chat, social media, and SMS, creating a fully integrated customer experience.
• Personalization: Very strong. It connects directly with your e-commerce platform (Shopify, Magento, etc.) to pull in customer details, order history, and more to create deeply personalized interactions.
• Analytics and Insights: Strong but specialized for e-commerce. Gorgias helps track customer inquiries and response times, though it’s more tailored to online stores than broader customer service analytics.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Great for e-commerce businesses. It scales well for mid-sized businesses but may not offer as many enterprise-level features.
• Integration Capabilities: Strong integration with Shopify, Magento, and other e-commerce platforms, allowing seamless support of order history and customer data.
• Generative AI Integration: Gorgias includes AI-driven automation tools for routine customer inquiries, especially related to product inquiries, order statuses, etc.
• Sentiment Analysis through NLP: Decent. Uses basic NLP for analyzing customer messages but lacks advanced sentiment tools available in other platforms.
• CX Automation & Self-Service Tools: Excellent. Provides automated responses, helpdesk tools, and strong self-service options tailored to online businesses.
• Pricing: Focused on e-commerce, Gorgias is reasonably priced and offers tiered plans that grow with your business.

Each of these platforms have their own benefits and flaws, so pick one based on your CX objectives, size, and industry. More on that next.

How to Choose the Best CX Software for Your Business

Before committing to a platform, ask yourself and your team a few questions:

• Does the software meet your primary requirements? 

If your business needs powerful analytics or omnichannel support, confirm that those features work well in the demo version.

• Is the platform flexible enough to grow with your business? 

Consider whether it can accommodate future expansions in team size or service offerings.

• How much are you willing to spend? 

While CX software can be an investment, you should always consider the ROI when making this decision.

• Does it integrate well with the tools you’re already using? 

A seamless workflow will save time and reduce friction.

Ultimately, the best CX software is subjective. But by understanding your needs, evaluating potential ROI, and thoroughly testing options before committing, you can choose a platform that will help you drive measurable results.

Take advantage of demos and trial periods! You don’t need to commit to the first thing you try. Always be open to refining your choice as your needs evolve.