Customer retention is often influenced by a multitude of factors, including the quality of the website experience, response times, and the level of personalization offered.
However, maintaining customers, especially new ones, for an extended period is a challenging and unpredictable process.
In 2023, the retention rate for banks improved the most (4.3 percentage points) among other industries globally. On the other hand, the electronics industries witnessed negligible improvement (0.4 percentage points).
In this scenario, the right customer retention software can help you maintain existing customers and even re-engage those you may have lost along the way.
Now, let’s check out the 11 best customer retention software available today.
What is Customer Retention Software?
Customer retention software gathers valuable insights about customers’ pain points to facilitate targeted action. It is designed to reduce churn and increase repeat purchases through various features, such as lead tracking, data analysis, email marketing campaigns, and multi-channel engagement.
These features help companies collect and analyze customer data in a way that reveals patterns and trends in consumer behavior. They can leverage this knowledge to pinpoint the junctures where customers drop off and find out the key reasons behind churn.
Top 11 Customer Retention Software You Need to Know
1. Plivo CX
Ideal for mid-market e-commerce, B2C, and healthcare companies, Plivo CX is a cloud-based omnichannel customer support and retention platform that brings all customer data into a single-pane-of-glass solution.
The unified platform ensures that no matter which channels a customer uses to contact support—be it chat, email, SMS, or voice—the service quality remains consistent. Agents no longer need to switch between channels to find the context of the problem, leading to faster resolutions. On the other hand, customers can quickly resolve their queries, in their preferred channels—which promotes a convenient experience.
To up the game, you can train and deploy OpenAI-powered self-service chatbots to reduce reliance on live agents further, by over 50%.
Moreover, you can track your customer support team’s performance through live metrics and detailed reports.
Features
- Use the Unified Agent Desktop to provide effortless and omnichannel customer service across email, voice, SMS, WhatsApp, and live chat
- Deploy OpenAI-powered self-service chatbots to answer complex customer queries around the clock
- By offering self-service options and personalized greetings, the customizable IVR reduces wait times and improves customer experience.
- Seamlessly integrate Plivo CX with your existing tech stack, including homegrown systems, ERP, CRM, and helpdesk tools for a holistic view of customer data
- Drag-and-drop workflows can further simplify intricate customer journeys. By visually connecting components, you can automate tasks and trigger actions based on data.
- Analyze customer interactions and collect feedback in real time via Metrics and Reporting features to tailor your responses accordingly
- With features like call recording, barge and whisper, you can coach your agents effectively
- Create an integrated knowledge base so your agents can provide complete, quick, and up-to-date responses.
Limitations
- Lacks features for quality assurance and workforce management
- No mobile version is available for support agents on the go
Pricing
Omnichannel (annual plans):
- Growth: $29 per user per month
- Business: $69 per user per month
- Enterprise: Available on request
Voice-only annual plans
- Growth: $25 per user per month
- Business: $40 per user per month
- Enterprise: Available on request
Chat-only annual plans
- Growth: $15 per user per month
- Business: $30 per user per month
- Enterprise: Available on request
Ratings from G2 and Capterra
2. Salesforce Service
Salesforce Service assists companies in addressing data silos by consolidating all customer data into one centralized location. Additionally, it includes the “Last Activity” field to keep businesses informed about their most recent customer interactions, allowing them to filter communications based on the timing of their last interaction.
Salesforce facilitates tracking customer engagement, simplifying the identification of proactive customers.
It is more suitable for large enterprises. Examples of its current customers include Spotify, Amazon Web Services, Walmart, etc.
Features
- Get real-time customer call summary and data through cloud telephony integration
- Automate omnichannel routing to resolve customer issues faster
- Set up visual remote assistants and AI-powered chatbots for better customer support
Limitations
- Implementation and customization options are complex, especially for smaller businesses (G2)
Pricing
- Starter Suite: $25/user/month
- Professional: $80/user/month
- Enterprise: $165/user/month
- Unlimited: $330/user/month
- Einstein 1 Service: $500/user/month
Ratings from G2 and Capterra
3. HubSpot Service Hub
Service Hub by HubSpot changes how customer experience impacts your business by leveraging AI technology, offering omnichannel support, and integrating with marketing and sales data to drive scalable customer support.
Service Hub offers proactive tools to improve customer health, identify upsell opportunities, and drive customer retention.
Features
- Use a unified help desk to track customer tickets
- Instantly direct customers to the right agents via AI-powered chats
- Utilize customer health scores and product usage insights to retain customers actively
Limitations
- The ticketing system is new and not so advanced compared to other tools (Capterra)
Pricing
- Free: $0
- Starter: $20/seat/month
- Professional: $100/seat/month
- Enterprise: $150/seat/month
Ratings from G2 and Capterra
4. Zendesk
Zendesk Support Suite allows you to centralize customer conversations, interact with users using chatbots, connect with over 1,500 third-party apps, and analyze customer service performance through intuitive reports and graphs.
Its round-the-clock AI-powered bots provide customer insights by detecting sentiment and intent, helping agents predict and understand customer needs and emotions.
From enterprises and startups to small and medium-sized businesses, Zendesk mainly serves the retail, financial services, education, manufacturing, healthcare, telecommunications, and media industries.
Features
- Collect customer data and track support tickets using Agent Workspace
- Personalize omnichannel communication with your customers
- Compile valuable feedback through automated customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys to identify areas for improvement more accurately
Limitations
- Users have complained about slow and delayed customer support (Capterra)
Pricing
- Suite Team: $55agent/month
- Suite Growth: $89/agent/month
- Suite Professional: $115/agent/month
- Suite Enterprise: Custom pricing
Ratings from G2 and Capterra
5. Keap
Keap is a CRM tool and automation builder for small businesses, particularly service-oriented ones (such as coaching and consulting businesses). It helps with multiple aspects of customer service, from managing customer lists to creating sales pipelines.
Keap’s strategic reporting feature tells you which customers have clicked an email or purchased a product. Pre-designed email and text templates and advanced predictive algorithms ensure that leads and clients receive timely communications tailored to their needs and preferences.
Features
- Track customers as they move through your sales pipeline with lead scoring
- Automate email and text marketing campaigns
- Integrate different payment methods and promo codes to target customers with varying preferences
Limitations
- The reporting measures are limited, with users being unable to generate complex reports (G2)
Pricing
- Ignite: $249/month
- Grow: $329/month
- Scale: $499/month
Ratings from G2 and Capterra
6. Freshworks
Freshworks Customer Service Suite helps businesses of all sizes centralize customer interactions across various platforms, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, email, and live chat.
With advanced automation webhooks, you can automatically update customers on their inquiries, initiate conversations using pre-designed chatbot sequences, and support agents in resolving customer problems.
Features
- Deploy AI-powered chatbots on any channel to help customers 24/7
- Respond quickly on multiple channels through the omnichannel agent dashboard
- Solve complex customer issues using smart assist tools
Limitations
- Users have been left frustrated with unresponsive customer service, with sometimes issues not getting resolved at all (G2)
Pricing
- Growth: $27/agent/month
- Pro: $65/agent/month
- Enterprise: $106/agent/month
Ratings from G2 and Capterra
7. Hotjar
Hotjar is a one-stop solution offering tools like heatmaps, recordings, feedback, live interviews, and surveys for user insights. Observe how each customer moves through your website and see what catches their eye. This also allows you to detect where they lose interest.
The tool also offers easy-to-fill surveys to collect customer feedback. The sentiment analysis feature automatically categorizes the responses as positive, negative, or neutral, saving you time and helping you improve engagement with your clientele.
Hotjar caters to any business seeking insights into customer behavior, from small websites and e-commerce brands to SaaS, retail, financial services, subscription businesses, etc.
Features
- Watch complete recordings of user sessions on your website to track clicks, mouse movements, and rage clicks
- Automate the recruitment, scheduling, and hosting of moderated user interviews to learn what they think about your business
- Use live feedback widgets and send post-delivery emails to customers to calculate CSAT and Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Limitations
- The dashboard is cluttered and confusing to navigate (G2)
Pricing
- Basic: $0
- Plus: $32/month
- Business: $80/month
- Scale: $171/month
Ratings from G2 and Capterra
8. Qualaroo
Qualaroo is a cloud-based research tool that allows you to ask customers specific questions based on their user activity. These targeted surveys provide accurate information about your customer experience, enabling you to improve and optimize it. The tool targets micro-businesses, startups, and larger websites like LinkedIn, Udemy, and Glassdoor.
Features
- Conduct exit surveys to understand why customers aren’t converting and gather feedback on their experience with UX design across various platforms
- Utilize the Nudge™ technology to prompt relevant inquiries at the right moment without being pushy
- Get AI-powered analytics for your survey questions
Limitations
- The reporting dashboard lacks features and needs upgradations (Capterra)
Pricing
- Free Plan: $0 for 50 responses
- Business: $239.88 for 100 responses/month
Ratings from G2 and Capterra
9. ClickUp
ClickUp provides different views (List, Board, Table) to track projects, client communication, and retention efforts in a visually intuitive manner.
Customize ClickUp’s task management system to suit client retention activities, including follow-up calls, satisfaction surveys, and special client engagement initiatives.
Its built-in reporting features provide valuable data on customer retention, sales effectiveness, and team efficiency, which can be used to make informed decisions. ClickUp caters to enterprise-level companies, startups, non-profit agencies, etc.
Features
- Implement your customer retention strategy with pre-built CRM templates
- Track important customer retention metrics like average order value and customer lifetime value
- Use automated lead scoring to prioritize high-value customers
Limitations
- The mobile app is not intuitive and user-friendly (Capterra)
Pricing
- Personal: Free Forever
- Unlimited: $7/user/month
- Business: $12/user/month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Ratings from G2 and Capterra
10. ProfitWell
ProfitWell by Paddle provides services to more than 5,000 subscription-based businesses (both B2B and B2C organizations). It reduces customer churn by automatically recovering declined payments.
ProfitWell also captures customer metadata to attempt payment retries strategically. The interface offers comprehensive reports and visual representations, providing valuable insights into customer and revenue growth.
Features
- Monitor and compare user engagement across different plans
- Design custom churn reduction strategies to decrease customer turnover and re-engage with your client base
- Receive alerts for at-risk customer relationships
Limitations
- Most of your customers need to pay via Stripe if you want to benefit fully from ProfitWell (Capterra)
Pricing
- Pay-as-you-go: 5% + 50¢ per checkout transaction
- Custom pricing
Ratings from G2 and Capterra
11. Zoho CRM
Zoho serves enterprises and small businesses in the automotive, retail, financial services, and education sectors.
Zoho integration gathers information from landing pages and stores customer data in dashboards. It generates personalized reports for each customer, containing their contact information, current projects, product needs, previous orders, etc. Use this information to segment customers and target them with customized offers.
Features
- Talk to leads and existing customers using the omnichannel communication tool
- Automate Zoho workflows for targeted customer communication for specific offers and special occasions, like sending birthday wishes
- Enable collaboration with support teams to resolve customer tickets by integrating with help desk software
Limitations
- The platform configuration is complicated, and customizing the setup is complex (Capterra)
Pricing
- Standard: $9/user/month
- Professional: $16/user/month
- Enterprise: $28/user/month
- Ultimate: $31/user/month
Ratings from G2 and Capterra
Key Features of Retention Software to Consider
Real-time data collection and reports
This feature enables customer retention software to gain insights into valuable metrics, such as sales call metrics, lead drop-out rates, marketing video performance, link click-through rates, email engagement, and average wait and handle times.
Look for a tool that presents the collected data as organized reports with tables and graphs.
Customer segmentation
Personalization is the key to retaining clients. Customer segmentation can group different customers based on their demographics, purchase behavior, engagement levels, or other specified criteria and then develop and deliver a personalized customer experience (such as discount codes for cart items or promotions) to build strong connections.
Omnichannel engagement
Customers today interact with brands across multiple channels, including social media, email, live chat, and phone calls. Look for a tool that helps you connect with customers and maintain a high service quality across all communication channels.
Transform Your Business With the Best Customer Retention Software
As a true omnichannel customer service platform, Plivo CX comes with its robust suite of features, including a Unified Agent Desktop, drag-and-drop workflows, custom APIs, extensive integrations, agent coaching features, real-time metrics and analytics, etc.
These can help companies enhance agent performance and gain valuable insights into customer interactions. The outcome is faster issue resolution, personalized customer experiences, and ultimately, increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Are you ready to use Plivo CX to retain customers and elevate their customers’ experience?
Book a demo now!
